Reysha would have preferred to travel on foot, but time was valuable and it was easier to avoid settlements when taking the air route. While they did not know how exactly the Deathhound located their trail, they were certain that he did follow it exactly as it was laid. That meant that a mere hundred metre curve around a cluster of houses reduced the chance of anyone in that area dying considerably.
In their current position, this was as much good as they could do. It wasn’t much and it wasn’t even guaranteed to work. For all they knew, the demon could have been prone to detours or didn’t need to follow the trail as exactly as Aclysia had surmised. Regardless they had to try something, especially when it was so easy to do.
So, the only times they landed were when they needed to sleep or eat. Typically, they ate the deer that lived in these plain areas. Once or twice, they simply stole grain right off the field. In both cases, Reysha had to force the food down her throat. Neither the animals nor the crops were magical.
While Aclysia did have the typical reluctance to steal, in this particular case she declared this the definitive lesser of two evils. The fields they took from were large, the village stood a safe distance away and, as the villagers had attested to, food was no issue whatsoever in this area of the Leaf.
They kept going west. It was an often-difficult task to stay on course, reliant entirely on Aclysia’s ability to read the path of the sun. The only landmarks they had seen on the map were the single mountain in the area, housing the Golden Descent dungeon, to the south and a vast lake to the north. They passed both within several hours of each other. Otherwise, there were only plains, golden plains, all around them.
“FUCKING HELLROOTS, YES! A DIFFERENT COLOUR!” Reysha shouted, when, after four days of travel, the ocean appeared before them in all of its blue expanse. A greyish blue, it had to be said. This was not some kind of tropical Leaf where the water was clear and the wind still. Constant breezes kept the surface of the ocean in wavy turmoil, the overcast sky filtered too much sunlight to properly illuminate the liquid and disturbed sediment did the rest to give the water a dull appearance.
Unimpressive as the colour may have been next to the prosperous fields, it was still pleasing just because it was something else. It also confirmed that they had been heading generally in the right direction, which assuaged Aclysia’s fears of having misinterpreted the available information.
They headed towards the first large settlement by the water that they saw. Crossing the ocean was, according to the map, inadvisable using flight. A boat would be slower, but provide them with shelter from bad weather and exhaustion. Being on a seafaring vessel would be one of the few ways they could be around people without endangering them. Their route was being tracked, not their scent, so the boat would not be a pitstop for the demon – unless it happened to be on the route at the time Turlesh passed through.
“Darling, you and I should wait here,” Aclysia told him, after they had landed at the usual, safe distance.
Apexus tilted his head, “Why?”
“According to my assumption, the Deathhound is utilizing a tracking Art and it strikes me as highly probable that it functions similarly to the one the Hunter employed,” the metal fairy presented her thoughts. “If this is true and if Apotho, in his rage, decided that you should be the one to be tracked, as I deem the most likely, then it would be advisable that you stay out of the settlement and join us on the boat after we left port.”
“So why are you staying?” Reysha asked.
“Because most likely is not a guarantee and I am not endangering lives on the basis of my assumption,” Aclysia looked at the tiger girl, took the group’s coin purse out of her adventurer’s bag, and handed it over. “I trust you to locate a captain and come up with a convincing argument as to why we can only join out of harbour.”
Reysha took the coin purse and weighed the heavy thing in her hand. With a wide grin she chirped, “I will,” and turned straight towards the city.
Swing in her step, she strutted swiftly, straight inside the settlement. Despite her recent lack of desirable food and a tad of wobbliness in her initial marching due to lack of ground contact over the course of the day, she was in a good mood. There was no greater reason for it, Reysha just felt like smiling and whistling to herself as she walked through the mostly empty streets.
The vacancy of the outdoors could not be mistaken for the city feeling empty. The evening hours had come around and all that held the night at bay were the lanterns all around that burned either magic or, more commonly, fish oil, to keep the darkness at bay. Cold nights were the norm in an Autumn Leaf, so the people found company inside inns.
‘That makes things easier,’ the tiger girl thought and stepped into one of those inns.
Like she was used to, she drew the eyes of basically everyone inside within twenty seconds. These things usually went the same way at all times: at first people just turned their heads because something was moving at the entrance, catching the attention of the alert members of the crowd. When those then kept staring because she was the stunning, hot redhead that she was, more heads turned. The black of her sclera caused some additional interest at this point, rarely sexual.
Reysha smirked and entered the room, hips swinging a bit more than usual. She didn’t care to pretend that she didn’t enjoy the attention. The few men who had their wives accompany them on this evening trip were the only ones averting their gaze, everyone else kept watching. How obvious they were about it depended entirely on their level of brashness or drunkenness.
‘Men are so easy,’ the redhead thought and made her way to the bar. Had she worn something more revealing than the casual clothes and cloak, the latter an addition against the cold, she knew she would have had a pair of eyes now squarely focused on her bosom. Especially once she crossed her arms on the counter and leaned forwards. “Hey there,” she purred, tail brushing against the inside of her cloak.
Before the barman could respond, someone sitting nearby, one from a group of friends, entered the conversation as if he had been greeted. “Hey, pretty lady, care for a drink?”
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Reysha grimaced, “No, I’m good.”
“No reason to look that offended at a simple offer,” the man grumbled, raising his hands in defence.
“Sorry, it’s just that I can’t drink beer anymore. Plus, if I’m honest, it’d be wasted money anyway. What ya want, I give someone else, ya know?”
“Horrible fate,” the man shook his head. “No beer… you know what I mean lads?” he toasted towards the rest of his friends and turned his back towards Reysha. It had been a gamble that didn’t pay off and the young men were used to that. There were plenty of weirdos that got considerably more offended at a quick no. That bunch didn’t have any of those and so they took it in stride.
For her part, Reysha turned her head back to the barman. Interestingly, the tall, heavily haired fellow had completely changed his behaviour now. The announcement of her being unavailable, had transformed his gaze from leering to plain. Frankly put, he no longer looked at her as someone he could sleep with but as another customer.
Reysha found that change peculiar. She had never observed it before. Since getting together with Apexus, she hadn’t been in any of the environments she used to find pleasure in. “How can I help you?” the barman asked, dunking a rough ceramic mug into a bucket full of water to clean it. Afterwards he grabbed a towel. “Since you’re not looking for a drink.”
“I’d like to know if there’s any ships sailing west that a couple of adventurers could book passage on.” While Reysha spoke, he stared at the work of his hands, making sure the beverage container got cleaned out properly. She wasn’t used to this either, especially from tipsy barmen. On one hand, she did not like whatsoever not getting attention. On the other, that people (usually men, but there were exceptions to everything) weren’t desperately competing over who got to talk to her because she was hot and down to fuck made the conversation a lot quicker.
“Ah, you want to get to Weststir. Old Joey likes to ferry people like you over.” Putting the mug to the side, the barman looked across the simple, cobblestone room. “He’s at the table right of the door. The guy with the dark green coat. See him?”
“I do,” Reysha nodded and started walking.
Joey was still looking at her, far out of reach of the conversation. When she walked towards him, his eyes lingered on her chest for a moment. Once it became clear that she was coming towards him, he turned his gaze towards his drink.
He was an old man, a half-elf as the pointy ears indicated, with grey hair that still sported major traces of once having been universally black. He wore it long, around chin length, and open. Like his dark green coat, it was wild and the only treatment it got was that of the sea breeze. His build was lean and simultaneously packed enough to show that he worked aboard his ship. A tricorne sat on the table next to his large mug.
“Must be an adventurer,” he asserted immediately.
“How’d you know?” Reysha asked, plopping down on the seat opposite of him.
“Usually, I would say that nobody else comes to sit at my table unless I invite them,” he answered and sipped on his drink. “With you, it’s because you got black fucking eyes, Ragressian.”
“Oh hey, someone actually knows where I’m from.” Reysha’s grin fell, just like her tone . “How thrilling.”
“I used to work with someone from your Leaf.”
“What was the guy’s name?”
“His name was Mandela.”
“That’s my uncle!”
“No, he wasn’t.”
“No, he wasn’t,” Reysha admitted and laughed. Joey joined in. The little joke broke the ice effectively and the tiger girl reached over the table to offer her hand. “Name’s Reysha. Looking for passage over to Weststir. Ya know the drift.”
“Indeed, I do,” Joey took the hand and shook. “I’ve been doing this for seventy years. You’re lucky that you came today. I only do this trip once every three months and I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“Well, I deserve some luck,” the tiger girl grinned and fell back into her chair. Casually, she threw one arm over the backrest and crossed her legs. “I’ll be taking my boy toy and girl toy along, that fine with you?”
Joey blew air out of his nose and took another sip. “Sure, but my ship isn’t big enough for proper privacy. Keep things quiet until we have made it across.”
“Does that mean no sex or no loud sex?”
“The latter,” the half-elven sailor clarified. “You’ll have to share the room with three other passengers though. One of them is a fellow adventurer, so she might go along with your wild excesses, but the other two are local idiots.” He pointed at the friend group by the bar. “They’re giving them a goodbye celebration.”
“If they can’t keep their hands to themselves, they’ll get a broken wrist or nose – depending on who catches them,” Reysha warned.
Joey shrugged with all of the dismissiveness an old half elf had to offer. “That’ll be their issue, I just ferry people over. Better to break their nose than their wrist though, they’ll need their hands if we get in trouble.” Swiftly the man emptied his mug and slammed it back down on the wooden table. “You pay me one gold for the ferry, you come with your own food, I would recommend a week of supplies, you sleep in the same room as the other passengers, and if we encounter a storm or if the winds let up, you help with rowing. All of that sound good?”
“That’s one gold for each or all of us?” Reysha asked.
“All.”
The tiger girl put the purse on the table and searched around in it until she found the coin. Joey grabbed it as soon as she had slid it over the table, testing the metal for the softness of honest gold. “A dungeon coin,” he remarked, unsurprised. It was easily recognizable by how new the coin looked, without having any kind of special print on it. Any nation in the Omniverse that had the capacity to mint its own coins did so with their own flare.
“You charge a lot,” Reysha noted.
“If you don’t like it, you’ll have to go at least two days north or to Maevstir,” Joey said, placing the coin back on the table, allowing Reysha to take it back. “Getting a ship in these parts is damn near impossible. You have to buy it from Weststir, because we don’t have any large enough forests here that anyone bothers to be a master carpenter. You can only get to Weststir via boat. You see the business model?”
“So, you take a boat over to buy boats?” Reysha asked.
“Fishing boats, the rowing variety. And then I export them inland to people who live by the lake.” He raised his hand and the barman nodded, quickly coming over with one freshly filled mug and taking the empty one with him. “I’m rich and you will make me richer.”
“Sounds like you love money.”
“Only thing that never got on my nerves,” Joey mumbled while raising his mug. “If that’ll be all, I have drinks to empty tonight. Meet me by my boat tomorrow around noon. You can’t miss it.”
“Just one more thing – my two companions, they can only join us on the boat after we’ve left the harbour,” Reysha stated and placed another gold coin next to the first one.
“Will that slow us down?” Joey wanted to know.
“They’ll just fly after us and land on deck. Nothing unusual after that, I pinkie swear.” Reysha offered the pinkie of her left hand.
Waving off with one hand, Joey pocketed the two gold coins with the others. “Just make sure that your issues stay your own,” he demanded and grabbed his beer. “Now go back to your boy toy or whatever you want to call him. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Have a nice night. Hope you won’t have to wank yourself to sleep,” the tiger girl purred while she got up.
“We’ll see,” Joey responded, with the hint of a smile on his lips.
They understood each other and Reysha returned to her group with the swing still in her step.