Medio: A flawless plan ~ Present

A three wagons caravan pulled by four horses on the front advanced through the night, full of kidnapped people and three stowaways who severely regretted their life choices that led them to that moment. As a group they had been through a lot, inclement weather, steep paths and a fight between the guards regarding who would eat the last chunk of dried meat they had saved for the trip. But even after all of that, they finally arrived at Medio.

The city looked like a silhouette on the night sky, embedded on the mountain by some miracle of architecture. Normally, carts could arrive during the morning, after an exhaustive investigation to make sure that nothing that could bring harm to the city would sneak in. They were careful before, but in these times, all precautions were only the base requirement to feel the lightest amount of safety.

Outside of the walls of the city, but only noticeable when they got close enough, were a lot of small campfires now cooling down for the day. Dozens of people had decided to simply camp outside of the city, as they had tried to enter the city but were denied passage by the guards. Not all of them wanted to stay in the city, some of them wanted to pass on their way to Yatro, but that mattered little to the new governance they had. The governance that rose up some weeks ago, after some people rose up and killed every member in charge of the city, leaving a power vacuum that no one seemed to understand who occupied it now.

People could go to the alternative path to Yatro, but that would imply going down the mountain through a path that would take extra weeks, and at the rate the waters were rising, that didn’t seem an option anymore. If nothing changed, and people kept arriving, the situation might escalate into another violent outbreak.

But again, the guards of the caravan didn’t care, as they simply were let out sneakily in the night by a couple of guards who did not check the contents of it at all. The reason? they already knew quite well the cargo it had. A dozen people prepared for the rituals that would soon be performed in the city.

Herm and Raz stayed hidden in the cargo of the caravan, consisting of three different carts. After they hid on them, it was a matter of hours for the beasts to come for it, with a group of people who were still loyal to them to transport the people to Medio. It was a complicated trip, but the prisoners themselves helped them by providing part of the food and the water that the guards had been handing them. They had been quite well taken care of for prisoners, but then again, that only meant they wanted them alive for reasons that may as well be worse than death, for all they know.

The caravan was escorted through narrow alleys, ill suited for the size of the carts they had, but discreet enough to not rouse suspicion of whoever could still be awake at the late hours of the night. Herm analyzed it coldly, trying to make an escape plan, but the situation was not good.

On the bright side, if all he cared about was escaping with Raz, they could simply drop down from the caravan and run, as they were moving slowly enough to do so without any risk. The real problem was the fact that it would imply leaving all the others to be victims of a ritual that, based on what happened on Sueño, could possibly destroy the entire city with them in it.

Herm silently cut the cloth that covered the cargo and looked outside, trying to avoid being seen by the guards that were driving the caravan. He had been on Medio before, so he had an idea of where they were, but was not sure of the moment he should strike. One thing was for sure, he could not allow them to arrive at their destination, or their chances of escaping would go down to zero.

The prisoners were looking at them with their eyes full of hope, he could not bear to look at them, so he kept looking forward. There were four different guards, two of them were on the front of the cargo cart with the horses while they were in the back of the wagon, making sure the prisoners did not try to escape. The prisoners could easily overpower them, but the problem was the heavy chain that tied all of them to each other by the ankles. Even if they managed to overpower the guards, it would be impossible to escape from the guards on the front, who possessed bows and crossbows they had flaunted to the prisoners time and time again.

“Hey, I have an idea.” Whispered Raz to Herm.

“Finally. I was a bit at my wits end out here. What should I do?”

Raz was smiling weakly, looking at Herm with pity on her eyes. He did not like that look, not that he had seen it before, but he heard stories from his brother Ases of the things that happened when she smiled like that.

Well, it couldn’t get worse than it was already, could it?

The caravan advanced a few more minutes, and unfortunately for everyone, the place they were going to was now on sight, the mansion of the lord of the city. The prisoners were very restless, whispering things to each other. They all seemed extremely anxious, maybe they knew they were about to arrive?

“In advance, I’m so sorry for this.”

The guards on the front turned around just in time to see a woman and a kid come out of the cargo, their faces and hair covered, drop down from the cart and run towards an alley. They shouted at her, but the distraction did not let them see another man come out from the same hiding spot and slit the throat of the driver. The other guard turned around, shocked, and tried to unsheathe his sword, but it was too late for him. Herm had managed to take the whip and hit the back of the horse with all his strength.

The horse kicked back, shaking the cart and making them both lose their balance. Just after, the horse tried to run away, only managing to alter the other three horses who also started running out of nowhere on the uneven path.

Time seemed to freeze for everyone still on the cart, as in just a moment the wagon was bobbing from one side of another, seemingly about to tip over. The two guards lost their balance and were about to fall off, but all the prisoners had grabbed the cover of the wagon for dear life and managed to remain seated.

The guard debated for a moment between fighting with Herm or retaking control of the cart, and those moments of hesitation were enough to make him unable to do either. The horses ran into an alley and the cart crashed against the walls, making the entire caravan spin and fall to the side. The wagon where the people were in rose in the air for a moment, the two guards in the air suspended in the air for a moment before falling outside and hitting the ground.

Most of the prisoners were incredibly rattled, fearful of letting go of the cover of the wagon that had now broken apart. The two guards from the back were hurt and it didn’t take long for the two strongest prisoners to take their weapons from them and kill them.

“Now, this way!” Shouted Herm, screaming at them from one of the nearby alleys.

The ex-kidnapped discussed for a moment before they split into couples to raise and take away the corpses of the guards. The four of them, as the last one of the front died in the crash, stabbed with his own weapon that impaled him when he fell. Herm managed to survive, barely, as he jumped from the caravan before it crashed.

The people who woke up from the noise and looked through the windows of their houses managed to see a strange spectacle of chained people tripping with each other constantly as they carried the corpses of the guards, running away and clumsily disappearing through the alley.

Two of those people in particular watched from inside the mansion of the lord of the land. Halia, who was so deep in disbelief that she failed to call the guards until it was too late, and Mors, who recognized the people who did the botched rescue attempt and discovered a new depth of disappointment she didn’t know she was capable of feeling.