The mountains of the impjasegi far behind Nannade, the ocean shore to her right and the city in front of her. More than five hundred miles of road to Plirova lay behind her and only ten more miles to the city ahead. The night before, when Nannade had climbed the last hilltop in darkness, she could only see the twinkling lights in the distance, but it was dawn now and she saw everything, the city in all its glory. There, in the distance, above the mouth of the salt river, Southbridge rose up from the landscape.
The bridge itself was already imposing from this distance. Half a mile wide, a mile long, reaching almost five hundred feet above the ocean, several floors in height, housing not just roads to cross over from east to west Ackarom, but also offices, storage, shops, and many other establishments. It was a marvel what the architects had sculpted from mere stone, wood and metal.
And on its apex, the Farstone stood. Two hundred feet the obelisk rose above the pavement of the bridge, always casting a soft light from within its crystal body. Outside of the bridge itself were the outskirts sprawling to both sides for miles away from the core of the city. A thousand times a thousand people were said to live there, more than in all of Sturreland. In many layers, the walls of Southbridge were like a record of its growth, the architects setting the city limits into stone every few decades, and it looked like soon, another generation would get its chance to outdo the previous one.
“I can’t believe I’m actually here.” She said, to no one in particular.
But Aaka decided to pick up the conversation. “Black Surgeon did not react much differently back when he first saw it.”
Nannade nodded absent minded and just kept on staring in the distance. All the tales and hearsay reverberated in her head. The bards truly did not lie when they sang of the splendour.
She finally set out on the road again. She could make it before sundown, if she hurried, and she intended to do exactly that.
She had spent the last thirty-seven days on the road, sometimes getting a free lift on wagons, but more commonly, she had to take care of herself. More than once a fellow traveller thought the girl easy and quickly got to meet the girl’s claws and knife, and she had acquired many a blister on her feet, but it all had paid off now.
Nannade was walking on the stone road as if the air itself carried her. By noon, she could see the ships sailing in and out of port. Unloading their cargo and taking on new from distant lands. Nannade did not even stop for lunch, eating some of her last rations on the way. She had made them last quite long with the free food she got handed for dancing and singing to the travellers at the end of a long day of travelling.
And now she was here, about to pass through the gates of Southbridge, the greatest city of her time, a monument to greatness itself. She could not keep her eyes off the view. The cranes, driven by arcane machinery, came into view. They pulled the cargo directly from the decks of the large ships all the way to the indoor markets and shopping alleys said to be housed inside the bridge.
And finally, as the sun started to set behind the hills and mountains behind her, Nannade came to pass the first lone houses. It was like almost any other outskirt of a city. She would walk until dark to reach the city itself and she just now realized she had no idea how to continue on. She guessed she could take the stone road flanking the salt river up north, another five hundred miles to her destination. But for now, a soft bed would be her only goal.
She had passed through a few walls already, when she was stopped by a closed gate. The centre of the city was inaccessible to her for today. She turned around and began looking for a place to stay. The houses here were already reaching three to four floors high but there was still some space between some of them, not unlike to Sosken.
She walked into an inn and took a seat at the bar. While waiting for the keeper, she put her head down, just for a moment, and almost immediately fell asleep.
A loud CLAP of a hand hitting the bar with all its force woke her right back up again. “HEY! GET A ROOM!” The barkeeper yelled at her.
Nannade raised her head barely above her own shoulders. “I’m sorry, I just stopped walking. How much is the communal room?” she cawed weakly.
“A Communion silver, and it will get you some bread and water for breakfast as well.”
Nannade went through her pouch and found a few last coins. The ones she had collected on the road were probably each of a different currency. She handed her silver over to the barkeeper and got her tired body up the stairs. Upstairs, she found the communal room and opened the door. The snoring of dozens of weary travellers greeted her like a lullaby choir. She found an empty bed and let herself fall forward. She was asleep before sinking all the way into the bedding.
The next morning brought a stiff back and sore soles. She got her breakfast and went back outside into the early autumn sun. The equinox had just been a few days ago. It had been more than three months now, although she did not keep exact count. She only kept the day the time ran out in her mind. Second day of first dozen of third month. 2-1-3
She was about to set out onto the road when Aaka spoke up.
“Nannade, you need to go to the university’s campus, to the treasury.”
“What?” Nannade was awfully surprised to suddenly hear from her. “We’re in Southbridge, you know that, right? We’re not in Northbridge yet.”
“It’s not about your next mission, it’s about your last. Black Surgeon has sent a message to have them pay out a credit in his name to you. It’s half of the last mission’s pay-out.”
Nannade wanted to clear her ears and hear that again. “What?”
“Yes. I spoke with him along the way. I didn’t want to get your hopes up so I said nothing. But Black Surgeon agreed that you should get a cut as soon as possible.”
“Woah.” Nannade was silent for a moment. She had come this far all on her own, with just a little coin from Garetas, and now she received help all the way from Sturreland. “I can’t believe it. Thank you Aaka. You really saved my life, I think. I thought you wouldn’t interfere anymore?”
“I am not allowed to aid you in your tests, but I am allowed to help you on your journey to these tests, minimally. And Black Surgeon specifically allowed it with approval of the Lodge’s judges, of course.”
A happy bell rang in Nannade’s heart with every step as she made her way further into the city and finally passed the last wall. The campus was outside of the bridge and had a western and an eastern division, built at the same time as the bridge itself, a bit less than eight hundred years after the Great Sundering. She made her way to the western campus, being allowed entry through Aaka herself. She was technically an Alumni of the university as well, since familiars were treated as part and extension of their masters, but it took some time to find a medium among the campus staff to confirm Nannade’s story of the talking spider.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
The campus was bustling with activity. The students were all wearing jackets in deep blue and orange; the staff and professors were wearing robes in the colours of the university, orange, dark red and deep blue, with silver trim. Chatting with each other, reading newly-printed books, hurrying from lesson to practice, meeting in the park – what happiness to behold! Nannade could barely contain her excitement and wonder, the guards escorting her had to urge her to hurry several times. Garetas had promised to enrol her in a university as part of her training as well. It would not be before she was nineteen, but and so, she wanted to linger a moment longer.
At the treasury, she was handed a small cardboard box filled with Communion silver, then she was escorted back out again. Outside the campus walls she stood, with more silver in her hands than she had ever even seen before. After all, she had saved a city from a crazed occult conspiracy and a voracious abomination. And this was just half of the bounty. Even from Garetas, she only ever received a quarter of their mission. And she was only allowed to spent half of that freely.
She was counting the coins another time, just to be sure.
Aaka observed it all and decided to snap her out of it. “Do you know how you’re going to spend it? This would last you two or three times as far as you have come so far.”
“I know exactly what I am going to spend it on first.” Nannade said with a cheerful smile.
“Is it a bath?”
“IT’S A BATH, YES!” she crammed the box down deep into her backpack and started running towards the entrances to the bridge. Whatever she wanted, the highest quality and biggest selection, she would find up there, at the apex.
The bridge technically consisted of many parallel bridges connected by footpaths and corridors, like a lattice, all without a gap to be seen between stone, steel and wood. For all kinds of traffic in each direction, there was its own one of these bridges; carriages, carts, horses and other mounts without carriages or carts, transients on foot, regular pedestrians, members of the university. And then, for the very privilege, a special system for hovering carts and carriages whizzing through the air along the side of the bridge above everyone else, only high functionaries and key industry was allowed to use them. What spells were used, how much flux it cost to move them, Nannade did not know and nobody else on the ground seemed to know either.
She was on the bridge for regular pedestrians, walking across the intricately set pavement, each stone a filigree by itself. It had cost her a bit of toll to enter, but she endured it. She would find the best bath house she could find and enlist the finest service they had that was not aimed at adult men. The best would be just good enough for her, just for today.
For quite a few coins she had gotten a great service. Soaping, scrubbing, massaging, washing, drying and brushing her entire body by two women who knew what they were doing. She felt like a bow being unstrung, cleaned, waxed and put back in its container. They even washed her clothes, although not all blood stains came out. She felt refreshed and new when she finally left the bath house, ready for dinner.
She chose a coffee house with a balcony and a view northward, up the salt river. She ate her dinner with this vista. Below and ahead of her lay the Great Cleft, the Wound of the World, where 1346 years ago in the Great Sundering, the continent of Ackarom was torn atwain. And in this chasm, less than a hundred feet at its widest, the sea flowed, forming the salt river, five hundred miles from Southbridge to Northbridge, the sister cities. Above Nannade’s head, she could see the Farstone, identical to its sister stone in Northbridge, stand, the two largest single glass crystals ever grown by human hands. Not only did it serve as a soft illumination across the countryside, but also as a connection between the two cities. Together, the two cities formed the central capital of the Federation of Universities of Ackarom, Lmakahir and Othmuraigg. The world was truly vast, and Nannade sat at its centre, having a nice serving of roasted chicken and rice with wine.
From up here she could also feel the greatest and most stable ley-line in the known world, the fire river, flowing through the cleft. Normally, ley-lines shifted, changing over the course of decades, but this one hadn’t changed significantly, the only constant in the vast web of ley-lines through which flowed the energy of nature. To mediums, these lines meant that they could see faraway places and convene over great distances, something that the arcanists could only achieve with gargantuan projects and investments such as the Farstones.
After Nannade had finished her lunch, she went back to the markets on and in the bridge. She was bent on spending something for herself. She still had the idea of the object-bound spirit, but she needed ingredients and materials, and if she couldn’t find them on this market, she wouldn’t find them anywhere else. A snake-skin, around ten feet long. A length of cloth, even longer than the snake skin and two feet wide, sturdy thread, lots of sinew. She found it all with no problems. It would take her quite some time to finish it, maybe during her next long travel, she could spend a bit of time each night working on it.
Then, the last thing on her list, she wanted better gear. She had found the dagger and cap rather useful. They were small and light, but gave her much more to work with than the short throwing knives, which also did not have a guard. She found exactly what she had been looking for, they were almost identical to what she had borrowed from the Plirovan Guard.
With her new dagger in its sheath on her belt and her new cap in her backpack she stepped outside on the bridge again. She took the box of coins back out and realized just how much she had spent.
“I guess this marks the end of my spending spree.” she said more to herself than Aaka.
“Is it still enough to keep on going?”
“Ahem... maybe. I don’t know the fares. I can at least buy a lot of rations with it.”
Aaka quickly climbed up to Nannade’s shoulder to see the coins for herself. When she did, she turned to the girl. Somehow this spider managed to make an angry face.
“You’re an idiot, did you know that?”
Nannade nodded in shame.
She walked to the southern edge of the bridge and watched the ships come into harbour. A big net of chains lay on the bottom of the harbour, which could be pulled up by a moment’s notice to block the gate for all who tried to leave or enter. The harbour itself was lined with quay walls made from fused limestone, adorned with statues of the architects and land-sculptors who made this marvel of magical application possible. None of the big ships dared to enter the salt river. Nannade had heard that it was still a dangerous route to travel, the fire river was untameable, and mediums were rare everywhere. Maybe she could get a free ride by getting hired. But if she wanted to openly advertise her talents, she’d draw the attention of the guard, who’d want to see her seal and permits and whatnot. She watched the cranes pull up large pallets loaded with crates, bags, barrels and other containers, directly to the port staff on the bridge to hasten the transport of large volumes that needed to flow inland.
She decided to leave the bridge again and to find a cheaper and faster way to Northbridge. Walking another month on the road seemed too much of a hassle. How fast would she be sailing right through the greatest natural phenomena in the world? She was determined to find out first-hand.