was no need to call out to someone who was leaving. Sandor got out safely. Even then, he didn’t lower his staff. He walked until he could no longer see the walls of the town. When he arrived at an empty plain with good visibility, he let his guard down at last, and without a moment of hesitation, he set off running. He was heading for the Superd village. Something was terribly wrong. If he wasn’t the target, someone else was. “…I really did think someone was there,” he said to himself. As he remembered what he’d said back in the basement, he went a little pink. *** Sandor made haste to the forest of the Superd village and didn’t stop at any towns or villages on the way. He hadn’t been attacked back at the teleportation circle, but he was on his guard against an ambush. Whether he was deterring his would-be attackers or there just hadn’t been any assailants in the first place, he couldn’t say, but his journey passed without incident. He exited the forest and approached the ravine. When he went to cross the shudder- inducing depths, Sandor suddenly realized something was wrong. “There’s no bridge…?” The stone bridge that Rudeus had built had collapsed partway in. It had looked extremely sturdy, but he supposed it had only been a makeshift thing built with magic in the end. Sandor didn’t know much about magic, but he vaguely knew that this sort of dashed-off magic bridge was prone to collapsing. It didn’t strike him as odd. What caught his notice was the original bridge next to the broken one. There was something on the ground near it: the scabbard of a sword. If his memory served, it was the one the regular soldiers of the Biheiril Army carried. “…What’s this doing here?” he wondered aloud, his alarm bubbling up once again. He knew his own instincts well enough that when something felt wrong, he wasn’t imagining it. Of course there were times he read too much into things, but still, he could trust his gut. Looking around the bridge to ensure he was alone, he slowly began to cross it until, when he was partway across, he was greeted by a familiar sight. Splotched, black stains. Bloodstains. He couldn’t tell whose, but judging by the color, they were likely human. The blood appeared to have come flying from the broken stone bridge. Page 4 Goldenagato | mp4directs.com