She slowly looked down at her hands before lifting one up to her head. “Owe…”
I stepped up cautiously. She still seemed normal, but…
She lowered her hand, squinting her eyes at me, and stepped away, the farther away she got the more she tensed up. She stepped closer again before finally relaxing, repeating this process a couple of times before stepping up right next to me. “Why does it hurt more the farther away I am from you?”
‘I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT’S HAPPENING! How should I know…’
Her whole body suddenly went limp and she fell into my arms, all of the strange changes vanishing like they were never even there. The carriage had stopped at that point and all that was left was the massive crater behind and the gorey battlefield. I moved slightly to get a better look at her peacefully sleeping face. ‘Wait… So… Different world, born different, knows magic when magic is illegal. I’m the main character right?’ I looked back at the massive crater again. “Airsidh?”
“Don’t look at me, this is your doing.”
“What…”
“Something happened like this in the dungeon too remember? When she saved you from that undead hoard? Although, that was a bit less dramatic.”
‘Wait what? No. That was, Rafi…’ Finlo threw her sword back up to the rooftop and Airsidh caught it, slowly cleaning up the carriage roof as if his sister hadn’t just turned half demon and nuked a mountain.
“From what I understand she made a pact with a saint and became a vessel.”
“Oh… Is that all…”
He sighed. “Let’s clean this mess up and make sure the horses are ok and the carriage is holding together. Or… I’ll do that. You should change her clothes and clean her off. Spiders blood is usually acidic.”
I quickly did just that, using my magic to create some water and wash her off with a rag inside the carriage before changing her clothes and coming back out after tucking her in.
I took a quick scan of everything. The horses were exhausted, but after a bit of rest and something to drink they were fine, except Fritz of course she was fine regardless… I still gave her some treats though, after pretending to scold her a bit for how she bucked me off.
The carriage was in… Less than ideal shape… Still, the inside was relatively unharmed and the luggage was all there too. All in all not a bad result. The paint had certainly seen better days, and parts were cracked and broken. It was pretty shocking considering it was all made out of that special wood, or at least most of it was. Then again, most of the serious damage was actually caused by Lu…
I let out a sigh as I climbed into the carriage to check on her. She was still unconscious, no doubt talking to the saint she made a pact with, who I could only assume was Rafi.
Parts of it were still confusing to me but… The whole thing made me worry. She at least looked like she was sleeping peacefully though, and besides, I couldn’t do much until she woke up anyway…
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Airisdh jumped back in the carriage with us and we started moving again. “Ok, we aren’t far from our next stop, so I’ll try and make this quick. Lu made a pact with the Saintess of the Abyss to become her vessel, it’s like… She can barrow Lu’s body every now and then, or in some instances share it, giving Lu her powers, which is most likely what you just saw.”
“So… Two people existing parallel each other in one body at the same time…”
“Yeah, see, you get it.”
“Yeah… Why did she make this pact?”
“To save you, and… Also possibly because the pact involved her going to the dungeon and she was jealous she wasn’t invited.”
“Sounds like her…” I sighed. ‘I’ll have to talk to Rafi about this…’
A loud horn bellowed through the valley as we came down the mountain and birds, shocked by the sound, took flight from the surrounding trees, some of which had talons the size of my head… Easily big enough to pick me up and fly away with me… Thankfully they weren’t hostile…
Our carriage finished down the winding road and finally started traveling through farm country that lasted about half a mile surrounding the castle. A small knee-high stone wall surrounded the perimeter which… Well, I guess it looked nice… The community was small, but that made sense, it was just a fortress, not a town, and everyone in it was most likely military.
The castle itself was located on an island in the middle of a massive bridge that crossed a raging river just before emptying out into the sea. Saying it was a sight would be putting it mildly. Even though the river was clearly flooding from the massive amounts of snow melt and rain there were still dozens of feet of rock between it and the fortress that stood strong against it. There were just… A few things that bothered me… “Airsidh…”
“Yeah… The fields are empty…”
I sharpened my senses and the wind carried the sounds of battle to my ears. “They’re under siege…”
“Monsters or humans?”
“Monster I think…”
“That makes things easy. Can you tell what kind?”
“Sorry… The water is moving too much for me to hear anything clearly…”
“So sea monsters then, that should make things easy.” He poked his head out the window. “Zu! Double time to the garrison!”
The carriage sped up again.
He slowly stood up, letting out a deep breath, trying not to show how stiff his joints were. “If it’s an attack from the sea there are only a few things it could be, especially if it’s threatening Riverhold I’m expecting a kracken, water panthers, or if we’re lucky, reaper killers.
“If we're lucky…” ‘That doesn’t sound like something easy to kill…’
“I was being sarcastic.”
I rolled my eyes. ‘Oh of course…’ “You fought a Kraken already, right? Let’s just assume it’s one of those what do we do? I only ever learned about land monsters.”
He shrugged. “Krackens aren’t crazy tough, but their limbs are really slick and relatively immune to blunt damage and are so thick they can be hard to cause any real damage too.”
“Just tell me whether or not it’s essentially a giant squid.”
“More like a carnivorous flower the size of a whale.”
‘Flower?’ “So uh… Do they taste good?”
He paused to look at me for a minute without responding.
“What? If I’m going to kill some giant freaky monster for free I should at least get a good meal right?”
“Right… They taste pretty good I guess… But it’s really chewy.”
“And how do you kill it? Where’s it’s a magic crystal?”
“Figure out how to distract it for long enough that someone else can stab its heart.”
“The crystal is inside?”
“It has more than one and freely moves them around…”
I chuckled nervously, starting to get a little intimidated. “So just killing it the normal way is easier…”
He nodded
“Ok… And the other two?”
I followed him onto the roof and we grabbed our weapons. “We don’t have to worry about those.”
“What makes you say that.”
He pointed at the castle as an entire wall came crashing down and people flew through the air. “The other two don’t really throw people like that.”
“O-oh…”