Siilrava was placed to the right of Chancellor Gilethe and his extensive family, and to the left of Krig Marshall Sodorin, who stood alone, while several of the Samlendel teetered behind them. Sodorin had even ordered her protectors to step back from her during the ceremony, and told them to look away in the opposite direction.

  It was an ancient custom that they were acting in, but Siilrava thought it outdated and rather foolish. The three most influential and powerful authorities in all of Haemonine, as well as nearly half of their Samlendel senators, standing on a rickety stage on the far side of the realm, ripe for attack. And it became all the more absurd since the Haemonine's discovery of undara serum, with most of them sensing an even greater target sweeping across their heads.

  The Haemonines were famed for their spy network, and reports from the Collosean chambers of the last few years had hinted at a festering unrest spreading like disease in the mind of Prime Regent Ulagg Leynsham. The latest development, gathered directly from a recent assembly held in the Collosean Palisade, spoke of an almighty spilling of combustive plots and claims. The winds and the mountain sound were beginning to prophesize, and Siilrava felt far from ready.

  Four of the five sacrificial damned were now being blessed by a Priest of Haemonie, while the fifth was having his head cradled by a member of The Vicariate. 'She must be the former Ruskelite.' Thought Siilrava, the mild intrigue of this sight providing some distraction at least.

  In all the years he'd attended the Innlandet ceremony, he'd witnessed a range of peculiarities, most of which distressing. He was expecting at least one runner, for an Innlandet ceremony without an attempt was a rarity. It was the reason they now shackled the damned at the ankle before marching them forward like marionettes. Escape was impossible of course, but that's not why they ran. They were hoping for a quick, fortunate death during the action of being caught.

  The sacrificial damned were always the most reprehensible of those arrested and charged at the pleasure of the Haemonine Government: Serial murderers and rapists with victims in the double digits, arsonists whose infernos have claimed the lives of multiple families, overseers of abuse rings, Treasonous conspirators. Siilrava and Gilethe, as Deputy Chancellor and Chancellor respectively, were provided the summary of the crimes prior to the ceremony, for they were the ones wielding this heaviest of sentences. Gilethe looked as unmoved as usual, his porcine eyes locked in place and his large hands held in front of him. At six-foot-six he towered over Siilrava.

  The two holymen said their final words and stepped back from the sacrificial damned with their heads bowed. The doomed five were all dressed in cloaks of grey with burgundy, which were then ripped from the each prisoner by soldiers wearing full masked helmets, symbolising the annulment of their expulsion as Haemonine Citizens. Another soldier then came forth and removed their ankle braces, while another carried a simple ladder made of untreated, beige wood and placed it against the wall. There was no hint of attempted escape from any of them, all five were silent still as they stepped slowly in unison towards and then up the rungs.

  'So say by decree of the sainted custom of the Haemonine Realm,' roared Chancellor Gilethe, 'and by the higher laws of The God King Haemonie, that the disgrace of his fallen children should be atoned for by way of the Innlandet sickness.'

  Siilrava always found this part of the Chancellor's sermon to be slightly confusing, considering the Haemonine people were in constant disagreement as to what the Innlandet was and how it came about. Being a pious people, it went without saying that their Primary God, Haemonie, The God of Love, Plantlife, Magic, Innerknowing and, most importantly, Death, created it. However, the divine purpose of the Innlandet was heavily debated. Some sectarian followers of Haemonie, the ones who denounced the other Gods, Collosea and Ruskel, entirely, preached that it was by Haemonie's hand that the 'demonic presence' residing within the Innlandet was kept from spreading over the wall. Others saw the land beyond the Hul Sjel line to be a form of hell that could be seen with one's own eyes - one set down by Haemonie as an intimation towards a life of goodness and devotion. The most common belief, however, was that Haemonie Himself resided within the Innlandet, and that the Hul Sjel affliction, or "sickness", as Gilethe so named it, was the consequence of the simple, mortal minds of humans witnessing the celestial spirit of a God.

  Following his first Innlandet Ceremony as Deputy Chancellor, Siilrava educated himself on all the Innlandet theories. He became morbidly curious to the point of near obsession; rifling through books and demanding audiences with rectors and experts and Philosophers and various other intellectuals. It was strange, when he was there he despised every second, but when home he found the place to be wildly fascinating. If he was being honest with himself, it was the only thing for which he'd found much passion in recent years, aside from watching Brenna and Rumi grow up.

  Despite interruption and governmental manipulation from the church, Haemonine botanists, alienists and healers had tried to identify a scientific explanation for the affliction. Whether the individuals had crossed by coercion, arrogance, or, in the case of the Sacrificial Damned, force, the result was never not the same. A person in ownership of both the sharpest mind and fittest physique could scale the wall and cross into the Innlandet, and they would still either return as the empty, memoryless iterations of their past selves to then die in a bed hours later, or collapse beyond the wall, never to wake up.

  However, the scientific hypotheses were as varied and disputed as the religious ones. They tended to agree it to be an airborne agent invisible to the naked eye, such as a pathogen or undocumented solute in the moist air. It was also assumed that the aggressor originated from the swamp flora or from beneath the ground, which would explain why those who'd attempted to cross the boundary by means of scaling the cliffs that descend from the northwestern border of the Haemonine land had suffered the same fate as all others. The perfectly-preserved bodies of climbers sitting loosely in archaic climbing equipment could even still be seen when one looked westwards from the edge of the Ruskel Cloud Walk.

  How and why the affliction only took effect once one passed the Hul Sjel line was a question that still remained unanswered. If the toxin was present in the air, then why did it not simply float over the wall and wreak havoc on the people of Oros? And how is it that, when those who return over the wall were examined, no physical damage could be identified in the lungs or brain?

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  Then there was perhaps the most eerie aspect of the Innlandet itself: That those who fell and died beyond the Hul Sjel line did not appear to decompose after they passed. Thus, some grieving loved ones of people who had crossed could still look upon the fresh faces of those they knew, even decades after their death, and those they mourned appeared as though they were in a deep and peaceful sleep. It was this surreal quality of the Innlandet that intrigued Siilrava the most. Plus, it gave credence to the theory that only plant life could survive in those lands, and that not even the bacteria which facilitate the natural decomposition of dead animals could endure the walk beyond the Hul Sjel.

  The last prisoner dropped over the wall, and a silence, cut only by the soft breeze, rested on those watching. The sentence had been carried out. They were in God's or nature's hands now. Siilrava averted his eyes as the prisoners killed by his and Gilethe's word stumbled out amongst the marshes of the Innlandet. Already they were hollowed folk, aimless in direction.

  The walk back to the encampment was as slow and melancholy as the outward journey. Brenna yawned several times, causing Fress to squeeze her hand lightly to remind her of the seriousness of the occasion. When they arrived back, almost immediately one of Gilethe's new Chief Secretaries came bounding up. She was a woman with a voice as shrill as a peacock's and big knotty hair, whose name Siilrava could never quite remember.

  'Chancellor Gilethe!' She cried, 'We've received several falcons from the Samlendel, there's word from Attekant-'

  'Not here for the Lord's sake!' Interrupted Gilethe, 'Look around you, you were about to spit out what I'm imagining is classified information in plain view of spit cooks and horse-washers!' The surrounding crowd stopped and turned at the sound of Gilethe's booming voice.

  'Back to your labours!' shouted his Chief Guard.

  'Meet in my quarters, straight away,' said Gilethe to Siilrava and Krig Marshall Sodorin over the heads of his rear guards, 'and bring the Samlende.'

  Sodorin walked over to Siilrava and said softly, 'Gather the Samlende, Siilrava, you're good at that kind of thing.' Before she sauntered after the Chancellor. Sodorin was directly below Siilrava in the governmental hierarchy but she didn't put much effort into recognising it. However, Siilrava couldn't quite tell whether it was he or the Deputy Chancellor position itself for which she held the contempt. Probably a little of both. He didn’t care much, she was a joyless old cow after all.

  He gave Fress an apologetic look; he'd promised to spend some time with the children to take their minds off of the capital punishment they'd just observed, but orders were orders. When Siilrava and the three Samlende Senators arrived at Gilethe's tent, which was about four times the size of his, the Chancellor was pacing back and forth with a series of papers in one hand and three torn envelopes in the other. His face was now pallid, save for the flushed angry cheeks.

  'Siilrava, about time.' He said as he looked up quickly and then back at the words on the page. Sodorin smirked behind him.

  'What word have we received, Chancellor?' Siilrava asked.

  'Some parasitic malcontents, onerous bastards, wanton treacherous fiends, have infiltrated the Attekant Seed Vault!' Gilethe was scrunching the paper now and staring wildly at the Deputy Chancellor, as if it was Siilrava's own fault. Gilethe rose to anger easily, and possessed a short temper, but he rarely reached this degree of irateness. He threw a heavy bronze fruit bowl, fruit and all, across the room and stamped one big foot. 'Fuck!' he roared.

  'Is there any word on who arranged this robbery?' Asked Sodorin.

  'No!' Spitted Gilethe, who was now breathing heavily. 'It's not confirmed anyway.' He then said, with a little more restraint.

  'One of them perished in the process, Haemonie be good, who wore both a Collosean warrior marker and the brand of the New Becoming.'

  'So it could be either? or both?' Queried Sodorin.

  'You heard the word from our spies in the Palisade, Sodorin, it's clearly the New Becoming sowing unrest. It's practically the first page of their manifesto, for God's sake.'

  'It could just as easily be the Collosean's using them as cover.' said the Samlende for Attekant District 1, who was walking further into the room.

  'Speculation isn't getting us anywhere.' Bemoaned Gilethe. He held up another of the crumpled letters and shook it at the officials in the room. 'There's also rumblings of further mobilisation of Collosean troops into the Triskellion! As the Souls beyond the wall are my witness, I will not stoop to war in my time. Even if those Colloseans have such wanton hubris that they would crash against us over our undara fields.'

  'Should we not,' Siilrava said, 'at least humour any other explanations?'

  'Such as?' Asked Gilethe, who was back to reading the letters in melodramatic fashion.

  'There are three realms in our world, and thrice the amount of cults to boot. What of the Ruskelites? And what of the Broken Headstones? The Silk Moths? Hell they raided one of the banks down in Tylluan Reach just a month ago, by not dissimilar methods.'

  'Of course the Ruskelites are being considered, but were you not at the meeting a few days ago where we discussed the Prime Regent's assembly? The cache of two-cross ajers they found? Honestly, Siilrava, your head has been in the clouds of late.'

  Gilethe looked more disapproving than angry. Siilrava hated it but managed not to show it. 'We've yet to find any culprits with the candle brands to date.' Continued Gilethe.

  'The Ruskelites could have hid them, or used third parties. You know of their resourcefulness, their secrecy. Even we have found difficulty in infiltrating their levels with our spies over the years.'

  'I find I must agree with Siilrava.' Said Gilethe. 'What little we know is the first concern, and the Ruskelites are likely to be enjoying watching these calamities from the North. What we do know, however, is that we should match the Collosean's hand, show the forces that our Undara serum wealth has bought us, and move more Krig Warriors to the Triskellion.'

  'Don't put words in my mouth, Sodorin' Said Siilrava, 'What we SHOULD do is exercise restraint'. Sodorin's countenance was stony to say the least. She was of diminutive stature by measurement, just above five feet or so, but she always seemed far taller by way of her perfect posture and bulbous waist. In this instance, she stepped back though.

  'Of course, The Chancellor’s word is final.' She said emotionlessly.

  'We are to return to Attekant at once!' Shouted Chancellor Gilethe to the room, 'Cancel the feast for this evening. Pack the tents and arrange the undara carriages, and find our most trusted falconer. I have several letters of instruction to return. By the Gods! Whose fucking idea was it all those years ago to have have the leaders in Haemonine cart themselves clear across the realm to stand in a swamp.'

  As the group queued to clear out of the tent, Siilrava was rubbing his bald head tiredly, anxiously, lost in several trains of thought and trying to arrange them in a pragmatic order, but as he was nearing the exit, he noticed Gilethe stopping by Krig Marshall Sodorin. He looked deep in rumination and sighed before saying the words: 'If we were to mobilise... If... How quickly could you do so?'