Explorer of Edregon

"After Kym ran away, things started going downhill," Curash admitted, glancing once more at Scule as the four of them sat in a rough circle. The Hunter hadn't been surprised at the fact that Shia and Scule had been hiding in his pitfall trap, but he had been caught off guard by the Rogue's race. Evidently he'd met elves before, but never a petian. "Golrim and Kym had managed to keep something of a shaky hold on everything due to Kym's knowledge and Golrim's skills, but Golrim wasn't able to keep it up on his own."

"From what we heard, it sounded like Kym remained a prisoner in all but name after the rest of you broke out," Vin asked. "Is that true?"

"Golrim did what he had to in order to keep things under control," Curash shrugged. "Being stuck inside a house is far better than locked away deep within a soul-crushing prison, being tortured for hours on end."

"What, uh… what did you do to end up there?" Scule asked, sounding both hesitant and excited to hear the Hunter's answer.

"My story is one I don't mind sharing, but I recommend you don't go around asking people that," Curash frowned, glancing over his shoulder as if to ensure they were alone. "The majority of us came to an unspoken understanding that our lives before The Escape are behind us. It doesn't matter if you were a thief, an arsonist, or even a murderer. Edregon is a clean slate, and so long as you don't go back to your old ways, all are treated equally and given the same chances."

"Okay, no repeating the question," Scule nodded. "But you don't mind sharing, right?"

"I've nothing to be ashamed of," Curash nodded. "I was the leader of the kingdom's largest group of poachers, the Righteous Arrows. The king had miles upon miles of woodlands that were off-limits to the common folk, and he refused to allow us access even after the combination of war and disease wiped out many of our crops. It started as just me and my close friends, but the more villages we came across suffering the same as ours, the more volunteers I accepted into my little band. Before I knew it, I had nearly eighty people serving under me, and our hunting grounds had grown to encompass over half of the king's private forest. When they finally caught me, they hung most of my subordinates, but decided to toss me into that prison to rot."

"How long were you in there?" Shia asked, her gaze filled with sorrow after hearing the Hunter's story.

"Tough to keep track of time down there," Curash sighed, his hand subconsciously reaching up to touch the nub that remained of his right ear. "Best I can tell, somewhere between three or four years. Sure felt like longer though."

"How many of the other prisoners have stories like yours?" Vin asked. If most of them were like Curash, then maybe a good chunk of the fragment would be willing to join the Earther's after all.

"Who knows," Curash shrugged. "It's tricky, seeing as few of us willingly speak of our old lives. I know of at least a dozen or two folk that I'd bet my bow were unjustly thrown into that prison. But they are heavily outweighed by those that were locked away for good reason."

"Is that why you're out here, rather than joining the rest in town?"

"That's half the reason," Curash nodded. "To be honest, after spending the last few years locked away in that God-forsaken prison, my skin itches if I so much as step indoors anymore. My soul longs for the great outdoors, and I'll die before letting someone lock me away again."

"We're not asking you to go into any buildings," Shia said, reassuring him with a small smile. Surprisingly, Curash seemed more curious toward the elf's jagged teeth than afraid. "…But if you could help show us around town and introduce us to the others you think might be willing to join us, we'd appreciate it."

"I could do that," he said, offering her a small smile in return. "Though only if you agree to my request. No asking anyone of their history before The Escape, understand? Our sins were washed clean the moment we stepped out of that prison and into the Gods' light once again. If people wish to speak of their past, let them bring it up."

"Okay," Vin nodded, trying to keep the worry off his face. Even if he could get behind something like this, he had a feeling Spur wouldn't let any of these people get anywhere near camp without a thorough interrogation regarding what landed them in the high security prison in the first place.

"In that case," Curash grunted, getting to his feet and offering Shia a hand up. "I'll show you the way to the others. Just keep your guard up, there's no telling when or where the Red Dawn will strike."

"Wait, what was that last bit?" Scule asked, clambering up onto Vin's shoulder. "That sounds mildly important if you ask me."

"The Red Dawn is a small group that have banded together to cause trouble," Curash spat, explaining as they began walking deeper into the fragment. "They've decided that after escaping that prison, none of them would be beholden to any laws or rules ever again. They swing by the town every now and again to ruffle feathers and take things that don't belong to them. The only reason they're not an even bigger problem is because they spend most of their time fighting amongst themselves."

"They sound like a serious danger," Vin said, raising an eyebrow. "How does the town survive being raided so frequently?"

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"Nothing brings people together like defending their homes against a common enemy," Curash chuckled. "As much as everyone hates them, I have to admit the Red Dawn have probably done just as much to keep the town functional as Golrim has. If it weren't for their unseen threat, there's no doubt all the townsfolk would be at each other's throats far more frequently. I think even Golrim understood that, which was probably why he never made a real effort to stamp the Red Dawn out."

"Ten gold says Golrim was secretly funding the Red Dawn all this time," Scule whispered in Vin's ear, grinning. "That sounds like something a former king's advisor would do."

Before Vin could comment, Curash called back over his shoulder.

"Anyway, I mentioned things have been going downhill lately," he repeated. "I don't know how he did it, but Golrim somehow managed to keep some semblance of shaky peace among all the former prisoners. After he proved himself capable, rather than solve problems with violence, people started taking their many disputes to him. It didn't matter if the argument was over who had the rights to certain hunting grounds or if two people both wanted to build a house in the same location, somehow, Golrim always found a way to make both people happy. I can tell you with absolute certainty the town never would have come together without him and Kym, and it didn't take long for it to fall apart in their absence."

"He was that helpful?" Vin asked, trying to reconcile his mental image of the man who had broken into his room in the dead of night or sent an assassin into their camp with this selfless one Curash spoke of. "He struck me as more dangerous than that. Kym warned us of the same."

"I didn't say he wasn't dangerous," Curash said, plucking a particularly tall stalk of grass off the ground and plopping it in his mouth. "All men fear a stranger with a knife, but few stop to think about the one who provided the knife in the first place and pointed the stranger in their direction. He's just as deadly as anyone else that came from within that prison, if not more."

"What's his class?" Shia asked, walking side by side with the Hunter.

"Some weird crap I've never heard of before," Curash admitted. "Logistician, if I remember right. One of those fancy classes only the nobility normally get access to."

"No way that guy's a noble," Scule snorted. "I can tell a street rat when I see one. It's the way they carry themselves. As if they're both trying to keep attention from themselves while also making themselves appear more dangerous than they really are. Not an easy thing to pull off."

"I know nothing of his past other than the fact he was the king's advisor, but he doesn't strike me as being noble-born either," Curash nodded. "He and Kym couldn't have been any more different, which made Golrim's insistence on keeping Kym safe all the stranger."

"If Golrim is all about logistics and solving problems, nothing would be more important to him than knowledge," Vin pointed out, warily eyeing a few snare traps Curash led them around. Each had been baited with a small handful of berries, and they must have smelled rather good based on the twitching nose that poked out of his pocket. Reginald had elected to hide from the Hunter for whatever reason, and he quickly pulled his nose back in before Curash noticed.

"Which explains why he chased after Kym," Shia nodded. "But why bother trying to save the town?"

"Honestly, the more we talk about it, the more I think Golrim is telling the truth," Vin admitted. "At least about most things. I still think he originally ordered that assassin to recover Kym no matter what, but after realizing the opportunity our camp presented him, maybe he decided to abandon ship and try to get in good with us instead of continuing to struggle with his failing town. He straight-up told me he likes being the right-hand man of the one in charge rather than leading himself."

"That doesn't answer Shia's question," Scule pointed out. "Why not wash his hands of this failed place and turn all his focus to the Earthers' camp?"

"It sounds like he's already made quite the name for himself here," Vin shrugged. "Why throw away all that goodwill and start over alone when he could potentially bring a good number of allies with him? Curash, do you think people would leave the fragment and follow Golrim if they knew it was safer?"

"Are you kidding? In a heartbeat," the Hunter chuckled. "The only reason more of them haven't already tried is fear of the Red Dawn. The few that attempted to flee to adjacent fragments were tracked down and killed by those maniacs. The town only even learned of their fates because of the Red Dawn's obsession with putting their victim's heads on spikes like trophies."

"I'm starting to think Spur might have an issue with drawing those guys' attention over to camp," Scule muttered, his voice low enough that Curash wouldn't hear. "Please tell me you're not about to make it our mission to take them down or anything."

"No, we're just here to check things out," Vin confirmed, getting a relieved sigh from the petian. "If things turn ugly, we either bunker down in town like the rest of the former prisoners, or we book it. We might be two fragments away from camp, but all we need to do is step one foot into the Sacred Forest and we'll have a small army of elves backing us."

"Alright, this is it," Curash nodded, cresting a small hill and revealing a large camp with a few dozen tents strung up. There were at least a good thirty or forty people wandering about here and there, and Vin could immediately tell this was a place of lawlessness where anything went. From up here, he could easily make out a ring of people drinking as they cheered on two brawlers trying their damnedest to knock the other's lights out. There was a small medical tent where a filthy looking healer was working to stitch up a woman with a deep gash running down her side, and even a few of those fuzzy looking deer creatures saddled up and eating from a trough on the edge of camp.

"I don't mean to be critical, but this doesn't look like much of a town," Scule said, squinting at the cheering crowd as one of the men finally went down to a nasty uppercut.

"That's because we move around a lot," Curash admitted, raising a hand and grinning at the resulting cheers as the crowd down below finally spotted him. "Just as a precaution of course. Even if Golrim never tried to root us out before, I had no way of knowing if that would remain the case."

Vin turned toward the Hunter, blinking in what felt like slow motion as the man's words finally registered. Before he could do so much as move, Curash spun around, whipping an arrow out of his quiver and pressing the tip directly against Shia's throat in a single motion.

"Now, why don't we continue our conversation down below," Curash grinned, his eyes seeming to light up with a dangerous fervor.

"The Red Dawn just loves meeting new people."