By The Sword - Homepage

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It all happened so fast.

After my meeting with Arathorn and convincing Kye to come with me, the past day had rushed past in a blur. Despite the simplicity of the task, there had been more preparation than I’d expected. I’d prepared for trips before—as a high knight, travel had been half of my job. But here, things were still different. Here, I’d actually had to learn about my destination. It wasn’t a place I already had conceptions of based on stories from my youth. No rumors, no tales—nothing. It was exactly like all of the other things I’d faced since the beast had cursed my new life.

Entirely new.

And that novelty had led to multiple things. Namely, it had led to decisions. After reporting the task to Lorah, Kye had actually given me a run-down of Norn itself. She’d told me her experience of traveling there and made sure I was fit for travel at all. But after that, the decisions had only just started. I’d had to decide who would pick up my assignments while I was gone. I’d had to decide what to bring—what weapons and equipment. And all of it had only served to remind me of one of the few things I’d actually disliked about being a knight.

“Are you fucking ready yet?” Kye asked from the doorway. I chuckled. At least one of my decisions hadn’t been that hard to make.

I smiled, narrowing my eyes on the weapons rack again as a knife balanced in my hand. Shifting it back and forth, I feigned interest in its weight and composition. After all, I actually was interested in those things, so it wasn’t that hard to pull off. I’d just made the decision already.

“I’m still deciding,” I lied, my lips cracking into a wry grin. The longer I spent with the Rangers, the more devious I found myself becoming. It was enjoyable to indulge in some of the childish things I hadn’t done since my previous youth.

“Just pick one already,” Kye said with a groan. In the corner of my eye, I saw her slump back against the wall while she twirled an arrow between her fingers. My grin only deepened.

In reality, I was only choosing between what backup weapon to bring. As a knight, I’d never had to worry about it because my sword had been able to tear any of my foes to shreds. But now, I didn’t want to take the chance. No matter how much I hated admitting it, Ruia was more dangerous. It was unknown. So I wanted to go prepared.

I tapped my foot and brought the knife up in front of my face again. Its metal tilted at the very edge, sharpening even further with an unreflective grey tinge. It was tipped with blue silver, I noted. One of Kye’s favorite weapons to use. So naturally, I asked her about it. “You think this knife would be useful?”

Kye straightened up, casting a glance my way. And when she saw the knife in my hand, she rolled her eyes. “Yes. You know it is—now stop dawdling. If you don’t choose, I’ll put another hole in your side.”

I finally broke, my face contorting as a laugh bubbled up out of my throat. I turned to Kye and tilted my head. “Wouldn’t that just hold us up even more?”

She shrugged. “Maybe. But I’d get to shoot you again, and I say that’s worth it. This isn’t my job, you know. It’s your own grave.” At the tail end of her sentence, she smirked.

The signature expression made me chuckle. “Fine. I’ll take the knife.”

“Great choice,” Kye said dryly. “Now can we go? We’re wasting daylight.”

Finally, I yielded. I took the knife and holstered it on my waist where I’d already placed the sheath. Then, still grinning to myself, I turned back to Kye and rolled my wrist. “Yes. We can go.”

She rolled her eyes again and walked out the door without me. I chuckled, pushing myself into a brisk walk as I caught up. The bag dragging down my shoulders reminded me of exactly what we were doing. As a ranger, we rarely carried more than our weapons and a few extra supplies. Carrying the brown bags that I’d always seen on the shelves was a strange experience, at least. All I had in mine were rations, my extra uniform, and my bedroll, but the extra weight reminded me that this was it. For the first time since I’d arrived, I was actually leaving Sarin.

Although, at least I didn’t have to carry as much as Kye did. Along with all of her own supplies, she was also carrying the extra equipment and medical supplies that she’d insisted on bringing but hadn’t let me carry for fear that I’d complain.

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I scoffed as I caught up. “How far is Norn anyway?”

Kye turned to me. “Not far. It shouldn’t be more than a day’s travel away on foot.” The signature smirk tugged at her lips. “Though, traveling with you, who knows. It could take up to a week.”

I rolled my eyes, straightening up. “A day’s travel it is, then.”

Kye laughed, tilting her head as we made it to the base of the climb to the main part of town. “I am still holding you to that. If this takes longer than it needs to, you are getting another arrow stuck in your side.”

I sneered. “It won’t. And I made sure of it as soon as I picked you as my guide.”

She jerked her head back at that, sparing a sideways glance at me. Then she grinned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

I snickered. She already knew exactly what I meant. “It’s impossible enough that you already know our forest as well as you do. After going to Norn once, I’m sure you know the way by heart.”

“I travel a lot,” was all the response I got as we walked up toward Sarin’s main square.

I smiled. “It shows. I’ve never even seen anyone here use a map.”

Kye slowed, and I had to slow down just to keep pace. Looking back at her, she squinted at me as if I’d just proposed an unsolvable problem. “A map? How the hell would any of us get a map anyway?”

I blinked, instantly cautious. In Credon, maps had been a common commodity. They had been made for entire regions, kingdoms, and some of the continent. They’d been available to anyone who had enough coin, and I’d always carried one of wherever my king had sent me off to. Here though, things were different. I had to remember that.

“I don’t know,” I said carefully. Kye shook her head slightly and started walking normally again. But the confusion didn’t recede. “Do you not have a single cartographer here in Sarin?”

Kye shook her head, still blinking. “Are you kidding me? With how expensive they are and how quickly they get outdated? A map-maker would run out of business before they even started.”

I scrunched my face. “How—“ I stopped myself, trying to calm the presence of my past life. Back in Credon, map-making had been an easy process. A few professionals skilled in pen-work could create and copy them easily. But in Ruia, it must’ve been different. In some way, it made sense that any form of map was unreliable, but it still irked me. “How does anyone get anywhere without one?”

Kye scoffed. “They know where they’re going,” she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Either they have been to their destination before or they don’t go at all. It’s that or getting lost.”

My eyebrows dropped. It still felt… wrong to me, but I nodded anyway. I kept the rest of my questions inside and catalogued them away to come up at another time. Better not to push it further, I reasoned. So I chalked it up to differences between the continents and moved on. After all, I had enough to worry about as it was.

So I just let the silence that had settled continue as we walked on. Into Sarin’s square and past the sweeping town hall. Through all of the bustling commotion that melted my confusion in an instant. As we walked on, we even got a few waves and nods from the townsfolk. Most nodded to Kye in respect for her service. But some nodded to me, offering the kind of respect that I hadn’t felt in months. The kind of respect that I’d earned in spades whenever I’d returned to Credon triumphant. In Sarin, it came in the form stray glances and esteemed smiles as opposed to cheers and decorations, but it was respect all the same. It felt good.

From my experiences with the townspeople of Sarin, I knew that they respected the Rangers. Revered them, even. To the town, we were seen as protectors—as providers that allowed Sarin to exist at all. And I supposed that wasn’t very far off. Every time I’d been in town, it was always bustling. Busy and cheerful yet accepting. And I hadn’t ever figured out why.

Before coming to Sarin, I’d been tricked by Death. I’d almost starved in the woods. I’d been taken prisoner by mercenaries. And I’d learned that the second chance of life that I’d thought I’d earned was on a corrupted continent instead of my own.

Yet, Sarin was different than that. It was a welcome contrast to the bitterness and the danger that felt safer and more content. It gave me a place to sleep. A place to train. A place to gain the experience my new body so badly needed. It gave me a purpose, and one that wasn’t that different than the one I’d had before. I’d protected citizens as a knight, and I was doing the same thing as a ranger.

It only made sense that people were grateful.

The near-afternoon sun glinted in my eye as we left the square. We turned down a narrower street that led past houses on the outskirts of town. That led back out to a path all too similar to the one I’d arrived on. But as the commotion faded behind us, I couldn’t help feeling bad. And it wasn’t about the uneven roads or mouth-watering smells we were leaving behind. It was that we were leaving at all. We were walking right out of safety, right out of home.

“Leaving this place is harder than I thought,” I said, shaking my head with a dry laugh.

Kye turned to me and nodded, casting a glance at what we were leaving behind. “It really does have that kind of effect on you, doesn’t it? It sucks you in just to spit you out sometimes.”

I bobbed my head, twisting around to spare one last look at the collection of wooden buildings I now called home. The town that had made me feel welcome on a foreign continent and even in foreign skin.

When I turned around, I was met with yet another foreign sight.

Stretched out in front of us as the cobblestone path degraded back into marked dirt lined with stones was a huge field of grass. Unkept and unwieldy, just like it had been during my first days in Ruia. It was scattered with jutting rock formations that seemed to reach to the sky. To my left, the same forest I’d been hunting in for weeks stared back at me. And to my right, the same intimidating mountains loomed over as if taunting us with our destination.

Kye stretched out her hand and pointed in the direction of a collection of trees that led up to the mountainside. “Norn is in that direction.” She smirked. “Didn’t need a map to tell me that.”

I laughed, my mood lightening. And as she walked forward, I was tempted to take a look back, to take one last glance at what I supposed was my new home. But I resisted. I looked at the sprawling land in front of me instead before running to catch up with my companion.

The only way to go was forward.