Mount Larshen - Communication.

Ewan hurried to the Association's postal service, joining a long line of people who were clearly already in a state of turmoil. He knew too little about the situation, and what had happened to Carciem, to do nothing. He hoped to be able to send a message quickly and receive a reply as soon as possible.

The postal service of the Association not only allowed to send mails, parcels, and small to medium-sized objects, but also allowed to send voice messages from city to city through communication stones. Each branch of the Association was equipped with these, and could therefore ensure a permanent connection between the places where the organization was present. It was a rather expensive service, compared to sending letters or goods, so the wait was already less important than for the normal counters.

Ewan suspected that most of the people waiting for their turn here were in the same situation as him: acting in a hurry, without worrying about the cost. People who had to ask for news of their relatives, or on the contrary be the ones to give some.

Soon, his turn arrived, and at the desk dedicated to communications, he quickly made his request.

"The military academy of Ylesse?" Repeated to confirm the employee of the Association.

"Yes, I need to get in touch with them," confirmed Ewan.

"That's going to be complicated," said the employee. "We've lost all contact with them since yesterday, and with the evacuation order given, I doubt anyone is still assigned to civilian communications there."

"But you could still try to get the word out, right?" Ewan insisted, "My friend is in the military, and I don't know what could have happened to him..."

"Whether he's in the army or not, it won't make any difference. Our premises there have already been evacuated, so the only possibility would be to send a message to another branch of the Association for them to pass it on to the nearest barracks, which would relay it via the army's communication stones." She explained.

"Then let's do that!" Ewan exclaimed.

The employee then got up to go and find a specific stone on a large wooden bookcase, among all those lined up neatly on all the shelves. Each of the stones had in front of it a label on which was marked its location, and corresponded to a branch of the organization across the continent.

There must have been at least fifty stones, but Ewan suspected that some were hidden from his view by the base of the counter and the corridor that turned toward the back of the building, the library following one of its walls into the relatively dim light of the premises.

Perhaps there were a hundred of them, perhaps more.

However, they also seemed to be arranged in order of proximity and frequent use, so the most important cities and those very close to Barbados were all lined up behind the counter, and the employee had no trouble finding the one in a city that could relay the message.

She reached for a stone labeled 'Ventricaire', a town Ewan remembered as being in Haularinne County, right next to his own home county of Sharmyr. It was a small town located not far from the armored city of Bergamme, near the border between the two counties aforementioned; and even if Ewan had never stopped there, he had already passed by it in the course of requests to be fulfilled.

Among all these stones lined up and emitting a soft yellow or white light, the young hunter's gaze was drawn to the upper left corner of the library: up there, several stones were completely extinguished, inert. Ewan bitterly recognized some of the names among those concerned: Bohr, Caderpaste, Cataprieste, Embasse, Ylesse. He didn't recognize the others, but he was willing to bet that they were located in exactly the same area: an immense circle of desolation having for center and point of origin the village of Bohr. Several towns and villages where all contact had been broken, rendering the stones attached to them inactive.

"What is the content of the message?" Asked the employee, returned to sit at the counter in front of Ewan with a stone before her.

The vocal intervention snapped the young man out of his observation, but did not dispel his concern.

"The content of the message is 'I need to get in touch with Quartermaster General Carciem Balgoranth, you can contact me at Barbados. Signed Ewan Jesabell.'" He dictated.

The employee then calculated the cost of the communication, and after confirming with the young hunter that he wanted to send the message, she placed her hand in front of the stone to make it glow with a blue light, and repeated the message which would be written down at its destination, before being transmitted.

Ewan then placed several silver coins on the counter, and after thanking her, made his way back through the ever-growing crowd of people flocking to the premises. Then, in the street, he joined Pavas and recovered Fusain by directing him with his reins before making road towards the inn where they had found a room.

The young girl threw him some worried glances, to which Ewan did not answer. He was far too busy imagining all the possible scenarios in his mind.

If the army had been defeated, did that mean the monster couldn't be stopped, and was still destroying everything in its path?

What had happened to Carciem, then? Had he asked his troops to retreat? Was he injured? Would he even be able to reply to the message Ewan had just sent?

The young man had no answers to any of these questions, and what worried him even more was that the situation seemed serious enough to move entire populations away from their homes. In such a situation, what was the Emperor going to do? Would the hunters be mobilized by force, as in the Great War?

Without realizing it, he had stopped walking and felt the sleeve of his jacket being tugged. Looking down, he saw that it was Pavas who was behind this gesture.

"Hmm? What's wrong?" He asked the girl.

She then pointed to some people who had also stopped in the crowd, a few meters away, letting people come and go in all directions around the two groups.

Ewan stared at the man and woman in front of him, frowning. If the woman with the light brown hair and the spear was unknown to him, the man with the long black hair tied in a regular and perfect braid was not foreign to him.

"Well, would you look at that! If it isn't Jesabell!" Exclaimed the man. "What the hell are you doing here?"

The man grinned, and answered with little enthusiasm and a lot of reluctance.

"Géandre..." He said slowly.

The two men stared at each other in silence, motionless in all the surrounding agitation. Then, the man named Géandre spoke.

"Still stealing other peoples' preys like the sore loser you are?"