[Lifespan Remaining: 29 days, 7 hours, 10 minutes.]
The closer Noct got to the city, the more a specific detail mentioned in the game started to emerge in his head. Altaire wasn’t a place that the main character actually went to, but it was mentioned quite frequently as the "hub of trading" in the West.
But more than that, it had been called something else:
The Two-Faced City.
A gigantic river descended from the nearby mountains and bisected Altaire before emptying into its famous port. Because of it, travelers approaching had to enter through one of two gates standing on opposite banks.
The gates had once served a purely practical purpose. Though somewhere along the way, that purpose seemed to have been forgotten.
Now, each gate belonged to a different faction, and entering through either one meant announcing which side you were on.
Though Noct noticed an interesting detail.
The path on the left climbed gradually along raised earth. Its pale stones had been swept clean. While the one on the right descended toward the river. It was wider and presumably built to accommodate several wagons at once.
But years of use had driven deep grooves into the stone without anyone deciding to use money from their own pockets to fix it.
"I’ve been here a few times..."
Aurora muttered as they went down along the right path, encountering the many bumps on the road that made her almost throw up.
"Has...it always been...this atrocious?"
Noct steadied himself against the opposite seat. "Which gate did you use before?"
"The left one, obviously. A Rosenthal carriage wouldn’t enter through the merchants—"
He didn’t catch the rest of what she said, looking through the window again. The entire ’nobles’ path had been completely empty while merchant wagons completely filled the right road.
But more importantly...the inspector’s carriage from Arcadia wasn’t here.
Noct searched the left path for its familiar banner, but the road remained empty all the way to the gate. Had they already gone inside?
It was possible. With nobody ahead of them, there wouldn’t have been much of a wait. Still, not knowing where the inspector was made him increasingly uneasy.
"I have a bad feeling..."
"What? Why?"
But just as Noct was about to answer, another group of knights approached the carriage in front of them in line, where one of them yelled crudely.
"Inspection! Open the door, now!"
’What the...another inspection? But didn’t they just inspect us?’
Apparently, the carriages ahead had the same thought. The merchant stepped out with a big frown on his face, fighting with the entrance guards about the fact that he just had one before entering town.
And from their conversation, Noct caught something that made his spine run cold.
"Advance inspection?" the guard repeated. "There’s no such thing. Who stopped you?"
Noct’s eyes widened, and instantly, he pushed the carriage door open and jumped down with urgency. "Noelle. Come with me."
"Noct?" Aurora leaned out after him. "Where are you going?"
"Back."
"Back where?"
"Complete the inspection and head inside to meet with Amelia first. We’ll catch up."
He didn’t really wait for her answer. Noelle handed the reins to Aurora before dropping lightly from the driver’s seat. By then, Noct was already hurrying past the carriage behind them.
"Hey! Watch where you’re—!"
He brushed past the line of merchants and broke into a run. The line of wagons stretched along the road, leaving barely enough room to squeeze between their wheels and the grass beside them. Noct stumbled over a rut, caught his balance, and kept going.
’No advance inspection.’
The guard’s words repeated themselves in his head.
’Then who the hell did we leave him with?’
"Young Master," Noelle said, matching his pace without difficulty. "The road they took was farther ahead."
Noct nodded and reached into his senses, trying to find any sense of mana disturbance that could give them a clue. Mana washed over him from every direction, but underneath it all, just barely, he could feel a slight tug.
It was beyond the roadside grass, where a stretch of forest ran along.
"This way."
Branches caught at his sleeves as they entered the trees. Noct shoved them aside, trying to find that faint trace again.
"Young Master," Noelle said. "I caught a glimpse of the gate guard’s plaque."
"And?"
"It appeared identical to the one we were shown."
Noct slipped into a deep thought, muttering softly to himself. "Could the guards at the entrance be lying then...?"
The first possibility was that those men really were knights of Altaire. Someone could have ordered them to intercept the inspector before he reached the city. The guards at the gate wouldn’t necessarily know about it.
If that was the case, perhaps they had taken him somewhere to be questioned and detained. Kept away from whatever he had been sent to investigate.
Second possibility would just be normal sleazy guard behaviors, pretending to be ignorant while collecting two tolls from the merchants. But for some reason, Noct felt like that wasn’t it either.
And the second possibility...was that the plaques had been stolen. And those men weren’t knights at all, but the very people who were said to be active around these parts:
Bandits.
’I should’ve never let that carriage out of my sight...’
He forced his aching legs to move even a tiny bit faster, hoping that they weren’t too late. And after running for a little while longer...
They found the carriage, or rather, its remains.
The Arcadia banner was ripped to shreds, along with the body of the carriage barely hanging together. One of the wagon’s wheels was ripped right off, and its doors hung from a single hinge.
"No..."
One of the knights assigned to protect the inspector lay next to the broken wheel. Another had fallen a few paces away, face down in the grass. And farther ahead, a third sat slumped against a tree, blood soaking through the gaps in his armor.
Noelle passed Noct and crouched beside the nearest man. She pressed her fingers against his neck, waited a moment, then moved to the next.
Noct kept walking toward the carriage.
An open trunk lay across his path. Clothes had been pulled out and tossed aside, while loose documents fluttered between the roots of a nearby tree. He stepped over them and reached for the carriage door.
Through the opening, he could see the inspector. The man was still inside.
He sat crookedly against the opposite seat, one arm hanging toward the floor. His mouth was slightly open and his eyes fixed on the empty doorway.
A dagger had been driven into the side of his neck, and from his expression, Noct could tell that he died instantly, wondering why all of this had to happen in the first place.
"Young Master..."
"They’re dead, I know..."
The inspector’s clothes had been searched as well. His coat hung open, its pockets turned out. Whatever valuables he’d carried were gone. To anyone who found them, it would look like a robbery.
Bandits had attacked a carriage on the road, becoming unfortunate incident in a region already known for similar happenings.
Noct’s fingers tightened around the broken doorframe, as his expression scrunched up in anger. Not necessarily toward what happened, but towards himself, for allowing it to happen in the first place.
"Damn it..."