Chapter 21 - Shared Destinations

Road, Vanstead Dukedom of Augustein Year 995

The road at night looked like a different world. The grasses turned into a singular, shifting mass of shadows. The vast sky became a smooth, inky plain speckled with silver stars around the silver moon.

It was a clear night, and the edges of the moon were crisp even as they undulated and warped, moonlight shifting with each moment. It was one of the “wave” nights, as Amara had taken to calling them. Those nights, the moon’s warping took the form of ripples, moving like water in smooth, constant patterns. Other nights, the movements would be more jerky. Sometimes it didn’t move at all, and the stillness would be disconcerting.

Amara adjusted her position. They’d stopped a little ways away from the road behind a small hill that would obscure them from immediate passersby, and they sat around a small crackling campfire that danced in the wind, constantly in a battle to remain lit. Amara eyed the flames, their warmth barely present against the night chill. Her eyes shifted over to Isolde seated on the opposite side of the campfire.

After they’d stopped for the night, the woman had pulled out her spear, lighting up the stone and unwrapping it from itself, and begun to clean and inspect it. Watching her had made Amara briefly consider if she should do the same with her dagger, but the comparison between the two weapons and their quality was so comical that she’d laughed away the idea. She was under no illusion that her knife would last more than another two or three fights at most.

“We should be able to reach Magrath tomorrow night if we maintain a constant speed of travel,” Isolde said, not looking up as she inspected the blade of the spear.

Amara nodded. She leaned back on her arms, letting her fingers sink into the damp grasses, and tilted her head away from the thin wisps of smoke rising from the fire. She stared up at the sky, absentmindedly tracing the movements of the moon.

“There’s a lot of ore there, right?” she remarked casually. Leila always went there to get ore for the watchmen, and a couple of times Joan had gone in her stead when the woman was too busy. Amara herself had never been there, though.

“More than here, certainly.” Isolde flipped the spear over and began to inspect the other side of the blade. “A new mine was dug near Magrath a few years ago. A fairly large one, at that.”

“You keep good track of this stuff.”

Isolde chuckled. Without pausing, she pulled out a cream colored cloth from her bag and began to wipe the blade. “Well, it’s necessary in my line of work.”

Amara felt her lips spread into a grin. “Didn’t know that was what they were calling theft these days.”

Isolde glanced up at her, an eyebrow raised. “Well, you certainly don’t seem to care much.” She paused, adjusting her position so that she could look Amara in the eye. “I suppose, now that we’ve confirmed we’re traveling together for the foreseeable future, it’s as good a time to ask as any. You’re truly alright with my ‘thievery,’ as you put it? You’re aware it can be a capital offense.” She gestured vaguely. She still had on her gloves, and they blended into the night sky.

Amara shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter to me.” Her eyes shifted over to Isolde’s hands, remembering the numbers that had been there before they faded away. “Besides, I think I’ve got an idea why you do it.”

Isolde smiled wryly, eyes sharp. “Well, it’s certainly necessary for someone with my…metrics.” She cocked her head. “Haven’t you thought about it?”

Amara raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

This time Isolde’s eyes were the ones that landed on Amara’s bare hands. “Your reserves are standard, even a bit above average,” she remarked. “But with such high output and low variability, you will very quickly drain your reserves, especially if I’m correct in assuming that your output continually increases.”

“Something like that,” Amara said. “Haven’t really figured out exactly how it works yet, but yeah, it goes up from what I can tell.”

“But your variability remains at 1.”

“Yep.” For a period of time, Amara had believed her variability would also increase. That way, she’d be able to keep the same minimum output, but instead, it remained the same and her minimum thus also kept rising.

Isolde hummed to herself. “And you’ve never considered using ore to mitigate the cost to your reserves?”

Amara scratched her hair. “Well, ore’s not really a thing much in Winrow, so I didn’t really think about it,” she said plainly. Isolde folded the cloth and put it aside before giving the spear a final check. A few strands of dark hair fell over her face as she worked.

“I would think,” Isolde said, “that finding a way to live longer would’ve been a top priority for you.”

Amara watched her closely, but the woman’s eyes were turned away, focused on her weapon.

“What, like it is for you?” She shrugged. “I dunno, sounds to me like if you were really so worried about it, you wouldn’t use magic so much.” She nodded pointedly at Isolde’s gloves. The woman chuckled.

“I suppose that’s true.” She straightened, and with another tap to the stone, the spear glowed and began to roll into itself again, its movement reminding Amara of a coiling snake. Once the glow had faded and the spear had been condensed into a much smaller form, Isolde tucked it back into her bag and closed it shut.

“You are correct that avoiding magic would be the most effective way to preserve my lifespan,” she said calmly. Her eyes stared into the crackling flames. “However, I have no desire to allow my… poor luck to impede my desire to grow stronger.”

Amara grinned. “And you don’t think me tagging along’ll do that?”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Isolde chuckled. “Well, you seemed a capable enough fighter during that encounter in the forest. And admittedly there are certain things that are much harder to accomplish alone.”

Amara hummed and leaned further back, sinking her fingers into the damp earth.

“Well, I’ll probably join you then.” She raised a hand, absentmindedly staring at its currently blank back. “I’ve always wanted to know how far I could push the output thing, to be honest, but I never really had a chance to.” Not if she wanted to avoid blowing up Winrow by mistake. “Getting ore’ll definitely help with the ‘not dying’ part of that,” she joked.

Isolde chuckled. “Well, I’m still training my magic myself, but I would be happy to have someone join me.”

Amara finally gave up on staying seated and laid back, resting her head on the grasses with a sigh. From this angle, she could see the entire sky, and there was only a hint of everything below it.

“Sounds good to me,” she said, closing her eyes and breathing in the air.

For a brief moment, before her eyelids shut, she could almost convince herself that the figure sitting opposite to her, partially cloaked by the campfire, was Edith.

—

The two rose early in the morning, and Amara was disappointed to see it was a cloudy day. The blue sky was cloaked in a layer of flat grey clouds that hung low over the land. Their color reminded Amara a bit of the facility walls, only these, she knew, were ephemeral and easy to pass through.

Perhaps because of the weather, the two didn’t come across many people along the road. A few traveling farmers and one or two carriages passed by, but for the most part, they were able to travel uninterrupted for much of the day. Of course, it was a bit difficult to tell how much time was passing when the sky was as covered as it was.

“We’ll need to get you gloves,” Isolde remarked as they walked. Amara raised an eyebrow, eyeing her bare hands. Isolde just shook her head.

“I’m surprised you don’t already have a pair,” she remarked. “Those numbers immediately draw attention.”

Amara laughed. “Well, I don’t really care that much about it.” In Winrow, she hadn’t used magic particularly often anyway. It was a bit hard to, when every single use resulted in excessive destruction. As a result, hiding her numbers, as was customary for most frequent magic users, hadn’t really come up.

That, and a small part of Amara was curious to see if someone would eventually come after her if she kept drawing attention to herself. If anyone who was involved with the experiments was still alive. That would certainly be a way to give her travels some direction, she thought darkly. Amara shook her head.

“I guess I’ll get some. Maybe a better weapon, too.” She patted her knife.

“I’m surprised that it’s still intact,” Isolde remarked.

“You and me both.” Amara slowed down, sniffing the air when she realized it was dustier than before. Amara glanced down at the road, and she saw that the path had indeed become a fair bit more dry. She raised her head and glanced around.

After passing through a chunk of fields, the signature forests of Vanstead had returned and the smooth land rose into rolling hills that seemed to climb higher and higher the further they walked. Amara noted how the hills were much more rocky here.

“It seems Magrath’s mines have expanded even further than I thought,” Isolde remarked. Amara rubbed her nose and nodded in agreement.

The dust grew thicker and thicker, and up ahead, Amara could see movement around the hills as they walked. Most of the grasses disappeared or were reduced to a few yellowed patches, and the sounds of shifting stone and clanging metal resounded around the landscape.

“Excuse me,” a man muttered, hurrying past them with a bucket of sloshing water that he carried to the other side of the path. He was dressed in a worn shirt and thick pants, both covered in so many old stains and dirt that it was impossible to tell what their original color had been. His forehead shone with sweat despite the slight chill, and his face was equally smudged with dirt as he hurried across the road with the bucket of water that Amara noted was rather cloudy.

From behind one of the hills, a group of other workers stepped out and took turns passing around the bucket to drink. None of them looked in Amara and Isolde’s direction.

The sound of shifting stones made Amara turn around. Up ahead on the other side of the road, she could see a few more workers standing around a mine entrance. Like in Penrith, carts filled with stones stood in a line near the hill, though these had workers behind them wheeling them away with slow, heavy shoves.

In front of the entrance itself, one worker’s hand was outstretched, shaking slightly. A faint orange glow surrounded him, one matched by a small ore that he gripped in his other hand. In front of the entrance, a large stone shone with the same color, and the man gritted his teeth, sweating bullets as the stone slowly shifted to the side, allowing the other workers to enter the mines proper.

Nearby, Amara noticed a woman struggling to yank a towering cart of stones through a different entrance. Another worker rushed over, a similar dull ore in hand, and a soft yellow light wrapped around the mine opening’s edges, warping them slightly so that the cart could pass through.

Amara realized Isolde had continued walking ahead and hurried after her, though she kept glancing around them as they passed through. She heard one worker off to the side whisper to the other.

“Mandy says it’s gonna take a lotta magic to get that rock by entrance 2 out the way.”

The other worker huffed, her breaths coming in heavy pants. “Well we don’t have much rations left today. Tell her she’s gonna have to find some other motion affinities and figure out how they wanna divide the magic use.”

A few eyes glanced in their direction as the two walked through, but for the most part, the workers seemed much too busy to pay them any attention. Isolde kept walking steadily, though her eyes carefully scanned the surroundings as they passed through, even as she kept her head mostly still. Amara didn’t bother to hide her curiosity.

By the time the constant cloud of dust had faded somewhat and they passed through, the green grasses and trees returning to their vision, Amara remarked, half to herself, “So that’s what mines’re like.” When they were active, that was.

Isolde smiled slightly even as she kept her head facing forward. “They had more ore rations than I thought,” she said. “Usually laborers don’t get as much to work with.”

Amara hummed, glancing back, but the mines were too far away to see now. “How do they figure out who’s using magic when there’s no rations?”

“Usually the people with the highest reserves will offer to do it, but I’ve heard of more than a few fights breaking out over the subject.”

Amara could imagine. The lower people’s magic reserves got, the more dedicated they became to preserving them, with a few exceptions like Joan. She wondered how the woman was doing. If she was still using her magic to heal, if more of her body was beginning to crumble away. She wondered if Colm had forgiven her for leaving yet.

“There.”

Amara glanced up, looking in the direction Isolde nodded. Just through a thicker patch of trees, she could make out a few distant silhouettes. Even with her limited view, she could see many, many more buildings than she’d ever seen in one place before, densely packed along smooth, even roads. The roofs, too, extended much higher than Amara was used to, and she found herself walking faster unconsciously, eager to see more of the town without the trees in her way.

For her part, Isolde matched her pace, looking just as happy to finally reach their destination. When they finally stepped through the thick trees, the town greeted them in all its glory, and Amara noted a large wooden sign standing beside the road, the name of the town carved in intricate letters. None of the villages bothered to have signs like that.

Welcome to Magrath, it read.