They were led inside the guard tower, made to kneel on the stone as their hands tied using some strange restraints made from neither metal nor rope. The soldiers treated them with neither mercy nor brutality, but a strange, cold professionalism, like slaughterhouse workers treating cattle.One by one their were raised up, carefully patted down. Their pockets were emptied, their bags inspected and confiscated, their crossbows carefully unloaded with their bolts tied with the same restraint they’d tied their hands. Celeste tried an experimental tug, but it didn’t budge. Strange; she eyed the restraints placed on one of the guards, and saw only a set of two thin bands made from the milky white material, one edge passing through a thin hoop in the other; by all logic a tug should have freed them. Instead, the restraints felt like a solid piece tying her hands together.A soldier cast a warning glare at her as she groaned in pain from the tugging; that quickly put a stop to any more curious experimentation. When her time came up for the inspection, she dreaded one of the soldiers deciding to be thorough; when the inspector stepped back and a female soldier took his place, she was too shocked by the day’s events to let out a sigh of relief.Then they were put back on the floor.Soldiers stood in front of them, asking questions. She couldn’t tell a word, not even a hint of the accent let alone understand what they were saying; it showed on their increasingly-exasperated expressions. It wasn’t the roughness and rigidity of the tongues of the Free Confederation, nor the poetic accent of the elven tongues. She thought they might be Northland barbarians or mercenaries —the Imperium saw use in them at times, though the late Witch had caused much distrust for anybody north of the Iron Mountains. As she thought, something snagged in her mind; the tongues were changing.The soldiers were trying to communicate with them in multiple tongues; Celeste (...)