Incognito

Kyr was astonished by the quiet normalcy of Lumis. 

It appeared like a traditional countryside vista next to a rocky mountain. The houses were small but plentiful, with a wide thoroughfare in the middle leading to a few buildings and the clocktower. 

Its streets weren’t particularly busy, but it wasn’t barren either. Shops were open, children played, wagons delivered goods all across town. There were even chickens grazing next to a well where a woman was drawing buckets of water.

The tragedy must’ve been a lie.

“Why do we need to go to Lumis?” Roy asked back at the hero’s parade two days ago.

Nowe rolled open a map that everyone huddled over to look. “The Spire of Resolve is south of Serami and north of Tristen,” the princess explained, tracing her index finger across southern Vastille. “Meaning we can simply go down the silver road to get there.”

“Which is what Vysa and the hero's parade are doing,” Cinza observed. 

“Yes. Unfortunately we can't simply stroll into Serami like them,” Nowe continued. “We can get tons of supplies in the sapphire city, but the royal army will be there. Mostly to provide support for Ilara, but we also know they're on the lookout for Kyr.”

Leatrix pointed to a small town southwest of the Spire of Knowledge, away from the silver road. She traced her finger along the Spearhead Mountains, down to the Spire of Resolve.

“We’re taking the back route instead,” the princess said.

“It is a shorter path...” Roy mused. “But the roads are old and we might run into more beasts.”

“Better than dealing with the king’s army,” Leatrix replied. “And we need to give Vysa time to talk to Ilara before we know if they’ll accept our help. If the hero or any of her supporters disagree, then we’ll only invite ourselves to an ambush.”

Kyr stared at the path next to the mountain range. There were small towns and villages along the old roads that was probably neglected by the king's army. Many of them probably needed help. He liked this route.

“To Lumis, then,” Nowe said. “We can do our resupplying there too. Right, Kyr?”

“Kyr?”

Nowe stood in front of Kyr and fixed his hat. He blinked and shook his reverie aside.

The princess had wrapped his horn in silk, then draped that around the brim of his pointed hat to make it seem bulbous and part of the style. It was a better disguise than what Roy fashioned, but it also meant he had to carry this ginormous thing everywhere.

Kyr loathed wearing hats, but he felt another level of hate for the damned things.

He endured wearing them during formal functions in the academy and to hide his horn throughout their journey, but did this thing really need to be five times larger than his head and bright green? It was inviting more attention than away from it!

“Did the others already leave?” Kyr asked with the straightest face he could muster.

“Leatrix had Roy lead her around town to relive his experience six years ago,” Nowe replied. “We want to stay as far away from that as possible. If people connect you to their trauma, then our cover is blown.”

To further prove her point, Nowe fixed the hat that she wore, which was very similar to his. “Remember, we are originally from the nation of Runet,” the princess said. “Runeti hats aren’t quite this weird and gaudy, but they’re known for having them. What’s important is what people expect!”

“You heard that from Cinza?”

“Yup!”

Kyr sighed and walked around town with the princess. Whenever he walked too far from her, she’d grab onto his arm and pull him close.

“We’re pretending to be together here,” Nowe insisted.

“Why can’t you just be my sister?”

“Who goes on a trip with their sister?”

“Who goes on a trip when the world’s about to end!”

“Oh, true… Alright, new story. We’ve been living in Vastille for the past decade, but we can’t let our old customs go so we wear these funny hats. Better yet, we realized how important our Runeti roots are, now that the end is upon us!”

Sure. The people of Lumis would definitely buy that story.

Still...

So close to the apocalypse and the townspeople still worked. Men and women in dirty clothes hauled crates of stones delivered from the mines on the other side of town.

Even when the cracks appeared larger and scarier, they continued with their lives. They didn’t give up.

“The sacred order giving them hope is one thing,” Nowe said, as if reading his mind, “these people provide the metal the army needs for their fight against the beasts. As far as they’re concerned, they’re fighting the apocalypse too.”

It was the reason the town was rebuilt.

Was that why?

Why Aven’s killer burned this town to the ground? It couldn’t have been because of what they produced, could it? There were several mines along the Spearhead Mountains and none of them were burned.

“Does Lumis produce anything special?” Kyr asked. “Some kind of precious stone?”

“Not that I know,” Nowe answered. “Leatrix asked the same question back when she was investigating your case.”

A different reason then...

Leatrix tried to hide it by her nonchalance, but Kyr had grown to know the inquisitor in the time they’ve been together. She wanted to come here.

Kyr and Nowe circled the western part of Lumis, stopping by the monastery, the large public eatery, and the park overlooking a creek. In trying to avoid the main thoroughfare where the town's attacker unleashed their magic, they mostly found areas that were least affected by the tragedy six years ago. It meant they didn't find any clues, but it wasn't as if Kyr would remember anything either. This really was his first time visiting Lumis.

When the sun was about an hour from setting, they found themselves next to the creek, watching a school of fish swim upstream.

Nowe sighed, then tried leaning her head on Kyr’s shoulder. Unfortunately for the princess, her hat wouldn’t allow it. They both laughed.

“Have you been to Renat in your travels?” Kyr asked.

“I’ve been to every country in the west,” Nowe replied proudly. “Renat is just past these mountains, but getting there is too dangerous unless you circled down to the merchant republics.”

“Or take a ship across the northern sea.”

Nowe groaned. “If only.”

“Did you come up with stories too?” Kyr asked. “Pretended you were someone else out there?”

“I did,” Nowe answered with sincerity. “I like to be someone other than a foreign delegate when I travel. Though I almost always get caught in the end.”

“I do remember a certain scholar from the congregation,” Kyr said. “So sure of herself until she spoke of things only royalty would know and say. Her disguise was particularly dubious.”

Nowe slapped him in the shoulder. "I should’ve traveled east and learned of their mysticism instead!" the princess cried, her face red as a tomato. "People say their glamour tricks could morph a person into an animal if they wanted to!”

“So you could've pretended to be Aven’s pet monkey?”

Nowe gritted her teeth and slapped him harder. She was really strong.

“I will break that horn, I swear!”

Kyr laughed.

“If only magic worked like that,” he said. “Mana manipulation would be so much more interesting.”

“Perhaps," Nowe said, "but in my travels, stories like morphing, curses, or communing with the dead always end up as some form of trickery. I often get outed as Vastillian the moment I use real magic.”

“Communing with the dead?”

“People from In’ana have a whole culture around seances and something about a world of spirits.”

“Having that would make this investigation so much easier,” Kyr said. “But you know what? One of the Specter’s legends is about a king who returned as a ghost. Heck, our spires are populated by them. Maybe our cultures have something in common.”

"If there's a connection, then it might have something to do with the old magics," Nowe said with a shrug. "But who knows? We call them 'ghosts', but the smoky creatures of the spires.. are..."

The princess' voice trailed off as her attention fell elsewhere. Kyr followed Nowe's line of sight and saw a girl crying at the other end of the park. A couple of adults appeared to be consoling her before they ran away, faces painted with worry.

Something must’ve happened.

They went over to see what was going on. The girl was probably ten, with long brown hair and a round face drowning in tears.

“What’s wrong?” Nowe asked, crouching next to the girl. “What did they say?”

“Something in the mines… collapsed…” the girl said between sobs. “…it’s where my brother works… They said… it looks really bad…”

Kyr and Nowe shared a look.

“He’s the only one… I have left… after what happened…”

The burning of Lumis.

“I can’t lose him too… I have nobody else...”

The girl wailed as Nowe did her best to console her.

Kyr expanded his sense of mana. The flow was disrupted heavily somewhere in the northwest part of town. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said before realizing it. He bolted in the direction of the mines.