Having maintained her ruse as a member of the Rune Knights, Augusta was being afforded a luxury that many were not eligible to receive, nor one in which some around these parts might have wished to have. The Rune Knights were a touchy subject, perhaps not as controversial as the Holy Knights to which she wished herself with, but they were still carried and held to a varying regard with respects to how people interpreted their aim and goals. Some viewed them as being puppets of a power who held no authority out in these parts, a sentiment that was shared by Augusta, but also there were those who appreciated their efforts to maintain some degree of order and structure within these areas, parts of the province which often fell to massive violence and corruption, with more people preferring to engage in combat and fights than they did with diplomatic matters. Augusta herself tended to prefer the former, viewing them as the most assured way to maintain order and control, using the force and violence to maintain it after having claimed it. It also mattered the force by which someone applied to them. Augusta had seen those who made deals with small warlords and bandit groups soon find themselves crushed due to their own weakness. She made sure as to if she made deals, there was a very clear sign of power, an establishment of power that would prevent those from rising up against her should things have gone in a manner against her aimed goal. Kill the leader who might have objected, torture their most loyal allies, they were all viable options to ensure that it was made clear that she was the one who was in control and in the greatest position of power.

There was no need for her to have excercised that degree of force here, at least not yet. There was certainly a high degree of those who were suspicious of Augusta’s intentions, and that was also a true statement when considering the fact that she was there under false pretenses. She was truly not a member of the Rune Knights, nor someone who had their own interests in her heart, at least so long as she was led to believe that they were not followers of God. Then perhaps she would have viewed their plight with a bit more consideration and appreciation, though right now there was nothing to have indicated that or make her believe differently. They had accepted her into the area, though much of that was attributed to the fact that she had contributed towards the safety and survival of a man who nearly been lost to an interesting and perhaps even a bit frightening level of corruption that had been nearly at the point of taking his life. Meanwhile, that was what had her interested, the corruption, along with the potential that that may have bene tied into the rumors that she had been investigating. The possible existence of heretics.

500/2000

She had awoken early in the morning, well before the sun had arisen, which gave her more than enough time to investigate the area, outside of the sight and snooping eyes of the people who might have lived within this region. It was far safer to do this like this, as there had to have been a level of commotion that arose with her arrival here, and quite frankly, she was neither rinterested in what was going on, nor was she looking to have answered any questions. With this, there might have been a farmer or two who could have possibly seen her, though she was careful and did not have any interest in allowing herself to be exposed or caught out in the open. If someone were to find her, it would have been either a terrible mistake on her part or otherwise something to which she would have given credit towards, and with the people who lived her of whom she had had a chance to witness with her own eyes, there was nobody who came to within any level of success or talent by which she would have put in that category. By that, it eliminated the greater risk and instead imposed a far more likely scenario in which the reason for her detection would be by her own hand than anything else. She was determined not to allow that to happen, be it accidental or not.

Her search was largely yielding her no such evidence or any reason to believe that she had been on the right track as far as these supposed heretics. There may likely have been them throughout the region, as this area was far enough out of the normal area of the Church, but at the same time, it was also too remote and scattered for her to have been expected to actually go ahead and follow them to a point of finding out just where they might have been. At least on her own. There was more than likely a chance that she would have come across them at some point, and that would be more thane nough justification to issue out a small invasion of this region, razing it and everything around them to the ground. But right now, there had been nothing to indicate that she was on the right track or was coming any closer towards it than how far she had travelled up to this point. Everything was more standing as a work in progress and her only lead thus far that had any level of credence, the infection which had been the cause of death for several people in the recent days, it was also too obscure to accurately say whether it was attributed to any one type of affliction, any of which might have been linked to heretics, some in which she knew for a fact that were in use by them. Whether she was going to find them though, that was the lingering question.

1000/2000

The day had largely been for nothing, no actual information that could have been garnered, at least as she initially figured it to have been. Around midday or so, she had come to find out that a letter had been left at the location in which she was staying, isolated from the rest of Baska as to not draw any further attention to the people who might have been there or otherwise heard that a Rune Knight was located nearby. There were only a small few of whom who might have known of her location here, so it was very easy to believe that this was the work of the doctor whom she had been in communications with in her past encounters within Baska Town, the man who had been wiling to reveal what he knew of these supposed cultists and heretics to Augusta as he could. The information thus far had panned out, though it was not enough for her to build anything on it, being largely reliant and obligated to search for other measures that might have better indicated to her that these rumors in which she were pursuing were anything different than just that. Rumors. Speculation. Nothing concrete, nothing in which she could use to accurately determine whether or not she was on the right path.

Reading the contents of the letter, Augusta was a bit intrigued as to what she was reading. As the doctor explained, the infection in which was claiming the lives of the people within Baska was one that also seemed to have come with another side effect, one in which was not apparent in the man who was suffering earlier due to the condition and the drugs in which they had given him to calm the side effects. Extreme aggression, rage, attributes more like that of what would be found in a rabid animal, that was what this infection also carried with it. It was a bit of a disappointment towards Augusta, as the explanation of rabid creatures spreading their infection to others would explain a bit, but upon further thought, it would not have explained for the preservation of the bodies following the point of death. A body would have decayed and lost muscle, lost its main body mass, but the corpses had seemed to have all maintained it. There was something to that which she had to investigate further. And to her delight, there appeared to have been several boars that had been reported by hunters of which the hunters had informed the doctor as to allow them a chance to find them for herself and deal with them. Boars were hardly creatures that she was interested in fighting, especially if they were rabid or otherwise dirty, but there might have been some evidence that they were infected by something other than just genetics or nature. If there was proof that there was Magic involved, it would further her reason to believe that there was far worse things at play.

1500/2000

The hunters had provided clear and concise information with regards to how to go about finding the boars, and even without them, Augusta likely would have found an easy enough means of detecting them. The area was largely barren of wildlife, some of which might have been due to the hunters, some of which due to the wolves themselves who may have taken that extra level of aggressiveness and applied that to significantly limiting the available wildstock in the immediate area. After about an hour of walking htrough the area, al the while keeping an eye out for any sign of a heretic, she happened up what looked to have been fresh tracks that had been set by a pack of wolves. Four of them she could clearly tell, maybe a fifth, maybe even a sixth, but certainly a pack that was moving like how the hunters explained it to have been. Following the tracks, it only took a short time before the wolves had been within her sight, though to fight them all at once, while easily doable, was nothing something that she was as interested in doing. Rather, she got a little bit creative, heading towards the wolves, throwing a small rock which managed to hit one such that it would head towards Augusta. As soon as it had come within even remotely close range of her, she delivered a quick, swift strike against the wolf’s head, knocking it out at the very least. It might have died from the injuries before all was said and done, but it would survive for right now.

As to the other wolves that were now aware of her presence, four of them in total, they rushed towards Augusta. She did not worry too much about them, as immediately 8 swords materialized before her, all of them floating within the air and assembling themselves in such a manner that they formed a small garrison wall between her and whatever was going to come against them, in this case being the wolves. Like mindless animals, the wolves rushed headlong into the garrison of blades, each of them being severed apart by at least a blade, if not two or more. Their screams echoed throughout the area, otherwise silent up to that point and following it as well. With the other wolf still on the ground and unresponsible, she took it upon herself to have the wolf delivered to the province of Baska. For whatever time it was still alive for, it would be more than enough to thereby enable her to have whatever test might be done upon it conducted in a more private setting without the wandering eyes of either hunters or other predators that may have lurked and may have been attracted to the blood. As well, there might have been something more scientific to the whole infection that might have provided for herself and give her reason to believe that this was in fact the work of heretics and infidels.

2000/2000