In The Meantime (1)

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The sky had grown quite a bit darker ever since we left my parents behind and wandered back down the road that initially led us here. This must have been our third time circling a rundown street littered with abandoned shops and stalls.

Our lone wagon was the only thing patrolling the streets at the moment, a fact that couldn’t have been more inconvenient for us. There was literally no one around to even ask anything.

The directions we’d been given were arbitrary in the first place so no one was to blame here but, it still didn’t change the fact that we were lost yet again.

“She said the one that was in good condition, right? What does that even mean? Everything here looks like it's been through a warzone!”

“Calm down Jytte, we’ve probably just missed a turn somewhere....again.” Myra mumbled solemnly.

“Don’t worry Liam, w-we'll figure this out. I just need some kind of scent to lock on to.”

“I can wait, I think we’re getting closer this time.” I replied softly from my guarded position.

In reality, there wasn’t actually that much to see here but since the opportunity to explore this placed had presented itself I felt the need to oblige.

“Um Myra, that big waterwheel thing back there, what do they use it for?” I asked, tilting my head to gaze up at the Faerie riding on my shoulder.

“It's an artifact.” She replied in a flat tone.

She was still being a bit cautious around me but that much was fine, so long as it didn’t attract any unnecessary questions from the others then our relationship wasn’t going to change very much just from that.

“They were forced to build it here after the humans tried to conquer Sylvan a while back. There’s a deity over there and apparently, she didn’t take too kindly to that, which is why this entire mountain almost got destroyed.”

“A deity?”

“Uh-huh, I’ve never met her before but I think your mother knows her quite well. You might even end up meeting her soon. She’s the one that’s been preserving that entire forest over there.”

A rather abrupt turn of events to be sure. I never expected to be in the presence of these so-called deities so soon but I was looking forward to it.

“That wheel back there...” Myra continued after a bit of pondering “It’s not really here for the people to get water or anything like that – we already have those kinds of artifacts. But in the case of the Brimwell, we just need it to keep the water pressure from the mountain’s streams at a certain level, just to prevent it from eventually eating through the city.”

“I saw the other side of the mountain just now and there was barely anything left over there. Building a city here seems stupid to me.” I said through a sigh

Myra let out a series of giggles. One rarely ever got the chance to see something like that so I found myself staring at her.

“I guess that’s what they call brutal honesty.” She said, wiping away a tear.

“It’s true though, this place was actually an outpost during the war but after it ended loads of people just started settling here when the Brimwell was being made so it just kind of turned out like this. The old forts on the other side are really the last real remnants of what this place actually is.”

“An outpost for war.... that makes a bit more sense. But I still don’t get it, can’t they just fix the mountain with magic?”

“If only it were that convenient. You would need a few hundred mages here for something like that to ever work and even if you could somehow fix the fissure, the streams flowing though this mountain have already been disrupted so it would only be a matter of time before some other problem came up.”

Basically, if you wanted to fix this place for good, you had to kill two birds with one stone. Given the effort needed to do something like that, it really was a lot easier to just put a stopgap measure like the Brimwell in place.

“There is one way to fix this for sure.” Myra said with unwavering confidence.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Intrigued, I raised an eyebrow. “How?”

“Deities of course. The elves and druids probably wouldn’t appreciate a foreign powerhouse showing up at the border to their lands but I’m pretty sure Sylvan’s deity could fix this if she really wanted to. It’s just that outsiders aren’t really allowed an audience with her, especially those that worship one of the other six deities so as of now it's only a possibility.”

Whoever that deity is, if she was actually the one responsible for overseeing the massive stretch of land on the other side of Fallon, then it wasn’t out of the question for her to repair a simple mountain.

“Oh, so this place might actually get fixed one day, that’s good to know.” I said, a smile creeping onto my face.

“You two! What have you been talking about since just now? How about you help me find the inn.” Jytte, who had been locked onto her own train of thought must not have been paying much attention to our conversation just now.

“Help you how? It’s not like searching from the skies will do much good.”

Although she just said that, Myra still found herself floating up into the sky a little afterwards. We waited for her directive on the ground and watched as tiny white embers of light slowly trickled off her wings.

“What...is that?” I heard her mutter in disbelief. “Hey Jytte, follow behind me, you can see the light from my wings, right!?”

“Go for it.” My companion yelled.

The reins in her hands let out a wicked snapping sound as our wagon raced off down the empty roads, rattling from the bumps and cracks in its surface. We weaved through a few alleyways that led us back onto a main road that was a fair bit wider than the norm here. The shops and stalls around us were seemingly growing scarcer by the second as our environment grew more and more spacious.

A few of the modestly sized street lamps had dimming Aether crystals affixed to their lamp posts, the only source of illumination to be seen right now.

“There! Up ahead!” Myra shouted.

My eyes focused on the sight in the distance and nothing else. It was a small group of humans – raiders to be exact, and they were currently in the midst of committing murder. An old man was about to get his skull caved in by a large, chipped blade one of these brutes was about to swing over his shoulder.

Jytte instantly rose to her feet and took aim. She found perfect posture in the coach box despite letting go of the reins to the newts pulling us along.

“Enchant”

She muttered before firing off a single iron arrow that whistled through the air, it sliced through night’s calm like a knife.

The arrow met it its target with a thunderous sound, the blade about to be swung shattered like glass fragments upon impact.

“Who is it!?” The bald brute roared, stepping over the bruised old man’s body in the process.

“Liam, I’ll be right back, this won’t take long.” Her words were doused with an infectious confidence. She lightly pulled on the reins once again to slow the newts charge, and leapt from her position with inhuman grace, landing deftly on the ground.

There were four armed men less than twenty feet away from her, yet for some reason she refused to arm her bow. Instead, she angled it like a club and sprang at them mercilessly.

A deranged smile popped unto the man’s face as soon as he saw Jytte charging at him like that. He licked his lips and shouted “You’ve got guts girlie!”

The fingers on his right arm clenched before it came barreling down with a powerful swing. Yet, the girl didn’t hesitate, she simply ducked under the blow at the last moment and used the iron bow to deliver a bone crushing thrust to his right knee.

“Grreh!”

The man squealed in agony as he plopped down to her eye level, barely able to support himself. Before his pain could even fade however, the very same recurve bow was already winding up for the finisher and came swinging at his throat like a battering ram.

That one blow must have literally knocked the wind out of him, because immediately after, the giant man tumbled onto his back with his eyes glazed over.

“Kill her!” Shouted the next contender.

He was another familiar face; it was the same dagger wielding coward who embarrassed himself at the gates not too long ago. In a rage, he ripped the weapons from their sheaths and coated them in a swirl of flames. The two other minions at his side mimicked his stance and each conjured disc shaped blades of wind and water.

The attacks spiraled at her mercilessly, still, she didn’t seem too concerned or even interested in dodging any of them. Just before the attacks could make contact, the fierce torrent collided with a stream of water that suddenly erupted from beneath the cobbled streets.

A fierce explosion of steam emerged, blowing back the three lackeys in the process as they stumbled over each other in an attempt to find their target.

“Enough of this.” Myra coldly stated as she floated down to my shoulder.

“W-where’d the other one go!?” One of them shouted, and as if to taunt them, Myra smiled and raised a finger.

“Take a guess.”

They all staggered back in a panic and fixed their gazes on something in the sky. It was a lone beastfolk girl who had managed to casually leap dozens of feet into the air immediately after the explosive clash earlier. Her azure-colored recurve bow was already knocked and drawn with three metal looking arrows glinting at their targets.

Despite her inverted posture, I had little doubt in my mind that she was going to hit her target.

With a narrowed line of sight and loose fingers, the metal arrows sang through the air with deadly accuracy.