Bigger Than it Seemed.

They tried to interrogate the person they had managed to capture but unfortunately the assassin just spouted off a bunch of hysterical accusations against the kingdoms and proudly proclaimed that they were part of a group based in Nix'Ryl called the Grimshades. The name was the most useful information they had gotten.

Then the assassin took their own life with some sort of poison that was hidden in his tooth, which Heron had failed to find. They did not manage to get the priest in time to stop the poison and the assassin died.

Heron was at a lost of what to do at this point. This was hardly enough knowledge to go off of. Just knowing they were from Nix'Ryl hardly helped – the place was larger than any one of the kingdoms. Not to mention so unknown and most of it not on any map.

Who knows where these people based at?

It would be like finding a needle in a hay stack searching all of Nix'Ryl for them. And it wasn't as if they could feasibly declare war on the wild lands of Nix'Ryl! The place was too unorganized, but had too many dangerous creatures and people. That much was well known.

Fortunately Heron didn't have to fret that long over it. Within a week of the attack, a letter arrived from Lumna.

Strangely enough it was not from the king, but rather the queen. While Heron had met King Arrion of Lumna once he had never once met the notoriously reclusive queen of Lumna. He knew very little about her, other than what her lovestruck husband had said. As he had been a newlywed at the time he had talked about her more than a little.

Heron had not understood how a man could almost sound proud of marrying a woman he described as reticent – which Heron had understood from what little else was circulated on her that that was a gross understatement.

So he was more than a little surprised that that woman had sent a letter addressed to the castle. And he was shocked upon reading it.

King Arrion was dead. By assassination.

It seemed unreal.

Even though Heron had barely known the youngish king, he had heard many stories about him and his lineage. For it was well known that the Lumnan kings were good combatants and extremely hard to kill. (There were some rather tall tales, but the fact that before this not a single one of them had died to anything but old age seemed to point to there being some facts to it.)

Anyway, it seemed the queen of Lumna was taking it upon herself to take the fight to the Grimshades, having already secured the location with help from Carendlus.

Apparently, all the kingdoms had had similar attacks. It wasn't too surprising that the Lumna royalty would be the first to realize this – they had a vast merchant network, that would have noticed something this big happening.

This knowledge brought a whole new worry to Heron. Were his friends back in Jarenkul alright?

He sat down at his desk and wrote two letters. The first to Queen Dawn of Lumna. Telling her he would be willing to offer some knights for her to use.

The second letter was to Kur. He asked him if everything was alright. It was a short letter, written in haste as Heron was worried about them.

He had to send both letters by regular carriers, as Sun was not yet back.

After sending the letters he wasn't sure what to do with himself. He couldn't really concentrate on anything nor did he want to stay still. Thinking was uncomfortable.

Elswyth and him ended up sparing in order to help his nerves. Neither of them were the best at melee weapons. But it did provide a good distraction.