Other than the rain, the varying degrees of land sickness, and the disorientation in the midst of a harbour full of non-Wyperan speaking people, the group was pleased to finally set foot on land again.

"So where do we begin?" Eliza looked around, deciding to count them just to make sure they hadn't forgotten anyone. "What about Ethan? I thought he was coming with us?"

"He's with Abram," Richard said, pointing over his shoulder towards the ship where Abram and Ethan were standing together.

Thinking about it, Lucius noted it was a strange sight to see them outside together. It hadn't struck him until then that the sun and moon rarely allowed for that to happen, but with dusk approaching and clouds blocking out most natural light, they could exist under the same sky for a short time with just their umbrellas as a precaution.

"Aw, well, I guess they should get to say goodbye." Eliza smiled warmly at the sight. "There's no hurry after all, probably."

Lucius couldn't be bothered with reacting negatively to the 'probably', instead feeling relieved that Abram and Ethan appeared to be on good terms despite the tense conversation they'd had earlier.

"What are we looking at?" Tom had to ask after the others had stared long enough to make it weird. "Is it still Abram and Ethan? Why?"

"Because they look cute." Eliza rolled her eyes, not finding hers or the others' behaviour inappropriate at all. "You'd know if you could see."

"And I'd love to see." Tom agreed dryly while pulling the hood of his raincoat further over his head. "Not to ogle others having a conversation, but it would be nice to know where I'm walking."

"And we'll get to that." Richard patted his shoulder before nodding at Frey, who'd loudly rejected all raincoats he'd been offered to borrow, instead reluctantly accepting a vampire umbrella. "I'm sure Young Lord Clausson can locate some place to get you new glasses."

"Oh, please, we've known each other long enough I insist you call me 'Frey'." Frey beamed and Richard smiled back, blissfully unaware what being on a first name basis actually meant in the Frey context. "As far as running errands go, however, I believe we should focus on finding what we're here for first."

Tom pursed his lips, likely wanting to point out that he can't find things if he can't see, but it was getting late and his fear of conflicts usually rendered him quiet around Frey.

"Why don't you go ahead then, Frey?" Lucius folded his arms, secretly wishing to prioritise his emergency first as well but he wouldn't be caught dead supporting Frey's ideas. "Tom gave you the address, so ask for directions."

The corners of Frey's mouth remained in place, but his eyebrows wrinkled with artificial concern.

"Saying 'please' would not kill you, Lucius."

"I just didn't think you knew that word."

Frey opened his mouth to launch another scalding comment on the vast differences between their educations, but Eliza hurriedly stepped in.

"Can we not do this? We're tired and in a hurry as it is, so let's find where we're going already."

Frey still stared Lucius down, but nodded slowly.

"That would be for the best, I believe."

He proceeded to look around, sauntering forward while people almost instinctively cleared the path in front of him as if sorry they'd existed in the first place.

"Do they... Know you?" Lucius had to ask, brazing himself for the terrifying smugness Frey would radiate if that was the case.

Instead of a mocking smile however, Frey's nose wrinkled slightly.

"I'd be surprised if anyone here knows the first thing about upper class families, especially not if they're from out of town." He raised a hand to adjust his cravat. "They're just making way for someone who is undoubtedly important enough to wear these kinds of clothes and walk with my amount of confidence."

Lucius would not fall into that trap. He would not ask follow-up questions on the fashion trends of Wypera compared to Hrimrike because as he'd come to learn, Frey's lectures were unending.

"We're passing by a lot of people," he said instead as Frey continued to look around. "You could literally ask any of them, couldn't you?"

"Depends," Frey said absentmindedly while his eyes wandered. "Do I want to waste my time talking to commoners?"

Lucius did not pray often anymore given his circumstances, but at that moment he had to send a small wish to Dyris that she give him strength not to strangle a child.

"Just ask someone," he hissed and Frey gave him a brief, empty look before focusing back on the crowd, lifting a finger to point around.

"Not him, not him, not her, not them, not her, not her, not him, not—" He paused just as Lucius readied a kick in his direction. "There."

He pointed at a man who indeed stood out in the crowd, back turned against them while he conversed with a group of similarly uniformed people and Lucius raised an eyebrow.

"A naval officer?"

"A lieutenant," Frey specified after giving the man's attire a glance. "He will do."

No one dared to speak a word should the boy decide to go on another rant about titles, so they took a step back instead while Frey approached the group.

Lucius had to admit the switch between languages was fascinating. Frey's voice seemed to have been made for Rhimska rather than Wyperan, with the melodic rhythm and unusual pronunciations of vowels seemingly fitting right in, giving Lucius the impression that his tone was actually a product of using more than one language growing up and not just deceitful cheerfulness.

It was, by association, too late to find Frey's voice pleasant though, so Lucius shuddered as the lieutenant opened his mouth to reply in a similar, tonal way. He didn't seem to mind the boy's intrusion at all, smiling like any sensible person would at such a disarming presence. As Lucius should have predicted however, Frey looked over his shoulder to nod in his direction and the man followed his gaze, lips curving into an amused, haughty smile before responding.

"Do I want to know what they're saying?" Lucius muttered to Tom, who was the only one with a chance to understand the conversation.

Tom, the avoider of conversations, chewed on his lips.

"It's, um... Hard to hear, but... I'm sure it's nothing bad."

"Oh, is that right?" Lucius said sarcastically with a fake surprised look but didn't expect any further reply, so he turned his attention to Ethan who'd just decided to join them.

"Are we making progress?" Ethan asked, following the others' gazes to where Frey was standing and Lucius shook his head in doubt.

"We'll see."

An awkward couple of minutes passed as they all stood idle, mumbling non-understandable excuses to the busy crowd that kept bumping into them, until Frey finally returned to them.

"He was a decent person," Frey declared with a sigh of relief. "He'd even heard of my family."

The others looked at him.

"... And?"

"Well he had no idea where we're going."

"That's it," Lucius growled before striding off in another direction. "Language barrier or not, we'll make more progress if we leave that brat out of this."

"But then why did we kidnap him?" Richard objected.

"I don't know!" Lucius didn't look back, trying to find the slightest trace of someone who could understand Wyperan. "You all brought him along."

"Maybe he needs to eat, or rest," Eliza suggested. "Maybe he'll be more helpful then."

"Or we try shaking him," Richard added, gaining an unappreciative look from Frey.

"You can ask anyone." Lucius looked over his shoulder to stare the boy down. "Just pick someone who can speak."

Frey curled his lip.

"I can't just—"

"Oh yes you can." Lucius reached back to grab Frey's arm and proceeded to shove him hard into the nearest person, extracting gasps of dismay from both of them. "There, an introduction."

The woman under attack decisively pushed Frey away with a wrinkled nose, anger only faltering as she lay eyes on him. Frey tried to back away further however with a short sentence that Lucius assumed was an apology, but he was not getting off the hook that easily.

"Ask her," Lucius demanded, hands holding Frey's head still to force eye contact between him and the woman. "Now."

"Lucius, no." Ethan grimaced. "Don't hold him like that."

"I thought Samueli had talked to you about not bullying children," Eliza began but Lucius hushed her, not without receiving an offended look in return.

Finally, Frey talked to the woman for real with an appropriately sugary voice of someone who'd just stumbled into her. He gestured around at the group seemingly without insulting Lucius in the process, though the woman gave his rough handling of the boy a disapproving glare before nodding at Frey sympathetically, pointing past their group and further down the harbour with what sounded like a long series of instructions.

Frey nodded enthusiastically, exchanging another couple of sentences before the woman ended the conversation with a small wave to them all.

"See? So much quicker, right?" Lucius released Frey's head before the latter could fight him off. "What did she say? Did she know where we're going?"

"Yes, but it's not good news at all," Frey mumbled, mood having taken a blow from the forced conversation. "It's a forty-five minute walk, at least."

The rest of the group blinked, all of them shrugging slightly at the so-called bad news.

"That's not too far," Eliza said. "We walk across town a lot at home, and forty-five isn't so bad."

"For you, maybe." Frey pressed his hands against his chest. "Not me. I don't need to walk anywhere."

"Well you learn something new every day." Lucius beamed with poorly hidden smugness. "Let's go."

The woman's description led them to walk along the harbour at first, and Lucius took the opportunity to look around, vision still clouded by the rain but for a late evening with no visible sun it wasn't that dark.

"You know, I would have expected more... Colour," he said to Frey. "Something more like your way of dressing."

"Vivid colours like I— or rather Wyperan fashion in general prefer, are pricey," Frey reminded him, nose scrunched and eyes fixed on the muddy cobblestones underneath them. "And since most of them are wearing several layers of wool clothes because of the weather and season, few bother with expensive dyes."

Lucius hummed, grateful he wasn't subjected to another fashion rant. Chances were it wouldn't have mattered either, because as they moved along he tuned the others' voices out to look at the scenery around them. It wasn't that much different, he supposed, but it was as though the paleness of their attire had urged the people there to make up for it by painting their houses various colours instead. It became increasingly obvious the further they got from the harbour and inner town, reaching what had to be the outskirts where houses largely made out of wood were closer to one another and significantly smaller.

"How are you doing, Tom?" he turned to ask after a while. "Gotta be a bummer not to see, but I doubt we'll find someone who can do something about it at this hour."

"I've accepted my suffering," Tom muttered, having hooked arms with Richard to prevent him from falling victim to the slippery mud and leaves. "But if I'm lucky they might have some glasses where we're going."

Lucius pinched his lips together. Had it been his luck, the entire country would be without glasses.

He looked down at the yellow leaves in thought. They'd barely entered late summer when they left the Wyperan isle, but it seemed as though autumn was just around the corner in Hrimrike. Either that or summers were just colder up north.

As they walked deeper into town they began seeing more stone buildings again, similar to the nicer streets of South Kerilia except the walls weren't littered with planks or gangways.

Then a sudden, bone chilling sight caused Lucius' breath to choke.

"You got to be fucking kidding me," he whispered as the blight cat stared back at him from an alleyway, eyes ever so bulging and unsettling in the rain.

The others looked in the same direction but he knew they wouldn't see it, so he shook his head to move on.

Starting to think its purpose is just following me around to make me angry.

The remainder of their definitely-more-than-forty-five-minute walk was spent circling around whole streets and turning around enough times to become even more disoriented. It didn't help that Frey would groan loudly whenever they did so, followed by an eye roll from Lucius and an assurance from Ethan that it couldn't be that far.

It fortunately didn't get much darker than it already was, at least giving them the advantage of sight, but Lucius wasn't so sure they would have needed it once he finally spotted their destination.

"Oh so it's not one house," he said as he rounded the corner of a large stone wall to find the entrance in form of a beautifully sculpted archway that led them all into a small cloister. "It's a whole damn monastery."

"I feel like even you should know better than to say 'damn' and 'monastery' in the same sentence," Frey criticised, and before Lucius could open his mouth Frey predicted his intention. "And I know I just did so as well, but it was to reprimand you."

"Still counts," Lucius whispered under his breath, but quickly forgot about his bitterness as another thought struck him. "Wait—"

He stopped in his tracks, acknowledging the dull ache in his head for what it was and gave the area another glance. Monasteries were no less popular with unholy beings than any other holy grounds. Had Catherine not been wrong about his inability to stand on it, Lucius could have unknowingly stepped right into his death.

That still went for other unholy people though.

"Ethan—" Lucius spun around, but the vampire had already stopped before the entrance.

"It's not the first time I've seen holy grounds, you know." Ethan smiled, but it did not look sincere. "It's a shame, but it appears I won't be of much help to you here."

"You've been plenty helpful already," Lucius assured him, offended that anyone could think otherwise but most of all worried about how close Ethan still stood to the archway. "And be careful."

Ethan shrugged.

"Fires, ravines, hostile animals... Humans stand close to death all the time."

"But—"

"But yes, I will need a place to retreat to." Ethan turned his head. "I'll find an inn or something."

"Alright, but just... Wait here for now, until we know what's going to happen so we can discuss it," Lucius said before turning to Tom with an accusatory glare. "You didn't say he lived in a monastery."

"We're here to get rid of some unholy presence," Tom defended himself. "I don't know why you would think any different."

A voice called out behind them, and they all looked around to spot a man heading their way.

Lucius had little knowledge when it came to monasteries and their inhabitants, but judging by the light purple rhenelis with intricate, embroidered details, he had to assume the man was of some greater importance there.

"Go on then," he said to Frey, who was still looking the man up and down as if unsure he was worthy of their time, so Lucius shoved him forward before he could decide. "Ask about that Aldrik fellow."

"Aldrik," Frey corrected him with a whisper, pronouncing it as 'ahl-dreek', but Lucius disregarded it with a nod forward to make him focus.

It began with an introduction, with Frey gesturing to each of them with a couple of sentences. It escaped no one that the man's gaze lingered on Lucius, and to a smaller degree, Richard, but Frey's incessant talking forced him away from potential questioning.

"What's he saying?" Lucius inquired after some time, and Frey excused himself to the man by holding up a hand.

"He's the guest master here," he relayed. "We're welcome to stay, but are you certain we want to? This place doesn't exactly scream classy."

"And we're not looking for—" Lucius closed his eyes in resignation. "Just... Ask about Aldrik already."

Frey was still not impressed by his pronunciation.

"Aldri—"

"Ask about the man we're looking for."

As requested, after an eye roll only Lucius could see, Frey finally asked about the man's whereabouts.

The guest master wrinkled his forehead, asking something back while Frey turned to point at Tom.

"What?" Tom squinted, and Frey pointed back to the guest master.

"He wants to know why we're looking for him. With an emphasis on 'him', I might add."

"Is he not a 'him'?"

"He's a 'him', just not a person this man expects us to want to see."

"Well, tell him about the article I found," Tom suggested. "About the blight that possessed him."

"That's why we're looking for him?" Lucius gawked. "You didn't say that."

"You didn't ask."

"Is it wise to ask about blights in a place like this?" Frey looked sceptical. "From my knowledge, I don't think they're fond of them."

"He wouldn't be here if it still possessed him," Tom protested. "He got rid of it somehow, which I consider a promising feat."

"It does sound promising," Lucius had to agree, having seen more than one priest be defeated by unhallowed forces and therefore reckoning the man had to be quite an impressive one. "Guess he must be the abbot here or something."

Frey pressed his lips together, giving it a moment of thought before facing the guest master again.

Despite another inquiring look at Lucius, the guest master nodded slowly before raising an arm to the side for them to follow him.

The group let out a low, simultaneous breath of relief as they were led through multiple stone-clad corridors of, from what Lucius' headache indicated, a holy establishment. Far from as grand as a sanctuary, but possibly still a place for prayers.

After yet another confusing turn into a secluded part of the building, they were shown downstairs into a poorly lit basement corridor, and Lucius made a face. It hardly seemed like the place for an abbot to stay, and he'd mostly had bad experiences around holy people, so what stopped his bad luck from leading him into another one?

The guest master stopped in front of a wooden door to knock on it, saying something to Frey while they waited, but the latter had fixed his eyes on the small sign hanging on the door. He then asked something back in a low voice, to which the guest master nodded assuringly.

"Alright, so..." Frey turned to the others with a look of disapproval. "... Apparently he's the chamberlain."

"The..." Lucius began, but trailed off as the door was opened by a man in modest, worn attire. His black, greying hair was messy and tied back in a short ponytail, and the bags under his dark eyes did nothing to help his rugged appearance.

Another introduction was made, this time between the man who the guest master confirmed was indeed Aldrik Alvarsson, and the group of baffled visitors, with the man in question giving them a toothy smile as he attempted a 'hello' in Wyperan.

It hardly came as a surprise when Frey, without batting an eye, leaned towards Lucius.

"I don't want to talk to this man."

***

Author's note: And we're back! I can't stress enough how much I struggle writing travelling/transition chapters. It's hard to move them forward without it getting tedious and overly descriptive, but now they've finally arrived! So what are your thoughts? What are your predictions for the next chapter(s)? Let me know what you think!