Personal System Calendar: Year 00015, Day 1-28, Month V: The Imperium
Imperial Calendar: Year 6859, 1st to 28th day of the 5th Month
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The Road to Kirka (North)
After leaving the village proper, they traveled the stretch of forest path, and after four days reached the ongoing construction of the imperial settlement core area, which looked mostly finished by now. The imperial response to their counter-proposal had also arrived last month, approving the land lease beyond what was originally allotted for the core military settlement area. Phase one was about to wrap up in just a few months. Other than that, they kept moving, stopping briefly at the forest entrance to hand out rewards to the guards stationed there, then continued on, passing the Outland Waycamp to their right, east of them when facing north.
News from there wasn't great, at least not for the camp's future. It had been set up as temporary humanitarian aid, but that probably wouldn't hold much longer, not once the imperial force stationed there got recalled to whatever installation or outpost they'd originally come from. That meant the Waycamp's days were numbered, though nobody really had a good answer for what came next. The village had its own process for taking people in, slow as it was, since Maya wasn't exactly the easiest place to just walk into and start living.
"These poor people have been through so much," said Chief Peerce, looking out the window at the camp. "Whatever we've given them should've at least shown them that there are still people out there who cared, without expecting anything back."
"I agree, Chief," August replied, keeping it formal, the way they always did on duty. "I hope they find the strength to stand up again and take the next steps."
They kept pushing north, only stopping to sleep for the night, eat their meals, or let their draft six-legged horses rest. They didn't march too hard since they had plenty of time, only covering fifty kilometers a day. It also gave them a chance to bond, form something more cohesive as a unit. Most took turns between the two groups as their shifts rotated, riding outside on watch or driving while others rested inside the wagon, everyone getting used to working together, especially the newer Talon One members who hadn't been truly tested yet.
The rotation wasn't just about getting used to each other's positions. It gave them time to actually talk with each member of the group.
Oryn Thalwell, one of the newer leadership-tier warriors, spent one of the night shifts walking Rael Sundfang and Daret the Battleborn through wind-reading, how to properly gauge shifts in a treeline before they became a problem, something he'd picked up the hard way during his years as a refugee before the village took him in. Rael, being a Kotoko beastman, already had an instinct for it, but Daret admitted dwarves weren't exactly built for tracking wind movements through the open canopy of the forest, and the three of them ended up trading stories about home more than the actual technique by the time their shift ended. Cassa Venn and Piri Longwhisker took a different approach, running quiet sparring drills on top of the wagon whenever the terrain allowed it, testing each other's reflexes without waking the ones who were trying to sleep inside. Nilo Mak mostly kept to himself on watch, as he felt more comfortable scanning the treeline than making conversation, though Fen Mirros made a habit of sitting near him anyway, trading a few words here and there about nothing important, the kind of quiet company neither of them minded.
All of this August listened to and noted as good, positive character growth for them.
Princess Mee-rka didn't complain either. She understood what she'd signed up for when she applied through the recruitment drive for new members of New Talon One, and now she had something to prove, not just to herself but to her father, the chieftain of the Southern Beastmen Tribes. He didn't actually need any convincing that letting her join August's group hadn't been a mistake, he'd already believed in her strengths from the start. She took her turns the same as anyone in the group, and had no complaints despite what her title suggested. A few of the newer recruits had figured she'd get some kind of pass, that she might sit out during the harder shifts, but that idea didn't last long. They'd seen how hard she worked alongside them, training with the same intensity as everyone else, pulling her weight the same as the rest. Though they'd been with her for two years since their formation, some of them still hadn't fully shaken their doubts. By the second night out, most of Talon One who'd still held onto those doubts through earlier missions and training sessions with her had finally stopped seeing her as royalty first. She was just another one of them now. That mattered more than it looked from outside, honestly. A unit thrown together this fast needed every excuse it could get to actually trust each other before any real danger showed up.
A few days later, they arrived at Kirka Village, three days before the merchant ship.
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Kirka Village
They stayed there prepping for the water portion of their journey, and enjoying their time seeing how the place was doing currently.
It could be said the place was doing fine, recovering steadily under Rufus's leadership. The population had climbed back up from its decline. Trade was picking up too, and some of the refugees had clearly taken shelter here since it was the nearest settlement from Maya Village. They'd expanded their fields and housing because of it. They weren't surprised by any of it, since they already had agreements with Maya Village, and even Earl Millhaven's territory, regarding the crisis situation in Arwen. The discussion may not have been held through a face-to-face meeting, only through messenger birds, but it was there quietly before the first refugees ever arrived at the Outland Waycamp.
Yes, it wasn't only Maya Village that had prepared for it, but them too, as part of the Kingdom of Ogind. That was probably the reason the Outland Waycamp had been created rather hastily, because the kingdom had given a response that seemed cruel at first glance but would save them down the line. It was also the very reason they were able to prepare and soften the blow before a structured protocol was set for how the kingdom as a whole, not just Kirka, the nearest settlement to the southern regions of the Kingdom of Ogind, would receive the refugees. So Maya Village declaring the Outland Waycamp was an agreement with Ogind too, and with the Empire besides. Hence why there were refugees here undergoing permanent or temporary residence, however the Kingdom of Ogind handled migrants on their end.
The refugee situation was never just Maya Village's effort, though they did take on the first bulk of it during winter. That was why they'd formed the Outland Waycamp, or the refugee camp before it was formally named. Now the situation has calmed down, with fewer refugees arriving from the south.
In total, at least as far as the Kingdom of Ogind had documented, somewhere between 300,000 to 500,000 refugees may have passed through the kingdom, with a margin of 5-10% unaccounted for, likely having gone through other channels without being caught, but still within the kingdom. Currently they were hosting 150,000 to 200,000 refugees that were accounted for within their borders. The rest had passed through and gone further north to settle on the other northern kingdoms. Kirka Village alone had taken in more than 10,000 refugees, and that number was still growing daily by increments of a hundred since their first arrival.
The kingdom's border control was strict and tight, which was the only reason they'd managed the sudden influx this steadily, though Kirka might also soon have to refuse any further increase before they were truly overwhelmed. They'd managed so far because there were still empty houses within Kirka, left behind by former residents who'd never returned. Though the population was recovering, it wasn't anywhere near its heyday. They were still feeling the effects of years of abuse under Rommel and his cronies, followed by Lance Sellot and his men after Rommel fled. Kirka's rough population once sat around 50,000-75,000, before it dropped massively when Baron Kirka left and Rommel was left in charge as acting chief, and later during the Lance Sellot ordeal. The population had dropped massively by 30,000 at that point. Since its recapture, they'd grown back to 50,000, and could comfortably accommodate 10,000 more refugees. But some of the buildings had fallen into disrepair from years of disuse, and the farmlands had shrunk year after year, which was why the expansion mattered so much now.
But that wasn't the point of this story, though, just the envoy of Maya Village's journey. It was simply a bit of fact that had gone untold in the shadows.
Chief Red spent some of that time with Chief Rufus, the two of them talking more like old colleagues than a visiting dignitary and a village chief. Red, Theressa, Adam, and Isabel, along with Jonathan and Angeline, were all former residents of Kirka, so they had more to talk about than just their current positions.
That was also part of why August had accepted without hesitation when Baron Kirka pleaded for assistance during the retaking of Kirka Village. He already knew by then that the first people to become refugees of Maya Village, Angeline and her deceased mother among them, had come from Kirka. Red and his family, along with Jonathan, had also been chased out of the village during Rommel's reign, or rather escaped from it, once Jonathan learned what had happened to his wife and to Angeline. That was how they'd all ended up in the forest of Lonelywood in the first place.
Bringing it back to the present, Red asked him plainly how the position was treating him, whether the weight of it sat easy yet or if it still felt borrowed. Rufus admitted it was somewhere in between. Being Baron Kirka's man had never meant standing in front of a room full of people from different walks of life before, not like this. He'd always been more of a background figure, someone who protected the Baron rather than led in his place. But if he had to assess his own performance so far, he could at least say the village hadn't fallen apart under him, and that alone counted for something. Red told him that was usually the best sign a person was doing the job well, that it wasn't supposed to feel comfortable this early, only survivable. He shared his own story too, about the time he'd taken the role over from August as Maya Village's leader. It had been hard, and he'd come to realize just how tough it must have been for August to carry all that responsibility in the first place, especially given everything August had already gone through before their arrival. August never let it show, that he was struggling as a leader, but he'd still been young at the time, barely surviving the massacre of his own village before being pushed straight into protecting everyone else, Red included. Christopher's death may have been what finally pushed August past his limit, which was part of why Red hadn't complained when he was told to take over leadership in August's stead. It had been rough, but Red made it work in the end. Rufus laughed nervously at that, almost like he was admitting something about himself in turn, and said he'd hold onto the position as long as his lord commanded him to.
August, for his part, spent an afternoon among some of the refugee families settled near the edge of the village, the ones who'd arrived early enough to have something like a routine now. A few of them recognized him, or recognized the name attached to Maya Village, and word passed quickly enough that a small crowd gathered without anyone meaning for it to happen. He didn't have much to offer to them beyond his time, no grand gesture, but he sat and listened to a few of their stories anyway, about where they'd come from and what they'd lost getting here. It wasn't so different from what he'd already heard passing the Waycamp days earlier, only that it was closer now, the actual faces instead of the statistical numbers attached to them. He left them with nothing more than his word that Maya Village's doors were open, slow as the process was. They weren't closed to anyone, so long as they could truly survive being there, rather than simply being forced into it by circumstance.
Solvan Drek, ever the numbers man even outside of official duty, spent some of his free time talking with Kirka's local merchants and farmers about how the resupply route economy actually worked on their end, curious in a professional sort of way about how a settlement this size kept its finances upright while absorbing thousands of refugees at once. He came away with more questions than answers, admitting to Belta Ashwood over dinner one night that Kirka's books, if anyone even kept proper ones, were probably a mess worth studying someday.
Their sparring sessions with the village defenders also drew a crowd, honestly. Word got around fast about who was currently staying in the village, and a good number of Kirka's younger and older soldiers lined up for a shot against Talon members, even knowing how it'd probably end. Nobody minded losing either. If anything, it seemed to boost morale more than dent it. Most of Kirka's garrison had grown up hearing what this group did during the worst of the Sellot occupation.
Meanwhile, the heads, Chief Red, Chief Rufus, and Captain Skippy, had turned to conversations of their own, and found Skippy easy to talk to, quick with a joke, quicker still with stories about decades hauling cargo up and down the river, most of them probably exaggerated, though nobody called him on it. By the time the five days were up, the delegation had a decent read on the crew they'd be spending the next few weeks of the long stretch of water with, and that counted for something heading into unfamiliar waters and territory.
They ended up staying in Kirka Village for eight days total before their eventual departure. That also meant whoever had been tasked with retrieving the large wagon, Oron, had plenty of time to still catch them before they left.
After eight days at Kirka Village, their journey toward Arwen was about to begin.
Understood. Here's the full grammar pass, organized by section, preserving your structure and content throughout. Where I've made small expansions for flavor, I'll flag them clearly so you can evaluate separately from the pure corrections.