“Oh, would you quit your bitching and move, you lolly-gagging sons’ of ’bitches!” Danai snarled at the pack of men near the back of the column we were marching in, her normally even-tempered expression replaced with a snarling drill sergeant.
“It’s something, isn’t it?” Rorak asked me, his eyebrows wagging up and down as if trying to earn a reaction from me. “Give her a few insubordinate or slow recruits; suddenly, she’s an entirely new person. Some call her the ‘Rearward Devil’ because you will face her wrath if you fall back to the column’s rear.”
I snorted, amused. We’d been traveling northward along what looked like a beaten path intermixed with sparse cobble, the famed ‘Northern Pass’ that connected the central and northern regions of Haerasong. Reputation, as it often is, was just a tad more impressive than reality. Our caravan trundled along, plenty of wagons carrying supplies as the soldiers themselves marched forward. We’d only stop three times during the day for short breaks and rests before a final stop at night. Moving as a large group, we had no trouble with the local wildlife. On more than one occasion, I noticed a towering Dire Bear watching from the trees, only to slink away as our raw numbers made it decide otherwise.
Our next biggest hurdle was our prisoner situation. After we’d announced that we’d be bringing the prisoners north to Theronhold, there had been a sort of relief spreading through them. Apparently, there had been suspicions we were intending to execute them to make a point. It was a good thing then that we had opted not to do as such; the prisoners, having already considered that, would have doubtlessly fought us for their right to live.
Without the threat of death hanging over their heads, their only job being the assistance in hunting and gathering food, they followed along with a sort of uncomfortable tension, our two sides not outright hostile but obviously not on the greatest of speaking terms.
This was how Danai, Rorak, and I found ourselves responsible for overseeing our progress north at the back of the marching column. Needing some oversight over our prisoners, it was decided that I was apparently a given. As the person partially responsible for breaking their spirit and willingness to fight in the first place, it was considered vital that I be there to remind them of the fact. Danai had then been selected as one of our most veteran officers, matched in standing with Dirk, who had unofficially become the leading officer of this entire operation. Finally, Rorak had been selected for…
Well, honestly, I’m not sure why.
Now that we were no longer sailing in our small ship, which, for the record as being sailed on ahead to discretely dock in one of the northern ports, Rorak had found himself less… valuable. Alice had the benefit of her Kin magic; she could sense things from far away and thus was stationed near the front of the column. Rorak did not have that same sort of skill set. His expertise outside of sailing was apparently nothing more than explosives. I hadn’t had the opportunity to see his magic firsthand, so I could only imagine what ‘explosive’ magic was like if it was merely an application of practical wild magic or a unique form of Kin magic. As curious as I was, I wasn’t about to ask for a demonstration, not when we had skittish soldiers who might assume we were under attack if explosions suddenly started popping off.
Still, I wonder…
Brushing the thought aside, I glanced down at a map in my lap, inspecting it again. We were about a week off from Theronhold, a week of monotonous marching, and little to do besides napping. Nights weren’t too bad; I could engage soldiers in sparring practices, a way to move my body about, given I was stuck riding upon an officer’s stallion all day. It was a giant caramel-colored beast, one of the larger northern breeds bred specifically for travel through the woodland north.
Well, mostly woodland.
Thoughts shifting, I was reminded of my childhood, escaping Theronhold with Imako, and how, as we’d made our way to the Pond of Elvermarzon, we’d been forced to cross a stretch of rocky barren land. As a kid, I’d assumed that had been a geographical sign that we were making our way closer to the desert central region. However, older and more traveled, I knew it was nothing more than a rather rugged stretch of northern badlands.
I shivered, a cold breeze sweeping through the trees and sweeping past our marching column.
Good thing it was the summer season back then.
The journey had already been arduous as a kid; I could only imagine what it would have been like had it also been freezing me to my core.
Hmm. Speaking of that.
I glanced down at the map again, trying to gauge relative distances. We were still a week out from Theronhold and approaching from the southeast, which meant…
We won’t be far from the Pond.
If I was correct, it would be roughly a three-day detour, or it would be if anyone else attempted to detour as I could.
I could do it in a day and a half, max.
What was nothing more than a random thought suddenly became something more pronounced, an idea formulating within my mind.
I’ll be back before anyone starts wondering where I am.
Glancing around, I took stock of our location, gauging roughly where we were on the map.
Tomorrow. Suppose I leave tomorrow and account for a roughly three-day round trip. In that case, that leaves me with approximately three days until we arrive at Theronhold.
Almost smiling, I turned toward Rorak, giving him a gentle prod with my elbow.
“Hmm?” Rorak turned toward me, confusion on his face. “Something amiss?”
“No, nothing like that,” I answered, eyes scanning his body language, looking for signs that I should abort my plan. “I wanted to ask you something, was all.”
“Oh?” His eyebrows shot up, curious as to what I could possibly be looking for him for an answer.
“If theoretically speaking, I were to slip away for a bit, how many days do you think you could cover for me?”
The curiosity swiftly turned into a furrowed brow, his lips puckered as if he’d just tasted something sour.
“Are you looking to abandon your post?”
“No, nothing like that.” I smiled as convincingly as I could. I really wasn’t planning to do that, but there was no way for Rorak to know that off-hand.
“Why then?” The bitter expression softened slightly.
“I grew up in this area.” I waved about, not exactly the truth, but neither was it strictly a lie. “And there is something I want to see for myself.”
“Ahh.” Rorak nodded, sympathy filling his eyes, a far-off longing for some distant home likely on his mind. “I can understand that. Perhaps a sweetheart or such? I don’t see any nearby cities or settlements in this immediate area. Still, the North is famous for having countless unrecorded villages.”
“Aye,” I said, the man correct in his assessment of the North, if not my actual motivation. “So, do you think you could?”
Rorak chewed on his thoughts for nearly ten seconds in complete silence before letting out a slow breath.
“Two days. I could buy you two days. I’m not the subterfuge type, but that’s why they won’t suspect it from me.”
“What if I needed three or four?”
“The best I can do is two.” Rorak shrugged. “But that doesn’t mean you’re out of luck. Easier to ask forgiveness than permission, right? And besides, you aren’t strictly bound by our bylaws, expectations, or codes. Not like we can have you flogged for deserting your post, nor would anyone even wish to try it, not when there is muttering of how you can tear down mountains with your own two hands.”
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“That’s preposterous.” I scoffed. “I can’t do that.”
“Rumors are powerful.” He patted me on the arm, apparently amused by the surprise on my face. “Surely you knew there would be some rumors about you.”
“Yes, but not something as outlandish as that.”
“Well, you don’t carve through squadrons of men and women without so much as a cut and expect to be treated as anything less than some minor deity.”
“That’s alarming but duly noted.” I sighed, surrendering to reality. Anyway, I wasn’t even sure if that wouldn’t ever be true. From what I knew about the power of the Sage Above All and other exceptionally powerful figures through history, tearing down a mountain wasn’t so much of an if it were possible, so much as it was a ‘how quickly?’
Yes, well, they also had access to far more mana than me.
Regardless of how powerful I became, the fact would never change that without a mana core, I relied on how efficient I could be with my mana rather than how much I could fling about.
Neither here nor there.
“When do you plan on leaving?” Rorak asked me, interrupting my thoughts.
“Tomorrow. It should take me three days round trip, with an extra half a day or so spent away. I’ll return by the time we reach Theronhold.”
“Ahh, well, I would say this village you’re visiting must be exceptionally close by, but given what we’ve seen from you, I wouldn’t doubt you have some way of heading straight there, eh?”
“Just the two classics,” I said, patting my legs.
For a moment, Rorak looked as if he were about to laugh at my joke before the mirth died away.
“You’re serious? You’re going to run there?”
“Bingo.” I snorted. “Much as I appreciate the beast for letting me take it easy upon her, it’s faster for me to just run.”
“Huh, well, if you say so.” Rorak shook his head. “Makes it easier to pass it off as you scouting the area or being sick if your horse is still here after all.”
“I appreciate it.”
“Well, that’s what friends are for.” It was Rorak’s turn to snort, apparently amused. In return, I watched the man, a slight frown on my face.
“What?” He questioned me after a moment.
“You called me your friend.”
“ ‘Course I did.” Rorak folded his arms one over the other, leaning back, or as much as you could lean back on a horse. “I know it wasn’t long, but we sailors got a saying. If you can pass through the night with strangers, you’ll see mornin’ with friends.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means sailing is dangerous business. I’ve been on few ships where a crew of strangers weren’t fast as friends after toughing out the rages of the sea, and we survived days straight of some of the worst shit she can throw in, nothing more than a dinghy. We passed the night and came out in the ‘morn.”
The comment hit me surprisingly hard, a gut punch of emotion swelling within me.
Friends.
I hadn’t had ‘friends’ in a long, long time. I’d had students in Akadia and whatever Scyla and I were, but I hadn’t had friends. Before that, in my time spent in Songhold, I’d had no friends either; the closest had been Maeya, but then calling her anything remotely like a friend would be like referring to a parasite as a friend.
Not to mention, you don’t usually kill friends in a sudden outburst.
Ignoring the dark thought, my memories extended back to my time as an adventurer.
There were times I felt something akin to friendship. Still, it never failed that either they would eventually turn on me, my own rise through the ranks inevitably leading to friction, or they’d end up dead, as is often the fate of an adventurer.
Before that?
I could hardly call Imako a friend, and we had only known each other for roughly a month.
Which left my childhood growing up in Junaper. Small as the village was, there were only a few kids my age. A slight smirk formed as I suddenly remembered one of the village boys, a kid named Tallinn, and how there had been rumors that he had been scouted for a position as a guard in Theronhold because he’d shown signs of Kin magic.
Which was a loud of bologna. His family never had Kin magic to begin with.
The smirk began to fade as a person’s memory replaced that of the boy. It was a girl, that much I was sure of, but try as I might, it was as if any memory of her was left as a shadowy fog, strangely absent.
Damnit.
It was undoubtedly related to the magical means through which the Sage Above All had reincarnated through her body. It was strange when I thought of the Sage Above All; I could recall what she looked without problem, and yet the girl who had existed before her… Nothing, even though they shared the same body.
Shared is perhaps too kind of a word. Stole would be fairer.
It had taken quite some time to realize there was more to why I couldn’t recall anything of the girl. All I knew was that I’d known her, and the thought of those lost memories left me feeling empty.
Perhaps we were friends?
I’d tried to investigate how memories could be wiped from myself and seemingly the world itself, but it was a fruitless effort. First, how was I supposed to investigate the pinnacle magic of a Great Sage, not just a Great Sage, but seemingly the most honored of them?
Like trying to investigate the darkness of the heavens from all the way down here.
My mood dampened, I glowered at the back of my horse, trying to recall the warm feeling from only a moment ago as Rorak referred to me as his friend. Still, it seemed the moment of simple appreciation had passed.
Too bad.
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My eyes snapped open, a familiar slash of frigid temperature wisping my breath away. Taking a moment to do nothing more than breathe, I watched the ice crystals of my warm breath drift away in the barely lifting darkness. The sun had only barely begun to peak over the horizon, the morning a strange world of light and dark, a balanced dance that would only hold for perhaps an hour until the light would emerge triumphant.
Perfect.
I’d planned for this exact moment. Gathering mana, I let a single barely whispered word slip out from me as quietly as my iced breath.
“Aulous.”
As a mage, I didn’t have access to spells of invisibility or illusions that could hide me; that was more my family’s specialty. What I did have was a rather diverse range of knowledge and an affinity for the primal element of water. Water had a rather fun property, capable of bending light. Many still believed that our eyes produced vision by expelling some sort of ‘sight ray,’ but that was wrong. Our eyes simply were receptacles for light, through which our brains would form images from the information.
As such, if one took advantage of the early morning when there was enough light so that the nighttime vigilance had lifted, but the darkness hadn’t faded entirely, all one had to do was create a curtain of vapor around oneself before you’d be all but impossible to detect. Sure, suppose someone was explicitly looking for strange light refractions or even just looked directly at me. They’d probably notice me in that case, but I was wise enough not to assume I was utterly without detection. Veiled by my vapor veil, I slowly pulled myself from my bedroll, folding it up as I began to skirt through the camp. Moving with as much speed as silence could allow for, I kept stock of my mana reserves. It wasn’t rapid, but I could sense my mana steadily decreasing, the active spell manipulating so many water particles with an edge of control instead of the more practiced discipline of unrefined force. Keeping such a spell active for an hour or so would leave me entirely exhausted of mana.
Which was why I had no intention of remaining near for that long. As soon as I’d managed to snake past the tents and wagons and was clear of signs of nearby human life, I dropped the spell, instead directing the mana through my body as I felt my original sage ring tickle as the spell activated. I’d practiced flow for so long, engrained the principles of the magic in my flesh and blood since even before I’d formed that first ring that it was the only magic I could use without a peep; in fact, it was the only magic I knew of that could be used without a word from any human mage, minus those made capable through enchanted objects.
Thoughts of magical theory aside, I felt my body lighten, my body dialed up to an eleven. I rolled my shoulders once, never quite able to get used to the sudden lightness that came with flow, before I took off without a word. The trees seemed to blend into a wave of green and white, snow already collected in some of the branches, as I flashed through the quiet morning like nothing more than a fleeting specter. In a plain sprint, I was faster than the fastest horse, and unlike a horse, I could deftly maneuver through the crowded trees.
I initially assumed a day and a half, but at this rate, I might not need more than a day to reach the Pond.
It was also perhaps a statement to the vast distances that separated much of the land. Even traveling as swiftly as I was, covering such distances would still take at least two days. To cross the entire country, even at this speed, would take weeks.
Which is part of why you’re up North in the first place.
Marching troops on foot could take egregiously long periods of time. It was why we needed to control the waterways. Capturing the North meant that we’d be able to focus entirely on such; perhaps this war could be ended before dragging out past months and years.
To the swift goes the spoils.
And yet, I was leaving behind my task, off to visit the Pond for no specific reason. It wasn’t as if the Pond held the key to bringing down the walls of Theronhold, or at least I didn’t expect it to. It was nothing more than my own selfish desire to revisit one of the places that had marked the beginning of this journey that my life had become.
There was no point in trying to convince myself that there was something more profound about my actions. I was simply being selfish.
So, you said it yourself. To the swift goes the spoils, so best be swift about this, eh?
Turning my attention back to my fantastically quick run through the forest tundra, I began pouring more mana into the magic that granted my body the capability to run at such speeds. Faster and faster, I continued until I could go no quicker without losing the ability to track where exactly I was running toward.
A day. Less than a day. I’ll cut it down to two-thirds. A day and a half round trip.
It was nearly half the initial estimate of how long my round trip would take, yet I was confident I could amount to at least that much.
What good is being a Sage if I can’t even do that?
Knowingly goading myself on, I focused on the rhythm of my breathing. Regardless of what I told myself of what a Sage should be capable of, pumping this much mana into flow would be taxing, and the next sixteen hours would be challenging to maintain. Still, if there was anyone who could do it, it was I.
After all, you’re the famed Zero, conqueror of dungeons, vanquisher of mighty beasts, and champion of dueling. What’s a little run?