Three weeks, Purattu thought. I can’t believe I’ve been on Sin-Amuhhu for three weeks. I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of the area around the school.

He was currently in a location not too far away from the Sin-Amuhhu Institute of Military Magic. It was an innocuous-looking gated manor at the end of a meandering residential street on the other side of Gula Bazaar.

From the outside, the manor looked ordinary in every aspect. However, its walls were infused with powerful spell formations that made it impervious to the mage sight of even High Archons. The manor had an outer courtyard, an inner banquet room, guest quarters and the like, but at the moment they were all empty. The staff had been given the day off.

The inner courtyard was immaculately tended by a master gardener. It had an olive tree in the corner, a fish pond opposite it, and a table decorated with copper and jewels, surrounded by matching chairs padded with felt. Sitting in one of those chairs was Purattu. He had been shopping at the bazaar recently, where he’d spent a few dozen shekels on things such as a golden girdle and a mage hat of polished whalebone.

Directly across from him was Archon Shabadras, with his gaunt cheekbones and crooked nose. To the right was General Kamaru-Ayyabu, who was Unsighted, but at the same time was one of the highest-ranking members of the Sin-Amuhhu military. He was a bear of a man, with salt-and-pepper hair and a well-tended beard. The man had a hand-rolled cheroot between his fingers that spewed out a steady stream of smoke.

“Not one of the students of the Epitome tested into the officer group?” Purattu asked, waving some of the smoke away from his face.

“The one named Xerxes came close,” Archon Sabadras said. “It’s a shame. His combat skills are superb, and he clearly has a good foundation in magic. But his written test was abysmal. Plus, the boy seems distracted.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said General Kamaru-Ayyabu. “All of this has been orchestrated for a greater purpose.”

“I know,” Purattu said. “Still, I’d hoped at least one of them would show some promise. To find followers of the Epitome together in such a backwater location is… odd.”

Archon Sabadras nodded. “That’s true, and we plan to look into it further once things have calmed down. But there are greater concerns at the moment. The Abhorrent activity in Ira starisles is clearly winding down. Now we’re getting reports of incidents in Pira, Lira, Ki-Suhi, and others.”

Purattu tapped his finger on the smooth table. “So the Ira invasion was a probe.”

“I still think so,” the General said. “Regardless, once we confirm Ira has cooled down, we can think about how to go in and retrieve the Gateway Key.”

Eyes narrowing, Purattu said, “What exactly does that mean, General? Won’t I just go there, grab it, and come back here?”

Archon Shabadras frowned. “Too risky.”

Purattu’s eyes shifted to Archon Shabadras. “Something happened, didn’t it? Was the mission compromised?”

“We don’t know for sure. Last night… High Mystic Fila was found dead.”

Purattu forced his face to stay neutral. Fila, like most of his peers, was a fool and an idiot. But that didn’t mean he’d ever wished her harm. “Fila? Dead?”

“Why be so vague, Shabadras?” the general said. “She was ripped apart. Very violent. My guess painful.”

“Torture?” Purattu asked, feeling a chill run down his spine.

“Probably,” Archon Shabadras said. “It’s impossible to say for sure, but given the wounds, I’d guess it’s highly likely an Abhorrent was involved.”

“Unless the Abhorrent have somehow snuck up here, it would have been summoned. And given that Fila was a High Mystic, it would mean whoever captured her was probably on the same level as her, if not higher.”

“Correct. Which reinforces our previous suspicion that the Eternal Father cult has infiltrated the highest levels of the Sin-Amuhhu Parliament.”

“Even given this development, the Annunaki still haven’t gotten involved?”

Shabadras shook his head slowly. “We’ve submitted reports and requests, none of which have been replied to.”

Purattu sat there quietly, mind racing as he tried to determine all the implications. “At the very least, the cultists, and by implication the invading Abhorrent, know about our mission with the Gateway Key.”

The general nodded. “It’s probably safest to operate under that assumption. And that’s why we don’t want you going directly to get the Key. We fear that any premature actions by you or the other High Mystics from Ku-Aya will be dangerous, to say the least. We don’t want to lose any of you, or the Gateway Key.”

Purattu nearly snorted out loud. Like you give a shit about us, General.

“How do you expect to retrieve the Key if I don’t get it personally?” Purattu asked, and even as the words left his mouth, he realized what the two older men were hinting at. “Oh. You want to send some of the new recruits. I can’t imagine how that will be less obvious, but I’m sure you have some idea.”

“A kernel of an idea,” the general said. “But it’ll take your cooperation.”

“Fair enough. Care to explain?”

“We’re going to send five High Mystics down secretly, including yourself. But not to get the Key. You’ll be on diplomatic missions, or something similar. Shortly thereafter, we’ll deploy all of the new recruits on a variety of missions. We have thirteen officers, and thus, thirteen expeditionary forces. Each officer will command fifteen mages and roughly a hundred and fifty Unsighted troops. Three of those groups will go to the starisles of Humusi with different cover missions. For instance, quell local uprisings, deal with rogue Abhorrent still on the loose, that sort of thing. Of course one of them will be sent to the starisle where you hid the Gateway Key.”

Purattu rubbed his chin. “Let me guess, you want me to come up with a convincing cover story for why a group of over a hundred and fifty mages and soldiers are going to the exact location where I hid the Gateway Key.”

“Precisely.”

“The cult is still going to be a problem,” Purattu continued. “First of all, we seem to have proof there’s a high-level mage involved. Probably a Buhhu mage. Incidentally, you’ve surely looked into all Buhhu mages on Sin-Amuhhu.”

“We’ve begun the process,” Shabadras said. “But such operations take time, especially when trust is a very limited commodity.”

“For all we know, we could have picked up some cultists with the new batch of Seers. Also, won’t they be keeping tabs on everyone we send down? It still seems like the safest option would be a lone party going stealthily to retrieve the Key.”

“Or… both,” Archan Shabadras said.

Purattu looked at him. “Plots within plots?”

“You and the other High Mystics will be leaving first,” the general said. “You’ll do your best to draw out any enemies, or at least confuse them. The group assigned to the starisle with the Gateway Key will be unaware of the true nature of their task. At least initially. We can include sealed orders to be opened by the commanding officer at a certain point.”

“You’ll need to seal the orders with a spell formation. Something flashy. Like the kind that destroys the orders if the wrong person tries to open them.”

The general looked at Shabadras. “That can be done?”

“Of course,” Shabadras replied.

Purattu waved some more smoke out of his face. “Your plan isn’t very well thought out. Too many holes. Too many potential complications. For one thing, they’re teenagers, for the Monad’s sake. Are you really going to trust something so important to kids?”

“They’re legally adults, as you know,” Kamaru-Ayyabu said. “And as you also know, we follow Macrides’ war treatises, and he was a proponent of young officers getting field experience as early as possible.”

Purattu had never been a fan of Macrides, but he decided not to beleaguer the point. “Fine. But there are other problems. For instance, what if I buried the Key out in the middle of a swamp with no markers, in a place that only I can find?”

“You buried the Key in a swamp?”

Purattu smirked. “No. But I did put it somewhere no one will think to look. And even if they did look, they wouldn’t find it. Wasn’t that the entire point of this thing?”

The general drummed his fingers on the table. “Are you saying you can’t devise written instructions for how to retrieve it?”

“I never said that.”

Archon Shabadras huffed. “This isn’t a game, High Mystic.”

“I beg to differ. This whole thing is a game. A very important, potentially deadly game. And this plan of yours is the culmination of it all. Except it needs work. A lot of work.”

The general exhaled a smoke ring. “I said it’s the kernel of an idea. We still have months to refine it. Besides, it’s also possible that you could eventually circle around and meet up with the group. Hell, once the path is clear, and we’re sure an ambush hasn’t been laid or something along those lines, you can just go ahead of them and get the Key yourself.”

So, they’re sending in the kids as sacrificial lambs, Purattu thought. Or, at the very least, bait.

He didn’t like it. But unfortunately, there was too much at stake. If the Abhorrent got their hands on the Gateway Key, what was currently a minor problem for lesser starisles could quickly turn into something much more dramatic.

“For now,” the general continued, “the main thing we need to do is set up a cover mission. Can you think of a reasonable justification to send an army down to… where exactly did you hide the Key?”