Woodsy Studio Winter Visual Novel Sale!

The Steam Winter Sale is here, and with it we’re offering discounts on all of our games! Quantum Conscience and Serafina’s Crown are 33% off, while Echoes of the Fey is 25% off! On top of that, we bundled all three games together at an even deeper discount in our Visual Novel Bundle, which is only $11. If you already own one or more of our games, the bundle is even cheaper. The Winter Sale is the perfect time to complete your collection!

For those who already have our games (thanks!) we’ve also put the soundtracks on sale through Steam, so check your DLC tabs for the sounds of Woodsy Studio.

If you’d rather buy on itch.io, we’ve got a similar bundle available for Serafina’s Crown and Echoes of the Fey, as well as individual discounts on each game.

As for us, we’re hard at work on the next installment of Echoes of the Fey, Episode 0: The Immolation. If you’d like to see that on Steam early next year, head on over to Greenlight (after picking up some games) and vote!

 

Why We’re Making Our Next Visual Novel in Unreal Engine 4

We’ve been quiet over at Woodsy Studio for the last month or so, but with good reason: we’ve been busy! Shortly after releasing Echoes of the Fey: The Fox’s Trail on Steam, we decided to switch our development platform from Gamemaker Studio to Unreal Engine 4. This is no simple task. For Gamemaker, we had a very helpful base to build off of with ThinkBoxly’s EdgeVN system. With UE4, we don’t have such luck. There is a module for sale, but it seems unequipped to handle large multi-scene VNs, so we are building from the ground up using the UE4 blueprint visual scripting. On top of that, we’re converting to 3d backgrounds, which means re-making a lot of our general world assets to 3d models.

Most people are totally confused when we tell them we’ve decided to switch to UE4, and that’s without the troubles mentioned above. UE is best known for big-budget 3d games. It isn’t known for indie development or user friendliness. Unreal is total overkill for a visual novel, especially when the most GPU-intensive thing we’ve pushed out in previous games is a high resolution character sprite. So, why are we going to all this trouble to switch to an engine that is (on its face) worse for indie 2d development than our previous platforms?

To start, I need to go over the problems we had with Gamemaker. I don’t want to make this post a big list of complaints about GM–which I think is fantastic for certain kinds of projects–but addressing a couple of these is unavoidable. First off, audio files.  The way GM handles audio files was frustrating from start to finish. Importing them was clunky. We couldn’t make batch changes to groups of sounds. And a couple times, references to entire groups of sounds just disappeared.

These would be annoyances for any game, but because of the nature of our (partially) voiced visual novels, we had over 2,500 sound files in our game. Any task related to the sound was a huge ordeal for us and, in the end I think the sheer number of sounds ended up creating our other problem with GM: porting.

Our first (still work in progress) screenshot from Episode Zero

Our first (still work in progress) screenshot from Episode Zero

Before we switched to GM, Woodsy Studio was releasing its games on Windows, Linux, Mac, and Android phones. However, so far we’ve been unable to bring The Fox’s Trail to any platform other than Windows. The problem is different on each platform, but without going into too much detail, our suspicion is that our sounds (or more specifically, the size of our sound files–2.8 gigabytes before compression) have something to do with it.

Finally, drawing backgrounds has been one of our biggest hurdles. Every room requires a background and these are Jenny’s least favorite thing to draw. They are also large, contiguous sprites that are difficult to break up into 1024 x 1024 pieces to keep our texture page size down (which is needed for performance reasons, especially on mobile). Moving to 3d environments is theoretically possible in GM, but would require rebuilding a huge amount of what we’ve already  And it’s not what the engine is designed for.

I really do want to stress that Gamemaker Studio is a very good option for all sorts of games, we just decided it wasn’t right for us. Because going forward, these problems were only going to get worse. For episode 2, we’ll have the same–if not more–quantity of voice acting clips. We’ll want more backgrounds. And we might want to go to native a native 1080p resolution, at least for the PC version–further exacerbating file size and background creation issues.

All this added up to need to change. But again, the question comes up: why UE4? Why not Unity, which seems to be the favorite choice of indie devs everywhere? A couple reasons. No matter what engine we switched to, we were going to have to re-learn everything. Ren’py uses python and GM uses gml, its own language, so there was no real chance of transferring our knowledge perfectly over to either of our options.

A UE4 material we made for our visualization of a fey rift.

A UE4 material we made for our visualization of a fey rift.

Also, out of the (metaphorical) box, UE4 is fantastic at making your game look good. I don’t entirely know how the guts of either engine work, but it seems very easy to use the UE4 cameras and lights (as they are implemented without plugins) to make our art pop compared to what I’ve seen of Unity. And the material system lets (relatively) inexperienced programmers do some amazing things with shaders in a visual scripting interface.

Finally, I’ve always been a bit of a contrarian and everyone using Unity because the common knowledge is that Unity is more user friendly just makes me want to go down the road less traveled. And we’ve discovered that this common knowledge might be wrong.

It has been just over a month and a half since starting the conversion and we already have a full dialog system set up (developed by us from the ground up), with working choice menus and overworld exploration like in The Fox’s Trail. We’ve built out our first environment and imported the first handful of scenes for Episode Zero. Converting to 3d environments has allowed me–a person who couldn’t draw if my life depended on it–to take over a portion of the art process, building 3d models based on our original drawings. This required learning Blender along with Unreal Engine 4, but for a long time the art burden has fallen entirely on one member of the team and I’m more than happy to finally help out.

An Episode 1 asset re-made in 3d (again, work in progress).

An Episode 1 asset re-made in 3d (again, work in progress).

At first, I likened trying to make a visual novel in UE4 to using a rifle to kill a fly. Yes, it can get the job done but it will be harder and a ton of overkill. Now, I’d use a different tortured metaphor: it’s like putting together Ikea furniture with powertools. It’s still overkill, but the power tools have a lot more uses than just putting together Ikea Furniture.

So, when is Episode Zero coming out? Right now, we’re tentatively saying “TBD: Winter”. And yes, we mean this upcoming winter. I don’t think we can commit to anything more than that, but since we have so much of the framework already done and Episode Zero is a smaller project, we hope that you’ll be able to enjoy the first visual novel developed in UE4* fairly soon.

*I don’t know if we’re really going to be the first UE4 VN. I couldn’t find any. Correct me if I’m wrong!

 

Demo-ing After The Fact: A PixelPop Retrospective

Watching strangers play your game is terrifying. It’s especially terrifying when your game is already released. The flaws you see can be corrected, but they can’t be contained. They are already out in the world, installed on the hard drive of everyone who has bought and played the game. Even if they are minor issues–even if you are incredibly proud of the game you put out there–the smallest of imperfections can drive you crazy because there’s nothing you can do to fix them for all the people who have already experienced them.

Despite that, we attended this year’s PixelPop Festival with a demo of Echoes of the Fey Episode 1: The Fox’s Trail.

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PixelPop Festival, now in its third year, is St. Louis’s annual gaming convention. It features competitive events, talks from developers and others in the industry, and of course demos of upcoming and recently released games. It ran from October 8-9 this year at a new location, the St. Louis Science Center.

There are a few reasons we brought Episode 1 to PixelPop. First off, right now we’re in a transitory period. If we’d committed to GameMaker Studio after finishing Episode 1, I’m sure we’d have a (very rough, very early) build of our next release, Episode 0: Immolation to show off right now. But we decided to make the rather huge leap to Unreal Engine 4, which necessitated rewriting our VN system from the ground up and learning how to make 3d environments. So you might say we’re a little behind schedule. Second, we wanted to test controller support before submitting a build for approval on console. Handing folks a controller at a convention to see how they use it seemed like the best way to get an idea of how accessible our build would be.

Fortunately, the results were great. We’ve brought our visual novels to various events, but none were more welcoming than PixelPop. Demo-ing a visual novel is never easy. VNs don’t have small, digestible chunks or “vertical slices” that can be carved out and used as a standalone example of the overall gameplay. We basically have two options: start players at the very beginning of the game and hope the first few scenes are compelling, or pick out a spot in the game we know is exciting and start players there.

For our very first demo at Anime St. Louis earlier this year, we took the later route. We skipped ahead in the story to when the player can control Sofya’s transformation into a cat, which allows them to spy on various characters and have a little freedom in the overworld portion of the investigation. We wanted people to see the beginning of the side stories, and see the very first hints at the mystery central to the game. Unfortunately, we found that people were just confused. Dropping people in the middle of the story left them with too many questions, and the core gameplay of a visual novel just doesn’t work if you don’t understand what’s going on.

Going forward, we decided to start our demo at the beginning. Our game starts with a nice CGI, an introduction to the world, and then a short scene with a cat, all of which are at least conducive to drawing people in. This meant that the demo would not feature the full extent of the exploration/investigation, but we recognize that the story is the draw and that needs to make sense.

On the first day of PixelPop, we committed to our usual strategy of encouraging players to use headphones. The first few scenes are heavily voiced, and we’ve got some rad music we want people to hear. Convention demo areas are usually pretty loud, so we figured the best way to make sure all of it is heard is force headphones.

However, we quickly discovered yet another problem with demo-ing a visual novel. Even a small portion of the game–the first investigation sequence of the first day–can become a 30+ minute experience if a player gets into the game and goes everywhere they can. And there are pretty much two reactions we had to our demo. Either people immediately didn’t like the game (too much reading which, hey,I get it) and left after a minute, or they stuck around for a while and played through several scenes. We loved seeing people get deep into the demo, but with only one demo station, it limited the number of people we could engage. We put the game on a larger monitor to the side so passers-by could watch, but that wasn’t quite enough to entice anyone to stand and observe the demo. So we decided to bring a set of speakers for the second day.

Despite the loud demo floor, we found that the speakers encouraged people to stand and watch the demo, which for a visual novel is almost as good as getting them to play it. Granted, we had the opening music in our heads all day, but I think it was worth it.

All in all, we had a great experience showing off Echoes of the Fey to the crowd at PixelPop. We’d encourage any local developers (and any developers who can make it to STL with relative ease) next year to join us!

 

Echoes of the Fey: The Fox’s Trail Out NOW On Steam

The day is here, friends! You can now get Echoes of the Fey: The Fox’s Trail on everyone’s favorite PC gaming platform, the launcher we all know and love, Steam.

We’ve got achievements! We’ve got trading cards! At some point in the near future, we’ll have a demo and soundtrack DLC! Go check it out!

Steam Achievements and Us: Why We Added Achievements for a VN

With less than a week until Echoes of the Fey: The Fox’s Trail hits Steam (August 16, thanks to a quick turnaround), I thought I’d discuss one of the larger steps in preparing a game for Steam: Steam Achievements.

Steam achievements are a funny thing to spend time on, because in a lot of ways they are completely meaningless. They don’t give you access to anything. They are easily hack-able. And, unlike Xbox Achievements and PSN trophies, there’s no running count across all games to pad out. There is no ultimate objective in getting Steam achievements.

The visual novel is also an unusual genre for achievements. Some people see achievements as a badge of skill and, well, there’s really very little pure skill involved with playing a visual novel. Sure, there will be endings that are more difficult to get, but it’s just merely a matter of knowing what to do, not executing it.

So why add achievements if they represent so very little, and require (fairly simple, thanks to Game Maker Studio) coding and art? Our answer is twofold. First, people like achievements. Even if they’re meaningless, people like seeing them pop up every so often in the corner of the screen. It’s fun, even if we all know it doesn’t confer any real bragging rights. Ultimately, games are about fun and adding achievements is worth it even if only a handful of our players have more fun because of it. And on console platforms, achievements/trophies are mandatory so people are used to VNs/casual games awarding them for story progression alone.

The second reason is a bit more self-serving. You see, the ratio at which players acquire Steam achievements is publicly available. You can go and look at what percentage of your playerbase has each achievement. This is incredibly useful for a VN developer because it (a) lets you know if there is some part of the story where you lose players’ interest (a steep drop off between achievements that always pop when you reach certain milestones) and (b) informs you what choices players are making in the game. Several characters have side quests in Echoes of the Fey: The Fox’s Trail and we want to know who has the highest completion rate. There is also at least one big decision late in the game that we definitely want to track, even if it’s just out of curiosity. So we put an achievement on it.

This helps us in numerous ways. Since Echoes of the Fey is a series, we can use this information to find out which characters we should bring back/feature more in future episodes. We can see if we should focus more on the depth of the side quests or (if they’re generally neglected) we should siphon attention away from side content to lengthen the main story (or make more of it mandatory.)  And when it comes to the big choices you make in The Fox’s Trail, we can use the statistics to decide what will be the ~canon~ ending. While we definitely intend to feature a save import for Episode 2 (or some way to play with your decisions from The Fox’s Trail intact), there will need to be a default ending and we can base this off the numbers we have.

Various factors can throw off these numbers–either people hacking the achievements or bundles adding a bunch of new users that never play (or only leave it running for trading cards)–but the ratios should remain informative. Anyone who is hacking the Steam achievements is probably adding all of them across the board, and people who buy in bundles and never play don’t get any achievements at all.

As long as there is nothing prohibitive in your engine, we’d strongly encourage developers to add achievements, if nothing else for their own stat tracking. There are so few ways to get information about how others play your games that it’s an entirely worthwhile endeavor (and there are plenty of people who appreciate the achievements, even though on PC they are less meaningful).

Echoes of the Fey: The Fox’s Trail will be out August 16, 2016 on Steam.

Echoes of the Fey – The Prophet’s Arm (Part 4) Final

This is part 4 of a multi-part short story detailing one of Sofya Rykov’s cases prior to The Fox’s Trail. Part 1 can be found here and part 2 is here.

The second Sofya stepped into the pub, every eye in the room was on her. There were a dozen Leshin seated throughout the surprisingly spacious tavern and every one was curious why a Human would dare to join them.

Normally, Sofya felt rather comfortable around Leshin. Spending so much time with Heremon over the last few months helped with that. But she’d rarely visited their side of the border, and mostly interacted with them as minority in post-occupation Vodotsk. This was different. Now, she was the only Human in the room.

“Do you see any soldiers around?” Sofya asked quietly.

“No one dressed as such,” Heremon replied.

“Good. I don’t see Braden here and I need a drink.” Sofya headed for the bar but Heremon grabbed her arm.

“We need to be careful. There could be an ambush.”

“They tied up their horses out front. Not a very good ambush, if you ask me.”

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Echoes of the Fey – The Prophet’s Arm (Part 3)

This is part 3 of a multi-part short story detailing one of Sofya Rykov’s cases prior to The Fox’s Trail. Part 1 can be found here and part 2 is here.

Echoes of the Fey: The Fox’s Trail is out now and available at woodsy-studio.itch.io!

“This is one of the worst ideas you’ve ever had,” Heremon muttered as he knelt down below a window near the service entrance to the Melinkov keep. “I can’t believe that you convinced me to go along with it.”

“Come on,” Sofya replied. She was crouched beside him, her hand on the windowsill. “I saw the looks you were giving that woman. You are more excited about this than I am.”

“She was quite rude, but that doesn’t justify theft.”

“The AFC stole the Arm from the ir-Dyeun. The Empire stole it from the AFC. And then the Melinkovs stole it form the Empire. We’re well beyond justified at this point.”

Heremon frowned. “I don’t think that’s how it works.” Ever since Sofya had suggested breaking into Melinkremlin to take the arm, Heremon had voiced his concerns. But she knew the truth. Heremon was beside her for a reason. He wanted to take the Arm from the Melinkovs as much as she did.

The plan to retrieve the Prophet’s Arm was relatively simple. Because the Melinkremlin keep was built after the Fey reactors, the entire structure was dependent on Fey-powered electric lights. There were no fireplaces, no torches, and surprisingly few windows. At night, the only thing that could illuminate the corridors were the neon lights that lined the walls.

Very few would-be burglars would be able to take advantage of this particular design feature. Disabling Fey power to the building would require destroying or disabling multiple transformers across Volgrad, some of which were as heavily guarded as the keep itself. Sofya, however, had an advantage.

“Any luck?” Heremon asked.

“There’s a pipe in the wall a few feet from here,” Sofya replied. She pulled her hand down from the windowsill and began to creep towards where she felt the Fey energy pulsing through the wall. All magic—even magic pulled from a rift to power gaudy lights in a human castle—left a signature that Sofya could sense if she concentrated. And sensing it wasn’t the only thing she could do.

“And you’re sure this is going to work?” Heremon asked. “Do you know what happens to most humans when they break a Fey energy pipe?”

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Echoes of the Fey – Episode 1: The Fox’s Trail

Get game on Steam

Coming to PS4 July 11

For the first time in almost thirty years, the land of Oraz is at peace. For three decades, the Humans and Leshin of Oraz waged a brutal war over the right of Humans to power their cities and machines with magic. But the Leshin people have overthrown their theocratic leaders who pushed to extend the war and ushered in a new era of reconciliation and reconstruction.

This peace, however, is fragile and strained under the shared history of the two peoples. This is true nowhere more than the city of Vodotsk, a historically Human city that was occupied and ruled by the Leshin for years. Old grudges among the Humans have re-emerged. Leshin who lived there for years as rulers must decide whether to return beyond the Great Forest or stay as second-class citizens. And the wounds of the war threaten to re-open whenever the two peoples come into contact.

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Echoes of the Fey is a series of detective stories set in the high fantasy world of Oraz starring Sofya Rykov, a Human private investigator with a dangerous secret: following a near-death experience in the war, she spontaneously developed the ability to use magic. She is joined by her Leshin partner, Heremon ir-Caldy, a doctor fascinated by Sofya’s magic but fearful it will soon come at the cost of her life. Together, Sofya and Heremon navigate the mysteries and tensions of Vodotsk, the city they intend to make both their hiding place and their home.

Get Echoes of the Fey on itch.io


gameplay“The Fox’s Trail” is an English-language visual novel with multiple story variations. Will you uncover the truth behind the mystery on your own? And once you do, what will you do with that information? Your investigation will change the future of the city and its people. Over 100 individual choice points exist throughout “The Fox’s Trail.” Some will improve your relationship with the characters. Others will provide you critical information. And some will change the fate of the people you will come to know. Explore Vodotsk in side-scrolling segments and assist other characters in minor side-quests to uncover more about the history and lore of the realm.

You can find a full, detailed walk-through in the Steam community (may contain spoilers!)

Credits

Written by Malcolm Pierce and Jenny Gibbons
Art by Jenny Gibbons and Wendy Gram
Music by Jenny Gibbons
Programming by Jenny Gibbons with use of VN Edge Engine by ThinkBoxly
Sound design by Jenny Gibbons
Sound effects by: Drew Becker, Adobe Audition Library, Free SFX

“The Fox’s Trail” also features voice acting–fully performed critical scenes and expression lines throughout–by the following awesome voice actors:

SOFYA RYKOV – Amber Leigh

HEREMON IR-CALDY – David Dixon

ARKADY VANZIN – CJ Aulenbach

EDUARD GALKIN – Dillon Taylor

EMILIA OSBORN – Michelle Michaels

LUKA TETERIV – J.P. Daman

TIATHA IR-ADECH – Kristyn Mass

ANYA SAITOV – Helen Edgeworth

VIOLA ARISTOV – Olivia Steele

SIMION IR-SHEAF – Jacob Anderson

PRISONER: Isaac Lawson


Press Kit

Echoes of the Fey – The Prophet’s Arm (Part 2)

This is part 2 of a multi-part short story detailing one of Sofya Rykov’s cases prior to The Fox’s Trail. Part 1 can be found here

Sofya was not surprised to find that the Imperial checkpoint was abandoned. Emperor Lapidus had set various temporary encampments on the roads leading into the Great Forest to prevent the Leshin from removing gold and other valuable minerals from human lands during the transition, but now there was no reason to maintain them. In fact, Imperial troops in the borderlands had been reduced to the minimum, because the locals resented their presence. Very few of the western houses were pledged to Emperor Lapidus and he personally controlled no lands beyond the Great Plains. Even though the Empire had liberated them from the Leshin, the people, especially outside of the cities, saw Lapidus and his allies as new invaders rather than defenders of the Human realm.

As the hired carriage pulled up to the abandoned site, Sofya surveyed the area. They were not far from the forest, but most of the nearby trees had been cut down to construct a small guard cabin along the road. Even from a distance, Sofya could tell that the cabin, hastily constructed to give the guards a warm place to sleep, was already falling apart. The road itself branched off into a dirt-paved lot where, months ago, carriages departing human territory would be searched for contraband.

“This really the place?” the driver asked. “Doesn’t seem like there’s much out here.”

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Echoes of the Fey: The Prophet’s Arm (Part 1)

Leading up to the release of “Echoes of the Fey: The Fox’s Trail”, I will be posting a multi-part short story “The Prophet’s Arm”, which takes place shortly before the game and introduces the world and some of the characters of the series.


This story is now available as a free, downloadable novella


 

Sofya Rykov was supposed to be dead, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at her. She had bright, piercing eyes—one blue, one green—that peered out from beneath a swoop of dark hair. Her skin was pale but full of life, blushing at the first sign of anger or the second drink of the night. She had narrow shoulders that helped her conceal her well-toned arms under a worn, cropped leather jacket. Her teeth gleamed white, brighter than the smiles of most inhabitants of the border town of Vodotsk, betraying her noble birth.

In fact, the only sign of the injuries that should have killed Sofya was a single scar. It was a thin crease that ran from the her forehead down to a point just above her nostrils, cutting across her left eye and betraying that her striking heterochromia might not be natural but the result of an awful trauma.

Of all Sofya’s scars, it was the only one she couldn’t figure out how to hide.

“Have you considered makeup?” Heremon ir-Caldy asked as Sofya stared at herself in the mirror. “I believe that applying some sort of cosmetic concealer would be the simplest solution.”

“No,” Sofya said. “Because that wouldn’t solve anything.”

“It would make the scar invisible.”

“I would still be able to see it.”

Heremon grunted. “So you’re going to stay in here until you can get the incantation to work?”

“You’re usually curious about my magic. Don’t you want to know why it can hide my burns, but can’t touch this one stubborn little mark?”

“I’m not curious about a question when I already know the answer,” Heremon said. “The spell won’t work because you won’t let yourself forget.”

Heremon ir-Caldy had a tall, thin frame and smooth, chestnut-colored skin. His golden hair was bound into thin, intricate ropes, which he subsequently tied into a neat ponytail. He had a narrow face with a dimpled chin. Unlike many of his people who remained in Vodotsk after the war, he made no attempt to conceal his long, pointed ears. He wore his Leshin heritage proudly.

Like all of his people, Heremon was ageless. His skin did not wrinkle or sag, he remained perpetually youthful. He could have been thirty years old or three hundred. Sofya often wondered how old he was, but even she wasn’t sure how to broach the subject. He knew all of her secrets, but she still couldn’t bring herself to ask for just one.

“You know it would be safer if you didn’t use any concealing magic at all,” Heremon said. “If it ever wears off in public, it will raise questions. No human your age has even managed to perform the simplest of glamours. It’s not worth the risk.”

“Sometimes I forget you’re not human,” Sofya replied. “But often you find a way to remind me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Sofya laughed. “Vanity, Heremon.”

“Leshin can be vain.”

“It’s not the same,” Sofya said. “You care about presentation—about showing how much effort you put into your appearance. But humans want our appearance to be effortless. We want to look naturally beautiful.”

Heremon furrowed his brow. “Everything is naturally beautiful,” he said.

“Yes, that is exactly what every girl wants to hear,” Sofya replied. “You’re as equally pretty as everyone else.”

Before Heremon could respond, the soft chime of a bell drifted up from the first floor. “We have a customer,” Heremon said, allowing just a hint of excitement to enter his voice. “I hope you’re feeling presentable.”

Sofya looked at herself once more. “It will have to do.”

SofyaA sharp, pungent odor stung Sofya’s nose as soon as she descended to the first floor. She recognized the scent immediately. Leshin perfumes were especially strong and, to humans, possessed a noxious edge that resembled heating fuel.

Even though the Leshin occupation of Vodotsk was over, Sofya wasn’t surprised to have a Leshin visitor. Hundreds of them remained in the city. When the war ended, the Leshin of Vodotsk were allowed to remain under certain conditions: they had to renounce the ir-Dyeun and register with the County government. Most chose to leave, if only to avoid living side-by-side with the people they had spent a decade fighting. But a few remained, refusing to give up their home.

“Welcome to Rykov Private Investigations,” Sofya said as she descended the staircase into the lobby of her modest office. “How can I be of service?”

The Leshin man standing in the doorway looked up at her. He was impeccably dressed in a light green tunic and perfectly tailored leather pants—a demonstration of the vanity that Heremon had just described. He had bright red hair and a dazzling white smile, but that was not the first feature that drew Sofya’s eye. Arching up from his back were two shimmering wings. They were thin, almost translucent, as if made purely of light. They shined through small slits cut in his jacket and fluttered in the breeze from the door. Winged Leshin were rarely seen near the border, as they hailed from far west beyond the Great Forest that divided the continent. He had come a long way to Vodotsk, which made it especially strange that he would find his way to Sofya’s door.

“Private investigations?” the Leshin man said. “What does that mean?”

“We’re like mercenaries,” Sofya replied. “But we try to avoid fighting. We find information. Cheating spouses, mostly, but we’re more than open to any sort of work you might want.”

“Good. That… That sounds like what I want. They told me to come here, so I was hoping you would be able to help me.”

Sofya looked back towards the stairs. “Did you hear that, Heremon? We’re getting referrals.”

“Yes, but who is giving them?” Heremon asked. He stood halfway up the stairs, eyeing the Leshin visitor with suspicion.

The redheaded man considered this question. “It was the man who polices the city. The Imperial Inspector. I believe his name was–”

“Luka?” Sofya interrupted. “He told you to visit me?”

“That is correct.”

“Now that’s a surprise,” Sofya said. “Here I was, thinking that he hated me…”

Heremon sighed. “You have not heard what this man wants,” he said. “Perhaps Luka sent him here to torment you.”

“No!” the redheaded Leshin exclaimed. “Nothing of the sort!”

Sofya shrugged. Rent was due in a few days for the office, which meant that she didn’t much care how work was sent her way. “So, that brings me to my original question: What can I do for you?”

“My name is Braden ir-Alba, and I am… Hmmm… I am the curator of the Alban Museum of History.”

“You’re a long way from home,” Heremon muttered. “Especially for a historian.”

“Yes, yes, I understand. Are you from Alba as well?”

Heremon shook his head. “Caldy. Still west of the forest, but I’ve never been as far as Alba. So if you’re here…”

“It is very important,” Braden said. “But no one here is willing to help me. I suppose I understand why, but that does not make it all the more frustrating. You may be my last hope, unless you plan to refer me off to another intelligence agency?”

“Don’t worry,” Sofya replied. “We’d love to have your business.”

“We don’t even know what he wants,” Heremon said. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Braden, tell us why you’re here.”

Braden fidgeted with his hands as he sat down in the chair across from Sofya’s desk. “It is about a historical artifact,” he said. “An item of great importance to our people that has been lost. It was here in Vodotsk during the occupation and has gone missing since.”

“What is it?”

“An arm.”

Sofya raised an eyebrow as she looked at the nervous Leshin man. “An arm?”

“Yes. Well, a prosthetic arm. It belonged to Cathal ir-Dyeun, the messenger and recorder of Dyeun’s Will. During the war, the ir-Dyeun believed it had magical properties and thus brought it to Vodotsk during the occupation. They wanted it close to the front lines. But after the war ended, and the Alliance of Free Cities imprisoned the ir-Dyeun radicals and Vodotsk was returned to the humans, the Arm disappeared.”

“Disappeared how?” Sofya asked.

“When the peace was agreed to, I sent a messenger to Vodotsk asking the AFC to ensure that the Arm was brought to Alba for our museum. It seemed like the proper place for it, as Alba was the birthplace of the prophet. But in the chaos of the transition, it was stolen.”

Heremon grunted. “Stolen by whom? Humans or free ir-Dyeun radicals?”

“I don’t know,” Braden said. “That is what I want you to find out. I admit that both possibilities are quite likely, and I have no active leads. But the museum has authorized me to provide up to eighty gold pieces for information leading to the recovery of the Arm.”

“For the recovery of a magic artifact?” Sofya asked. “I suppose that sounds fair. Plus any expenses that we incur.”

“Yes, yes, if you agree to help I suppose I could also use discretionary funds from the museum for minor expenses. But you must find the arm.”

Heremon approached Braden, arching an eyebrow as he examined the other Leshin man. “What do you intend to do once you have it?”

“I’m going to place it in our museum, of course. What else would I do with it?”

“Well, for one thing, I’m sure that there are ir-Dyeun out there who would pay a lot more than eighty gold pieces for an item that genuinely belonged to the prophet Cathal.”

Braden’s eyes went wide. “You would threaten to give the Prophet’s Arm to the ir-Dyeun just to get more money out of me?”

“Nothing of the sort,” Heremon replied. “The arrangement you propose is fair and even if we were mad enough to collaborate with ir-Dyeun, contacting them would be difficult for us. But it would not be difficult for someone with connections west of the Great Forest. My fear, in fact, is that you would pass the Arm along to ir-Dyeun radicals to turn a tidy profit.”

“I am a historian!” Braden exclaimed. “I have no interest in selling the Arm to anyone.”

Sofya reached out and put her hand on Braden’s shoulder. “Don’t worry,” she said. “My business partner is just very cautious about the kinds of cases we take. I’m still interested in helping you, we just–”

“Wait a minute,” Heremon said. “Sofya, can I talk to you alone?”

“Don’t be rude.”

“This is important.”

Sofya returned her attention to Braden. “I’m so sorry. This will be just a moment.” Before Braden could even respond, she hurried back upstairs with Heremon right behind her.

Heremon closed the door leading to the staircase and whispered, “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking that this is easy gold,” Sofya replied. “I can sense the presence of Fey-enchanted objects. It’s one of the few powers I have that consistently works. This is the perfect job for us. The Arm is probably sitting in some junk shop somewhere and the owner doesn’t know what he has. I just need to go around to the right places, ask the right questions and–”

“This isn’t just any enchanted object, it’s a sacred ir-Dyeun artifact. It’s the arm of their first prophet. Do you know what kind of trouble we’ll get in if the Empire gets wind of what we’re doing? Or even the county guard?”

Sofya shrugged. “Why would they care? We’re not going to give the arm back to the ir-Dyeun.”

“You’re giving them too much credit. We’re giving it back to the Leshin people. Most humans—and especially the humans who could get us in trouble—don’t know the difference between a museum and an ir-Dyeun temple.”

“Then they’re dumb. The ir-Dyeun were overthrown. The Alliance of Free Cities controls the Leshin lands now. They’ve cooperated with humans in ending the war and the occupation here in Vodotsk. People know the difference between the two.”

Heremon shook his head. “No they don’t. Trust me on this. We’re all just primitive, untrustworthy Elves to most of your people. I don’t know whether Braden ir-Alba can be trusted to put the Arm in a museum or if he’s going to turn around and sell it back to the ir-Dyeun. But either way, it doesn’t matter. Taking this case is going to draw attention to you. And aren’t you here in Vodotsk to avoid that?”

“C’mon, take some risks,” Sofya said. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“The Empire decides that the Arm is a weapon and puts us in prison for attempting to return it to the ir-Dyeun. Or the county decides the same thing and kills us outright.”

“It’s just a fake limb,” Sofya replied. “How could they call it a weapon?”

“Listen, the ir-Dyeun didn’t keep it in Vodotsk during the occupation because it was a safe place for a historical artifact. I don’t know what they think it did for them, but they must have though it gave them an advantage.”

This just made Sofya even more intrigued. “Did it?” she asked. “If the Arm has anything to do with the Leshin’s connection to the Fey, we might be able to use it to help us understand my own situation.”

“It’s baseless superstition,” Heremon replied. “The only thing that a false arm would be enchanted with is a spell to give it movement. Simple telekinesis that almost any Leshin mage could apply. Perhaps, since the Prophet was a particularly powerful mage, it was especially well articulated. Maybe he could move all the fingers independently, like a real hand. But that’s it.”

“All the more reason to give it to Leshin moderates, so they can reveal the lies of the ir-Dyeun.”

“You’re just going to find a reason to look for the Arm no matter what I say, aren’t you?” Heremon asked.

Sofya smiled.

Rykov“We talked it over and we’ll take the job,” Sofya said.

Braden ir-Alba’s face lit up. “Thank you. You have no idea how much this means to me, to the museum, perhaps even to all my people. The teachings of Calath ir-Dyeun led us down a dark path, but the Prophet himself cannot be blamed for how we came to twist those teachings. And we cannot deny that they are part of our history. I am glad there is at least one human who understands this.”

“No, we understand the value of gold,” Heremon said. “Let me be clear that I do not particularly care about the legacy of Calath ir-Dyeun.”

“Then we will agree to disagree,” Braden replied. “And I will instead be thankful for your pragmatism in the face of a hostile world.”

“You’ll want to get used to that hostile world,” Heremon told the historian, “if you want to remain on this side of the forest for more than a few hours.”

Braden hesitated, as if he was considering whether he should escalate the conversation. It was clear that Heremon had touched a nerve in the Leshin historian. Fortunately, Braden stood down. “I will try to take that advice to heart,” he said.

Sofya gave Braden a quick smile, relieved that he chose not to pick a fight. It was hard enough to convince Heremon that the case was worth taking as it was.

“What does the Arm look like?” Sofya asked.

“It was made of steel, with mechanical joints on the fingers that the Prophet could control with magic,” Braden said. “The stories say that he was as adept with it as his natural hand, but you know the ir-Dyeun tales are hardly reliable.”

“That’s the best you can do?” Heremon said. “Let me guess: you’ve never even seen it, have you?”

Braden was suddenly quiet. If the Arm had been on the front line throughout the entire war, it was entirely possible that a Leshin from far west of the forest had never laid eyes upon it.

“What about leads?” Sofya asked. “Anyone in town who might know something about the Arm?”

“We hired a human courier to bring various artifacts from the temple to the edge of the border shortly after the end of the occupation,” Braden said. “The arm was supposed to be among them. Our agents at the forest border took possession of everything the courier brought and did not notice anything missing. Of course we did not check the contents of every box until delivery in Alba, and the arm had been hidden inside an urn to hide it from potential ir-Dyeun sympathizers who might have inspected the cargo once it was back in Leshin hands.”

Heremon grunted. “You’re telling us that the Arm could have disappeared during transport in the forest as easily as it could have disappeared here in Vodotsk?’

“My agents received the cargo and brought it to Alba without a single inspection along the way. And I trust my agents,” Braden replied. “They are all historians like me, and not an ir-Dyeun among them. Our organization has been secular for years and sees no value but historical significance for an item like the Arm.”

“Nevertheless, please check to see if any agents with access to the Arm have outstanding debts or have made recent extravagant purchases,” Heremon said. “Just to be sure. You may trust them, but trust can be misplaced. You can never be perfectly sure about anyone.”

Braden reached into his tunic and pulled out a small, clasped notebook. He scribbled hastily with a stylus. His wings shuddered with the violence of his writing. “Debts or purchases. Fine. I’ll look into it. You’re right. If there’s any chance the Arm disappeared on our end then I don’t want to waste my money or your time.”

“Thanks,” Sofya said, trying to remain cheerful despite Heremon’s attempts to sabotage the job. “We’re just making sure every possibility is covered. As for the courier, we should be the ones to talk to him. Your instincts were right—much better for a human to lead this investigation in Vodotsk than a Leshin.”

“I will give you the name of the courier and the address where we wrote to him.” Braden flipped through the pages on his notebook and scribbled a few words. He tore out the page and handed it to Sofya with a visibly trembling hand. “And as for any possible trouble on my end, I will immediately investigate.”

“How can we contact you?” Heremon grumbled.

Braden quickly wrote a second address on another sheet of paper. “I am staying in Edun. It’s a little village on the other side of the forest border and–”

“I know where Edun is,” Heremon said, snapping the paper from his hands. “We will be in contact when we find something. And deposit the promised payment in the Central Vodotsk Bank under our client account. Half for the retainer, nonrefundable. Half on delivery of the Arm.”

“Yes, yes… Will do. Please let me know what you find. I will go to the bank right now and arrange the transfer of funds.”

Without saying anything more, Braden slipped out of the office. Sofya was surprised by how easily he agreed to provide half of the payment up front, especially when Heremon raised doubts about the Arm being on the human side of the forest at all.

“Please stop trying to scare off easy gold,” Sofya said.

Heremon shook his head. “If there is one thing I refuse to tolerate, it is the ignorance of those who did not fight in the war.”

“You’d think that you were the one who nearly died in the Immolation,” Sofya replied. “You don’t have to be angry on behalf of us humans, Heremon. Plenty of us take up that cause already.”

“I know. If anything, I was trying to help him. If he speaks so openly and ignorantly while in Vodotsk, he’s going to get himself killed by a survivor who is not as… forgiving as you.”

Sofya glared at Heremon. “I’m not forgiving,” she replied. “I just know who to blame. If Braden was an ir-Dyen trying to reclaim the Arm for his temple, this meeting would have gone very differently.”

“I’m sure, between the both of us,” Heremon said. “Though it is amazing that you are comfortable taking this job at all.”

“We have to keep moving forward. And, besides, we need the money.”

Heremon ir-CaldyAs Sofya and Heremon walked towards the Vodotsk Fey Reactor district, Sofya took a moment to appreciate the reconstruction that was happening around them. Just five months ago, when the Alliance of Free Cities officially withdrew from Vodotsk, the streets were in ruins. Over a decade of Leshin control had destroyed most of the technological infrastructure. The reactor had been mostly disassembled, the pipes that carried its energy across the city were a decaying patchwork, and most of the streetlamps had been scrapped.

The Leshin had even allowed the city water and sewage system to fall into disrepair, though that was mostly an unintended consequence of their rule. Without Fey-powered lamps, fixing most parts of the underground tunnels was impossible. The Leshin could have done it using their own natural magic to create light, but they preferred the use of wells and outhouses so they were slow to respond to plumbing failures.

This wasn’t the only side effect of the Leshin prohibition on technology. Holes were carved out of buildings to allow more natural light, exposing them to the harsh storms of the border region. Trash piled up outside homes and Leshin-bred animals were introduced to the city and encouraged to scavenge the streets. In theory this would reduce waste, but Vodotsk was not built like a Leshin town and quickly found itself dirtier for the influx of western wildlife.

Despite years of neglect, Vodotsk was already on its way back to shades of its former self. After the hand-off, there was no ruling house controlling the region. A county government was established by nearby houses and a handful of refugees who had lived in the city during the occupation. They acted quickly to begin the reconstruction and stave off Imperial agents who wanted to subsume the region under the direct control of House Lapidus. Many other occupied counties had given in to the Empire immediately; Vodotsk and its surrounding lands were ready for a fight.

In the end, both Vodotsk County and the Empire contributed to the rebuilding effort. They waged their war for control over the region not with guns and swords, but with hammers, nails, and fey-powered cranes. The reactor was back up and running within a month. Water and sewage had been restored to over half the city. Buildings were repaired and the streets re-paved.

Not everything was perfect—Leshin gnil-beasts could still be seen scurrying about in the alleyways—but the progress was remarkable. Even from the Reactor District, Sofya could see the new capitol building under construction. It would be the tallest structure in the region—eleven stories tall, with a view that would reach the border of the Great Forest. The only question is who would eventually occupy it—the Vodotsk council or a governor appointed by the Emperor.

“They’re re-opening the heated baths near our offices,” Sofya said as she scanned the street signs for their destination, the offices of Utkin Continental Transportation. “You should really give them a try.”

Heremon scoffed. “You know, Leshin also can warm water with Fey energy. We just don’t need to pipe it in from a contained rift miles away. We do it ourselves.”

“I bet it’s not the same,” Sofya replied. “The baths have some kind of metal embedded in them which makes the heat completely uniform. It never gets too cold or too hot, and requires no effort on your part. You can just relax.”

“You know I am very liberal,” Heremon said. “But even I feel a bit of discomfort about warming myself with Fey energy sucked out of a rift.”

“Really? Interesting…” Sofya was silent for a moment, then worked up the confidence to follow up with a question. “I know this is a sensitive subject, but where do you draw the line? What’s a proper use of Fey energy and what isn’t?”

“A sensitive subject?” Heremon chuckled. “That is, perhaps, the greatest understatement of our time. A sensitive subject leads to an argument, not a thirty-year war.”

“Fair enough, but I wanted your line. And given everything you know about me, it’s only fair that I have some war-starting material on you.”

Heremon considered this request. Sofya could tell that he was very reluctant to answer. “I was raised religious,” he finally said. “My father wasn’t an ir-Dyeun, but he believed their teachings and tried to pass them along to me. I don’t necessarily think that Fey energy is sacred, but I believe that it is not given to us unconditionally. I don’t hold it against you that you enjoy a heated bath, but I would not use it for a luxury resource.”

“But you just said that Leshin have heated baths as well.”

“It’s different when you draw the energy from yourself and when you draw it from a rift you opened.”

“How?”

“It just–” Heremon stopped. He realized he had raised his voice and quickly calmed himself. “It just is, for me. And I don’t even think I can articulate why. I can just say it was how I was taught and what I believe. Is that enough?”

Sofya nodded. It was the best answer she was going to get and it was better than any answer she’d heard from a Leshin. “We should have taken a carriage,” she said, changing the subject.

“Just be patient. We’re almost there.”

“How do you know?”

“The address is right across the street.”

Utkin Continental Transportation was a small, one-story building in the Vodotsk Fey Reactor District. It didn’t look like much. The dirt-paved lot behind the building was occupied by three ramshackle carriages and an assortment of horses that grazed on withering grass nearby.

“I don’t know if I would trust these people to move my personal belongings, let alone a priceless historical artifact,” Sofya said, wrinkling her nose as they approached.

“The museum likely didn’t have much choice,” Heremon replied. “Months after the end of the war and most businesses in Vodotsk still refuse to serve Leshin. Imagine how it was in the first few weeks. If they already had a business established, they probably lived here and worked under the occupation. ”

“Wonder why these folks took the job…”

“I’m guessing it is the same reason that we are here.”

Sofya approached one of the carriages. The front wheel closest to the road was split from the axle and was barely holding up the body of the vehicle. Closing her eyes, Sofya tried to sense whether a magical artifact had ever been placed in the carriage.

This was one of Sofya’s easiest spells. Along with the glamours hiding her scars and low-level ice sorcery, this sensory magic was the only kind of magic she could reliably control. Everything else was volatile—it came and went in fits and starts.

“Something was here,” Sofya muttered. “It was quite a while ago. I can barely feel anything. I can’t even be sure it was the Arm but–”

“Hey!” a voice shouted, pulling Sofya out of her concentration. “What are you doing? Get away from there!”

Sofya’s eyes flew open and she turned to see a squat, bearded man approaching them. Her mind raced as she struggled to come up with a cover story that would allow her to continue inspecting the carriages.

“Greetings, sir, are you the owner of these vehicles?”

“Yes. What does it matter to you? Who are you?”

“Well,” Sofya said. “I’m a traveling machinist and I happened to notice that your carriages are in an awful state of disrepair. If you’d like, I could offer–”

The bearded man scoffed. “You’re no machinist,” he exclaimed. “Look at your hands! Ten fingers. No callouses. Who are you trying to fool? Explain why you’re here.”

“It was a good try,” Heremon said. “But it seems we may just want to be straightforward with this man.”

Sofya looked back to the bearded fellow. His scowl was even more intense than before. She immediately regretted the ruse. “Okay, I’ll come clean. I’m a private investigator hired by the Alban Museum of History. I’m looking for a particular item of theirs that may have been in the possession of one of your couriers four months ago.”

“Why were you poking at my carriages then? I wouldn’t be a very good courier if this item of theirs was still sitting in one of ’em for so long.”

While it would make the investigation much easier, Sofya couldn’t explain her magical sensitivity. Magic came naturally to the Leshin, but for humans took decades of learning and practice. Even then, most ancient human magicians had only a fraction of the various abilities Sofya had demonstrated since her power began to manifest. There was no telling what humans—or Leshin—would do to her if her magical skill was discovered, so she had to stay quiet.

“Well, I still think I could probably fix this wheel in exchange for some information,” Sofya replied. “Though you should be more than happy to help, since otherwise it might look like the item we’re looking for disappeared on your watch.”

The bearded man considered this for a second. Sofya had both threatened him and offered him a deal and he clearly wasn’t sure which to respond to. He settled with simply introducing himself. “It seems we started ourselves off on the wrong foot,” he said. “I’m Nikolai Utkin, owner and manager of Utkin Continental Transportation. How can I help you?”

“How long have you been in Vodotsk?” Sofya asked.

“Me or the company? It’s my father’s business. I took over some, say, sixteen years ago. But he started it at least twenty years before that so–”

“You were here during the occupation?”

Nikolai hesitated. His eyes darted to Sofya’s jacket—it had once been an Imperial army issued long coat, now tailored to a more fashionable cut. “Well, I was never called to war on account of my bad shoulder. Childhood injury. Couldn’t swing a sword or keep a gun stable if I had to. So I stayed here and ran the business. When the Elves—I’m sorry, the Leshin—when they invaded I didn’t have time to pack up and run.”

“Can’t imagine there was much business for a human courier when the city was occupied,” Heremon said. “If I recall, there were blockades on both sides.”

“Well, I… You know, I did what I had to do to survive.”

Sofya crossed her arms. “Did you run courier service for the Leshin? We’re not going to judge you. I was kicked out of the army for collaboration myself. Wasn’t true. Not really, but I’m hardly in a place to throw blame around.”

“What did you do?”

Heremon put his hand on Sofya’s shoulder, as if cautioning her to be careful with her words. The reasons for her discharge from the army and the emergence of her magical powers were closely intertwined. While one was public record, the other was a dangerous secret.

“I was stationed at Onigrad during the Immolation,” Sofya said. Nikolai’s eyes went wide. “We knew that the attack on the Fey reactor was done by a bunch of radicals. When it became obvious the reactor would overload, I freed our Leshin prisoners so they could escape. They had nothing to do with it, they didn’t deserve to die. But you can imagine how that looked to army brass in the immediate aftermath.”

Nikolai shook his head. “They weren’t there. They want to second guess you.”

“During the Leshin withdrawal, you were contracted by the Alban History Museum to transport certain items from the ir-Dyeun temple established here in Vodotsk. Do you remember that?”

“The withdrawal was a crazy time,” Nikolai replied. “Thousands of Leshin needed help moving out of the city. We refused to deal with the ir-Dyeun and only took on contracts from civilians. Even then, our carriages were going between the city and the forest almost non-stop.”

Heremon pulled out the piece of paper Sofya received from their client and gave it to Nikolai. “The man you dealt with was named Braden ir-Alba. Here’s his handwriting, if that helps.”

“His… handwriting?”

“He won’t remember it, Heremon,” Sofya said. “We don’t recall that sort of thing.”

“Oh.” Heremon reclaimed the piece of paper. “I still don’t understand how you trust written communication if you can’t recognize the distinctions of handwriting. Anyone could impersonate anyone else over letters.”

“We know when it doesn’t look right, but we don’t remember people by their–” Sofya groaned. It wasn’t worth it. “Never mind. I’ll go over it later.”

Nikolai stood in silent contemplation for a moment. He looked back at his office. “I think I remember the contract. Not much of one. But, like I said, I wanted to make sure I was only taking on jobs for Leshin who recanted the ir-Dyeun. A secular museum seemed safe enough.”

“The item we’re looking for is an artificial arm,” Heremon explained. “The Prophet’s Arm.”

“An… arm?”

Sofya gave Nikolai the description she received from Braden. The Prophet’s Arm wasn’t just a standard human replacement. It was engineered and articulated to allow Cathal ir-Dyeun the same range of motion as his real hand. Whether or not he had been able to control it was matter of Leshin folk tales. The prophet had died hundreds of years ago. There were none, even among the ageless Leshin, who had lived alongside him and could remember the truth behind the legacy.

“I never saw anything like that,” Nikolai said. “I would remember that. A steel arm? That would stick with me, especially if it was some kind of ir-Dyeun magical charm.”

“I highly doubt it truly has the power the ir-Dyeun attribute to it,” Heremon said. “If it belonged to the Prophet, and he used it as the tales say, then it would have some lingering Fey energy. But it is, at best, a historical curiosity.”

“Still, I don’t remember anything like it. And I probably inventoried the shipment myself.”

“Speaking to our client, it sounds like the arm may have been hidden in another item,” Sofya replied. “An urn. The museum was afraid of raiding parties and searches once it passed into the Great Forest. They knew that the ir-Dyeun would want to take it and stuffed it inside something else.”

Nikolai glared at Sofya. “Then how am I supposed to remember anything about it? Listen, if our customers don’t let us properly inventory their shipments, how can we be held responsible when something goes missing?”

“The museum isn’t trying to hold you liable,” Heremon said. “They just want to find the Arm. Could you, by any chance, bring us the paperwork related to this job? It would have been approximately four months ago.”

“Of course. I will be right back.”

As soon as Nikolai disappeared into the office, Sofya returned her attention to the carriage. “We should have opened with that,” she said. “I really doubt he’s going to be able to remember anything. And the records? Likely just as useless. I’m going to have to do this all by myself.”

Sofya placed her hand on the broken wheel. She closed her eyes and focused on the glimmer of magic energy she had perceived before being interrupted. It was faint, barely enough to feel. At first, she couldn’t be sure if it was the Arm. Nikolai had been running a courier service for the occupying Leshin for years. Undoubtedly, he transported magical items on several occasions. But none of them would be old or strong enough to leave an echo like this.

“The Arm was here,” Sofya said. “Or something like it. Something ancient and unusual. Are you sure it doesn’t still have some magical function?”

“After all these years, it would have to be enchanted on a level unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” Heremon replied. “The Fey energy remains, becomes more ingrained in our world. But its utility decays over time. Most magic weapons need to be re-focused every few years. The Arm was enchanted centuries ago.”

Sofya opened her eyes. “What if someone was re-focusing the Arm? Keeping it ready to be used?”

“Used for what?”

“I guess that’s a question we’ll have to ask when we find it,” Sofya replied. “It wasn’t in this carriage long. It was removed after just a few hours. Not long enough to get to the forest.”

Heremon sighed. “So the Arm was lost before it reached the Leshin border?”

“Are you disappointed? Now we can earn our full payment.”

Across the lot, Nikolai emerged from his office. He hurried over to Sofya and Heremon, a bundle of papers in his hands. “Here you go,” he said. “All the paperwork for the Alban museum job. The inventory we were able to do, the courier’s report, and all our receipts.”

Heremon took the papers and turned immediately to the courier’s report. “This says that the courier was stopped at an outpost just outside the city,” he said. “What can you tell me about that outpost?”

“When the occupation ended, most Leshin left the city,” Nikolai said. “Under the terms of the surrender, each Leshin was only permitted to take two pounds of gold currency. I don’t know why; that’s way over my head. But, of course, some Elves–” Heremon prickled but didn’t interrupt. “–tried to get around the rules. Emperor Lapidus set up checkpoints on most of the roads to the Forest to check for gold smuggling.”

“How extensive are the searches?” Heremon asked. “Do they go through everything?”

“Depends on the person performing the inspection,” Nikolai replied. “Sometimes they wouldn’t even search the cargo. They trusted that a human wouldn’t help the Leshin plunder gold on the way out.”

Sofya took the courier’s report from Heremon. “This is, what, about a half hour west of the city?” Sofya said. “This is it. This is where the Arm was lost.”

“How do you know that?” Nikolai asked. “Are you saying this was my fault?”

Ignoring him, Sofya continued to page through the documents. “We need to head to this outpost. If it’s still active, we can talk to the people there. If not…” She didn’t finish her thought—not in front of Nikolai—but Heremon knew what she was proposing. The Arm had a very strong Fey signature and would have left its mark on the outpost if it had been stored there for more than a few minutes.

“It’s not your fault,” Heremon said. “Someone with the Empire found the Arm during the inspection. Maybe they knew what it was, which means we’ll never get it back. But you weren’t put in prison for smuggling it out of Vodotsk, so I suspect it was taken for another reason.”

“Another reason?” Nikolai asked. “What is this thing? What does it do? Is it dangerous?”

“We don’t know,” Sofya said. “But don’t worry. Before we hand it over to the Leshin, we’re going to find out.”

Part two now available here