The castle was a mess, with guards running around, yelling, "find the assassin!"
Damian was an assassin who tried to kill the Duke, yes, but he was not the assassin who killed the servants. They put the blame on him, which did not matter.
It was all fake. The assassin who killed the servants was probably someone under the Duke's command, perhaps his daughter, and they did that to lure someone from Glen's noble house to start their plan!
They did not know who Damian was, but if Neil and Glen agreed to send him, then he had to be someone from their family, or someone close.
"Everyone is looking for me, and where can I find the Duke?"
The situation was not looking good for Damian, who had an army of guards looking for him, and a severe injury on his abdomen. He needed to rest and properly heal, but he also needed to find the Duke.
What made the guards unable to find him was his cloak, turning him invisible. He had to find the Duke fast before too much blood was lost, as that would not be ideal.
Damian felt lost, scanning the castle area from the roof, trying to see any hints or glimpses of the Duke. Nothing. When everything felt like it was going downhill, someone called him!
He checked the number. It was Neil.
"‌Neil, is something wrong?" Damian asked.
The voice from the other side was not that of the old man, but Astrid's!
"Damian, I know where the Duke is! There is no time to talk. He hides in a small shack near the castle, outside of the walls!" Astrid said with a tired voice.
"Thanks, Astrid."
They turned off the call after that. Damian could hear from the other side all that noise, presumably the fighting sounds with the beasts who came from the dungeon.
So, both parties did not have time to chit-chat with all of that mess. The new information regarding the location of the Duke was vital, and Astrid surely used a lot of her divination power to get that.
Damian used his Telekineses to fly from the roof, passing through the castle's walls without major problems. All the guards assumed he was still inside the castle, and no one knew he could fly or become invisible.
A wooden shack outside of the castle walls, covered with moss, bushes, trees, and any type of vegetation to make the area almost impossible to be found.
Duke Hagrid had spent a lot of his time creating that space, finding the perfect hidden location, and also changing the surrounding area to make it look even more hidden.
It was his secret place where he would go to chill, think about life, but of course, the place he would go when danger knocked on his door.
"He will never find me here, and my guards will get him. How good it feels to win," the Duke said aloud, drinking a glass of wine inside his shack.
The Duke never believed Damian would find him. That shack hid in the deep forest.
"Only if he could fly, but that's impossible," the Duke said, drinking his glass of wine, feeling the heat of the fireplace.
Damian flew above the forest, gazing down, trying to find anything different. It was a privileged view he had, and after twenty minutes of searching for the so-called shack, Damian found it!
One reason he found the shack was because of his flying abilities, but the most important thing was that he knew what to look for! Astrid was the real reason for his findings.
He descended from the sky, stopping in front of the cabin door. Damian looked out the window and noticed the Duke in front of a fireplace, relaxing with a glass of wine in his hand.
His hand moved toward the door, and he knocked on it. The Duke was surprised to hear a knock.
"Daughter? Is that you? I am coming!" Hagrid said.
The plan was that his daughter would return to meet him after dealing with the assassin that tried to kill him, and considering no one knew the location of that cabin, only her, Duke believed it had to be here.
But when he opened up the door, someone else was on the other side. A man wearing a black-mask, looking creepy.
"W-What? How?"
Hagrid fell on his butt. He could not believe that person was before his eyes! It was someone that should be dead! His daughter and all the guards were looking for him at that moment.
"How did you find me?"
"It was easy. Do you call this a safe place? What a joke." Damian said.
The Duke was trembling with fear, shifting his gaze, trying to find a way out of that place, but there was none. It would be impossible for him to escape at that point, no matter what he tried.
"Even if you kill me, this is not over. We will find the secrets Glen's son is hiding!" Hagrid said.
"What do you mean? What secrets?"
The sentence caught Damian's attention. So the real reason for them to want to take over Glen's castle was not because of the place's territory itself, or just to harm Glen, but because of his son? Who exactly was Glen's son who went missing? Was he truly missing?
Damian had many questions, but after Duke Hagrid saw his situation had no escaping from, he took out a knife from his pocket and stabbed his own heart.
Both he and his daughter did it to avoid Damian finding answers, meaning the organization behind them was not simple, and it was better for them to die than handing over the answers.
"Fuck."
It did not go the way he intended, but with the Duke dead, the current attack on Glen's territory would stop, and that would bring temporary peace.
But it would never stop. Damian wanted to find more about Glen's son, and that would be his next goal. Of course, after he reunited with his friends, Aurora and Magnus!