Three suns shone from the apex of the sky. It had been almost a month since the boy had saved the man from slavers. He had yet to rest. The snow was mostly melted now, and so the Incipere had truly begun. Very few settlements existed on the cliffs of the Edge, but the boy had made much progress in this time, even if he walked on foot. Soon, he would most certainly come into contact with the merchants who traveled on the newly opened roads, seeking as early a beginning as possible for their trades. And with said merchants would come the bandits that preyed on them.

The boy's path soon came to an end with a Y-shaped crossroads. He could choose to go left or right, but there was no path directly forward.

The boy paused for a moment. He sensed a mid-sized group of people approaching from the right branch. He considered leaving the road until they passed, but decided he would have to interact with humans sooner or later.

The boy turned back and waited just beyond the horizon, timing his approach so that he would be near the crossroads early enough that they wouldn't miss him completely, but late enough that he would arrive a bit later than the caravan; after all, that would be just too suspicious of a coincidence.

The caravan contained three wagons and a carriage; two wagons clearly belonged to merchants, one contained guards, and the carriage, covered in ostentatious finery, likely housed traveling nobles.

"Hail the caravan!"

Despite over a month of silence, the boy's voice remained the same; even as he called a simple greeting, it held more beauty than the best of songs; for this, the boy blamed his Fae blood.

"Halt!" commanded a man who seemed to be the guard captain. The guards were twenty in number, more than any merchant or minor noble could afford. They were dressed in chainmail tunics, with leather and half-plate armor on top, and open-faced helmets on their heads. All of them wore a crest that depicted a shining spear on the left breast of their armor. Three were mounted. Clearly, the nobles traveling with the group were of some renown, as no minor noble could afford such a number of guardsmen with such high-quality armor. And by the way that they moved, they were relatively well trained. Not to mention the three horses.

The boy did not recognize the crest, as in his time at war with the humans, his aspects of pride and wrath had decreed that he need not know which ants he was crushing beneath his feet.

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The guard captain, distinguishable by a small plume of feathers on the top of his helmet, rode over to the boy. From the boy's height, the guard could distinguish that he was likely quite young, but he kept a sense of caution, as he would with any stranger on the road. Especially because that the boy's voice was, most definitely, unusual.

"Take off your hood."

The guard's command was short and direct, if a bit overbearing. After all, he was the guard captain of a highly ranked noble.

The boy complied, and both the guards who watched alertly from their positions and the merchants who watched nervously from the safety of their carriages sucked in their breaths.

The boy's face was beautiful. In fact, all of the members of the caravan would mistake him for a female, if not for the fact that there was something about the atmosphere he generated that made his gender absolutely obvious.

Though they were not aware, this was an effect of his Fae blood. The fae all appeared inhumanly beautiful and were definitely feminine by most standards, but the males were able to emit a masculine aura that seemed to contradict their appearance, though in fact, it suited them greatly; they seemed almost as masculine as a seven-foot-tall man with bulging muscles, and yet it somehow fit their beautiful appearances. 

The boy had always emitted this aura, as he disliked being mistaken for a female for... many reasons. The only time he had repressed it was when he had used his Fae appearance to assassinate one of his six competitors for the throne, who held the aspect of Lust. 

The guards felt that this was very abnormal, but they avoided commenting on it; they knew that fairies, supposedly distant relatives of the legendary Fae, had a similar aura, and the noble family they served was not racist like many others.

After a moment of stupefaction, the guard captain grunted and gestured to his two mounted subordinates. The two stood on guard, one watching the boy and the other surveying the surroundings while the captain took a glass orb the size of an infant's fist out of his saddlebags.

The man cautiously handed the orb to the boy, wary of any sudden movements. The boy took the orb, and it turned white for a moment before clearing. The guards lost some of their tension, but continued surveying the surroundings; the orb had decreed the boy innocent, but that did not mean that they could lose concentration; the boy's innocence merely meant that if bandits attacked, he would just be another innocent victim.

The guard captain left watching the surroundings to the nine other guards currently on duty, and said with a friendly smile "Hello, boy. Quite young to be alone on the road, aren't you?"

The boy pulled his hood back up and shrugged, replying "Indeed. That's why I wanted to ask if I could travel with you."

The man's smile turned into a grin[1], as the boy's attitude reminded him of his son. "As long as you can carry your own weight, it's no problem. What's your name, boy?"

The boy looked up, meeting the man's brown eyes with his own golden ones, and opened his mouth to speak.

"Fenrir."