Footsteps To Home(1)
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After helping us across the bridge, Vreena went her own way as soon as she’d managed to leave the heavy haul of items within a comfortable distance of the small house, waving overhead all the while. Now it was just me and Julia here, mere footsteps away from the humble abode.
Our shadows grew longer with the sun’s now fading essence caressing our backs, this ‘shadow’ of mine was an interesting gimmick that came along with this body. Maybe it was just because I didn’t have one before, but I felt strangely captivated by the sight of my own opaque frame dragging along the ground behind me, if nothing else, it felt like irrefutable proof of my existence in this world.
“Mother, are you famous?”
“Hm? Do you think I am?”
“Well....you did get a lot of attention today.”
“I suppose so...but that's mostly because humans don’t really see us druids all that often. You remember all those stories I told you about my village?”
“Yeah...you said it was far away.”
Her eyes, still fixed on our destination, narrowed with a reminiscent glint of satisfaction. Just from that I could already tell that the next words that came out of her mouth would undoubtedly be coated in nostalgia.
“That’s right. It’s still here in Ekin but it would take a really long time to reach it from here, plus all the formalities and uncertainties that come with traveling between nations like that make it all the more tedious.”
“....So you’re like a traveler then? Don’t you want to go back home?”
Once again, she’d found my response amusing.
“Yea that’s right Liam, your mom’s a traveler. Of course I’m going to go back home one of these days but there are a few things I need to do first, but don’t worry you’ll get to meet your grandparents soon enough.”
“Grand....parents?”
“Mmhm~ I’ll be taking you to see my parents soon. Or maybe they’ll be coming down here? I’m not too sure how it’ll all work out.....”
Apparently, this detour had been brewing on the itinerary for quite some time now. I guess there was just no way out of this........
“Can dad come?”
A small sigh escaped her after hearing my question.
“I want all three of us to go but that might be tricky.....humans and druids aren’t the best of friends you see.....”
Ahhh....so that’s what’s going on here. In a world filled with such a wide variety of sentient races, disputes between them would naturally arise. If humans could barely manage getting along with their own kind, then they’d certainly have problems with people who could spit fire.......
Julia stopped in her tracks after getting those words out, and the reason for it was now walking triumphantly towards the two of us, the fading glow of the evening’s sunset was just barely enough to properly illuminate his massive frame.
Armed in his bulging black muscle shirt and trousers that perfectly fit his frame, he approached with a confident smile, the usual brown vest still hoisted over his shoulder and a reflective gleam of brilliance shining through the glasses resting on his nose bridge.
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Though it’d been a few days since I last saw him, it kind of felt like he hadn’t left at all.
“I’m back a little earlier today.”
“Fufu...welcome back Oliver. Would you be a dear and help us carry some of these?”
She wasted no time suggesting that cunning gesture with her slender outstretched hand, it was one so polite it seemed almost irrefutable......
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“Mage”
That was how they referred to those who’d awakened to magic in this world. Despite the abundance of mana flourishing across this land, being a mage was something of a coveted existence. The reasoning behind it wasn’t all that complicated either, just because there was a lot of mana here, it didn’t mean everybody could use it, some would naturally be more favored by the mystical energy than others and a myriad of factors ranging from your family lineage to even your species could influence how attuned your body was to mana. Fortunately for my case, Julia’s druid heritage made wielding mana second nature for her, and in Oliver’s case he was simply just someone on the rarer end of the human spectrum who’d managed to awaken to mana through sheer effort.
I’d read about various methods linked to the awakening process, whether it be through means such as elixirs, arranged marriages and even esoteric rituals, but by far the most common approach was to curate the specifics of your own family lineage. I couldn’t say for sure if that was the reason behind this body’s creation, but the fact still stands that it was an irrefutable success.
I could feel the essence of the magical energy around me pooling into my core with greater ferocity each day, it was almost at the point where I didn’t even need to intently focus on pulling in mana and instead concentrate my efforts on circulating that energy with my core.
This attraction to mana certainly came about by way of Julia’s druid heritage, a trait I couldn’t be more proud of. In Oliver’s case, he didn’t have any remarkable hereditary traits to offer but in place of that was the vast expanse of knowledge nestling within his mind. The litany of books and bookshelves occupying the majority of this small wooden house was clear proof of the man’s dedication to his craft.
Many a nights, I would leave him here in the ‘living room’ scribbling away at the papers on his desk, locked in a vigorous mental battle that would perpetually continue until the stack of documents on the table in front of him had ultimately dwindled away.
I wasn’t completely sure as to what he’d been working on for all that time but the one thing I could say for certain was that it definitely had something to do with his profession – a ‘Raider.’
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The dim orange glow of a shining crystal cast a blanket of warmth throughout the small house. The single, jagged shard of the material was about as big as an apple, yet it was still more than enough to grace every nook and cranny of this house. It was known as an ‘Aether crystal’, the supposed product formed when mana was allowed to condense over a long number of years and whenever it was stimulated with even the smallest bit of magical energy, it would begin giving off its radiant essence in an unwavering display of emanating light. The small crystal was contained inside something like a lantern and was now casting away the faint traces of the night’s creeping shadows.
It was quiet inside. Oliver was at his desk scribbling away as usual, and I was sitting on the floor, pretending to skim through the pages of one of his many arcane looking books. The only sounds that reached my ears came from the howling, screeching and croaking of the creatures outside, given how unnerving all of those sounds were, I couldn’t even discern the true identities of the creatures they came from.
Just then, the sound of Oliver’s scribbling quill came to an abrupt halt, he looked over towards me before posing the question I’d been eagerly waiting for.
“So Liam, what did you do today?”
The typical question was prone to come my way every time he returned.
Seeing as it was only the two of us in the ‘living room’ right now, then this was the perfect time to sate my curiosity.
“We went shopping in the town and I met a bunch of people, and the elder even followed us around.”
“Sounds like you enjoyed yourself... I’ll be sure to take you out once I’m done with all of this.”
His voice trailed off a little just now, given the faint hint of exhaustion I could see in his narrowing eyes, this was the best time to begin my ‘mission’.
‘.....Father why do we live so far away from everyone else?”
He paused for a moment before relaxing his confused features into a smile.
“.....How about we go outside for a bit?”
To my surprise, the first phase of my plan had been a remarkable success.