When I found myself in the woods after months spent in the damp, cold, and shit-smelling cellar, I thought there could be nothing more beautiful than that tranquil place, albeit shaded by the crowns of majestic trees, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Sure enough, the sun warming my still sore leg muscles cut sharply into my eyes, drawing out the tears, yet I couldn’t help staring wide-eyed at the vast world before me.

With Esulmor Forest at our backs, the grasslands rose gently before us, stretching all the way to the horizon into the valley between the mountains. And those rock giants were something to behold. To my left, quite in the distance, stretched the smaller of the two mountain ranges. And on my right rose the one under which Esulmor sprawled, its snow-capped peaks so high that I had to bend my head back to look at them.

“That’s the Granora Mountain Range,” Scoresby said, noticing my awestruck stare at the white peaks glistening in the sun, as if covered with thousands of diamonds.

“And...those over there?” I pointed to the smaller mountain range, like a curious little girl on a road trip.

“Granora’s Tail,” the old man replied, if anything amused, not annoyed by my excitement. And when more questions furrowed my brow, he went on to explain without so much as a grunt. “I’m no scholar to tell you the reasons why, but what you see should all be one mountain range. As a matter of fact, we are currently in the basin between those two and Granora Peaks. When we get further from the forest, they should be visible to the south behind us.”

“Does it have a name, too? The basin I mean?”

‘It should, right? People tended to name everything.’

“Take a guess, girl.”

“Seriously?”

This time, instead of answering, Scoresby shrugged, the corners of his mouth hidden behind his beard, raised in a wry grin.

“Fine,” I give in, more than happy to play his game. “Granora’s Bowls?”

“Good guess, but no.”

“Then...Granora’s Butt.”

“A peak in Granora’s Tail is actually called that. Try again...”

The game lasted us for quite a while, in fact, until we reached the crossroads where the Old and the New Roads parted. Scoresby was right; Granora’s Peaks were now peeking out behind the forest. But that wasn’t the only thing that caught my attention when looking back. In the shadow of what looked like a huge boulder in the far distance along the New Road, the roofs of several buildings could be seen.

“That’s Beyond Reach,” Scoresby replied when I asked him about it. “The inn that replaced Esulmor’s Edge. It’s a nice place, too. Sadly, barely staying afloat. When they finally built it, trade had long since moved to the northern routes...”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

‘An inn?’

The rest of what the old man said fell on deaf ears as a sudden dread gripped my guts. If it was an inn, then there were people there, a bunch of them. However, knowing better, or so I thought, before the notion of running away could bite into my heart, I swiftly turned my attention back ahead of us to the saddle of the valley between the two mountain ranges, the edge of this basin apparently called Summit’s Embrace. That was where the road we were following led and beyond which horizon lay the city of Castiana.

‘Shit. Shit, shit, shit. The CITY.’

The wide world around me, and especially Scoresby, had done a good job of distracting me. Now, however, the consequences of my decision to leave the “safety” of the forest were beginning to sink in.

“H-how much further, Mr. Scoresby?”

We’d been driving for hours, so for all I knew, Castiana could be just over the hill ahead of us.

“Well, I would say,” the old man replied, torturing me a little by pausing to think. “...that we’re about halfway there.”

“Only halfway?” The fact that my voice bore no trace of impatience, and instead brimmed with relief, did not escape the old man.

“Unfortunate, I know. But because of someone, I left Esulmor Edge later than usual,” he said, not angry, if anything amused, teasing me a bit, likely in an attempt to distract me again. Much to my dismay, this time, it didn’t work.

“I’m sorry. I-I didn’t mean to...to hold you back.”

“Oh, forgive this old fool for his bad jokes. You didn’t hold me back, Korra. I mean it. The drive from Esulmor Edge takes over half a day, so what’s a few extra minutes, right?”

‘A few minutes?’

Because of me, his breakfast had to be at least an hour longer. He seemed genuinely okay with it, though, so I asked instead,

“Is it really that far?”

Scoresby nodded. “Well, I wouldn’t say far. Sure, there are towns closer to Castiana, just half a day’s journey, and you’ll get to Ravenhear. Sure, even if I cut it short through Esulmor, the trip from Castiana to Granhill takes me a day and a half, a full two days to Brose, but the world is much wider, girl. Sometimes, I think it is too wide. Tits, if I wanted to do business in the capital, it would take me more than two weeks to get there - and that’s if I don’t run into trouble on the way.”

“More than two weeks?” Damn. Back on Earth, I could travel the world in two weeks - several times.

By no means did the fault with long travel time lie with the mares and the carriage, though. Sure, we weren’t traveling at any highway speeds, but now that we were on a maintained road, our pace picked up. There was no way I would have caught up with the wagon if the mares had raced through the woods as fast as they were now.

So, either this world was as vast as Scoresby claimed, or it was very, very sparsely populated.

“There, girl. Castiana?”

The old man’s words snapped me out of my thoughts and sent shivers down my spine. With dread at the pit of my stomach, I lifted my eyes and looked out at the vast world before me. There, nestled in the green grasslands of the sloping land on the other side of the Granora Mountain Range, lay the source of my current fears and hopes for a somewhat normal life.

“It’s...it’s a bit different from...from what I imagined.”

From this far away, it looked nothing like the medieval towns I pictured to find here. It was big, way bigger, for sure, but kind of flat - and hexagonal. There were no towers, every roof of the same height, and so seemed to be the city walls. No buildings stood outside them, no farms sprawled around the city.

I might not have been an expert on how cities worked, but this one just didn’t make sense.

“Well, I’m not surprised,” Scoresby chuckled. “Castiana is, after all, a Labyrinth City. You’ll only find a handful of those around the world.”