Chapter 12 Soon Enough.
“Get comfortable.” Ellie told the pair as they began their three day trip in earnest. It was going to be nothing but slightly bending stone and dirt roads for the next forty miles. It was a trip that usually could have been done in a day or so by a dedicated enough hiker but wagons were slow and people needed breaks to feed and water the horses and stretch their legs every few hours.
Isaac settled in next to Ellie on the bench seat and Lenna sat behind him just inside the wagon so the cover could help shield her from the comparatively bright daylight. “So, how long have you been guiding caravans?” Isaac began as small talk. There was going to be a lot of silence to fill while the seemingly endless trees, bugs, and small rodents passed them by. Speaking of bugs, that was by far the worst part of the outside world for Isaac. He got used to the light quickly enough but the occasional bug buzzing around his face was annoying at best. At one point he just incinerated it with a small puff of death flames which unfortunately spooked the horses.
Lenna was thankful for her full-face helmet that helped shield her eyes from light but it still wasn’t enough. She ended up just keeping her eyes closed as the wagon rocked and rolled under her. Her only other option was to just keep squinting at everything to use her eyelashes as a light shield.
Birds chirped and sang as they fluttered from tree to tree, chasing bugs and grabbing twigs for the nests. Various other tree based creatures climbed and hopped from branch to branch in search of a meal or playing with each other. The cloud cover left everything slightly muted and the colors dull but life went on with little other change. The horses pulled and the mortals sat mostly in silence as the hours dragged on.
By the time the wagon train had stopped to rest for lunch, Isaac had learned almost the entire story of Ellie’s life. Apparently she had been born halfway between two cities while her parents were making a delivery. Ever since, she had always been on the road. Nowhere had ever felt like home other than a moving wagon. She had grayed early and was only forty but her bad eyesight had always made people think she was older than she was. The constant squint was both a blessing and a curse. Few people would bother an older middle aged woman who was not that attractive unless necessary, and Ellie seemed to like that, but at the same time it was the reason that she was still single. Hugh was a friend from a caravan a long time ago and she had easily accepted the job once he had offered it to her. Unfortunately for her, Hugh seemed to be everyone’s favorite mark and not interested in her in any romantic way. She had never had feelings for Hugh but she was getting to the point where she would be willing to give any decent looking guy with a decent personality and hygiene at least a chance.
“Y’all are from down under, yeah?” Ellie asked Isaac as she slipped the feeding bag over the head of one of her horses.
“More or less.” Isaac replied. “Lenna’s eyes aren’t built for the surface, but there is a guy in Sapphirestone that has something that’ll help her with that. We could have just traveled at night but the surface is so much more vibrant under the sun.”
“Night’s scary for most.” Ellie told him. “I’ve never had great sight, but I can hear real well, so it’s never been as scary for me, but there are a lot a things that are real hungry at night.”
“Lenna and I aren’t any better than any other double platinum adventurers in the daylight, but at night it would take a demigod to get rid of us.” Isaac assured her in what probably came off more like bragging but was basically the truth. Only something capable of tangling with a demigod could pose a real threat to the pair under the moonlight.
“Someone is watching us.” Lenna spoke quietly. She had thought that her words were quiet enough that only Isaac could hear but apparently Ellie’s sharp ears had heard her as well.
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“From the caravan?” Ellie asked just as quietly.
“No.” Lenna replied. “Not unless one of them is in the trees behind you.”
“Not a chance.” Ellie told her. “Too many spiders and snakes in the trees for anyone to be off wanderin’.”
“Lenna, protect the caravan. I’m gonna go take a look at our admirer.” Isaac told her and started climbing into the wagon. With a casual gesture he left shadows clinging to Lenna’s hand and then finished hiding himself inside the wagon. Once out of sight, Isaac vanished in the embrace of shadows and arrived cloaked in them in the dense foliage. It took him a little while to find the man Lenna was talking about and when he did he simply stood nearby and watched.
The man was covered in a thin layer of dust and dried mud that served to protect him from the endless amount of insects. He was wearing tattered clothes that did their job well enough but were in dire need of repair. The best part about them, for the man anyway, was that they were brown and green which helped him to blend into the forest around him. He kept glancing down at a flat square piece of bark in his hand and making tallies on it with a piece of charcoal. “Where did that other guy go?” He asked himself in a whisper before he shook his head. He turned to leave and started slinking off farther back into the forest.
Isaac debated following the man for a moment before he realized that he didn’t have to. They weren’t hired to handle the bandits so he would let them make the first move. Once they did then they were fair game. It would also mean a lot less legwork for Isaac if he waited until they ambushed the caravan to beat them and make them guide Lenna and himself back to their camp for an easy cleanup. “Godspeed.” Isaac spoke towards the bandit scout from inside his cloak of silent shadows.
Once the scout was truly out of sight Isaac appeared next to the wagon Lenna and Ellie were waiting next to. “It was just a scout. No point in doing anything about it now. We don’t want to spook them.” Isaac explained.
“Y’all are using us as bait?!” Ellie exclaimed.
“Calm down.” Isaac told her. “Lenna can wrestle a giant and I can fist fight a dragon. There is nothing a few idiots in rags can do to us if they have no idea who they’re messing with.”
“Just who are you, anyway?” Ellie questioned him.
“I am the Lord of all that is Dark, the Legendslayer, the demigod of Darkness, Lord Isaac Wexler.” Isaac introduced himself. He then gestured towards Lenna. “And this is my wife, my Lady of Hellfire, favored and blessed by Lua, defiant survivor of Dri’El, Lady Lenna V’Nova.”
“That’s a lot of fancy titles.” Ellie replied. “I don’t even know what half of them are but they sound important. Demigod? Are the ones on top alright with you claiming that?”
Isaac wasn’t going to lie, he felt a bit insulted even though it was the truth. He was the strongest dark mage in the world until someone proved otherwise and there wasn’t a single shadow sorcerer that would be able to do it. As far as he knew, it would take an actual black dragon to even attempt at beating him at his own game. An ancient, maybe even an adult, black dragon could do so but he wasn’t claiming to be a black dragon so he had no idea if they would care at all. Isaac turned to look at Lenna. “This seems like a case of ignorance opening the gate to disaster.” He told his wife.
“She doesn’t know any better.” Lenna explained to him. “You are a new demigod, one that has been kept under wraps while you regained your strength no less.”
“Yes but how does she not know about Judgment and I trading blows outside of the city. That was over a month ago.” Isaac replied in mild disbelief. “We literally fought a demigod in front of a thousand people. I vanquished a demigod in front of a thousand people. He then came back and hit me with a hammer of justice or whatever, in the middle of the street.”
Lenna shrugged. “Some people just live with a bucket on their head?”
“I travel the world.” Ellie defended herself. “Sure, I don’t hear ev’ry rumor and I believe even less of ‘em but I ain’t gonna believe the insanity y’all are spoutin’.”
“I would show her but the horses would be entirely inconsolable.” Isaac told Lenna. “This is going to be a long trip, isn’t it?”
“Just until the bandits show up and you go all ‘I, am, Darkness’ on them.” Lenna replied. “By then, I think even the local dead will know who you are.”
“You know, I kind of expected something like this eventually. What really caught me off guard is the fact that we just came from Safeharbor.” Isaac explained. “The place where I hit the planet with a legend so hard it rattled glasses in the duke’s manor. The place we waded through thousands of skeletons to get to. The place we had a brawl with a demigod in front of. I turned a man to dust in front of two dozen people, like four times.”
Lenna shrugged again. “I don’t know what to tell you, Isaac.” She told him.
Isaac just sighed. “The bandits can’t come soon enough. The belief in my status as a demigod is one thing but the double platinum adventurers known as the Lord of Darkness and Lady of Hellfire should at least be well known. We are some of the strongest people on the continent. I don’t want to have to make any examples of idiots picking fights just because they don’t know who we are, again.”