The Khaganate fleet continued their orbit around the medieval planet, lazily passing over it as its ships tried to scan the planet and its surroundings for a slight grain of information. They had already learned that somehow, the two Khaganate ships that had been missing had somehow ended up on the planet below, earlier than the main Khaganate fleet.

The Khagan of the Khaganate, Yuri Lanist, as well as the admiral of the fleet, a rather short man with brown hair named Jay Haward, were sitting in the [i]Genghis[/i]' primary bridge. The primary bridge, contrary to the secondary one, was located more into the vessel, having several viewscreens instead of windows to make it safer for the crew inside. It was also located near the conference room where the Kurultai meetings were held, a specialized meeting room equipped with screens and holographic projectors. Both men had just returned from the meeting, exhausted from the many discussions that were held there. Yuri had just given the order to leave if nothing was heard from the wrecks on the planetary surface. 

Then, a group of scientists and some science officers came into the bridge at a frantic pace. The leading scientist bowed before Yuri before speaking. "We have discovered some new information that will most likely be very important to you." Yuri nodded, signaling that the scientist should continue. "We have discovered that the lost two Khaganate ships have somehow ended up at opposite ends of the planet. One is in the larger southern continent you can see on the viewscreen right now, while the other is near the arctic wastes of the world. We have also found out that the strange gravitational anomaly that caused many of the dropships that had been sent in to investigate and were completely ripped apart was caused by the wormhole generators of these two ships. I will spare you the scientific details, but the mass compressor required for puncturing a hole through spacetime has gone haywire, causing the anomaly that we have observed earlier. Interestingly enough, this also causes a temporal anomaly, where time is actually accelerated relative to us. If a few hours pass here, several days will have passed."
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[@Hokum]
As Fanny May rose from her seat, the tension in the room increased to the point where one could cut it with a knife. James and his colleague standing a few meters next to him at the opposite side of the doorway kept a firm grip on their heavy assault rifles. People or humanoids brought to these containment areas weren't really supposed to move, and James' keen eye had seen how she was able to stand against the almost unreasonably high acceleration of the elevator. He could see something was up with her, he had faced far too many anomalous beings and dangers to not quickly notice when something was off. And he knew that Operation Command, who were constantly watching the situation through cameras in the containment cell, elevator, and his team's helmets. By now, PA-3 to PA-12 must've been lining up at the door, ready to bust in if it is needed, James thought. He readied his weapon, covertly switching the safety off. To his surprise though, nothing special happened, and Fanny returned to her seat after giving the vice-admiral a kiss on his nose and forehead. Apparently, there was no danger after all, and James slowly let out his breath, making sure no one could see his disbelief. His face was hidden behind a gas mask anyway, so neither the vice-admiral nor PA-2 had noticed it.

Vice-admiral Jens Knaggs responded to Fanny: "Thank you for warning us of the danger of repairing your ship. You will probably be happy to know that sharing your knowledge saved some lives."

Right at that moment, in the hangar bay, several repairmen immediately backed away from the small ship that had been placed there earlier as soon as they had gotten the order to do so. They had been told to repair it earlier, but upon hearing Fanny's information someone in Operation Command immediately turned on the hangar's intercom speakers, telling the men and women not to do so.

"Secondly," Jens continued, "You are indeed correct that our arrival here has not been... as we had hoped, but thank you for your kind reception." The vice-admiral did not really listen to what she said after that. He was not a superstitious man who believed in bad omens, so he would not believe the way the Khaganate arrived here, however chaotic, was a sign of bad things to come.

He had seen how she considered giving him advice, and found it mildly suspicious, so he decided to ask about it. "Now, I would like to ask you a question, if I may. I do not wish to overstep my bounds, considering you probably know a lot more about this universe than we do, but what is the advice you mentioned that you wanted to give me earlier? We know nothing about this universe, so any information would help us greatly. Do not worry though, we are not the barbarians that some see us as, so we will not try to force this information out of you in any way."
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The fire crackled as one of the duchess' servants threw another chopped wooden log on the campfire. Several lackeys, soldiers, and even some mercenaries were sitting around the fire. The stranger thought back on how he ended up in this position. 

When he saw the woman, and especially, heard her name, immediately another one of those strange feelings of recognition, the same one that he had felt when he saw the many lights in the night sky that night in the tavern, overtook him. This time however, it was a lot stronger, and didn't go away so quickly, as if something deep inside him tried to either warn or alert him of something, but he did not know what. He followed her, while she rode on her horse, back towards the campsite, where several wagons had been placed as a defensive makeshift barrier. He listened to how she and her captain of the guard had heard great stories about how a traveller with white hair was travelling through several realms. The stranger knew this was obviously an attempt to flatter him to get him to actually accept their proposal. Then the duchess explained how she was travelling towards the south, and needed capable soldiers to protect her. He only became interested when they started talking about the reward "So," the stranger replied, "I help you, and in return I will get a lot of money? Sounds like a deal."

The duchess had talked to him alone a bit later, telling her about a strange dream she had, after which she felt the compulsion to travel towards the southern part of the continent. The stranger had replied by saying that he also had the same dream, but he did not know what or who caused something like that to happen.

And so, the stranger had joined the group of travellers. He was making his own journey towards the southern part of the world anyway, and if he got money for travelling with a group and doing what he usually did that was nothing less than a win-win situation to him.

The man had been staring into the fire for a while, when he was soon disturbed by a lot of noise, seemingly caused by Katie furiously storming out of her tent, followed by a small crowd of servants, advisors, and other important people. Contrary to her earlier appearance, the duchess was now clad in clothes that were more fit for travelling. They were all bickering about something the stranger could not hear because they were still too far away, but he did know that they were coming closer, and they were coming fast. Soon, they were near him, and duchess Anderson spoke to him. 

"Stranger, I will be continuing on this journey with you from this point on, and with you alone."

He heard the captain of the guard reply that she should not associate with a wanderer like him, and that he could be very dangerous, but Katie countered by saying that the stranger had the same dream as she did, and that there had to be something that had to be investigated. Soon, the staff were grudgingly forced to accept her decision, as she was still their duchess, and the stranger and Katie set off to adventure.

It was the first day of their journey together. They had already been able to cover a lot of distance between their original starting point and their end goal. The duchess had been able to hunt for some food with a bow and arrows she had brought along, and they had been cooking the food and eating it. Katie turned to the stranger, and said to him "I wonder what you look like under that hood.", so the stranger removed it, revealing his white hair, grey eyes, beard that had slowly been growing and most prominently the massive wound that ran across his face. She asked him if he was alright, or in pain, but he didn't reply. The wound had not fully healed yet although scar tissue had started to form, but it still hurt slightly. The stranger did not really like to admit such things and soon went to sleep, ignoring her question. 

It had been a week, and the warmer and drier climate of the area they were in signified that they were approaching their goal. They had only had one horse for the entire journey, because the duchess' servants and soldiers needed them or some of them were simply too weak to carry them, so they took Katie's brown mare. The stranger was riding it, while Katie sat behind him, holding him as she fell asleep. For some unknown reason, the stranger realized he had been smiling as the small incident happened, but why he did not know. Soon, the wanderer and the duchess had slowly started to trust eachother a lot more, and after a relatively long time travelling together one could say they had started to become friends. 

The area had started to get more hilly as they came closer to their destination. Both Katie and the stranger felt that they were getting close, and chose to walk the last part rather than ride a horse. They both felt that whatever lay behind those last few hills would change everything, and they wanted to savor those last moments together. The trek towards their final goal was brutal, and both sometimes nearly fell off a hill or cliff, only to be saved by the other. At one point, Katie nearly died when some wild animals ambushed their camp, but was saved by the stranger as he drove his sword through the bear's head. 

It was the final hill. It took several hours to even scale it, so bad was the path upwards. However, with the stranger's unyielding will and the duchess' clever tactics, they prevailed and they both looked out over the area. They could see a massive crater, with a radius of at least several miles, and in it was the strangest metal construction either of them had seen. Unbeknownst to them, they looked upon the broken and twisted form of the wreckage of the KRS [i]Tsol[/i], a Khaganate spaceship that had crash-landed three years earlier after the same disastrous wormhole jump as the rest of the GEF. They gazed upon the strange vessel, wondering what it was.

And they remembered everything.