“Now bound for Dulsnik,
The quartet did leave;
At last all the thread
Was placed in the weave.

Yet the library,
That they did now seek,
Had one last surprise
Which truly did reek.”

- Excerpt from the “The Ballad of Jysalef”, as Written by Gulosc the Bard

Chapter 21: “Twilight Departure”

Their twilight departure from the vendor laden city of Kyosem, as per the insistences of Tallus Osmaard, was an amazingly trifle thing for the unlikely quartet of travelers to pull off. Although it was true that the city council would have very much liked to held festivities in honor of Jysalef Soresh, for his gallant efforts in putting a halt to the rampages of the dragon that touched down upon their town recently, they were not expecting that he would be fleeing the city under the cover of night. Yes, it was true that the doors upon the massive wall around the city were kept locked during the after hours; but the structure of those walls proved far from an unscalable matter, this was especially so when the precious few guards keeping watch from upon the top of the wall were only truly interested with the outer facing.

Although it was a most natural notion that the group would remain quiet during their attempt to leave the city undetected, it was not so expected that they would maintain this silence for over an hour afterwards; this went doubly so when you considered that they hadn’t even attempted to set up camp for the night yet. However, this silence had not begun with the beginning of their secret departure; it had actually started immediately after Jysalef’s first and final conversation with Miran Via’s student earlier that day. Ever since he had spoken with the Scholar Tallus, upon waking up, the vagrant swordsman had spent the remainder of the day sitting around lost in clearly bitter thoughts.

As they hurriedly pushed forward, keeping step with the perturbed pace being set by the quiet swordsman at the group’s helm, the first to make a motion to at long last break the silence - now once more wearing a hooded cloak that hid her uncommonly cyan hair from the vision of others - was the priestess from the lands of Skrande, “I would like to thank you for agreeing to escort me to your land’s capital, Sir Soresh; the sooner I am done with my pilgrimage, the sooner I will finally have my rest.”

There was a lengthy pause, where in it seemed as if Jysalef might not deign to respond at all, before he finally issued forth a statement given in greatly constrained tones, “Let us be clear about one thing, Skrandonese woman, I am not presently engaged in escorting you to the capital city known as Dulsnik. Rather instead, I am currently making my way there to deal with matters entirely unrelated; it is by pure coincidence that you are merely following along as I do such.”

Reoisce’Aihr - the ‘Skrandonese Woman’ whom Jysalef referred to - exhaled as she realized that little profit was to be had in attempting a conversation with the apparently perturbed swordsman standing before her.

Although the foreign priestess might have had her desire to speak up beaten back down by Jysalef’s special brand of charm, the things which Jysalef said - to deter her from engaging in words - only made his student feel a great need to ask questions that had been on his mind all day long, “Master Soresh – Sir - that brings up something I’ve been meaning to ask all day long, why exactly is it that we are suddenly on a trip to our kingdom’s capital?”

Jysalef had, up until that moment, simply presumed that the Scholar Tallus had already discussed with Terus all that he had told him earlier that day; with a roll of his eyes, he wondered why he had ever assumed that the man they left back in Kyosem might actually do something that made sense. With a frustrated moan - as he now found himself in the most distasteful position of having to explain the plan set before them by Miran Via’s student - the swordsman angrily declared, “We are presently marching all the way off to Dulsnik so that we might, by force if necessary, make a permanent loan upon one of their books before someone else can apparently read it.” Jysalef paused for a moment so that he could growl again, before he continued his response, “Specifically, we are hoping to find a dangerous tome known as the ‘Arcanum of Jasmodeus’; apparently it was the use of this book that caused that Glein Empire to get razed to the ground by a demon, and that so-called scholar is now afraid that someone in our lands will be reading it very soon.”

“No, but that’s…” suddenly came a most surprising outburst from Latte. Although Latte had actually been quite vocal with Terus Kyreon these last few days, while Jysalef had been lying unconscious upon Tallus’s couch, that quickly changed once it had been stated they would be leaving for Dulsnik later that night. Immediately thereafter, in response to that development, she had run off to privately contact her master through the whisper ring he had entrusted to her; ever since then she had been sitting around with a morose look of dread hanging clearly upon her face.

However, her sudden outburst into vocality – once all eyes were now intently locked upon her – ended almost as immediately at it curiously began “Er, no, it’s nothing at all; forgive me for my outburst – Sirs - I was merely daydreaming out loud!” After which, she proceeded to laugh nervously to herself from behind a pallor expression.

As they continued to push forth through the night, once more with awkward silence hanging over them, the priestess wondered to herself if all of this was something that Goddess had meant for her to find when the greatly undesired pilgrimage had first been set forth upon her.