Our topic of conversation shifted once again after Lia finished the story, and we continued talking without pause until just before dusk when we reached our destination for the day: a small roadside town with a prominent inn. We rented our separate rooms and took a moment to put our traveling gear away, then reconvened in the common room for dinner. The provided meal of stew was cold and bland, but the good company was more than enough to compensate, and we parted ways for the evening in high spirits.
When the door to our meager lodgings closed behind us, I shrugged off my cloak and sat down in the solitary chair against the wall with a contented sigh. “That was...nice.”
“Yeah, it was,” Lia agreed, sitting on the lumpy straw mattress across from me as she began to unbuckle her armor. “I’m glad I said hello to them on the road, aren’t you?”
“I am now,” I chuckled. “I can’t say I was at the time, though. I’m not used to meeting people like them. You know, good people.”
She shook her head as she slipped a bracer from her arm. “That’s what most people are like, Lux.”
“You’re probably right. It’s just—”
“I am right,” she corrected.
I gave her an exaggerated roll of my eyes. “You are entirely, perfectly right.” After removing my boots, I continued with my original thought. “That’s not something I’m used to. My track record so far in this life has been less than stellar.” I paused in my disrobing and gestured towards her with a large smirk. “Apart from a few shining exceptions, of course.”
“Of course,” she echoed, holding up her nose with theatrical pride. We finished undressing, then climbed into bed for the night. “I’m glad you like them,” she said as she curled up against my chest.
“I’m glad they liked us, too,” I said. “Well, most of them, anyway. Josephine wasn’t exactly thrilled to have us join their group.” I reached out to the bedside table and turned out the lamp, then settled in beneath the thin blankets.
“She wasn’t?” Lia asked, confused. “Miles said she...oh! Right!” She tapped excitedly against my bare chest as she looked up at me through the darkness. “What was she really saying?”
“Well, she definitely speaks Kaldanic. It sounds like she isn’t too fond of foreigners.” I nodded towards the two piles of armor at the foot of the bed. “Plus, given the way we were dressed, she thought we were some kind of thugs and was mad that Miles told us where they were going.”
She let out a hearty laugh. “We are sort of thuggish looking, aren’t we?” Her finger traced lazily along my collarbone as she continued. “You can’t really blame her, I guess. It seems like everyone is a bit on edge traveling right now. Plus, with her hip the way it is, it’s probably hard for her to…” she trailed off, her finger pausing on its trek across my chest. “Could you do something about her hip?”
I shrugged. “Maybe. It feels a bit weird to invade her privacy like that, but it would be for her benefit, right?” Lia gave me a firm nod of agreement, and I took a moment to center my breathing. “Let’s find out.”
A pulse of mana ran out into the hallway and through the surrounding rooms, scanning each chamber quickly until I found my target. Josephine was asleep in the room two doors down from ours, propped up on the mattress by various pillows and balled-up clothing, while Miles reclined restlessly in her wheelchair. The mana in her core was a pale yellow, so faint that I could hardly see it even against the black void of my view through Detection. As I carefully suffused my energy around her hip, her ailment became immediately apparent: multiple osteoporotic fractures running along the surface of her right hip and femur.
I absentmindedly spun the ring on my finger as I activated the healing rune along the inside of the band. The small cracks in her bones began to mend, and after a few seconds of channeling, the green glow dissipated. While I was happy to see the breaks had healed, I was ultimately disappointed in the results; her hip bone, though healed of all its readily apparent injuries, was still overly porous and brittle. I activated the rune a second time, but the healing energy failed to make any further changes.
My eyes fluttered open as I withdrew the extended mana. “Well,” I said, scrunching up my face, “I did what I could. There were a couple of small fractures I was able to heal, but...she’s just old. She’ll probably be a lot more comfortable for now, but it’s only a matter of time until the bones break again.”
“You still helped, though,” Lia encouraged. “I didn’t expect you to...I don’t know, cure her old age or something.”
“You’re right, as usual,” I said with a slight grin. “I guess I’m just disappointed that I found another limitation to our healing magic.”
“You can add whatever it is to the list when we get home. Might as well add ‘fix old age’ and ‘cure death’ while you’re at it,” she joked.
“That would certainly be a good one to figure out.” I gave her a quick hug, then shook my head and patted my cheeks. “Okay, no more moping. We’re on vacation, right?”
“Right. No moping allowed on vacation!” She tilted her head and kissed me, then resettled herself in her sleeping position. “I love you.”
“I love you,” I murmured, closing my eyes again. As I drifted off to sleep, I was surprised to find myself in relatively high spirits. The feeling of Lia held snugly in my arms combined with my excitement for another day of travel with Layne, Lyn, and Miles easily banished my earlier disappointment, and I fell asleep with a smile on my face.
---
The following day of travel passed us by in a flash. We grew comfortable with our new friends almost immediately and spent our time talking as if we had known each other for years. I fully indulged in my passion for blacksmithing, trading stories with Layne for hours on end, while Lia asked Miles and Lyn for more stories about the capital. Josephine seemed to be in a better mood as well, as she stopped voicing her displeasure at our company at every given opportunity, but I couldn’t determine whether it was due to the reduced pain in her hip or simply growing accustomed to our presence.
Even though I was focused on my own conversation, I was able to pick up some useful information from Lia’s conversations, as well. As Miles was a well-regarded artist, he was often in the company of diplomats, royalty, and wealthy merchants, many of whom had a tendency to speak in front of him about matters otherwise kept private from the general public. While he was always careful to hide the names of his sources, he talked about the information they revealed openly, often with a sly smile.
According to the latest news from the major seaport traders, the Elta’Sahn Company’s presence had all but disappeared from the southern ocean. Various tales reported massive gatherings of their ships, the location of which never seemed to align from report to report. The most notable landowners around the capital reported similar disappearances of the usual ground forces. Strangest of all, every intermediary for the Company had gone completely silent, without a clue as to where they had gone, how long they would be away, or if they would ever come back.
The reports from Kaldan were even more troubling. Although trade with the coastal cities was at an all-time high, strange stories of trouble in the north had begun to filter back across the shipping routes. The details varied wildly from source to source. Some said a massive crop failure had plagued the northern fields and forced the farmers to abandon their harvests; others reported that the weather had grown abnormally harsh, forcing smaller towns to leave their homes for the warmer refuge of Yoria. The most troubling stories were those that mirrored the information Val had relayed to me: terrifying, unknown monsters were running rampant across the northern countryside, wiping out entire villages in the night. Whatever flavor the story took, one thing always remained consistent: People were fleeing from northern Kaldan, and those that didn’t were disappearing.
While we engaged in our own separate conversations, Lia and I also kept a dialogue running through our mental connection. Along with the comfort her presence at the back of my mind
provided me, our connection also served a functional purpose: a private place to share information without the need for hushed tones or fake backstories. We shared a silent moment of pride at our involvement in the Company’s disappearance from Lybesa and joked about the potential meetings led by Jeremiah “Quickblade” Eltann. When Miles mentioned the rumor of monsters in northern Kaldan, Lia was quick to assuage my anxieties, and despite the news, I was in good spirits by the end of the day.
When the sun set on our day of travel, we stopped in a small roadside settlement for the night. It was composed of a dozen buildings at most, which, aside from a small five-room inn and a general store, were entirely residential. According to Lyn, foot travel through the Midlands was uncommon during even the safest months of the year, so most major townships were spaced apart by roughly a day’s travel by wagon, not walking. She estimated that we would finish the first leg of our journey before noon on the following day with our arrival in Lienna, where our group would part ways; Lia and I would continue into the Midlands on foot, while the rest of the group would wait for their chartered wagon to arrive the next morning. With our plans set, we shared a quick meal in the cramped common space of the inn before retiring to our separate rooms for the night.
We left before the sun had broken the horizon the next morning. As soon as we were out of town, Layne gave the duty of pushing the wheelchair to Miles and pulled me aside.
“I’ve got a question for you, Lux,” he asked in a hushed tone, flashing a small smile.
I raised an eyebrow at him and scanned back over my shoulder at the rest of the group walking with us only a few feet away. “Uhm, sure. What’s on your mind, Layne?”
“Sorry for the sort of personal question, but I’ve been wondering this since we first met…” he trailed off, lowering his voice further as he checked to make sure we were out of earshot of the rest of the group. “When are you going to make your Union offering to Lia? You’re going to do it in Ellawynn, aren’t you?”
My eyes widened as I processed the question, and I immediately withdrew my extended mana and shut Lia out from my thoughts. “Why do you think that?” I whispered back.
“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? You two are clearly together, but Lyn says you aren’t married, according to her conversation with Lia yesterday,” he answered. “We thought that you might be taking the trip to the capital to do it there.” He paused as he watched my reaction, and his brow furrowed. “Unless, of course, that’s not your, uhm...you do follow Unity, right?”
“Yeah. Yes. Unity, yes,” I stammered. Caught off guard by the sudden inquiries, I thought back to my conversation with Hana and Marten on our initial ride into the country. Marriage proposals in the Unity religion, Hana had explained, were traditionally done through a Union offering. As opposed to the traditional engagement ring I was familiar with, a Union offering could be anything: jewelry, money, poetry, or even the completion of a special task. There were only a few defining features of an official Unity offering: demonstrate you truly know the person, how far you’d be willing to go for them, and your willingness to be joined for life. Unity, I had learned, had little tolerance for divorce.
“Oh, thank the Primes. That would have been an awkward mistake,” he said with a sigh of relief. “So, are you going to do it in Ellawynn? What’s your plan?”
“No, I haven’t, uhm, prepared anything, yet,” I answered. “I’ve thought about it, of course, but I don’t know exactly when—”
“You’ve got to go for it, man!” he cut me off, shaking my shoulder. “Trust me, you’re going to regret every single day until you do it.” His eyes briefly looked over my shoulder to where Lia and Lyn were walking, and his smile widened. “I knew that I was going to marry Lyn when we were just kids. I was starting to make plans for my offering, but I left for my apprenticeship before I figured things out. I kicked myself every day for six years while I was gone, and when I finally came home, I worked day and night until the offering was ready.”
“What did you do for your offering?” I asked, desperate to remove the focus from myself.
“Her brooch,” he said, nodding in her direction. I subtly turned my head until I could see Lyn out of the corner of my eye. For the first time since we had met, I noticed the shimmering gold pin that fastened her cloak: a gem-encrusted butterfly with wings made of handspun gold. “I wanted to prove that my blacksmithing skills would be enough to provide for us. That, and she loves butterflies.” He chuckled to himself. “It worked like a charm.”
“Wow,” I murmured, studying the finer details of the brooch through Detection. “That’s fantastic work, Layne.”
“Right?” he asked, puffing out his chest. “No more delays now, Lux. Tell me, honestly; are you going to make Lia a Union offering?”
I felt my cheeks flush, but I steadied my breathing and gave him a firm nod. “Yes, I am.”
“What do you need to do to make it happen?”
“I need…” I trailed off, rubbing my chin. “I guess all I really need is...a forge. And a few hours.”
Layne clapped his hands excitedly. “Come visit us when you’re in Ellawynn, then! You can use my forge, along with any materials you need. My gift to the two of you.”
“Really? You’re sure?” I asked, bewildered. “I guess I could come by.”
“No, promise you’ll come by,” he insisted, grabbing my hand and giving it a firm shake before I could respond.
“Alright,” I laughed, confirming the handshake. “I promise.”
“Good. Good!” He clapped my hand between both of his. “You’ll look back on this moment as the start of the best decision you ever made. I guarantee it.” He dropped my hand and nodded his head towards Lia and Lyn, who seemed to be holding an equally secretive conversation on the opposite side of our small party. “Looks like Lyn had the same idea I did.”
I reached out to Lia with a thin tendril of mana and found her consciousness blocked off. “Seems that way,” I agreed.
Layne took his place behind the wheelchair once again as we shifted back to the middle of the group. Lia’s eyes met mine as we walked closer, and she quickly turned her gaze elsewhere, blushing. Lyn laughed and led her a few steps further towards the side of the road, and they continued their conversation in private. Layne had started a loud, jovial conversation with Josephine, which provided them plenty of cover to speak in their hushed tones.
After another few minutes of walking, Lyn crossed in front of me with a satisfied smile on her face, joining Layne at the center of our group. Lia sidled up to me a moment later, keeping her eyes straight ahead. Talk about anything interesting? I asked her the moment her mental guard had fallen.
No. Nothing, uhm, specifically interesting. Just...lady things. You wouldn’t understand.
I couldn’t help but grin. Of course.
Her hand rushed out and grabbed mine, squeezing it far tighter than was comfortable. And what about you, with your secret conversation with Layne? You started it, you know!
Oh, we just talked about some blacksmithing things. It would’ve been too boring for you, I’m sure. I wiggled my hand out of her grip and wove my fingers back more gently between hers.
I’m sure, she echoed sarcastically. After a final moment of embarrassed standoffishness, she moved the remaining step closer to me, and we continued walking hand in hand.
Lia, how would you like to visit with Lyn and Layne before we leave the capital? I asked. Layne invited us to visit anytime we like. I figured we could stop in on our way out of the city.
Lyn said the same thing! Lia said excitedly. I think that’d be a great way to end the trip.
I gave her a wide smile. It’s settled, then. We walked on quietly together, both absorbed in our own thoughts. Layne had opened the floodgates that held back my dreams of marriage, and my mind was consumed with a half-dozen plans for my Union offering, potential ceremony locations, and our life beyond. The thoughts bounced around too fast for any one topic to develop until the buz
z became overwhelming. Hey, Lia?
What’s up?
I love you. The single, unifying thought was enough to dispel the chaos from my mind and provide me with a unified point to focus on; the only thing that mattered was Lia.
She bumped her shoulder against mine. I love you too, Lux.
I let out a satisfied sigh as I looked down the road ahead of us, feeling renewed and eager for our trip to continue. We joined in conversation with Miles and Lyn, who had been discussing which Lybesian delicacy should be considered the quintessential dish to try in Ellawynn, and the remainder of our morning flew by. The hilly but otherwise clear countryside generally blocked our view forward past any given turn in the road, which caused a moment of surprise when we rounded a corner to find our destination of Lienna in full view only a few miles away.
The town was much larger than the ones we had passed through so far on our trip, rivaling Mayaan in both size and traffic. Lia and I followed along behind Layne as he led us along the side of a bustling street; as opposed to most cities I had seen, the traffic on Lienna’s roads was made almost entirely of horse-drawn carriages. The clattering of their wheels on the gray brick roads mixed with a dozen conversations from the foot traffic around us on the sidewalk to create a lively, if not slightly suffocating, atmosphere. I kept my head low as we worked our way into the center of the city, eventually stopping our trek in a large cobblestone courtyard.
A towering, four-story tall building made of bright red bricks stood to our left, lined with neat rows of white shuttered windows on each floor and ringed by a manicured wall of hedges. A long, one-story wooden building stretched along the remaining edges of the courtyard, faced with open bay doors that seemed to constantly intake and output passenger carriages. Multiple workers in vibrant overcoats directed the traffic in and out from the busy road behind us. Near the exit to the courtyard, a small booth plastered with informational posters was constantly swarmed by a crowd of travelers.
Restart Again: Volume 3 Page 26