Chapter 21 – The Way North

The gates of Myzelemaerlazin were already an hour behind them when Shaelith was finally able to think clearly again.

The finger. Vyriz’s finger. With the word “COME” carved into the skin like an invitation to a damn dinner party.

She marched silently at the head of the group, mechanically putting one foot in front of the other, while her anxious thoughts were with Vyriz. The landscape around them gradually changed, and the phosphorescent mushroom columns of the Shaeravyn heartlands gave way to wild fern forests and moss-covered rocks. The air always smelled so unfamiliar outside the Shaeravyn territory, much less sweet and spicy. It was an unpleasant, cold smell.

Behind her, there was a long period of unusual silence. Even Benderast seemed to understand that she needed some quiet time to herself and refrained from his usual eccentricities.

He managed to keep that up for about two hours.

“Oh, back there! Wild boars! Three of them!”

Before anyone could react, Benderast was already sprinting like a madman with his sword drawn, charging toward the poor wild boars.

Grimbart sighed heavily. “There he goes again.”

“Farming XP,” Thaelon muttered with an expression that suggested he knew these words by heart by now but still considered their meaning to be complete nonsense.

They waited. In the distance, they heard the indignant cries of bewildered boars, the sounds of battle from the undergrowth, followed by Benderast’s triumphant cry. A few minutes later, he returned, his shirt splattered with blood but a satisfied grin on his face.

“Not bad! If I slay thirty or forty more of those, I might manage to level up!”

Maybe you shouldn’t mention that in your hero resume, though. “Hey, have you heard the ballad of Benderast the brave boar brawler?”

In the afternoon, the spectacle repeated itself with a young duskbear who had made the mistake of stepping into Benderast’s field of view at the edge of a small forest clearing. Shaelith used the waiting time to collect her thoughts and push her feelings into a small, dark corner of her consciousness where they wouldn’t bother anyone.

I’m coming, Vyriz. Hang in there.

 

~

 

As dusk fell, they set up their first camp.

“We have three two-man tents for five people,” Grimbart announced as he sorted the luggage. “Thaelon and I will share one, as usual.”

Benderast nodded eagerly. “Perfect! Then I’ll take the second one with Shaelith, and Mirrsoss you can-”

“I’ll share a tent with Mirrsoss,” Shaelith interrupted.

The silence that followed was almost as delightful as his dumbfounded expression.

“What?” The disappointment and wounded pride were clearly written on his face. “But we are… I mean, you are my-”

“Concubine. Yes. That doesn’t mean I have to sleep in a tent with you.”

“But-”

“No.”

Mirrsoss’ wings vibrated excitedly. “Oh! I have a tent partner! That’s wonderful! Among us Umilari, the Wanderlings often share their sleeping quarters to conserve body heat and…” She paused. “Oh, but I should warn you, Shaelith.”

Shaelith raised an eyebrow.

“There’s this… thing with us Umilari women, you know, once a month-”

“Oh, I understand, it’s fine,” Shaelith interrupted with a dismissive wave of her hand. “It’s the same for Shaeravyn women. Don’t worry about it.”

Mirrsoss’ antennae twitched in confusion. “Oh. Really? That’s… interesting. I wouldn’t have thought that…” She fell silent, obviously unsure whether to ask further questions.

Benderast was still standing dejectedly next to them with his tent in his hands, looking as if Shaelith had told him he wouldn’t be getting any Christmas presents this year because he had been a naughty boy.

“You can pitch your tent here next to ours,” Grimbart said, not without sympathy.

 

~

 

On the third day of their journey, Shaelith noticed something.

They hadn’t consulted a map once. Not once had they pulled out a compass or even asked anyone for directions. And yet Benderast marched ahead, never stopping at any fork in the road, leading them as confidently as if he knew exactly where to go.

“You seem very sure of where we need to go,” she remarked as they crossed a clearing that led to a hidden forest path that Shaelith would never have found in a million years.

Benderast turned around. “Of course! I’m following the quest marker.”

“What?”

“Quest marker.” He pointed into the distance. “There it is. A glowing indicator showing me the waypoints on the way to the fortress. Right now, we still have to go about… five hundred feet in this direction, and then down to the left along the river.”

Shaelith stared in the indicated direction. She saw trees. Rocks. A bird landing on a branch. Absolutely nothing that looked like a glowing indicator.

Damn it! Why does he have something so useful and I only have this stupid trait list?

“And you didn’t think this was worth mentioning in the last three days?”

“I thought it was obvious?” He scratched his head. “I mean, I’ve been following the marker since we set out. I assumed you already knew, I mean, that the others had told you all about it or something. That’s how we found you, too!”

“Explain to me how this quest system works,” she said, trying to keep her voice neutral.

Benderast’s eyes lit up. Finally, she was interested in his favorite topic!

“Well, I have a quest log that lists all active quests. The main quest right now is ‘Destroy the Crimson Warlock,’ which gives the most XP. Then there are a few side quests, optional objectives, and-” He interrupted himself. “Well, and there’s also an optional quest linked to your romance quest.”

“Linked to my…?! What?”

“‘Save Vyriz.'” He cleared his throat hastily. “But I swear, that’s not optional for me! I know he’s important to you, so we’re definitely going to save him!”

Shaelith digested this information.

Saving Vyriz is an ‘optional quest’. A bonus objective you have to do if you want to win me over. Whatever this shitty system is, I fucking hate it.

“And these markers,” she said slowly, “always show you the way to the quest goal?”

“Most of the time, yes. Sometimes they get a little inaccurate, but I don’t know why yet. Maybe because there are multiple paths or because there are multiple solutions to the quest.”

She nodded briefly and then turned away. The information he had access to was useful, and she wished she had access to it herself.

Maybe I can unlock it somehow, or something? I have to get some more information about it out of him. But slowly, step by step. I really don’t want him to become suspicious.

 

~

 

With each day they traveled north, the traces of war became more visible.

First, there were the abandoned villages. They sometimes walked through ghost settlements full of intact houses with open doors and fields that no one had harvested and that were now overgrown with wild plants. The inhabitants had fled, sometimes leaving everything behind.

Optimistic bunch. They thought they might be able to return soon.

Then came the first villages where goblins had obviously wreaked havoc, their ruins smelling of charred wood, ash, and the disgustingly sweet stench of decomposing bodies.

Grimbart picked up a human thigh bone. From its size, it must have been a child’s. There were gnaw marks on it. “I’ve seen worse during my time as a mercenary,” he said quietly. “But not much worse.”

Thaelon said nothing. His jaws were clenched so tightly that Shaelith feared he would bite through his teeth, and Mirrsoss’s wings hung limply.

Benderast was silent. His gaze wandered over the destruction, and something in his face hardened.

Well, Ben? Is this still just a game to you?

On the sixth day, they passed a farmhouse that was still smoking.

The family hadn’t made it. An old man lay in front of the door, his hand still outstretched as if he had been trying to reach someone. The bodies of a toddler and an infant, or what was left of them, lay a few steps away.

No one spoke for a very long time after that.

 

~

 

On the evening of the seventh day, Mirrsoss came to Shaelith in their small camp while she was checking her glyphs. The Umilari sat down next to her and looked at her piercingly with her compound eyes.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Strange, it seems to me that you already are.” Shaelith smiled.

“True!” Mirrsoss’ antennae twitched amusedly. “So, this matriarchy of you Shaeravyn, how does it work exactly? How exactly do you oppress your men?”

Shaelith blinked. “What?”

“Oh! Was that rude? We Umilari just ask what we want to know. Restraint isn’t really our strong suit.” She smiled apologetically.

“I think it’s a little more complicated than just ‘oppression’.” Shaelith put the inkwell aside and thought about how to explain what had confused herself for quite a while when she was younger and had more earth influence left in her thoughts. “Noble Shaeravyn men live in relative luxury, but they have very little political power, that much is true. They focus on aesthetics, art, and, um… breeding.”

“Breeding?”

“They father children, the best of them at least. With as many women as possible, to ensure strong bloodlines and introduce desirable traits into the bloodline.”

“Oh!” Mirrsoss nodded understandingly. “Among us Umilari, the Elder Wardens take care of the eggs and guard the nurseries. Wanderlings like me are not yet ready for that.” She shook her wings thoughtfully. “So, you’re saying your noble men are like… breeding bulls?”

That’s actually a pretty accurate description.

“Something like that. Ordinary Shaeravyn men have a little more equality. They work as craftsmen, merchants, guards, and such, and can even save a little money if their wives let them. The sharp division mainly exists in the noble houses.”

“Fascinating!” Mirrsoss leaned forward. “And this concubine agreement with Benderast…”

Shaelith stiffened slightly. “What about it?”

“Is it unpleasant for you? We don’t have such contracts, so I don’t quite understand-”

“It’s primarily a political agreement,” Shaelith interrupted before the questions became too personal. “It’s a little different with him because he’s human. A Shaeravyn breeding male usually has several concubines from several houses at any given time, and there are precise agreements about how the offspring will be divided, how many offspring are expected, what rules apply, and so on.”

“I see!” Mirrsoss seemed satisfied with this vague answer. Then her face lit up. “Oh! Could you teach me some Shaeravyn? I need three foreign languages for my Rite of Wide Wings, and yours sounds so melodic!”

“You haven’t learned three languages yet?” Shaelith had to remind herself that it was probably not normal to learn as many languages as she had during her childhood. Well, her second childhood, as Shaelith.

“I speak Umilari, of course, and I picked up Tulvian during my travels.” Mirrsoss nervously tugged at a thread of the large colorful shawl she wore slung over her shoulder outside, as always. “But I’m not sure I want to commit to a second foreign language yet. It’s a big decision!”

Shaelith had noticed the garment before, an elaborate weave of shimmering threads in various colors that Mirrsoss took with her everywhere.

“What is that, actually?” Shaelith pointed to the fabric.

“Oh, that?” Mirrsoss’s face lit up. “That’s my Pilgrim’s Shawl! Every Umilari Wanderling weaves one during the Rite of Wide Wings. The patterns show where we’ve slept, and the colors-” She held the fabric up so Shaelith could see it better. “-come mainly from our food. The dyes in our silk change depending on what we eat. When we return home, we hang the finished shawl in the Loom Hall and receive our full voice in the community.”

So, in a sense, she weaves a kind of travelogue from her own silk.

Shaelith looked more closely at the shawl. There were deep blues, more to the beginning was an earthy brown and in between bright threads that Mirrsoss had obviously added recently.

“This part here is from my time on the west coast,” Mirrsoss explained, stroking the fabric lovingly. “And this,” she pointed to a lighter section, “is from the trip with Benderast. I ate a lot of berries there. And I wove the glowing threads there in Myksel… um, I mean Myzzleme… I mean in your city. I think the glow comes from the mushrooms that we got to eat there.”

Shaelith tried hard not to grimace in pain when she heard Mirrsoss butcher the name Myzelemaerlazin. “Anyway, I can teach you a few basics, but Shaeravyn has a complicated syntax. And the hair messages are a whole other story.”

“Hair messages!” Mirrsoss’ eyes widened. “I find that so fascinating! An entire language just in hairstyles!”

“Believe me, it’s really much less glamorous than it sounds. It’s mostly just political banter and passive-aggressive jibes.”

Mirrsoss laughed a melodic laugh that made her wings vibrate and released a fine mist of wing dust. “You’re funny, Shaelith. I like you.”

Shaelith caught herself almost smiling.

 

~

 

Darkness had already fallen completely over the camp when Thaelon returned from his lookout post, looking more tense than when he had left.

He crouched down next to Shaelith and Mirrsoss by the fire and lowered his voice. “We have a problem.”

Shaelith sat up. The others around her stirred as well.

“I spoke with a bird,” Thaelon continued. His amber eyes glowed in the firelight. “There’s a goblin patrol. About half a mile away, parallel to us, with at least twenty warriors.”

“Are they moving toward us?” Grimbart was already on his feet and his chronosteel arm hummed softly. Ben was also halfway up.

“Not yet, calm down. They’re heading in the same direction as us, though.” Thaelon gazed into the darkness beyond their campfire. “But we’ve entered actively patrolled territory, which means we have to be more careful from now on.”

That night, they slept without a fire.