“So what’s the plan?” Lleu’s question seemed to surprise Aelan who had lost been deep in thought, focusing on the land around them. He paused briefly before answering,

“We are heading to Marclix’s Pass. It's one of the passes the expedition sometimes goes through to enter the mountains.” He pointed northward towards where the mountains would be and continued. “There are quite of few others like it but we don't know which ones are open this year. The spring storms either snow them shut or blow them back open, it's one of the jobs of us Pathfinders to figure out which passes are open and which are not, once we know the expedition decides what pass to take depending on time and possible dangers.”

“Is that what the other pathfinders are doing as well?” inquired Lleu.

”They are, we all have our assigned passes to which we will be riding. The one we will be heading to is one of the farthest ones away so we have no others assigned to us, should take a little over a week of riding if we keep the pace we are at right now.”

“And the rest of the expedition, what are they going to be doing?”

“They will be traveling to the outpost, it's our designated meeting spot as it's the best place to camp that's still in a good position to access the majority of the passes.”

Conversation died and the pair continued to ride, now in silence, through the mists. Out of the corner of his eye, Lleu occasionally thought he saw the mist shiver in the distance but each time when he turned to look the phenomenon was gone. Also, it only seemed to appear just when he stopped thinking about it and let his mind wander.

Slowly the terrain began to change, where it had initially been very flat it had slowly transitioned into rolling hills which often had large boulders sticking out of them. The sparse trees which had been separated by large distances of open space near the city had also grown more common until they eventually became dense enough so that Lleu and Aelan had to slow down and find paths to travel on. The combination of all these made the landscape look like densely forested islands floating in a sea of clouds.

Distantly, a massive mountain chain had also begun dominating the horizon.

“That's where we are going.” mentioned as Aelan as he pointed towards the eastern section of the mountains. Following the path of his finger Lleu noticed a slight interruption between two monoliths, this he assumed was the pass. Hours of travel through the winding paths later Aelan changed direction and headed towards an especially forested hill. They rode up and he led the way into the thick clump of withered looking trees as a thin tunnel appeared leading them through the jumble. Inside was a clearing and to Lleu’s surprise, the mist which had been covering everything up to that point was entirely missing.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“I found this spot a couple of years ago, pretty nice isn't it?” asked Aelan

“Yeah, but why isn't there any mist here? It covered everything else,” questioned Lleu.

With a shrug, Aelan responded, “The hill and trees are probably the reason, I’m not really sure… Anyway, I think it's time for some training!”

Aelan moved over to his enquian and untied a large bundle that was tied to it. Unwrapping it he revealed five short spears, a small buckler, and a leather bow case painted in the typical white and grey of the pathfinders.

“Before we start looking into whipping your magic into shape I want to cover things a little more mundane but do not worry, practice in one will make learning the other much smoother. We will start with the bow, you have a wind affinity so this should feel natural to you.”

He handed Lleu the case which when opened revealed a finely made bow with a matching set of arrows.

“Try and hit that mark,” Aelan said as he pointed towards a gash in the trunk of a particularly thick tree.

Lleu pulled and released, the arrow flying from his bow and burrowing itself into the tree with a solid thunk. It had not gone directly into gash he had been aiming for but wasn't that far off either, a good first attempt.

“Not bad, try it again.”

Aelan's commands to shoot was repeated over and over again as Lleu lost himself in practice. To his surprise shooting really did feel natural and his arrows kept creeping closer to his intended targets. Using proper weapons was another thing that Lleu had never done before as citizens of the lower district were prohibited from carrying anything more dangerous than a meat cleaver. Although this prohibition existed and was successfully enforced it had never done much to curb violence as fists and short daggers were easily available and the weapons of choice for the countless toughs and thieves that kept the city guards overworked.

Aelan’s hand stayed the shot he was about to loose as he said, “That's enough for now, I still want to start with the spear while we still have some light.”

Taking spear and buckler Lleu was soon plowing through sets of forms and exercises after Aelan demonstrated each one. Contrary to the bow, the spear turned out to be far more difficult to use, partly because of Lleu’s limited height, and soon the light had already begun to face causing Aelan to end the session and promise that they would continue the following evening.

“Come here,” said Aelan as he once again began rummaging through his saddlebags. Eventually, he removed a small leather sack which he handed to Lleu.

“Inside are a handful of replicas for you to work with.”

“Won't they just break just like the first set I had did?”

“Some probably will, they tend to do that if someone tries pulling far too much power out of them and that brings me to your task. Tomorrow when we are once again traveling I want you to experiment with them and try to make them do nothing. Even better would be producing an effect without their destruction but I would be satisfied with the first result.”

Taking the bag Lleu glanced inside to see it full of black carved stones similar to the one he had used previously.

“Get some sleep, we will have a long day of travel tomorrow”

Lleu wrapped himself in his thick cloak and dropped down on a fairly rootless patch of ground. He briefly checked one of the deep pouches for the seer’s golden disk which he had stashed there and upon finding it in place began to fall asleep.