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Not long afterward, the two of them went their separate ways, with Ms. Rogers returning to her office in the Tower of Night and Hector going to grab a bite to eat in the refectory. He spotted Garovel along the way, chatting with a few of the other reapers, as usual, but decided not to bother him.

Garovel soon found him on his own, though, and brought up a subject that the both of them had been meaning to find the time and opportunity to address for a while now.

The subject of Rathmore’s Gate.

The Gate was a peculiar location, deep within the Carthrace Nature Reserve, where a large, seemingly natural rock formation resided. The first time he’d visited the place had been during a battle for Atreya’s fate against a group of Abolish terrorists. The second time had been upon their return from the Undercrust, via some kind of still-not-understood teleportation mechanism and the newly ascended “god” Royo Raju. Or had that been Malast’s doing? Hector couldn’t quite recall.

Regardless, they had been wanting to return there and investigate the location again, but it was starting to seem like they would never find the time. Hell, even now, when things were starting to feel relatively calm again, Hector still found himself a bit reluctant to go.

But he supposed if he’d been able to justify a trip to Klein, then he could probably justify this, instead.

It helped that Atreya was such a small country. And that he could fly pretty damn fast now with his armor. He wouldn’t need to be away from Warrenhold for all that long, and he could of course keep in constant contact with the castle’s guards and scouts, not the least of which was one Pauline Gaolanet in her roost at the top of the tallest aboveground tower that Hector had materialized.

Plus, he didn’t know if he was ever going to be completely free from concerns over an attack. Even if the war came to an end tomorrow, that didn’t necessarily mean Atreya and Lorent were much safer. In fact, maybe that would make the Abolish remnants go looking for some softer targets that weren’t being defended by the Vanguard.

Which was assuming that Abolish ended up on the losing side. The other possibility... Hector didn’t even want to think about that.

So he decided, as ever, to think of this as another opportunity for training.