Silas was exhausted. His second in command had practically forced him to nap on the couch in his office for a few hours and all it had done was make him feel more tired. He'd been forced to share the work with a couple other companies, his men overwhelmed by the sheer volume of victims. Nevermind the amount of criminals they had to process and identify.
Then Perrin had come in a dither because Kleid had been mugged, like the knight wasn't already busy, asking that Silas try to scent track the attackers. He'd sent the Duke to the kennels, with a friendly reminder that just because he had the ability it did not immediately follow he could or would and to please remember that he was a knight of the empire and not his friend's personal dog.
Perrin had gone away. Silas stared at the mountain of paperwork and sighed, not for the first time regretting taking the leadership promotion. If this were a battlefield three hours would have left him feeling fresh as a field of flowers.
He would not have bit his friend's head off about wanting to work together. He sighed again. Maybe he should hire an assistant after all.
"Sir Iaska! We got a lead on a hideout," a guardsman said after not knocking and rushing into his office.
Iaska was up and out the door, relief coursing through him. "Get us twenty mages of at least mid to high journeyman level and have them come here for a briefing." He wasn't going to risk another blown off roof or spell that failed simply because it was designed for a single target.
He pulled out the comm-crystal he had for his friends. "We may have a hideout, come to HQ."
The guard rushed off to fulfill his command about the mages. He went to interrogation to get clearer details on the information. A knight was waiting, a sheaf of confessions in his hand that he handed over upon seeing a superior officer.
"Has it been verified?" he asked as he skimmed the documents with a rising sense of predatory glee.
"Yes, we have had two Veritas on hold since the children were found to confirm their families," the interrogator reassured Silas. "They will likely think the source is dead and be unprepared for an attack."
"Perfect," the white haired knight hummed as he read the document in clearer detail. The boss was rarely there but there could be clues about them available outside that vague whiff of flowery perfume.
Silas had worked as a Security Knight since the war and had insisted on being on the streets and working his way up like every other knight. This had been partly because he wanted to and largely because Perrin had recommended it. People were in awe of the Knight of Herif the war hero but what he needed now was for criminals to learn how he got that title. Many thought it was a farce put on for publicity by the ducal house that four teens had destroyed the Monster King alone.
As it was on the battlefield, Perrin's advice was sound and soon all the rumors that they were fake heroes riding on the coattails of older men faded into guilty silence. Silas had found true joy in the subduing of criminals and a productive outlet for his more animalistic traits, particularly his love of hunting. Crime had taken a steep dive until he got his promotion, things had been getting worse since and he was on the cusp of asking for a demotion.
He was going over maps of the area the hideout was located, talking to knights and guards that patrolled around the building they now knew to house human traffickers. They were to be part of the operation as well, and all information was to be kept in the building for now, to the point that all personal comm devices had been confiscated until the operation's completion. He was sick of them getting away, tired of people being hurt, and pissed that the pretty artificer had almost died before he could even take her to lunch.
The mages and Archeus arrived together, all allowing their communication items to be taken away. They then set about waiting for the briefing. Silas frowned after a bit, he had asked Perrin here at the same time as Archeus, so where was the duke?
The knight approached his friend, "Where's Duke Levast?"
Archeus frowned. "He and Jered set out here ahead of me, I went to make sure you got competent mages." Silas saw that the mages around them were pleased that the High Mage thought they were competent, but his friend's words distracted him.
"Can you track him?" he asked the mage, a premonition of more trouble leaving him concerned.
"I can, but he'd want us to finish up this operation first and time is of the essence," Archeus pointed out, his voice full of frustration.
He was right but Silas was annoyed, he was supposed to be able to have a nice fun hunt, not worry about his friend. "No one would kidnap a duke right?"
"Not if they wanted a long, fruitful life," Archeus reassured.
Thus decided Silas went to the head of the room and briefed the knights, guards, and mages of the operation they would be undertaking. "We have a location on a hideout for higher-ups in the human trafficking case. We are hoping for a paper trail we can start following. With that in mind, the mages will be casting a suppression field in a one hundred foot zone centered on the building. We will signal you to lay it down after we have blocked all known potential escape paths. I will lead the breach team and we will hopefully be able to get some big wigs in this criminal group off the streets."
They did not teleport - such a large use of magic could alert sorcerers - but they moved through the city quickly using subterranean paths commissioned by the royal family for just this purpose. The beginning of the operation went as Silas had hoped, the mages cast the suppression field after they got in place without issue. Mages inside the field would not be able to cast and magical items would go temporarily inert unless they were more powerful than the twenty mages recommended by Archeus.
He and the knights stormed the building through the most obvious entrances, the front and back doors. It was not a busy building but it was obvious that they had not expected the raid. This was very apparent because Jered, a ducal aide, had Perrin tied to a chair and seemed to have been in the process of doing some sort of magic to his lord in the foyer.
"What in the gods' names?" Silas said to the room at large, for once as shocked as the people he had been hunting.
Luckily his subordinates were not as gobsmacked and flowed around him to secure the building. Jered was cuffed and had his face slammed into a wall for good measure by a knight as Silas went to his bound friend and crouched in front of him.
"How did this happen?" he asked with some good cheer, Perrin was rarely at a disadvantage.
"Mnf urf mpuy meh?" Perrin said around a gag, obviously irritated by his situation and the amount of people who had seen him in it.
Silas cut his friend loose and then helped him to his feet. "Men, bring all the detained men to this room and line them up, then check all the rooms for anything that will help our investigation. Anything you would like to add, your Grace?"
"I suspect there is a cellar or an underground route out," he informed them, rubbing his wrists then mouth while glaring at the man who used to be his aide. "What sort of spell were you casting?" he practically snarled at the young man who remained closed-mouthed.
Photograms were being taken of the algorithmic magic that Jered had been using to cast his spell. Perrin was now also a victim and so stood to the side to await formal questioning while Silas began to search the building himself. Faint whiffs of that scent were dominant in an upstairs room set up like an office, at least a day old.
The other rooms were storage and other offices upstairs. Downstairs the only rooms other than the foyer were a kitchen, the other walls had been knocked down to form a small barracks to house criminals that were part of the organization. He found the door to the cellar and they pried it open. Though a magical trap wouldn't trigger under the suppression field and mechanical traps - being expensive - were rare, he still had one of the knights skilled in detecting such things check it out.
Given the all clear he went into the cellar and stared at the tunnel leading into the darkness. Beckoning him to follow, to hunt the prey he could find there. His good sense reminded him that would probably be suicide and the suppression field was probably the only reason the building wasn't in the process of burning to the ground. Whoever was running things had a propensity for slash and burn tactics after all.
He mentally tagged the way the tunnel went and where it would likely intersect with the world above and left the collar to be looked over for evidence. He was half way up the stairs when he heard Archeus and Perrin yelling.
He rushed up to the foyer and found Perrin and Archeus holding down Jered and they prevented him from biting through his own tongue using the scabbard of Archeus' dagger. It was already bleeding so someone must have noticed the blood and intervened before he reached success. Silas went over and with a concentrated blow to the former aide's jaw the young man slumped into unconsciousness.
"Found a tunnel," he told the two men, both looking a bit frazzled."What happened?"
"He tried to bite off his tongue," Archeus informed him, as if Silas hadn't seen that.
"Yes, they do that if the other failsafes to keep them from talking don't activate. It's why this group has been such a pain in the ass. We've had so much success with them not dying lately that it seems we forgot to prevent it." He watched the knights do just that with the rest of those detained. "At least we have the answer to the question of who got Kleid mugged," Silas pointed out cheerfully to Perrin.
"I'm glad at your finding a silver lining Silas, but this also means we have had a potential sorcerer working in my office for almost a full bloody year," Perrin sighed with a pained expression, no doubt thinking about all the projects Jered had been involved in that were now compromised. "I'm never going to sleep again."
"I'll loan you Luka, she's pouting about still being confined to the temple and she is feeling a bit adrift," Archeus offered It was actually a very good offer, she was smart and thought of Perrin as a brother sparing him potential romantic rumors.
"I'll take you up on that," Perrin agreed, "but it doesn't really end the problem."
"I'm going to have Jered's office and address searched," Silas muttered, leaving the building suddenly so he could make a few important calls outside the suppression field.