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“There’s some information about my father in here,” Gilras said, sliding the tablet across the table. As Jarvis collected it, the king leaned back, grabbing his drink. “While most of those stories don’t concern me or my father, I found it all extremely interesting.”
Jarvis tossed the device onto the desk. Leaning against his chair, he asked, “Have your people ever encountered the shifters from Tarian’s logs?”
With a hearty laugh, Gilras lifted his goblet and peered inside. His gaze sank as his lips turned into a frown. He laid the cup down and jerked his thumb towards the door. “Can we move this conversation back to the banquet hall?”
A curse slipped from Jarvis’s mouth as he buried his face in his palm. He grabbed his tankard and poured the amber liquid into Gilras’s empty mug. The moment he finished, he thumped his now empty mug on the desk and retrieved the tablet. “We have things to discuss before we return to the festivities.”
“The shapeshifters from Tarian’s logs?”
Jarvis nodded, sliding the tablet to the edge of the table. “You’d think with creatures like those described in here, this planet couldn’t surprise me anymore. But they still do.”
Gilras gulped down more of his ale and belched before retrieving the pad and flipping through the entries. When he located the first entry that described a chemical that could counter the shifters’ abilities, he grinned. He tossed the pad to Jarvis and gulped more of his drink. “You’ve obviously retrieved information from your world’s previous expedition, but while you searched those records, did you come across the substance that Tarian’s people created to fight the shifters?”
“Unfortunately, when Fenton retrieved the logs, he found nothing more useful. He didn’t have time for a proper search.”
“Have you considered sending another team to Tarian’s shipwreck to retrieve more of the data it contains?”
Jarvis wiped his mouth and shifted in his seat. As his gaze drifted away from Gilras, he grabbed a small ball and squeezed it absently, weighing their dwindling manpower. After a few seconds, he pocketed the ball, licking his lips. “We still haven’t had the manpower to send anyone up there.”
“You have an ally that you didn’t have previously.” A grin spread across Gilras’s lips as he lifted his mug. He drained the last of the beverage and slammed the tankard onto the desk. He scooted to the seat’s edge and leaned forward, tapping the tablet. “Not to mention you possess interesting weapons that should free defenders from the wall for such an expedition.”
“The drones won’t replace the men on the wall or in the tower.”
Gilras rose, circling the desk, and with a powerful jerk, he pulled Jarvis to his feet. He clapped Jarvis’s back and pushed him toward the exit.
“With threats like these shifters, we can’t afford to be careless. We’ll need every advantage we can get,” Jarvis said.
Gilras grabbed a tankard from the table and shoved it into Jarvis’s gut. “Despite the horde, you need to learn how to relax. Death is this world’s constant companion...