“Are you sure Delilah’s not going to be back anytime soon?” Elijah pleaded.
“I’m positive,” said Isaak. “And you’ve got sauce in your beard.”
Elijah extended his tongue as he awkwardly tried to find whatever sauce Isaak was talking about, but he failed miserably. The result was that Elijah ended up looking quite silly, but in his defense, he’d drunk far too much liquor at Atticus’ insistence. The other man was like a bottomless pit of alcohol tolerance, and even Elijah’s vaunted Constitution was incapable of keeping up with Atticus’s capacity for strong alcohol.
Sure, he could have used Touch of Nature to fix the issue, but getting drunk was kind of the point of drinking. And with every shot he’d taken, that had seemed truer. Perhaps there was a connection there.
Regardless, Elijah tried unsuccessfully to get the sauce from his gyro out of his beard for a few more seconds before he lost interest. For the next couple of hours, he enjoyed his time with Isaak and Atticus – and a half-dozen other people whose names he didn’t even come close to remembering – until he staggered back to the inn and collapsed into the bed he’d rented for the night.
He was out in only a few minutes, and he awoke the next morning with a distinct groan. His head was pounding, his mouth felt like it was full of sand, and for some reason, his ears were ringing. Compounding the issues was the fact that he felt absolutely grotesque, and one sniff of his armpits confirmed that he smelled like it, too. It was a mixture of body odor, alcohol, and something else indefinable but no less gross. So, after pulsing Touch of Nature to get rid of his headache, he staggered into the shower and put his soap to good use.
That helped.
A lot.
In fact, when he left the shower, he felt like a new man. Idly, Elijah found himself wishing that he’d had healing powers during college. But then again, it was probably better that he hadn’t. After all, the threat of a powerful hangover was often the only thing that had curtailed his drinking. Without that, he might’ve descended into full-blown alcoholism.
Whatever the case, in the present, he was more than glad for Touch of Nature, which trivialized the worst parts of his hangover. For the rest, there was coffee – which Agatha actually had in stock – a good breakfast, and lots of water. So, after draining two of his jugs, refilling them at the sink, then draining them again, Elijah left his room and descended the stairs in search of whatever magical morning meal Agatha had on offer.
As it turned out, he was a tad disappointed when she served him oat porridge. It wasn’t bad, but it was a long way from her usual fare. Still, he thanked her profusely and ate everything she put in front of him. That got a motherly smile from the woman which only grew wider when he handed over a couple of copper ethereum coins.
After that, he spent almost an hour enjoying his coffee while engaging Agatha in idle conversation. As it turned out, she’d lost her husband shortly after Earth had been touched by the World Tree. However, both of her sons had survived, though she complained that they didn’t visit often enough. They considered themselves adventurers, and according to Agatha, they were part of the patrol headed by Delilah.
“So she is out of town,” Elijah said. Until that moment, he’d thought Isaak was lying. Not that he’d have blamed the young man if he had been. Having a sister like Delilah had to be difficult, considering the number of suitors she must’ve had.
“Yes. Corrupting my boys.”
“What do you –”
She interrupted, going on a barely understandable rant about how Delilah had convinced her sons to join her in her quest to be an adventurer. Agatha went on to complain about Delilah filling their heads with notions of immortality and untold riches. Clearly, Agatha wanted her sons to find more local professions, but it seemed that they’d already chosen combat classes, so that ship had sailed.
Eventually, Elijah extracted himself from the rapidly devolving conversation and went to say goodbye to both Isaak and Atticus. As expected, the arms dealer was paying for the previous night’s efforts to drink every bit of alcohol in town. So, he was in no mood to talk. Or be awake at all, it seemed. So, he waved Elijah on, telling him to stop by the next time he was in the area.
Isaak was a little more acerbic in his greeting, and he clearly disapproved of Elijah’s previous antics. And he just as obviously resented him for not being hungover. Regardless, Elijah needled him by saying, “Tell your sister I stopped by, huh? I’ll –”
Isaak slammed the door in his face, cutting him off.
Elijah glanced to the side, where Artemis had just stepped out of the alley. She fixed him with an expression of disapproval – that shouldn’t have been possible from a cat - then turned her nose up and pranced away.
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“Well, hello to you, too,” Elijah muttered with a shake of his head.
And just like that, it was time to leave Argos behind for the time being. Certainly, he fully intended to return. Part of that was so he could see Delilah, but he had to admit that he felt more like he belonged in the Greek city than he ever had in Ironshore. It wasn’t home, but it managed a fair impression.
In any case, Elijah set off without regret. It was tempting to swing by the Dragon Circle, but it was to the northeast. Meanwhile, he needed to go west. Perhaps he could even check out the skyscraper he’d seen the first time he’d set out from Argos looking for Seattle. He’d been called back to Ironshore before he’d had the chance, but he felt certain he’d cross that area before it was all said and done.
So, after leaving Argos – and telling the guards he’d be back sometime soon – he set off to the west. Once he’d gotten out of sight of the city gates, he shifted into his draconid form and let loose. He sped across the landscape, running at a pace of at least fifty miles an hour. Perhaps even faster. Exact speed was a little hard to judge without a speedometer, after all.
Whatever the case, it was less than a day before he arrived in the vale where he’d seen the skyscraper, but to his surprise, the structure had already collapsed. Still, he took a few hours to examine it, but he found nothing out of the ordinary – at least insomuch as a skyscraper in the middle of the wilderness could be normal. So, it wasn’t long before he moved on.
After another day, he ran into quite an obstacle when he arrived at a massive canyon. Elijah had never visited the Grand Canyon, but in his head, he imagined it like the ravine in front of him. It was at least a mile from one side to the other and it was more than five-hundred feet deep. More distressingly, it cut across the landscape as far as he could see in both directions. At the bottom of the canyon ran a rapidly moving river.
But unlike the Grand Canyon, this ravine was absolutely lousy with vegetation and animal life. It looked like a jungle, with huge vines and other plant life covering both sides, with a forest covering the lowest points. Elijah was on the verge of climbing down – after all, his lamellar ape form seemed perfectly suited for that kind of thing – when he saw a huge bird land on a tree that grew out of the side of the cliff. The bird looked like a hawk, though with a wingspan of at least twenty feet.
However, that wasn’t so abnormal. Elijah’s first experience with mutated animal life had come only seconds after Earth had experienced the touch of the World Tree. Back then, a huge bird had literally ripped his airplane apart. In the chaos, Elijah had been thrown free of the plane. He still had no idea how he’d survived the fall, only to regain consciousness on his island’s shore.
Whatever the case, the bird wasn’t anything noteworthy.
What was of note was the even larger spider that suddenly sprang out of the vegetation, wrapped its legs around the stunned bird, then dragged the raptor back into the thick curtain of vines. A few rustles followed, but then everything went still.
Elijah swallowed.
He had no interest in dealing with that. Maybe he could beat such a creature. Or creatures. After all, there could have been hundreds of those giant spiders within the vines. But even if he could win such a fight, it wasn’t worth the risk. Besides, he’d decided not to just kill beasts for being in his way.
It had nothing to do with fear.
He definitely wasn’t creeped out by how quickly that creature had attacked, snatched its prey, and disappeared. Not at all. He was just being sensible. He was only following his code.
With his courage intact, Elijah turned from the canyon and followed it to the south. Eventually, he came across another river that emptied via a majestic waterfall that reminded Elijah of Niagara Falls. Where it fell, there was a huge lake at the bottom of the canyon, but the river kept going from the other side.
In any case, Elijah shifted into his lamellar ape form, then fought the current as he crossed the river, and on the other side, he was greeted by the cry of a group of ducks. They quacked at him aggressively, and considering that they were the size of labradors, he quickly moved on.
From there, the ravine began to grow shallower, and the air became more humid. And soon enough, Elijah encountered another river. He crossed it, then found another one after only a few more miles. The whole time, he kept an eye on the canyon, looking for a place to cross. But by the time it came to an end a few days after his first encounter with the canyon, he’d reached a muggy swamp.
“Ugh,” he groaned. “I hate swamps.”
And he did. They smelled bad, were difficult to traverse, and were home to some of the deadliest predators in the world. He’d spent some time in mangrove swamps while working on his doctorate, and he’d hated every last moment. Yet, unless he wanted to backtrack and try the north, he had little choice in the matter.
From there, Elijah tried to skirt the edges of the swamp. He was not successful, and after only a couple of hours, he was forced to once again shift into his lamellar ape form, or he’d have been wading in waist-deep water and mud. The guardian form also provided some protection against the biting insects that seemed so ubiquitous in swamps.
And given how everything on Earth had grown more dangerous, he had no interest in experiencing whatever afflictions they might expose him to. He was already having waking nightmares about horse-sized mosquitos – he hadn’t seen anything like that, but he just knew it was only a matter of time – so he didn’t want to add to his psychological burden.
So, it was a tired, annoyed, frustrated, and altogether miserable Elijah that came upon a compound on the edge of the swamp. To him, it looked like it had come straight from the American Gulf Coast, with the main structure on slim pylons that looked like stilts. Otherwise, it was made of rough wood, with an unpainted tin roof, and it was surrounded by a dozen other buildings of similar design.
More importantly, they had boats, which seemed to be just what Elijah needed to ease the burden of his trip across the swamp. So, he found a bit of dry-ish land, then shifted into his human form. As he approached, he felt like he was forgetting something important, but no matter how he wracked his brain, he couldn’t remember what it was.
“If it was important, I would’ve remembered it,” he reasoned as he approached the compound.