Adventure of Pando 1

The route discussion is still open around the barracks table. Captain Vey remains with the records, while Tessa, Mara, Ilyan, and Avaris stand ready to decide who accompanies Pando toward Bracken Hollow.

A breathless village child rushes through the open barracks door. The slight young boy wears a mud-spattered green tunic, a wool vest, and a red thread around one wrist; he clutches a folded message in both hands.

The wax bears Sella’s household mark, a white lintel pressed into red wax. A pale stain creeps across the paper beneath it, thinning the ink until parts of the invitation seem to lose their meaning.

The breathless village child places the sealed message before Pando and backs away, still panting. Tessa stays near Mara, Ilyan watches the doorway, and Avaris keeps close to Pando while the choice of companions remains unresolved.

Pando picks up Sella’s sealed letter without breaking the wax. He turns it beneath the barracks light, examining the paper, fold, seal, and spreading pale stain from every angle.

His keen inspection finds no heat, dampness, or hidden powder in the fold. The wax remains intact, while the fading marks form broken lines that converge beneath Sella’s household impression.

Pando lowers the unopened letter back onto the table. He has confirmed the seal is sound and the failing message is a targeted attack on its written meaning, not damage caused by handling.

Pando takes the letter from the table, holding it over the wood as he breaks Sella’s wax seal. The household mark splits cleanly, and the pale stain stops spreading.

The remaining ink darkens as Pando reads, revealing a second paragraph beneath the damaged lines. The words are clear now, though several letters crumble into pale dust at the edges.

Captain Vey draws the unbroken household mark and the fading pages closer without touching them. Tessa, Ilyan, and the breathless village child listen as the invitation becomes an urgent call for witnesses.

Pando rushes through the barracks door into the clear morning air. His shadow wing opens in one decisive sweep, spreading darkly above the yard.

Tessa steps into the yard beneath Pando’s opened wing, while Avaris moves beside him without hesitation. Behind them, Mara gathers the records and Captain Vey turns toward the waiting companions.

Pando’s wing catches the morning air. Tessa takes hold, Avaris steadies herself beside him, and the barracks remains behind with Mara, Ilyan, Captain Vey, and the breathless village child sheltered inside.

Pando’s shadow wing lifts them over the eastern path. Bracken Hollow appears beyond the fields, its clustered roofs gathered around a stone well beside the village green.

Avaris’s borrowed sight clarifies the village beneath them. Pando follows the eastern path, keeping the well, the white-linteled house, and the surrounding lanes in view.

Pando descends over Bracken Hollow and touches down beside the communal well. Tessa steps clear, while Avaris settles at his shoulder, and the village lies open around them.

Pando surveys the green, the well, and the lanes beyond it. Fresh heel marks cross the damp earth beside the well, then turn toward a narrow passage between two cottages.

His attention catches a torn white thread snagged on a thorn hedge. Beyond it, a faint trail of crushed mint leads away from the communal green toward the village’s eastern edge.

Tessa follows Pando’s gaze. The trail skirts the cottages instead of approaching the white-linteled house, leading toward an old storage yard behind the eastern lane.

The crushed mint and fresh heel marks converge on the storage yard’s half-open gate. Behind it, a strip of pale cloth hangs from a splintered latch, giving Pando a definite trail to Sella.

Pando follows the crushed mint at a quick, silent pace, crossing the eastern lane before the trail can fade. Tessa and Avaris keep close behind him.

He passes through the half-open gate and reaches the storage yard. An elderly drow woman lies beside the rear shed, her gray braid loosened, brown dress dusted with straw, and wrists secured by a strip of torn cloth.

Avaris kneels beside Sella without touching the bindings. The pact’s warning warmth remains quiet, and no other person moves within the yard or behind the cottages.

Pando releases fine threads of blood toward Sella’s bound wrists and bruised arms. They pass beneath the torn cloth, carrying measured warmth through her strained muscles without disturbing the bindings.

The healing takes hold cleanly. Color returns to Sella’s face, her breathing steadies, and strength gathers through her legs until she can rise when the cloth is removed.

Tessa cuts through the torn cloth and helps Sella to her feet. The elderly drow woman sways once, then stands upright beside the shed, testing her weight carefully.

Sella points beyond the eastern lane, toward a rutted track disappearing between fields. Tessa keeps one hand near her knife while Avaris turns her attention toward the distant road.

Pando focuses the blood power through his legs. Red-black force locks into an angular rhythm, and he launches down the old grain road while Sella, Tessa, and Avaris remain behind.

The fields blur past in sharp, measured strides. His new speed carries him beyond the rutted track and straight to the abandoned granary, where three captors drag three bound bearers across the yard.

Pando arrives at the yard before the captors can enter the granary. The three adult men in dust-colored cloaks freeze around their prisoners, one clutching a false monastery seal.

The three bearers lift their heads as Pando blocks the entrance. Their bindings remain tight, but all are conscious, and the captors can no longer move them toward the granary unnoticed.

Pando releases a measured stream of blood, shaping it into three narrow daggers in one fluid motion. He throws them before the false-seal captors can shift their prisoners.

The first dagger pins a false-seal captor’s cloak to the granary post. The second catches the left captor’s sleeve against a wagon board, and the third fixes the right captor’s cloak to the doorframe, stopping all three without striking flesh.

The claim rings hollow against the three prisoners and the false monastery seal in his hand. The bound bearers remain conscious, while the captors strain uselessly against their pinned clothing.

Pando tightens his hand. The three blood-forged daggers wrench free of cloth and leap across the short distance toward the captors, guided with lethal precision.

The first dagger strikes a false-seal captor, while the second and third find the other two captors. All three go still, their false authority ending in the granary yard.

The daggers dissolve into red-black shadow and return to Pando’s control. The three transferred bearers remain alive, bound, and conscious beside the granary entrance.

Footsteps rush over the old grain road. Tessa and Avaris arrive with Sella behind them, finding Pando before the granary and the three captors motionless near the door.

Pando raises his hand toward the bound bearers. Blood gathers into a fresh dagger, its red-black edge steady as he steps between them and the granary door.

He works quickly and precisely, slicing through the first bearer’s wrist bindings without touching skin. The loosened cloth falls away, and the dagger turns toward the next knot.

The second and third bindings part beneath the dagger’s controlled edge. A transferred bearer rubs their freed wrists while a transferred bearer shifts away from the dead captors.

Pando dismisses the dagger after all three bearers stand free. Tessa checks their balance, Avaris watches the granary, and Sella studies the false seal lying beside the bodies.

Pando summons the crow-shaped scythe and points its curved edge toward the three dead captors. Their remaining blood rises in controlled red-black threads, draining into the weapon without disturbing the bearers.

The scythe’s dark edge receives the blood, then settles as Pando searches the bodies with precise attention. Beneath dust-colored cloaks, he finds false monastery badges, a stamped transfer ledger, and a folded route list naming three other destinations.

Pando gathers the ledger and route list while the scythe folds back into shadow. The evidence identifies an organized transfer operation and gives the group three immediate destinations beyond the eastern road.

Pando unfolds the route list beside the stamped ledger and compares the distances, road marks, and ink age. Three destinations are listed beyond the eastern road, each tied to a known bearer transfer.

The nearest destination is Briarhook Farm, less than an hour east along the old grain road. The other two, Ashmill and Coldmere Orchard, lie farther apart beyond it.

Pando folds the list to preserve the destination marks and turns toward the old grain road. Briarhook Farm is now identified as the immediate priority, with Ashmill and Coldmere Orchard remaining on the evidence for later pursuit.

Pando leaves Abandoned Granary Yard behind and arrives at Briarhook Farm.

Briarhook Farm lies beyond the stone bridge, its wheat fields silvered by wind and its low buildings gathered around a fenced yard. Pando and Avaris arrive without slowing the horses or raising an alarm.

Avaris touches down beside Pando as the farm’s outer gate swings inward. A young adult woman with sun-browned skin, a russet braid, and a green wool dress steps from the farmhouse, one hand raised in cautious greeting.

Elka, sturdy and oval-faced with a small scar through one eyebrow, glances toward the barn rather than the cellar. Fresh wheel ruts cut across the yard, and a monastery-style seal has been pressed into the mud beside them, still sharp enough to read.

Beyond the barn, a loose shutter taps against the wall. Elka steps aside and points toward the cellar hatch, giving Pando a clear choice of rescuing the hidden bearers or investigating the fresh arrival first.

Elka leads Pando and Avaris across the yard, past the barn’s loose shutter and into the farmhouse. She lifts a woven rug, revealing a narrow cellar stair beneath it.

At the cellar’s foot, Elka opens a concealed partition behind stacked root baskets. Two adult bearers sit within the cramped hiding space, alert and unharmed, their wrists free of bindings.

The two bearers rise from the hidden space. Elka steps aside, leaving the decision visible and unforced, while Avaris watches the farmhouse entrance and the cellar passage.

The nearer bearer studies Pando’s face, then notices the controlled darkness beneath his skin. The other keeps one hand near the cellar wall, but neither retreats.

The tension leaves their shoulders. The nearer bearer steps fully from the partition, and the other follows, accepting the open stair and the people waiting above.

Pando unfolds the marked route map and points to the well beyond the eastern fields. The nearer bearer leans over it, while the other studies his face instead of the roads.

Their agreement settles the immediate choice, but it carries a condition Pando must honor: their consent must be spoken plainly at the well, before any witness or record is made.

Pando closes the map and offers the route without pressure. His urgency is clear, but so is the choice he leaves with the two bearers.

Elka steps aside from the cellar stair while the two bearers gather themselves. The farmhouse remains quiet, but the open road and the waiting well now call them onward.

Pando leaves Briarhook Farm cellar behind and arrives at communal well.

At the communal well, pale afternoon light glints on the water and damp grass surrounds the stone rim. Tessa and Sella wait beside it as Pando arrives with the two bearers and Avaris.

As the bearers step toward the well, a fresh line of gray ash appears across its inner stone, forming a route mark that points east beyond the village. Someone has marked a destination after Sella’s warning.

Pando dashes across the damp grass and catches a transferred bearer before they reach the well. He plants himself between the bearer and the fresh gray ash mark.

The ash line brightens beneath the well’s inner rim, then fades without touching Pando. Its eastern point remains visible, deliberate and newly placed.

Sella guides the two bearers away from the well while Tessa takes the lead, placing herself between them and the gray ash mark. Their footsteps turn east along the village lane.

Pando remains beside the well as Sella, Tessa, and both bearers pass beyond the nearest cottages. Only when their figures disappear around the eastern bend does the lane fall silent.

Pando places his fingertips against the gray ash mark inside the well. The line brightens beneath his touch, but its pattern remains cold and orderly rather than commanding.

The mark opens its meaning through contact. Pando sees three linked impressions: the well as a signal point, the old grain road as its source, and a second active mark waiting at Ashmill.

A faint thread of ash peels away from the stone and settles across Pando’s palm, forming a readable direction toward the old grain road. The well mark dims, its message spent.

The ash thread tightens across Pando’s palm. His confidence carries through the listening mark, and the distant presence answers instead of withdrawing.

The name settles into the ash like ink. A second impression follows: Hessa knows a curse-bearer has answered the signal, and now knows Pando is that bearer.

The ash thread points east, beyond the old grain road. Ashmill is no longer merely a destination on a route list, but Hessa Thorn’s chosen listening post.

Pando sends the words through the bond instead of speaking aloud. The ash tread receives only silence, while Avaris hears him clearly beside the fading mark.

The ash thread loosens across Pando’s palm, no longer searching for another spoken response. Its eastern pull remains steady, marking a route toward Ashmill without revealing the bond’s conversation.

The mark’s signal settles into a narrow eastern trail, and a faint side path appears where the ash has thinned between the fields. It leads toward Ashmill while avoiding the main road.