Chương 214: Chapter 71: She Was Going After Them

Among the trees, soldiers in uniforms ranging from earthy to olive were wearing hardened leather armor and moved with a martial gesture, measuring craters, writing down data. One of them separated from the group and headed toward her with a fast pace. Selena walked to meet him, the project hugged against her chest like a paper shield. The soldier was a veteran with visible scars on his hands between his gloves, only when he stood before her did, he square his shoulders.

—Miss —he said, his voice hoarse from the smoke— the Hammerer Project is running a little behind schedule, but we are taking safe steps. Right now, we are testing the juveniles underground and the adults in the forest. Selena nodded, but her mind was already miles away, in borderlands marked with a familiar seal. The military routine, the reports, everything sounded to her like a distant echo. After the protocol review, she went directly to Aurele's office.

The lieutenant colonel was sitting behind his desk, reviewing a supplies map. Upon seeing her enter with the volume under her arm, he raised an eyebrow. Selena gave him no time for questions. She placed the project on the table with a sharp thump that made the wood vibrate. —I hand over to you the railway project —she said, her voice clear, firm, imbued with an urgency that was not feigned— As you can see, how to assemble it in each part is detailed. Even my previous research on tunnels can be integrated.

She took the volume on the table and turned it, then opened it at one of the indexes pointing out the appendix. —In the excavations, the critical areas to improve the underground flow will be of vital importance, you must be careful with structural firmness, I made the calculations and Bramis confirmed them. It is viable. It is efficient. It is the solution. Aurele took the manuscript, turning the pages with a mixture of skepticism and growing amazement. The schematics were clean and the explanations meticulous.

The signatures and seals at the end corroborated a massive collaboration. —My colonel… —he murmured, looking up at her. There was surprise all over his face, but especially in his mouth which remained somewhat open. In his light brown eyes, however, there was something else: a glimpse of professional respect that had previously been absent. —So, all this time you were working on this… Almost eight months of silence of paperwork that seemed to be circulating. I thought…

He did not finish the sentence, but the meaning hovered in the air between them: I thought you were sabotaging, that you were a spoiled noble playing soldier. Selena completed the sentence in her mind and muttered an involuntary smile. —I congratulate you —he concluded, and this time the praise sounded genuine— Let us hope the scientists of the path make it viable in practice. As for your orders… The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. He paused, searching for the exact words.

He opened one of his desk drawers, clearly looking for what his eyes had forgotten, unfolded the letter and after reviewing it said: —His Majesty left it implicit that, once a viable logistical solution was delivered, you would be released from your duties here until further notice, whatever the fate of the project might be. You will be notified in due time if you are required again. Selena felt a tension that had been knotted on her shoulders for months unravel all at once.

A smile, broad and real, lit up her face, the first in a long time that was not tinged with irony or fatigue. It was the smile of someone who sees a door opening that they believed sealed; but the military code demanded its rituals. She stood at attention, her back straight as a sheet of steel, and struck her fist against her chestplate, right over her heart, where Kaela's letter beat. —For the Sap and the Crown —she said, the formula coming out with a strange, almost personal conviction.

Aurele returned the gesture, a synchronized and sharp movement. —For the Sap and the Crown, my colonel. That same afternoon, with the efficiency of someone who has planned every minute, Selena and Fjora were taken back to the Fort of the Dawn on the backs of titanopods.

Although they spent little time in the fortress, as Selena hired the most experienced driver she found on the royal road, luckily, he had a light but robust wagon, pulled by six relay chelokran, beasts with sturdy legs and resistance proof against distance. The course this time was opposite to Kaelburg, the university had to be left behind along with those she loved there. The questions that were bound to circulate among her friends already made her uncomfortable even before being heard.

This time her destination, however, was another toward the western route, toward a misty border between the duchy of Aelthria and the wild lands of Thyll. She would go toward the estate of House Scargoth in search of the baron. The trip was a whirlwind of landscapes that merged into a green and gray blur, the snow that had covered everything was beginning to recede heavily with the passing days before the beautiful spring. However, Selena barely saw them.

Her anger was not a fire, but a glacier: silent, deep, unstoppable. Her resources were vast, the gold of Solendra, the title of marchioness, the ring of the Pact of the Waves that Meilan had given her, but what guided her, what burned in her entrails with more strength than any ambition, was the craving for the truth. The truth about why her soul had been ripped from one world and thrown into this one. The truth about what had happened to Isabella in the cabin, the young noblewoman whose body she had inherited.

She remembered, with a clarity that made her shudder, the scene of the room in Terracanto: the young body lying on the floor, the pool of warm blood under her hands upon waking, the wound in the neck that closed before her eyes with an unnatural slowness, as if reality itself resisted accepting death. Who killed you, Isabella? She ran one of her hands over her neck, where she had once had that scar, that wound. Why you? What or who brought me here? Why me?

She trembled, but it was not fear, rather the shock of a brutal longing and a foundational trauma that had never healed. This world, with all its magic, its wars, and its golden chains, had given her much; but it had also stolen everything from her. Now, at last, she had a thread to pull. A cowardly baron. A letter with a family seal. A planned escape to Theosyra. She looked out the window of the wagon. Night was falling, tinging the distant peaks with purple.

Fjora, by her side, sharpened a dagger in silence, her grayish-blue eyes reflecting the last light of day. Selena squeezed the black stone ring on her finger, the one from Ashkharum, the one she named Мгла, and felt its deep cold, its promise of sleep and oblivion. She would not use it. Not today. Today, the truth was more important than rest. The wagon roared over the road, carrying them toward the north, toward the shadows where answers awaited.

Selena, the Void, the Emerald, the colonel who had invented a railway in the medieval world, was going after them.