“What’s wrong...” he began, knowing full well he was not going to like what he heard.
“Well... we found the camp, but it was a little more than we were expecting. There’s a lot of Lupe down there”.
“How much is a lot?”
“You’ll see,” said Louisa. They walked to the edge of the valley and looked down. Beyond the winding road that cut through the brown rock of the cliff-face was an encampment of Lupe surrounding a set of six stone beds. Around each stone bed were ten large tents and a series of smaller tents surrounding them. There were hundreds of Lupe idly swanning around the tents, busying themselves and actively avoiding the largest, gaudiest tent within the middle of the valley.
It was odd to watch the encampment from so high up, as the Lupe down below looked like an ants nest, writhing in action as they searched for something to do, some way to help their nest. They all look so small and weak from up here... he thought to himself, before turning back to Jim.
“How many people do you think there are down there?”
“Close to a thousand,” said Yun, sitting down at the edge of the cliff, his feet swinging off the side. “I’ve been counting”.
“A thousand people? Babel’s eye...”
“That’s not all,” said Jim. For each large tent there’s at least one Heaven ranker inside,” said Jim, still uncomfortable.
“That’s at least sixty Heaven rankers? What? Is there anything else?”
“Just one. I’ve seen several of the people we marked as Heaven rankers walk into the tent in the middle, the one that people seem to not want to go near. I think there’s someone of a higher rank in there, either an Immortal or Ascendant Immortal. Yun thinks an Immortal because if they were higher ranked they would know about our snooping”.
The boys looked back at the camp and Laurence immediately activated his pointer ring. Sending several images to Winoa he left a message that simply said ‘around a thousand Saints, sixty Heavens, one Immortal’. Cracking his knuckles he turned back towards Jim and Yun, “Don’t mention this to Cleo because I’m going to do something stupid now, but I will be back in a minute”.
He pulled the cloak he had worked on the night before out of his storage ring and began to descend towards the camp. Quickly, Laurence hung his cloak on his body and increased the speed of his descent by a level. The cloak crackled into life and he crossed his fingers as he approached the camp, dodging between the path of two guards on patrol. One guard turned around and looked behind him, but seeing nothing between himself and the other guard he kept moving.
Laurence skittered to a stop just outside of the sight of the guards and ducked into one of the tents. Inside were rows of beds, some were filled and some empty, but they all looked used. He walked through the tent on the balls of his feet before exiting the other side, almost straight into the back of another member of the Lupe army situated here. He held his breath and edged around the back of the Lupe, making sure not to make a sound, before walking closer to the middle of the camp.
Laurence was uncomfortable just walking out in the open but his creation seemed to be working perfectly. The cloak was a speciality he had designed when he was younger, but something he had never actually completed as the materials he had to use to make it were far more valuable than anything he had found in his time up to that point. However on the eighth floor, in the jungle he had seen a set of vines that he had to grab. They were a material called cytan threads, or ‘the strings of Cytan’. These vines were a well known Heaven ranked material named after the fact that they were the material used in the harp in the myth of Cytan the cursed musician. While the plant itself was a thick tuber like vine, if a person cut inside they would see that the tuber was made of millions of extremely tough sinews. These sinews were so tough that the only way to harvest the plant was to cut it at the roots and then split the sinews apart one by one. If it was not for the fact that the sinews were effectively impossible to shorten, Laurence would have used them to create the muscles in Dannan. This did not mean they could not be used though. In fact they were a perfect material to make rope and several kinds of clothing, like Laurence’s cloak.
Laurence curved around two more guards before he entered the ring of tents that touched the six odd platforms. He assumed that these would be the most valuable tents within the valley, excluding the tent that everyone avoided. Inside the first tent was just more beds, but this did not deter Laurence. He knew he was on the right track, even if his first target was a bust.
The next tent was a kitchen, he could tell that from the smell that was coming out of it and the sounds of cooking within. Skip, he thought to himself. Tent three was more successful. Inside was a table with a map of the region and several desks with Lupe writing at them. Taking more care than he had in the entire search so far he began looking over the things each table was working on. Most of it was idle issues that the Lupe were dealing with within their clan, but the table in the middle was sorting out far more sensitive issues. There were two tables in the middle, facing each other with a small walkway between. Neither Lupe would look up from their work. They were too focused. This was perfect for Laurence. He began sending images of everything he was finding straight to Winoa’s pointer ring. He sent missives about the state of the six platforms, short updates about something referred to as the ’keys’ and several maps dictating the military might of the army within the valley from these two tables alone before moving on. He had found everything he needed so far, there was just one more tent that he had to look into. The tent that everyone was avoiding.
Creeping his way towards the tent he could understand why they Lupe in this area were so on edge. There was something horribly oppressive living within that tent, something or someone that was far stronger than anyone in the region. Is it an Immortal? An Ascendant Immortal? The more Laurence thought about what was within the tent the harder he found resisting the urge to see what was inside. Finally he broke and with even more care than before he crept up to the tent-flap, peeking in slightly.
Inside was an Immortal, he could tell immediately. It was not something he really understood, but he knew there was an essence around the Lupe that seemed incomplete. The Lupe was stronger than Yun by far, which was how Laurence gauged that he was not Heaven ranked, but his whole demeanour expressed subservience to something, which was something that Laurence could not imagine any Ascendant Immortal ever feeling. There was something else, something that Laurence had trouble placing, that was wrong with this Lupe. He seemed sick, but in the poor light it was difficult to say with certainty why.
The Lupe stood up and walked over to the large mirror that stood front and centre within the room. Immediately Laurence began recording everything he saw, but the more he heard the more worried he became. Something was very wrong in this camp.
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