by Riker Kane
I lowered to the ground and stayed behind a tree and observed them from about fifty yards away. They looked as ordinary as anybody back in Navica. They wore plain white linens and brown leathers. There were about a dozen of them, all of them men. I should’ve thought that was strange but didn’t think anything of it.
“Don’t wanna scare these people…” I deactivated the Life Rune and stepped forward through the trees with my cane. The closer I got, the more unassuming they appeared to be. I limped out of the forest toward their small campfire. They had small huts made of sticks and leather tarps that seemed to do just enough to protect them from the rain. They fit the description Guillard gave me but I couldn’t be sure.
Above their fire, a boar or some other beast was roasted black. The men picked at it with their sticks and tore into it hungrily. They smacked their lips and chomped their teeth loud enough to drown out the crackling of the flames. They were so distracted by their meal they didn’t notice me just a few feet away.
Finally, one of them turned. His eyes widened before he dropped his food and picked up a weapon. It appeared to be a blade shaped from an ivory bone or tusk. It wasn’t long before the others joined him in pointing their weapons at me.
I put a hand up and gave them a friendly smile. “I’m not here to cause any trouble. I’m not here to steal your food or any of your belongings.”
The men were disheveled, hair messy and beards in need of a shave. Their faces were covered in dirt as well as their linens. Their nails were long with grime underneath. If anything needed a wash, it was their blackened feet, which looked liked they’d been walking for miles without any shoes.
“Who are you?” The one who first noticed me stabbed his bone tusk at me threateningly.
“My name is Virgil.”
“What group do you represent? I demand to know.” He spoke in a commanding voice but I was only confused.
“What group?” The million-dollar question. It would’ve been nice if this were multiple choice. I figured I would come up with my own multiple choice answers. “I’m from a lot of groups. Humans. Earth. Navica. The LOD. Battle God. Pick the one you want.”
“Do not listen to him,” another one spoke. He was just as disheveled as the others, his long bangs covering his eyes to the point I wondered if he could even see me. “He has the stench of the nobles.”
“Stench of the nobles?” I sniffed myself. “Honestly, I’ve been on a ship for the past three days. It’s really hard to wash the smell of salt out of your clothes. I mean, the only water available is for drinking—”
“Shut up.” The one who first saw me kept his bone dagger pointed at me as he inched closer. His eyes stayed wide without blinking like an animal cautiously examining something that invaded its territory.
I kept my hand up, searching for a way to convince him I wasn’t trying to hurt him. How could a guy with a cane look more harmless? But it was clear he didn’t want me to talk. The only thing I could do was stay calm.
He moved close enough to stand in front of me. If I had the ‘stench of nobles,’ this guy had the stench of a District Drill Room after a long simulation. His pungent aroma needed a good scrub but I held my breath, more interested in not getting stabbed by his weapon.
“Your clothes,” he said. “You either stole them from the nobles. Or you are a noble.” He leaned closer to me and his stench flooded my nostrils.
“Can you not stand that close?” I said.
He suddenly pulled away.
“It’s not that I don’t like you,” I said with a smile. “I just… like my personal space.”
I decided to give him that old York charm I inherited. Judging from the glare he gave me, I hadn’t inherited enough of it.
“I do not believe you stole these clothes,” he said.
“Thanks,” I sighed. “I might’ve taken a few cookies from the cookie jar when I was younger, but I’m no thief—”
“I believe you are a noble. And all nobles must be killed.”
Without warning, he thrust his bone dagger right at my chest. He ripped through my linen shirt and thunked right against the Life Rune. I stepped back from the force of the blow and examined the tear in my chest.
“This was my favorite shirt,” I sighed.
The others turned their heads sideways as they stared at the exposed jewel in my chest. It shimmered with a bright yellow light that was mesmerizing. But after a few seconds, they all regained their senses.
“Kill him!” one shouted.
I immediately activated the Life Rune as they converged. I raised my palms and brought up a stone wall to stop them in their tracks before sending it forward into them. Half of them were immediately knocked unconscious from the crashing rocks. The others regained their balance and rushed toward me.
Beating them wouldn’t be a problem. Not killing them was the tricky part.
“Kill him!” their leader repeated as he hurried at me.
“I think they heard you the first time.” I raised my hand and summoned a Black Viper from the ground. It wrapped around his ankles, holding him in place so I could level him with my right hand. I wasn’t much for punching people but I had the strength to do some good damage. The man fell on the ground in a heap like the others. But there were still five remaining and they all rushed without care.
I summoned a Stone Golem. The hunk of smooth gray stones was short but when it charged, it hit like a truck. My attackers learned the hard way just what it felt like to be run over. Only one of the strangers managed to stay on his feet.
I recalled my familiars and held my hands out to the lone man pointing his bone weapon at me. “I just took everybody out. I’m assuming this is the first time you’ve seen a man in strange armor. I don’t suppose it’ll help if I tell you I’m not much of a man these days.”
The man twisted his soles in the dirt. A conversation was happening between his heart and his head. Attack me like his brethren and surely lose. Or put the weapon down and have a chance of not getting knocked unconscious.
“I told you, I didn’t come here for a fight—”
“Ahhh!” He ran at me before I could finish. I threw a punch at his chin before he could swing and cracked him. Now he was out before he could finish.
I deactivated the Life Rune and put my hands on my hips. I sighed when I realized not a single one of them was anywhere near gaining consciousness.
“Now how am I gonna get some answers?”
“You’ll never get any answers from them.” A voice from the forest made me turn my head.
I stared through the darkness of the trees, searching for where the voice had come from. One of the branches above began to shake and suddenly, a figure flipped through the air and landed a dozen meters across from me.
She didn’t look anything like the men I’d just taken out. For one thing, she was a woman. Her clothes were a lot cleaner, too. Some type of blue and white silk. Her top covered her chest, leaving her midriff bare. And considering how flat her stomach was, she had every right to show it off. Her skirt was cut around her thighs, just above the spot where her white leggings ended. But probably more interesting was the intricately carved archery bow strapped on her back. I suppose I should’ve been grateful she wasn’t pointing it at me. Her face was hidden by a hood, so I could only see her mouth.
“I’m guessing you’re not with these guys,” I said. “So, are you one of these nobles I’ve heard so much about?”
“We’re all noble in our own way.”
“That’s one way of looking at it… Well, either way, I don’t suppose it’ll help if I tell you I’m not looking for a fight.”
“I know you’re not. Nobody would come all this way for that.”
“And here I thought I wouldn’t sail across the world to find reason…” I put my hands up to reiterate my peaceful intentions. “My name is Virgil.”
She lowered her hood down and revealed the rest of her fair-skinned face. She must’ve been in her early twenties wit
h how smooth her skin was. But here other features were even more striking. Not her sharp cheekbones or her pointed chin. It was her eyes. And her lips. And her long, flowing hair. They all had a silvery sheen to it. Not like an elderly person but with a youthful glow like nothing I’d ever seen before. If she wasn’t a ‘noble,’ she certainly looked the part.
“My name is Lyra,” she said with a casual voice.
“Lyra? And do you plan on killing me, Lyra?”
“That depends on if you can tell me the correct answer to my question.”
“I sail across the sea and it turns into an episode of Jeopardy…”
She took a step toward me with her hands at her sides. Her intense, silver-eyed stare didn’t move.
“What’s his name?” She clenched her jaw, not blinking.
“His name?” I raised an eyebrow at her. But she kept staring at me, waiting for an answer I wasn’t sure of. “Why can’t these things be multiple choice—” But then it hit me. “…Guillard.”
Her face softened as she let out a soft sigh through her nose. She walked toward me but kept moving by me as she headed into the open grasslands.
“Come with me,” she said. “Before they wake up.”
I picked up my cane and walked after her. “And where are we going exactly?”
She stopped and turned toward me. “Haven.”
6: Kids Playing In The Smoke
I decided against bringing Rhiannon and Zafina along, since there was no reason for me to trust Lyra completely. The whimsical way she walked wasn’t enough to distract from the giant bow she had strapped to her back. The thing was half her size and made out of a silver that shined as much as her hair. I didn’t see any arrows or a quiver, which only made me more cautious. Who uses a bow without anything to fire?
We headed through the open grass field in front of us. It reminded me of the Bright Plains from how lush and green it was. The deer frolicked so peacefully and the rabbits hopped around without worry about getting scooped up by predators. Even the weather wasn’t too hot or cold.
“So much for the dangers of the Sol Lands… Say, Lyra… This Haven you’re taking me to. I’m guessing it’s a village.”
“You’d guess correctly, stranger.” She eyed my cane, an eyebrow raised in curiosity. “You have a limp.”
“Just noticed, huh?”
“You weren’t limping when you took care of those raiders.”
“Raiders? Is that what they are? It seems men with trouble walking are their weakness.”
“Apparently…” She smiled, though it was subtle enough she was on guard the same as I was.
We roamed through the valley in silence for nearly an hour or so minutes I estimated. It was hard to tell with how much everything looked the same.
“Wait.” Lyra put her hand up and stopped in her tracks. She pointed in the distance toward a pile of gray stones lining the side near the forest. I looked closer and noticed the stones had formed a sort of makeshift barrier. Behind it, there were a couple of men in ordinary-looking linens. They weren’t quite as dirty and disheveled, so I assumed they weren’t the same raiders she talked about.
“Don’t do anything that might seem threatening,” she said.
“I need a cane to walk straight. How threatening can I be?”
She gave me a sideways glance, a half-smirk on her lips as she proceeded to the stone wall that stood about four-feet high. It stretched for about twenty meters on both sides and seemed to wrap around deeper into the forest.
Lyra walked up to the two men guarding and bowed her head. “Guillard has succeeded. This traveler says he found him.”
The two men looked at me like security at a fancy nightclub. They didn’t have the sunglasses or weapons in their jackets, but they had the same snooty attitude. Too bad telling them I was Virgil York wouldn’t work like it did back home.
Despite their suspicious glares, they stepped aside and allowed Lyra to walk through the path between the stonewall.
I followed after her. “Friendly guys.”
“They have every reason to be cautious,” she said. “We have no allies outside of Haven.”
“I believe it. Now… This Haven…” Before I could finish asking my question, I heard something in the distance. Conversation. Laughter. It was loud enough I knew it was more than just a single person.
At the end of the forest path, I could see an open clearing. The first thing I noticed was the rising smoke. I kept moving, my curiosity growing and growing. When I reached the clearing, I saw what was waiting there.
The forest ended at the edge of a hill, leading down to a small basin that was about half the size of Navica. High hills surrounded on every side, with more of the makeshift stone walls built on top of them. The grassy clearing was insulated completely. And inside of it, I could see the huts with people going about their day alongside them.
“Welcome to Haven.” Lyra quickly began her descent down the hillside. “Come on. We have no time to waste.”
I followed her down and saw all of the ordinary townsfolk. Both the men and women had on plain white tunics. Their pants were brown leathers. All of them were barefoot though none of them seemed to mind. They were like the raiders, only without the aggression. The smell of the pork they roasted over the flames wafted through the air along with the smoke. Others were busy stitching and knitting more clothes together. Even the children were busy playing peacefully as they ran after each other in an intense game of tag.
What I noticed more than anything else though was how much nobody seemed to care about me.
“They seem like friendly people,” I said. “Not even staring at me with my limp.”
“We’ve faced bigger threats before,” Lyra explained. “A single man would not be trouble for us to dispatch.”
“I’m not as much of a man these days. You saw that for yourself.”
“Yes…” She stopped walking and eyed the Rune in my chest, exposed by my torn shirt. “You make me curious. Do these people have reason to fear you?”
I shook my head. “You have my word. Though, I don’t know what good a word is coming from a stranger.”
“That’s more than I can say for most. Come. We have dallied for too long. Joris will be excited to see the outcome of Guillard’s gambit.”
The homes in Haven were nothing fancy. Just ordinary leather tarps stretched out over wooden stakes, similar to what I’d seen from the raiders. If the weather was like this all the time, they wouldn’t need much.
We headed toward the center of Haven toward one of the larger huts. Lyra pushed aside the leather curtain and let me step inside.
A waft of something hit my nose—some type of flowery herb. The aroma flooded my nostrils with a sweetness that I could taste. I looked toward the center of the hut and saw the white smoke rising from a fire, heading toward the open hole in the ceiling.
The floor was covered in the same leather the hut was made from, soft underneath my soles. Off to one side, there was a table where there were more concoctions that reminded me of Araceli’s Arcane Circle. The experiments were accompanied by unfurled scrolls and leather-bound books.
Besides the bed, there was only a man left to look at. He had his back turned to me, covered in a white robe that went all the way to his shins. He had his head down as he looked over some parchment in his hands.
“Joris,” Lyra said. “I have returned—”
“Yes, you have returned,” the man interrupted her, his voice as stern as a District Adviser. “This time, you have. But next time, you might not have.”
He turned around and raised his head to look down his nose at her. He was a middle-aged man, somewhere in his fifties I’d estimate. His hair was gone except for the white circling his head in a male-pattern baldness pattern. His face was wrinkled from age, light liver spots dotting his cheeks. All things considered, he didn’t look frail underneath his robes. Judging from the veins on his arms, the guy was probably a lot stronger than most men his age.
He put his hands behind his back as he approached Lyra with the same disapproving glare. “What did I tell you about going beyond the walls without permission?”
“I was on a patrol,” Lyra said. “You never know when a raider might attack. Besides, I never would’ve found him if I hadn’t.” She pointed to me.
The man walked over slowly. He was a few inches shorter, looking me up and down like I was some kind of science experiment.
I gave him a friendly nod. “Hello. You must be Joris.”
He kept one eye half-closed in skepticism.
“He said he met Guillard,” Lyra said.
“Guillard.” The older man stroked the white scruff on his chin. “He is alive?”
I nodded. “Last time I checked. He nearly died in the water. I saw his ship and saved him.”
“Indeed.” The man slowly turned around then began muttering to himself. “Guillard’s theory was correct… There are others who have lived in this world before us.” He spun back around and bowed his head. “My name is Joris. Welcome to Haven.”
“Virgil.”
“Virgil… I sense something about you. You are different. Not from the rest of my people but something else entirely. You have a Mana presence within you.”
“You’ve got some good senses… Wait. You know about Mana, too?”
“Mana exists in all worlds. We were able to manifest it the same as you. Though we were not nearly strong enough to stop the attack…” He bowed his head in disappointment.
“Guillard told me what happened—how you had to flee Qashia and come here.
“The possibility that things could get so bad that letting the only world your people have known die… It is unthinkable. But what is even more unthinkable is that there are times when I wonder if even coming here was the best position for our people.”
“Joris!” Lyra suddenly stepped forward. “You know you can’t say anything like that. As long as there’s hope—”
Joris chuckled and put a hand up to calm her down. “Yes, yes. Forgive this old man for his moment of weakness. It is the rambunctiousness of the youth that will yet save us.”