The answer was simple, and that somehow made it worse.
Eclaire, standing near the door now, folded her arms. “So her group was likely taken in the fire.”
“Or the fire was used to hide the taking,” Ludger said.
“That’s not better,” Yvar murmured.
“No,” Ludger said. “It isn’t.”
Aronia looked back at the dryad, whose eyes remained wary, especially when they drifted toward Ludger. “She doesn’t remember the capture clearly. Just fear. Heat. Running. Smoke. Then… confinement. Long confinement.”
That landed hard in the room. Five years. Not days. Not months. Five years inside a guardian. Five years used as a source. Five years turned into a living piece of someone else’s hidden resource structure. Ludger’s jaw tightened slightly.
Arslan’s gaze went darker, though he said nothing. Yvar looked like he was already trying to connect dates, routes, known fires, noble holdings, and possible Obsidian Sword movements into a useful chain.
Aronia’s voice softened a little when she spoke again, but only a little.
“She also doesn’t seem to know exactly where she came from before that move. Or maybe she can’t reach it yet. But if this timeline is right, then whatever home she had is buried behind years of forced connection and imprisonment.”
The dryad shrank a little more behind Aronia at the sound of all of them talking around her, which only made the truth feel uglier. Ludger looked at her once more. Then away.
“Anything else?”
Yvar nodded. “She reacts strongly to certain names and places, but not cleanly enough to trust yet. We need time.”
Everything needed time. Ludger hated that answer more each day, because time was exactly what enemies used to cover tracks, shift goods, move people, and make crimes age into rumor.
Still, five years changed things. Not because the crime was worse. It had already been bad enough.
But because five years meant continuity. Continuity meant maintenance. Maintenance meant records, routes, supply chains, people who knew enough, and repeated operations that were never meant to be seen from the outside.
Which meant the structure around Armandis was even older and even more rotten than he had hoped.
The dryad finally looked at him again from behind Aronia, still scared, still uncertain, still reading him through the residue of a dead guardian’s fear.
Ludger looked back at her and said, “You can stop reacting like I’m going to bite you.”
She did not seem convinced.
Aronia gave him a look. “That was not helpful.”
Aronia shut her eyes briefly like someone asking the heavens for patience they were clearly not going to provide.
Then Arslan spoke, cutting through the room before the exchange could drift into something less useful.
“We have a time marker now,” he said. “A likely method. And a probable route of capture.”
Yvar nodded. “Enough to start digging into old incidents around the Velis border and matching them against anything tied to the families involved.”
Ludger’s eyes stayed narrowed. Because now the fire mattered. And not just as history. A five-year-old fire of unknown origin near the Velis border that ended with a dryad group disappearing into a hidden imperial resource structure?
Aronia folded her arms beneath her chest, her expression turning grim as the pieces started settling into place.
“It looks like the Empire has been targeting dryads to force more production of medicine and potion materials,” she said quietly. “If they were simply trying to profit from it, we would have noticed. Those kinds of goods always leave traces. Traders talk. Healers compare stock. Prices shift.”
No one interrupted her.
“Since nothing like that happened,” she continued, “then it’s safe to assume the extra production isn’t entering the normal market at all. Which means they’re stockpiling.” Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Preparing for something else.”
That made the room feel even colder.
Aronia turned toward Yvar. “Has the regent asked Lionsguard to build roads near the borders?”
Yvar blinked, then frowned as he sorted through the question. “Some lords loyal to the regent have requested roadwork on their territories,” he said. “A few border routes, a few trade connections, that kind of thing. But nothing on a scale large enough to suggest the entire Empire is behind it. At least, not openly.”
Aronia went silent after that. Not the absent kind of silence. The thinking kind. The dangerous kind. Then she slowly looked at Ludger.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“Have you seen any other dryads on the black market?”
Ludger’s gaze shifted to his father. Arslan looked away. That was answer enough. So he really hadn’t kept the secret. Ludger let out a slow breath through his nose, already too tired to be annoyed by it.
“I only saw images,” he said. “Three of them. Inside a crystal recording.” His voice stayed flat. “They looked recently captured.”
Aronia closed her eyes for a moment and exhaled. It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t loud. That somehow made it worse.
When she opened them again, there was a bitter sort of understanding there. “I see.”
Her lips pulled into a thin line.
“It looks like if I hadn’t joined the Lionsguard…” she said, voice low and dry, “I would be inside a monster body right now.”
No one had anything to say to that. Because there wasn’t anything to say. The truth had a way of killing conversation faster than any blade.
Ludger let the silence sit for a moment before looking back at the dryad.
“Do you remember anything from when you were inside the guardian?” he asked. “Not just what happened to you. I mean anything the creature said. Anything about someone else in the Empire.”
The dryad flinched slightly at being addressed directly, but not as badly as before. That alone was progress.
Still, she hesitated. Then she gave a small shake of her head.
“I… don’t remember,” she said softly. “Most of it is blurred. Like a long nightmare I couldn’t wake up from.”
Aronia stepped in before the silence could close again.
“You may not remember words,” she said gently, “but old feelings can remain. Dryads are sensitive to the emotional traces of living things, especially ones they were bound to for so long.” She leaned forward a little. “Can you recall anything the guardian felt? That could be a clue too.”
The dryad lowered her head. For a few seconds, she said nothing. She just sat there, thin shoulders tense, fingers lightly curling against the fabric over her knees as she searched through memories she clearly would have preferred to leave buried.
Then she spoke.
“A few times…” she murmured, “when humans came to gather resources… I felt annoyance from it.”
That made Ludger’s eyes narrow slightly. The dryad swallowed and continued, still staring downward.
“It wasn’t fear. Or respect. It felt more like…” She frowned, trying to grasp the shape of it. “Like it was trying very hard not to kill them.”
The room went still again. Then several people looked at each other at once. Understanding didn’t need words. So that was how it was. The arrangement between the guardian and the people behind that labyrinth hadn’t been built on loyalty. It hadn’t even been stable trust.
It was transactional. Forced cooperation held together by usefulness, pressure, and whatever deal had once been made.
Temporary.
The kind of alliance that only lasted until one side thought it no longer needed the other. Ludger leaned back slightly, expression flat, but his mind was already moving. That was good. Not because it made things simpler. But because enemies tied together by greed were easier to break than enemies tied together by belief.
Ludger exhaled slowly, then pushed himself away from the wall.
“I’ll ask Torvares for information from his spies,” he said. “Maybe he can find something about where the other dryads were taken. At the same time, he can help me narrow down the next target.”
His gaze shifted to Aronia.
“You can stay here with her and see if you can pull out anything else. Even fragments matter.”
Aronia gave a small nod. She didn’t say anything. Still, the tension in her shoulders was obvious.
That wasn’t strange. She hadn’t interacted with many dryads in her life, and the few times she had… none of them had left behind pleasant memories. Fear, pain, loss, distance. That kind of thing tended to linger. So this, sitting across from one, trying to help, trying to understand, was a first for her in more ways than one.
Arslan watched that exchange for a moment before looking at Ludger.
“And next time?” he asked. “Are you actually going to ask me for help?”
Ludger met his father’s eyes without much expression.
“The Lionsguard needs its guildmaster here,” he said. “You’re more useful in Lionfang than sneaking through enemy territory with me.”
Arslan opened his mouth, but Ludger kept going.
“It also helps,” he added, “when people keep seeing you in the open. Makes it easier for them to believe the Lionsguard isn’t doing anything strange while I move behind the scenes and crush our enemies like usual.”
That got a tired breath out of Yvar and a flat look from Eclaire. Arslan just stared at him for a second. Then he sighed and rubbed a hand over his face.
“That’s a difficult feeling,” he muttered, “having my son use me as a misdirection.”
Ludger shrugged.
“It’s effective.”
“Yes,” Arslan said dryly. “That is, unfortunately, the problem.”
For a moment, the room grew quiet again. Not soft. Just full. Too many things were moving at once. Too many enemies. Too many pieces they still couldn’t see. But at least the next step was clear. And for Ludger, that was usually enough.
Ludger headed to his office the moment the idea settled properly in his mind. It wasn’t even a complicated idea. That was the annoying part. The best ones rarely were.
He pulled the map across the desk, pinned down the corners, and started marking routes with quick, precise strokes. Roads first. Then rail lines. Not random expansions, not vanity projects, but movement paths that would make life easier for the people actually living in the territory while quietly doing something far more important.
They would pull traffic toward Lionfang.
Merchants liked safety. Traders liked speed. Travelers liked not getting stuck in mud, monster territory, or broken mountain paths. Give people routes that saved them time, reduced risk, and connected enough profitable stops together, and they would start drifting in on their own. Once they came, business followed. Once business followed, influence followed right behind it.
Simple.
Brutal in its own way, too. Because every road that made Lionfang easier to reach made it harder for other regions to ignore.
Ludger marked another line, then another, adjusting angles, river crossings, and the easiest places for terrain shaping. His guild members had been practicing that kind of construction magic diligently lately. At first because it was useful. After that because it turned out to be genuinely interesting. There was something satisfying about forcing order onto land and making stone, soil, and iron obey. Even the ones who preferred combat had started enjoying it once they realized building infrastructure at scale felt a lot like fighting a very large, very stubborn enemy that couldn’t hit back.
That steady work was helping him too.
Every coordinated project, every order executed through the guild, every improvement that tied people tighter to Lionfang fed back into his class. His Guild Master skills were growing steadily, sharpened by real use. Support, coordination, territory control, morale, labor efficiency, none of it looked flashy, but Ludger had long since stopped caring about flashy.
Power was power. And classes only respected results.