"Well," Jared said as he hovered in the air alongside Oswin, "Just as I said when Howl came to us, I'm going to come first and say, this is most likely a bad idea."

  "Oh, please." Oswin rolled his eyes at his friend. "You know as well as I that we didn't have much of a say in that matter, who the one who recommended him was, refusing him was too much of a risk."

  "Again I know." Jared shrugged, smiling widely. "That's why I just said it was a bad idea, which gives me the privilege of saying I told you so. From how things might turn, I think that I'll say that soon too."

  Oswin held himself from rolling his eyes again. He knew that his friend was just messing with him.

  "You know as much as I do that we need to follow them, we need to know all we can about the power behind them." His expression turned serious as he looked deeply at the retreating tenders.

  "That I know," Jared answered seriously, the humour gone from his voice, "I had decided to bring them to you both because of the weird jewellery they took out and because they mentioned Corgan. Only after I saw the boats they arrived on, their armours and their weapons did I realise how weird they truly were."

  "Not to mention those," Oswin murmured, as he brought out the papers that Marcus and the others gave him, "These papers and the ink are like nothing I've seen before."

  "It seems to be of too high quality to just be used for some random list," Jared agreed.

  "You could have told me about Corgan earlier though," Oswin grumbled, "Having to find out at the end like that wasn't really ideal."

  "I was going to tell you about it after they left." Jared seemed nonchalant about the matter. "I feared how you would react, honestly."

  Oswin paused for a second. His old friend was overthinking things, he might have pushed harder in his questioning if he knew that the one who introduced them into the black market was Corgan, but he wouldn't have gone overboard.

  The news that Corgan was on a mission was a shock, to say the least. The man had been the first of their small group of friends to retire. At the same time, he was the one who would have gone the furthest in his career if he had decided to remain. If he had, the Dynasty's Intelligence Agency might have had a different head.

  To hear that such a person had been on a mission was surprising, it being one that they had heard nothing about was even more so.

  "The only thing that comes to mind is the case of islands being attacked," Jared finally spoke.

  "I thought of that too," Oswin agreed, "I heard of no such mission though."

  "Neither did I." Jared sighed.

  "That aside," Oswin spoke slowly, "What do you think about that man saying that they accept the peace offering though?"

  "If what they said about being from a faraway country is true," Jared spoke after a long period of silence, "Then the only thing I can think of is that Corgan realised that and concluded that having them as allies would be worth way more to the Dynasty than enemies. Or he dreaded having them enemies."

  Oswin just hummed in agreement. Corgan was pragmatic, but in the end of the day that pragmatism only had the well-being of the Dynasty at its core. He would never just throw aside what the man might say about an unknown group.

  "Well let's hope that we will glean something from this," Oswin said, "Say what you want about Howl, at least he will let us see what they are about."

  "I agree." Jared first nodded, then he started laughing, "And if they can't take care of this, we can always interfere and win them over. I'm sure Corgan would love that."

  "My thoughts exactly." Oswin smiled lightly.

  They then followed silently after the weird boats. They were closer to the pirates than the boats, so they had a deeper look into what the pirates were aiming to do and thinking.

  "What do you think about the boats?" Oswin suddenly asked as they watched one of the boats leave the other two and move deeper into the ocean.

  "Weird," Jared didn't even think about it, "They didn't feel magical for sure. Barely anything in that group was really."

  "The pirates have a point though," Oswin said as he looked around, "How come no ship came to meet them again, I see nothing."

  "Maybe they docked quite a bit far from land for some reason?" Jared questioned, as if speaking to himself more than Oswin. At the same time, he looked straight ahead, as if trying to see where those weird boats were heading. Oswin felt his friend pause for a second.

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  "Wait, what is that?" Jared asked. Squinting as if to see clearly, "Is that thing moving?"

  Oswin followed his line of sight and saw that straight ahead, where the boats were heading, a huge mass of fog was moving towards them, it was fast, and seemed to be locked in on their location.

  "It is." Oswin too focused on that anomaly. "A Camouflage skill maybe?"

  "Most likely. Let's watch and see how this is going to evolve."

  They didn't have to wait long, a few minutes later, a sound was heard,

  "The Dark Lady and her accompanying ship. We ask you to turn around and leave, if you continue coming after our vessels, we will take it as a show of hostility and respond accordingly."

  Jared and Oswin looked at each other. That voice came from the mass of fog, which proved their guesses that the ship was with the group.

  Things after that went pretty fast, one moment they were watching the pirates prepare themselves for a full attack, and the second, as soon as the mass of fog got close to the furthest weird boat, it all went to hell.

  "Are those Swarmers??" Jared shouted from next to him. It wasn't like his friend to be surprised like that, but he could understand it, he had the same reaction after all.

  "They are," he answered numbly.

  He hadn't noticed them because they were hidden deep under the ocean, but as soon as they surfaced, fully in their enraged state and with their red halo connecting them all, it was almost impossible to mistake them for another creature. If any stupid bastard mistook them for something else, the way they were eating through that ship without any care for the ship's Cornerstone would have cleared that misunderstanding.

  "Are they being controlled?" Jared asked something that Oswin didn't dare to even consider. Someone having Swarmers under their control was too scary to even imagine.

  Oswin didn't answer his friend, but they just kept on watching. The pirates understood their situation fast and tried to turn around, but the weird mass of fog was too fast.

  When something inside the weird mass of fog blocked those cannonballs, none of them said anything, they just watched in silence as a slaughter happened. Almost at the same time, Swarmers did what they did best and turned Howl's second ship to a pile of drifting debris, changing their target to the Dark Lady.

  Oswin had them retreat when the weird mass of fog closed in on the Dark Lady, their cloaking skills should have been enough for most cases, but he didn't want to risk it, especially in such a weird situation.

  Another thing Oswin noticed was how the Swarmers retreated once the mass of fog closed in on the Dark Lady, that was almost all the proof they needed that the Swarmers were being controlled.

  Watching those invisible limbs, or whatever they were, destroy the Dark Lady made Oswin take a deep breath. It was the first time he saw a ship being destroyed that way, it didn't feel like anything he knew. The way those things felt was as if they were an extension of a living being.

  "So..." Jared broke the silence that fell on them after the Dark Lady was destroyed and the mass of fog headed for the weird boats, cloaking them in the rolling white, "That happened, huh."

  Oswin smiled wearily, a chuckle left him even. Only something as out of the blue as that would break him from what they had just seen.

  "It is a ship isn't it," he finally said, "Under all that fog, it's most likely a ship. And I really don't know how I should feel about that."

  "I think so too." Jared and Oswin watched the mass of fog move deeper into the ocean after consuming the boats. "I guess we at least know why Corgan might have extended a peace offering towards them. I would have too, if I saw something like this."

  "We should contact the mainland as soon as we get back," Oswin said seriously, "Whatever that was, they need to know about it. Corgan must have reported on them already, but giving more accounts wouldn't hurt."

  He was awaiting an answer from his friend when he felt it, something locked onto them. It was faint, barely felt, but it was there and it made his hair stand on end. It was the first time in a long long time that he had felt something like that.

  His mind might have been a bit confused about what was happening, but his instincts and body weren't. As soon as he sensed something off, he grabbed his friend and teleported them back to his house in the black market.

  "What was that?" Jared asked once they reappeared, "It was from that ship, I felt it."

  "It was," Oswin said grimly. Whatever it was that they had sensed, it truly came from that ship. He was already moving as he spoke.

  "It felt primal and otherworldly, it was like nothing I've ever felt before." Jared took a deep breath as he followed after him.

  Oswin just nodded. What they had seen when they followed after the ship was already quite concerning, but that last second was something else entirely. The fact that they had been locked onto aside, the feeling that whatever had them in its eyes gave them was like nothing they had ever felt.

  “Also…” Jared continued seriously, Oswin paused his thoughts to focus on what his good friend might bring up. “I told you so.”

  Oswin turned and gave his old friend the flattest glance he had ever given, and that was something. Jared at least had the decency to look a bit ashamed.

  After going through many protected doors and many scans, they finally found themselves in one of the deepest parts of the black market, a place that had the most valuable object under their control, the Emitter. It was one of too few objects that could pass the huge distance between continents, allowing communication between them and the Dynasty.

  He knew that the Empire had something like that, the Link they called it. From what the Dynasty gathered, it worked by sending and receiving mana through the air. A fascinating idea, but it had its faults. If the signal met any kind of interference, passing through a mana-charged location or even a huge surge of mana, it wouldn't reach its destination. It was also possible to intercept and block.

  The Emitter, though, worked by sending the message through Laylines. It was extremely stable, so stable that some of the stronger ones even sent a live feed, there was also barely any way to intercept its messages. That didn't mean that it had no faults though, the biggest of them was how they were stationary. Leylines were fixed, and using them for messages meant that they couldn't be moved from their location. You also needed to have the exact coordinates of whatever Emitter you wanted to contact, or your message would just keep on moving through the Leylines before degrading and disappearing forever.

  In the end, both devices were useful and miracles manifested. That they could talk through such huge distances was unimaginable.

  After contacting the Dynasty and reporting on all that had happened on their side, from the strangers arriving, to Oswin and Jared's hasty retreat after they were locked on, he realised something that shocked him a bit:

  Corgan had never shared that he had sent those people to the black market.