A second attempt to enter the Old Quarter from the Great Bridge ended with the Craft Guild Blade beaten and bloodied. He had been tempted to kill at least one of the men that grabbed him, but he knew that it would have led to his own death. A beating at the hands of five men was preferable to death at the hands of four.

As a result, he had embraced a new plan—sneaking into the Wretched Quarter from the southeast via the Ash Fields. He was actually looking forward to the mission. Everyone in Ness had heard of the former verdant fields that had been over-farmed to the point that they were nothing more than fields of ash. The Blade was intrigued as to what such fields would look like.

One of the reasons you couldn't see the fields from across the river was that the residents of the Wretched Quarter had built a stone wall along the great river, hiding everything on the other side from the view of the citizenry of Ness. That included the Ash Fields.

As the Blade walked along the south bank, he wondered if he could find a gap in the wall or a section that had been weakened to the point that he could remove some stones and slip through. But such was not the case. The Blade would have to climb over the wall. His concern over this was that those on the Upper Triangle side of the river would easily be able to see him, and being on the river bank on the Wretched Quarter side of the river was illegal. Of course, the bigger concern was that by climbing the wall he would be more easily discovered by the residents of the Wretched Quarter, and he was not keen on another beating.

But with no choice, the Blade climbed the wall, rolled across the narrow top and then did his best to drop to the other side without being seen. As he crouched at the base of the wall and looked around, he was glad to see that he was successful.

It was not surprising—he was on the edge of the Ash Fields, and the legends had turned out to be true. There was an immense plain of light dust that extended far to the west and north, with no one within eyeshot. He could see activity to the northwest, and in the distance to the west, he thought he saw a tower, but it was difficult to make out due to the dark mountains leaving everything in a deep shade.

The Wretched Quarter was across a tributary to the Great River that he would have to cross. The Blade was certain that there would be some kind of bridge and that it would most likely be near where he could see activity. So he started north along the wall to his right. There was a small road that was relatively well-kempt, so it made the trip easy.

The sun was starting to set as the Blade approached a group of hard-working men digging and plowing the fields. While the dirt appeared to be darker and richer, it still seemed to be as dead as the rest of the Ash Fields. The men appeared to be dropping in waste, compost, and the remains of vegetables and fruit. They turned the ground and moved onward.

It was rather impressive how the men were attempting to reclaim the fields. It appeared to be a lost cause, but the Blade had to hand it to the residents of the Wretched Quarter—they were giving it their all.

Three things in quick succession caught the Blades eye. The first was that while the men working the fields were all stripped down to nothing more than light pants as they worked in the sun, the pants were black. Black? Why not the green of the Harvest Guild? Black was the color of the mythical Thieves Guild. Why would they wear black?

Filing away the odd color as something to investigate later, the Blade took a closer look at a large building directly north of him. It looked very familiar, although it was brown and in deep disrepair. Just as he was about to give up on identifying it, the proximity of the field workers and the house made the connection click in his mind: That looks exactly like Harvest House.

The shock made the Blade take a few steps forward as he squinted at the building. It did look like Harvest House. Only the plants that grew around this house were brown and looked like they had died or were deathly sick. As he considered the house, it made sense to him. Someone would have had to work the Ash Fields, and it would have been the very old Harvest Guild, and what was the home of the Harvest Guild? Harvest House.

That made the Blade wonder if there were towers for the Merchant Guild, his own Craft Guild, or the Knight Guild in the Wretched Quarter. That thought led him to turn back to the tower he thought he had seen earlier. With the proper light of the setting sun, his location perfectly situated to see it, and his thought of looking for a tower, everything came together, and the Blade clearly saw a majestic tower off to the southwest.

The tower was massive, nearly double the height of the Merchant Tower at the edge of Founder's Park, and that tower was the largest in Ness as far as he knew. He had no idea which tower it was, but he assumed it was the original tower of the Merchant Guild, now abandoned. The thought of an old massive tower abandoned to the filth of the Wretched Quarter filled the Blade with disgust.

Orion had told him his mission was to find and assassinate the Guildmaster Thief, but that mission had no deadline. He would fulfill the mission, but first he would investigate the unknown tower in the distance.

He just had to know what secrets it held.