“Alright, while you’re admiring your new toy, I have business upstairs,” Bob said, as the youth was looking at the sword as if it were made of pure gold, and he went back up the stairs.
He kept ascending until he reached the manor's second floor.
It was quiet, outside the sound of nightly birds entered through window creaks, accompanied by the faint rustling of wind. Behind one door, he could hear the faint snoring of an individual fast asleep.
He kept walking until he reached a door with a small piece of paper tied to the handle, and slowly opened it.
“Good evening, sir,” a voice said from within the room, for while most were asleep, there was one resident still awake, the manor’s lord, the Margrave of Celia, himself, Xilthan Cusac, was his name.
“Evening, my Lord,” Bob replied, closing the door behind him.
He now stood in a large study, a square room, the walls lined with bookshelves, filled with stacks of paper, and various miscellaneous items.
The Margrave himself sat at a large wooden desk, equally cluttered with paper, feathers, inkwells, leather straps, wax sticks, and a single lit candle.
The man himself was still wearing his day suit, made of wine colored fabric, with white frills at the end of the sleeves, and at the neck.
The man's visage, though lit only by the single candle on his desk, was clearly marked with the scars of time, given to him by his impressive age of seventy-eight.
“So,” the Margrave spoke, “The boy has taken to the sword then?” He said, twirling his curled grey mustaches.
“He has indeed. I can feel the mana draining from it as we speak. This alone means nothing, of course, time will tell if he is truly the one, as you have suggested.”
“Regardless, I have no doubt he will come with you to the capital, the reports I received of him describe him as endlessly inquisitive, though tempered by apathy and disdain for the establishment, understandable, based on his background. Awfull thing that happened to his parents.” The lord said, before shuffling through a pile of papers, and pulling free a sealed envelope. “Speaking of which, here is his file, all relevant information my eye has gathered over the years is contained within.”
“Very well,” Bob said, taking the envelope and tucking it away under his cloak. “Is this eye aware of our plans, or what we suspect the boy of being?” Bob asked.
“No,” The Margrave replied curtly. “He has not been inducted into our order, and remains ignorant of the details of our mission, still, I don’t doubt he will soon learn of your presences, and make the relevant connections himself. He is one of my best agents after all.”
“It matters not. I will leave tonight, and I’ve no doubt the boy will soon follow, one way or another, fate wills it so, and the emperor's blade draws many to it, not just the one, this has become clear to me.” Bob said, and the Margrave nodded in agreement.
“Alright then, off with you now, or he might start wandering where you have gone.” Lord Cusac said, making a dismissive gesture, and Bob took his leave.

-=-=-

Rory waved Arthur off as he left. It was quite early in the morning, and only the first slivers of color were now creeping over rooftops.
He had given the boy around two days' worth of food, as much as he’d been able to spare, and sent him off. He had advised him against using main roads, and had told him to head west a ways before going north in order to avoid busy routes and any potential search parties.
As he watched the boy vanish, cloaked in the dark of night, he felt a sinking hole in his chest. He was gone, the boy he had spent the last ten years or so, watching over, observing, writing reports about for lord Xilthan even since the kids father had passed away. His life would certainly be a lot more dull now that the boy was gone.
He tried not to dwell on it, after all, there had been many before whom he had watched for many years, just for them to vanish one day. Perhaps he would request re-assignment. After handing in his final report of course.
He went back inside, took a seat, and started to write. He had always been an early bird anyway.

After he had finished his report, and tended to a few customers, most of whom came in the early morning, or very late at night, he decided to go on his rounds.
He got most of his information from informants, he had a knack for finding people with a talent for weaseling out valuable tidbits of information, and putting them on his payroll, which was why he had been recruited as an imperial eye in the first place. Most of those employees of his came to his office to deliver information, or left it in an envelope, but his most important informants, he visited in person.
It was imperative that the identity of his informants remained a secret, both for their safety, as well as his exclusivity.
The first informant he visited was his favorite, a fellow elderly gentleman, and the town's most skilled healer. He and his spirit closed the wounds, and soothed the pains of many of the town's most influential figures, and this, the information of such things was easily obtained for him.
Rory visited the man regularly, in order to keep his arthritis in check, but this was not all he did there, for with each visit, Rory received a thick envelope filled with the recent medical histories of the town's elite.
However enjoyable Rory found the man, the information was rarely very useful.
The second was a much less pleasant, middle-aged man who worked as one of the town's most talented bookkeepers, employed by many of Celia’s elite, as well as several of the great trade guilds.
The man asked a big fee, which was understandable, for his information was always extremely valuable, and if he was ever found out, it would not be merely his job or reputation he stood to lose.
Still, Rory found him an arrogant man, with a selfish and greedy disposition.
After these two, there were several more, and when he was done, he went back to the shop, for there were several informants scheduled to visit him. The first of which was a young woman who frequented the bed of the underworld's most influential figure. Her presence in Rory’s store happened in secret, for her status as a confidante was earned with great effort, and would be lost only under the pain of death.
Finally, one of his shadows entered the store. He was an eye for the eye, one of the cloaked figures in the night who watched the streets for him. This particular shadow had been assigned to watch to Cusac manor, and only visited him when he had something truly interesting to report.
“What do you have for me, Dev?” Rory asked the shadow.
Dev handed him an envelope, unsealed, and Rory could see a slight smile under his hood.
“Suspicious activity at the manor, that envelope contains a sketch of a man I saw around the manor, first meeting with the Margrave, and later, he broke into the place with some youth. They didn’t seem to have taken much besides some sword, definitely infused with magic, from what I could tell.”
Rory pulled the sketch from the envelope, and folded open the drawing. Dev was a talented artist, and the sketch was detailed and portrayed a large man, tall and wide, not fat, but bound in muscle. The man had a peppered black and grey beard and mustache, or so Rory assumed, for the drawing was in greyscale.
Much of the man was obscured by a dark cloak.
Rory frowned.
“Do you know this guy?” The shadow asked.
“Not exactly,” Rory muttered, shaking his head. But this man did fit the exact description Arthur had given him. And this man had met with the Margrave, the grand eye of the south… But that would mean that…
“Thank you, Dev,” He muttered, walking around his desk, and leading the man to the door, after handing him a pouch full of coins.
“Everything alright, Rory?” The man asked.
“Nothing for you to be worried about,” Rory said, “I have some papers to look over. Goodbye now.”

A magically infused blade, a man meeting with an imperial grand eye, Rory had some research to do.
He pulled stacks of papers from his pile, and started looking through them. The Margrave traveled a lot, not surprising for one of his status, but Rory had always suspected there was more going on than they had bothered to tell him, and he remembered a report from some time ago, but he couldn’t quite remember the details.
There had been infused objects before, but for what purpose?
He kept searching until he found it, a scroll dating sixty years back.

Concerning the latest heir apparent. He absorbed the energy from a magically infused orb, stolen from a mage. The subject seemed to consume the mana, pulling it free, after which he traveled to the capital with no guide, largely straight through forests and mountains. It is unknown how he survived this journey, only that when he reached the emperor's blade, he was rejected.
The orb had belonged to a sanctified mage of the south, one Borgast Cusac.

What would that mean? He wondered. Borgast had been the older brother of Xilthan, a powerfull mage, and a saint on top of that. But he had died some fifteen years ago during the rebellion of the south. Heart problems as he recalled. Borgast had been the Grand eye while he was alive, being replaced by his younger brother upon his death.
Rory kept looking, he swore there was more somewhere, and he found another old report, this one from one of his own shadows.

Borgast was seen giving a small knife to a young man. The object gave off slight mana pulses. The individual seemed enchanted by it, and was found dead a few days later, assassinated.

Rory had heard of the order of seekers, but had never before felt the need to ascertain how real they were. But now, with Arthur’s wellbeing in danger? He doubted not that this large man, was a seeker, and that Arthur had been swept up in events far beyond him.
He grabbed his satchel, and threw some supplies into it, and had just pulled over his coat, when he heard a knock on the door.
Another informant? If it was, they were late, with a glance to the clock on the wall, he saw that it was already two in the afternoon.
As soon as he unlocked the door, it swung open, and no less than five people entered his store, swiftly, without so much as a hello.
Two of them grabbed him by the arms, and dragged him back into the store, while another closed the door behind them.
Rory tried to scream, but no more than a soft squeak left his throat.
Bloody Emina! He thought.
Severants!

-=-=-

“Goodbye, Rory,” Arthur said as he left the old man in the door opening. As he rounded a corner, he looked back, and waved one more time, and that was that, the last friendly face he was likely to see for some time.
He felt the push strongly, though not constantly. Every time he reached a corner or an intersection, he felt it nudging him into a direction.
He made good time, and he walked briskly, and before long, he had left the city limits behind him.
He was surprised that he didn’t encounter a single guard patrol, or even on his way out of town, for there would surely be some after such a major hit, of which he had been accused.
But he started to realize something. The push was protecting him, and it was leading him away from danger. Today, it must have led him on a trail that avoided guards, and that was what it must have been doing the night before, leading him away from danger, rather than towards anything specific.
He left the main road behind him as soon as he could, and he spent some hours following a variety of dirt paths leading through hills, and tall grasses, before reaching to forest.
For breakfast, he ate bread with dried sausage, which Rory had packed for him. It was towards dark that he stumbled upon a small clearing in the forest, where someone seemed to have set up camp.
“So you made it then, huh?” a voice spoke, as he entered the clearing. Arthur didn’t need to look very hard to find the origins of the voice, for Bob large stature made him easy to spot, and it was made even easier by the fact he was sitting next to the fire.
“Apparently,” Arthur replied. Bob was studying him with prying eyes, almost if Arthur was wearing something strange. It made him feel out of place.
“How did you find me?” Bob asked. Arthur wasn’t sure how to answer that, he could hardly tell him that the tingling sensation amongst his digestive tract had told him to come this way.
“Plain luck, I suppose, to be honest, I didn’t know it was you I was looking for, I was actually on the run, so I’ve been avoiding main roads. Eventually I spotted your camp, and decided to take a look. If you were intending to be found, you picked a rather interesting spot.”
“I wasn’t exactly trying to be found, the city is full of unwelcome eyes. Are you trying to tell me you ran into me here, in the middle of nowhere, purely by coincidence?”
Arthur shrugged, and didn’t answer. “What do you mean, on the run, anyway?” Bob asked finally.
“Some blasted rat broke into some place he shouldn’t have, and used me as a scapegoat.” Arthur said simply.
“Huh,” Bob sighed, “Some luck you have.”
“Yep,” Arthur replied, “Thats me, the worlds luckiest man, thats why I’m out in the boonies, never to see home again.” He said sarcastically. “Well, now that I’m here, why don’t you tell about this great and noble revolution of yours. That was why you were at the manor, wasn’t it?” Arthur asked.
“Well, technically yes, but I wouldn’t call it a revolution exactly.” Bob replied. Arthur sat down next to the fire, where Bob was stewing something that looked like a rat.
“Then what would you call it?” Arthur asked.
“A renewal.” Bob stated, a serious look on his face. “Arthur, I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely honest with you. I’m less of a revolutionary, and more of a scout, a seeker, is my official title.”
“A seeker of what?” Arthur inquired.
Bob frowned, and adjusted his legs.
“Are you familiar with the prophesy of the emperors blade?” He asked. Arthur nodded.
“Mostly, yes, it is said that the one who pulls the blade from the stone will replace him as the emperor of Eskar.”
Bob nodded.
“Yes, but that is but a small part of the story, the emperor left us many clues as to the identity of the heir, and all even partially fitting that description seem to be attracted to the blade, and inevitably travel towards the capital, it is my job, as imperial seeker, to locate, and guide such individuals, once they become ready.”
“So you think I might be the Heir to the emperor, the one prophesied by the Emperor himself?” Arthur asked, disbelief creeping into his voice.
“Maybe,” Bob shrugged, “I have led five people to the capital, none successfully pulled the blade from the stone.”
“So what makes you think I might fit the prophesy?” Arthur asked.
“One eye in Celia identified certain characteristics in you, which a higher ranking member of my order matched with the description of the heir, as it was given to us by the emperor.” Bob paused.
Seekers? Eyes? Arthur had heard of the Imperial agencies, even saw some at times, such as the legendary speakers and the hands, even some imperial swords, but he had never heard of eyes or seekers before.
“The heir is said to be an orphan, one with a particular tendency towards opposing the establishment, containing powerful dormant magic, allowing him to bend fate to his will.” Bob said, pausing again to look Arthur in the eyes. “One of the eyes posted in Celia reported that you have, and I quote ‘uncanny luck,’ which is one of the most important signs for us seekers.”
Arthur didn’t know what to think, but he decided to keep his push to himself, at least for now, he didn’t want this guy to get too many ideas, and just in case he was making it all up, he didn’t want to overplay his hand.
“So, now what?” Arthur asked. “We go to the capital, and I attempt to pull the sword from the stone?”
“Hmphf,” Bob harrumphed, “If only it was that easy, but I’m afraid the seekers are not the only ones in Eksar seeking out potential heirs.”
This was just getting better by the minute, Arthur thought to himself.
“Others?” He asked.
“Well, I’ve told you I’ve led five others to the sword, but what I didn’t tell you, is that only two of those five ever made it there, the other three were killed before they ever got the chance.”

-=-=-

“I swear, thats all I know!” Rory cried out through tears of despair, throbbing pain causing his body to convulse involuntarily.
He had held out as long as he could, but the severant knights were cruel, and patient, and they had worn him down slowly, only growing more and more thorough in their torture. Part of him had hoped he would pass out from blood loss somewhere along the way, but their leader, an elemental mage, had used conjured fire to carefully cauterize his every wound.
They had been careful not to let him pass out from fear or pain either, pacing their interrogations slowly, until he had eventually caved.
Seven nails, that was what it had taken, he was not ashamed of that number. All eyes were trained to withstand torture, and he doubted a laymen would have been able to last for more than one. Somehow he had hoped that they would give up, and be content with what little he had been able to offer up, assuming he had told them all he knew, but they had not, they had continued until he had told them everything he knew.
They had read his latest report, and three of them had spent the entire time going through his files and scrolls, looking for anything useful.
And they had not given up. His desperation had only seemed to invigorate the severant leader, and when he had finally told them everything he knew, of the grand eye, lord cusac, and what he suspected they were doing, of Arthur, of the large man, when he was finally finished, the man seemed almost disappointed, as if he was offended that he no longer had an excuse to continue.
He needed to find a way out, to escape, to warn Arthur of what was coming, but no, he was still tied securely to the chair, and he was no no condition to walk anyway, et alone escape these five men, who now seemed to be discussing something amongst themselves.
Finally, they moved to leave, and on their way out, the leader looked back towards him one more time, and Rory could see the Ruby hanging from the mans neck light up, and flames poured from his fingers, setting ablaze his papers, and all other things in his store, and he could smell the burning of flesh before everything went black.