In the midst of a meal while riding consisting of the same dried meat and crackers from the days before, the sounds made by their mounts hooves suddenly changed. Where it had been the crunching of snow on dirt it suddenly changed to the clopping of hooves on paved stone.
“Were back on the road, nearly there now!” announced Aelan.
Nearly there turned out to be just enough time to finish eating a cracker. From out of the mist stone buildings suddenly made their appearances as they popped into existence from the haze. It turned out that the meeting point was an abandoned village or at least some sort of man-made fortification.
“What is this place?” asked Lleu.
“It was an outpost, used to be permanent but eventually the nobles in charge of funding decided that it was too expensive to maintain. They stripped it of anything useful a few decades ago, it's been nothing but a convenient stop for the expedition ever since.”
Riding through the remnants of a once mighty gate and into the streets of the outpost Lleu looked around and observed the place. The streets were fairly large as they had obviously been built with military situations in mind and the buildings were all built out of solid stone bricks in a blocky style. Only a few turns later, they were still fairly close to the edge of the outpost, the pair reached a building on which the white paw print of the Pathfinders had been sloppily painted. To their surprise, a pair of enquian were tied to a long post close to the entrance of the building.
“Looks like Ria and Manix beat us back.”
Opening an old and scarred door Aelan and Lleu entered the building to be greeted by the smell of a fresh stew simmering on a small fire built in a pit positioned in the center of the room. Sitting nearby and tending the stew were two pathfinders that Lleu recognized from departure, one man and one woman. Clearly partners, both had a slightly wild and scruffy look to them although their eyes seemed very friendly.
Looking up, the woman whom Lleu assumed to be Ria, asked, “I’m guessing you being here this early means it's closed again?”
“Fifth time in a row now, it's a dead pass.”
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“Not good, that one was in a great spot too and was safe as well. Our list of good passes we can still use is getting a little short for my tastes.”
Turning to Lleu her expression changed from the worried frown it had taken at Aelan's new to a happy grin.
“I take it you are Lleu? Jestix, that's the leader of us Pathfinders if you don't know, told us we finally had someone new again.”
Nodding he confirmed her query.
“Glad to have you, we haven't had any new recruits for a couple years now. Shadow Affinity is just too necessary for our work to be ignored and too damn rare to easy recruit from out of house.”
“Didn't Thalia have a student last year?” asked her partner, presumably Manix.
“Doesn't count, he got scared and joined some earth society a day into training. Not a great loss though, we were really scraping the bottom of the barrel when we dredged him up. You aren't going to run off like he did are you Lleu?”
“I don't think so,” Lleu replied who was then quickly followed by a comment from Aelan.
“I would be very surprised if he did, we already fought a pair of aberrations and he stood and fought, even managed to take one of them down!”
“I only shot it with one arrow, you dealt the blows that killed it.”
“If you downed it a part of the credit is still yours.” Interjected Manix as he stirred the pot. “Try not to rely too much on mundane weapons though, magic is what wins fights! You have had success using totems I take it?”
“Some” replied Lleu pulling out the final replica which prompted a surprised and questioning expression on both of Manix and Ria.
“Aelan, are you trying to deprive us of a well-practiced recruit?” Ria asked.
“This one managed to turn a testing device into a flashing firecracker and turned all replicas save that one into smoke signals. I thought it would be best to wait to give him anything until he learned a little more control and we were somewhere where we can make some noise.” replied the grinning Aelan.
“Now that you mention it though, it should be a good time as any.”
“I heard about someone almost blowing up Lania during the testing, I would have loved to see that. Anyway, we should probably finish up here before Lleu tries anything, just in case.” Ria said twirling her finger towards the simmering pot. The stew was ladled out and compared to what they had been eating in the days prior it was a very nice change of pace. Actually, it was a solid step up from anything Lleu had been used to eating while still working as part of the runners. The quality of the food was a solid ranking above what one would expect to find in most of the lower district.
Aelan, having finished with his meal before any of the others pulled a pouch out of the bag he had brought inside and removed the contents.