[color=goldenrod][i][h2][center]Gerard Segremors[/center][/h2][/i][/color]

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Pulled away from the search of everything with potential to be anything useful, Gerard swiftly about-faced on his heel, marching over to his leader's side and gazing at the words over her shoulder, reading them in time with her finger as it traced a line through the text. He was lucky he'd made a habit of harassing the merchants passing through his town in youth— literacy was a rare skill among most of his possible paths of education back home.

[color=goldenrod]"Damn,"[/color] The erstwhile mercenary grunted, left with no recourse but a curse beneath the breath. After a revelation like that... the mind couldn't tear itself away from a single track of thought, even if it may have tried to first mind the broader scope of things. [color=goldenrod]"Right under our noses the whole time."[/color]

His free arm felt the urge to fold across his chest— impossible with its partner in a sling. Instead, it floated up and behind, scratching an itch around the back of his head. An absentminded gesture. His eyes continued to pin the text to the page, a tight, sharp glare that received neither word nor gaze in reply. Thinking back to that night, he remembered truly needing to war with his own impulses— that thirst for battle that was so ingrained it began to swell at the slightest tension. Despite the Silver Stone being a place of order, protection, symbolic of Mayon's gentle light and care for peace... was it possible that having a shard in the proximity had exacerbated things?

Maybe. Maybe his concerns that night had been on the money in grander scale. He didn't know enough to say. More importantly...

[color=goldenrod]"I suppose that explains what the Boars were doing there,"[/color] he ventured, reaching down and tapping the words 'Brennan Forest' twice. [color=goldenrod]"First the fort where we know one was stored, then the forest the Stone's within, rather than the Stone itself. No idea who left that note, nor whom it was a hint for, but..."[/color]

He took a breath, trying to pull the tension growing in his shoulders out. No luck. Not with that conclusion staring them both in the face, plain as day. He couldn't imagine what else the answer was, not remotely.

[color=goldenrod]"They came from the forest, too— Not the Shrine. They had to be hunting that temple, right?"[/color]

And they'd been hunting the shards as a collective, not just one.

Reforging the blade? Unthinkable. Surely anyone that ambitious would have made themselves known by now.

... Then again, they had made sure to obfuscate the search by hiring mercenaries instead of using personal forces or adventurers from the guilds to do dirty work like attacking a garrison. in dealing with a threat like this, one that jeopardized the very nation if it got as bad as it potentially could... Best not to assume all parties listened to their first thoughts quite so much.

...They needed that prisoner to rat his employer out, more than ever.