Jasper had never been inside the Commander's hall before.
He'd seen it from the outside twice, once during his recruitment processing and once during a parade he'd watched from the wrong side of a barrier. It was the kind of building that made it very clear the people inside it made decisions about the lives of people who would never be allowed through the doors.
He'd been sitting in the antechamber for two hours when they finally opened.
Commander Valen wasn't what he'd expected. Jasper had built an image in his head during the crossing back, something broad and armored the way Sir Aldric was, a physical wall of Imperial authority come to life. Instead, the man behind the desk was lean and grey-haired and looked at him the way a butcher looks at a cut of meat, assessing what it was worth before deciding what to do with it.
Sir Aldric stood off to the side, his armor polished back to its usual mirror finish, his face carefully blank. He didn't look at Jasper once. He had arrived a few days ago and more than likely was the reason this meeting was possible. Jasper had tried upon his return only to be stalled and made to wait, told they had to process first and to just write a report.
Valen gestured to the chair across from him without saying anything so Jasper sat as commanded.
"Your report reached me a few days ago," Valen said. "I've read it three times since then." He leaned back in his chair, hands folded on the desk. "Now I would like for you to tell me what you didn't write down or chose not to put in it." He saw how Valen's eyes flickered over to Sir Aldric.
Jasper though had been preparing for this since the moment he'd been sent ahead. He'd ran it through his mind multiple times, working out what mattered most and what was dangerous. He had to frame both in his report without getting himself killed in the process but also ensuring the gravity of the place was understood.
"The written account is accurate, Commander," he said carefully. "But some things don't translate well to paper no matter how hard I tried to do so."
"Such as."
"The scale sir." Jasper paused, choosing his next words carefully. "You read about a village with unusual plant growth in the baren of all places and you picture something modest. A garden maybe, or a small settlement with some overgrown hedges or even just a tree with the rumors blowing it out of proportions due to it being in the Barrens. It isn't like that though. The walls are living trees that respond to threats on their own. The interior is dense and structured, reads as genuinely defensive rather than something thrown together by accident. The mist from one of the larger trees inside spreads a mist that keeps the soil and even the air moist." He stopped nervously. "The plants act on their own. Not like trained animals but instead as if they were an extension of the man who grows them."
Valen's face didn't change. "And the grower himself? What can you tell me of them."
"Young. Younger than I expected." Jasper watched for a reaction and got almost nothing. "He's from another world much like the hero's we summon, though I don't know how it happened. He's too young to have been an outcast and would have been brought alongside the previous batch which means he wasn't brought here through Imperial means. He speaks plainly, doesn't dress anything up. He knew we were coming before we arrived and he knew what the knight tried to use me for before I told him about it, telling me all of that with a unnerving calmness before." He gulped nervously, hand fiddling with the hem of his pocket. "Before he let me go."
"He just let you go? No demands, interrogations or attempts to pull information from you?" Valen questioned flatly.
"Yes sir, he did tell me though to give a message for Sir Aldric to stay away from his village." Jasper reached into his coat, feeling the weight of what he was about to do. "He was also aware I'd taken something on the way out but didn't stop me." He set the bottle on the desk between them.
Valen looked at it for a long moment. Then he picked it up, unstopped it and smelled it with the kind of detached assessment of someone who'd done this many times before. He poured a small measure into the metal cup on his desk and drank it.
The silence that followed lasted long enough to become uncomfortable.
"He was responsible for making this? From his plants?" Valen said.
"Yes sir." Jasper kept his voice even. "I don't know how long he's been producing it but I don't think he even has a distribution network or market as I'm sure we would have seen it by now if he did. There were rows of the stuff, all kinds of different varieties at different stages. During my time there I even noticed how the wooden vessels they were stored in were grown rather than carved." He let that sit for a moment. "There were also medical plants. I easily noticed a rather large shadow berry vine in the form of a bush growing, and vast patches of medical grass but something you should know and is somewhat more important was that the woman with him, it was the Bloody Shadow."
Something shifted behind Valen's eyes at the mention of Sera. Brief but there.
"What of the demon general you mentioned in your report?" Valen said.
"Korr. Former general of the southern armies. He'd been there for some time from what I could tell, operates as some kind of advisor sir. I recognized him from the newspaper that reported his death." Jasper chose his next words. "He didn't seem like a prisoner at all from what I could see."
Valen seemed to take another drink before capping the bottle and setting the cup down, his gaze turning back towards Sir Aldric. "Your account differed on several points."
Aldric's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. "The scout was inside the village for a short while and spent most of that time hanging from vines, Commander. His perspective is limited and the darkness no doubt messed with his perception."
"His perspective," Valen said mildly, "includes a physical sample and a more measured layout than what you gave me." He picked up the bottle, turned it once in his fingers and set it back down. "You described an ungovernable threat requiring immediate military response. The scout describes an isolated settlement run by a single individual with no political allegiances and no army and only plants of all things as his defense." He looked between them. "Those are two very different problems."
"With respect, Commander—"
"They are also," Valen continued without raising his voice, "two very different opportunities now presented to me." He stood and moved to the map on the wall behind him. The Barrens were marked in grey, a dead strip of nothing between the Empire's southern border and the demon territories and the various other empires around it. "It has no political allegiances which also means no treaty protections and no army means no conventional defense to speak of. One individual means one point of pressure we can bend to our will." He tapped the map. "You should know that the emperor has reviewed both reports and has declared that he wants what's there. The only question becomes how we take it."
Jasper kept his expression still before he commented softly. "But the settlement isn't in Imperial territory sir," he said carefully.
"The Barrens belong to no one because no one bothers with it," Valen replied. "Which means they belong to whoever is strong enough to hold them, for whoever wants to take them." He turned from the map. "We will be sending an expeditionary force. One large enough to make the Empire's reach clear yet controlled enough to leave what we want intact should he try to resist." He looked at Aldric. "The objective is not to destroy the place, no, it's to enforce compliance and assimilate it into the fold. The grower will be offered Imperial protection and integration. His village becoming an Imperial asset and his plants and skills will serve the Empire."
"And if he refuses?" Aldric asked.
Valen picked up the bottle one final time, looked at it the way you look at something you've already decided belongs to you, clearly debating if he could have another taste or save it for later.
"We've done this before," he said. "They always come around eventually and as I said that is why I am sending a force rather than another exploratory team." He looked at Jasper. "You're dismissed and know you'll be compensated for the sample." Something that might have been acknowledgment crept into his voice. "You did well getting back ahead of the party and giving such detailed information."
Jasper simply nodded and walked to the door, knowing he had been dismissed. Behind him he could hear Valen already talking to Aldric in a lower tone about the logistics of what came next along with the various possible expenses that could come with it.
He didn't look back.
He stood in front of the hall for a moment, the cold air brushing across him as he thought about the village. About the way the bamboo had softened to let him through when he ran. About the scream flower that had warned rather than killed. About the grower standing at his own gate with his arms crossed, looking tired rather than afraid, like a man who'd already decided what he was willing to die for and yet how content and alive the place seemed, the peace it seemed to hold.
He filed those thoughts away somewhere safe and kept walking.
Some things weren't his to carry but he knew the seeds of temptation had already been planted.