When the morning came the group ate a small meal and then started up again on their journey toward the forest entrance. While the were riding Gordan pulled out the heart from his pack and carefully inspected it to see if it was still running smoothly.
"What are you doing?"
Drake was watching him with slight curiosity as he tampered with the heart of the king. Gordan looked up at Drake and smiled.
"Just making sure that the heart is remaining functional, after all we would be in a bit of a pickle if our leverage became useless right?"
He quickly finished his check and gave the heart a slight squeeze which made it pump faster.
"So how is the heart able to keep him alive if it's not even in him anymore?"
Gordan placed the heart back in his bag and looked ahead toward the road.
"Well the magic basically makes several sets of portals in the various valves which make it so that the blood can continue to pump through means of magic which prevents decay and disease. Fun fact this is a spell that is actually most commonly used by vampires in order to protect themselves from being staked to death."
The last bit of information grabbed even the Generals attention. The amount of knowledge that Gordan had in his brain was unknown, but when he had been a comander the General had been aware of his expansive knowledge.
"But why would they need blood if they are undead? Wouldn't That be pointless since they don't have flowing blood?"
Gordan caught a small leaf which had fallen from a tree by the road. As he rolled the small leaf over in his hand he looked at it carefully.
"Well that information is a bit delicate to speak of."
The statement confused both of the listeners quite a bit. Gordan looked back and smiled at their curiosity.
"It mostly has to do with while they are undead they actually do have a substance pumping though their veins keeping them alive, but it is a complicated process that is quite frowned upon to speak of."
The two of them nodded in wonder. Drake wasn't really surprised that his knowledge of vampires was a bit off since he hadn't been around one before, so all he knew was hear say.
"So how is it that you know all of this information?"
Gordan looked back to the road and frowned, neither of them could see but his mood seemed to change slightly.
"Well part of it has to do with the fact that I read a lot when I was younger, but some things are fairly easy to pick up from experience."
Drake wondered what kind of life Gordan could have lived to be the person that he was today. Drake couldn't really understand Gordan all that well. After all he seemed like a fairly relaxed person, but thinking back to when they had been traveling together, the look on his face when he caught the assassin made him nervous to even think about.
The road in front of them was gray in the morning light, and the trees on either side of the road which were becoming more and more frequent were showing signs of frost forming on their leaves. The air had become rather crisp overnight, and it gave Drake a feeling of familiarity, but it was a kind of unconsciousness familiarity like he had felt it in a dream. During the trip they didn't talk very much since after Gordans last answer the air seemed to have become even more cold than before. Drake took in a deep breath and wondered what would come next. Both him and the General would likely be branded as traitors so there was nothing left for them back at the kingdom which wasn't a bad thing for Drake since he really had no intention of staying in the first place. He was more worried about what the General was going to do, since he had devoted almost his entire life to the safety of the kingdom, and now he would have nothing left at all.
"Hey what's wrong?"
Drake looked up and saw that the General seemed concerned about his current expression.
"I was just wondering, what do you plan to do after all of this is finished? It's not like we will be able to go back to the kingdom or anything."
The General smiled at him sadly and then turned his face toward the sky, of course he knew that, and it broke his heart. He loved the kingdom more than anything in the world, and now it had turned its back and rejected him.
"Who knows? I'm sure an opportunity will come for me by the end, so don't let it bother you."
Again the atmosphere became melancholy, and they rode in silence for several more hours.
Suddenly the trees which had been growing quite thickly around them disappeared entirely, leaving nothing but an open field which was the area before the entrance to the forest. They quickened their pace slightly and reached the entrance within minutes. When they arrived they all dismounted and Gordan began to speak to the horses in hushed tones. After he finished the horses all nodded in agreement, turned around and ran off toward the rest of the herd. It was quite the sight for the two traveling with him, but they didn't bother asking.
Gordan had been a bit annoyed thinking about how he had learned such information. He had never been comfortable talking about the wars which he fought in and gained most of his more... useful information, such as the idea about vampires hearts. He knew that it made the others uncomfortable but he had trouble holding it back so he decided to just stop talking and listen instead. When they brought up the issue of what would happen next, Gordan began to wonder about the question for himself, and then he felt a slight ringing in his head and a small exclamation mark appeared in the corner of his vision.
He made a slight gesture with his hand and the screen popped up in his face. Thankfully he didn't have to worry about directing the horse since it knew where to go, so it would be perfectly fine to see what was causing the sudden alert from the strange screen.
< system successfuly updated Patch Notes ver. 1.0 now available>
The strange notification dominated the usually clear screen with big red lettering. It was a curious thing to Gordan since he had no idea what it was talking about but it looked like it might be a good way to kill time so he clicked on the notification and instantly a large amount of writing appeared before him. Gordan smiled a bit at this, one of the best ways to take his mind off things was reading and now he had just the thing for it, so he began to read the document which seemed to go on forever. He didn't understand most of what it was talking about so he had to read it quite slowly. The contents mostly delt with somthing called 'bug fixes' and 'minor adjustments to software' each of these things were extremely well detailed and Gordan lost himself in reading. When he finally finished the first section out of the text he looked up and saw that they had already reached the grass before the trees. Gordan sighed slightly under his breath and sped up the pace of his horse.
When they reached the destination they dismounted and Gordan told the horses the best route to return by. He was still thinking about the things that he had read about during the trip so he was alittle bit in a daze.
"Um, do you have any preparations to do? Since they should be arriving in a couple of hours."
Gordan snapped back into reality and smiled slightly.
"Now that you mention it I do have somthing rather important to do."
Gordan pulled out Orion's core which had letters written on it in black blood. He rolled it over in his hand until he found the rune that he was looking for and made a small cut in his finger, before carefully stamping it onto the location. Almost emidiatly the back letters lit up and there was a low rumble in the earth before the core suddenly began to fade out of his hand. He felt a sharp pain in the back of his neck as the stone absorbed the pain leaving a dull ache in his head, not unbearable, but also not comfortable. Thankfully he had a bit of time before the various groups actually arrived he would need to set the stage more appropriately. Gordan used his heel to draw a sign in the ground and then stood back several feet to admire his work, suddenly a small figure jumped out of the tree line landing a few feet from the group, and Gordan smiled.
"Its been a bit Mara glad to see that you seem to be doing well."
The small girl looked at him in slight shock.
"What do you mean, glad to see you are doing well? Last time we met I tried to kill you."
Gordan pulled a small package out of his bag and tossed it to her. Mara grabbed the package and quickly opened it.
"That's what you came for if I'm not mistaken."
She pulled the green core out of the bag and nodded slightly.
"What's your price?"
=Sigh=
Gordan shook his head slightly in disappointment.
"Dont act like I'm a scammer or somthing. My payment is simple, wait until tomorrow to return this to your master. After all he needs to have his full attention on the battle right?"
Mara flinched when she heard that, the master had only decided to join at the last moment so he shouldn't know about that.
Gordan smiled as her reaction conformed his suspicions.
"Well then I'll see you in a couple of hours. remember to stay safe."
Mara was confused by his statement, but then he smiled at her and she suddenly looked down and realized that she had landed in the magic circle without noticing it. Gordan waved at her as she slowly began to disappear in front of him.
"You have got to be kidding me."
As she uttered those last words she faded out of view, and the two people behind Gordan walked up and looked at him questioningly.
"Who was that?"
They both said it in perfect unison, which would have made Gordan want to laugh, if he wasn't so busy trying to cope with his headache.