Eofe followed the winding river for three more days, scavenging what food her instincts told her was safe, and filling the rest of her diet with birds and critters who were so easy to hunt that she resorted to throwing stones at them to create some sort of a challenge.
She slept in the open each night and was glad for the clear summer weather. She also marveled at how different the plains were to her home. Once when she bathed in the river, suspiciously [Assess]ing each fish that swam past, Eofe came to understand that there really was little danger in the plains. The complete lack of any threat was unsettling, so much so that Eofe remained on edge throughout the journey and hardly benefited at all from the continued peace.
She knew she was nearing the city on the coast when she started to see signs of civilization. It began with a flock of strange animals being herded by some Aedwyn that Eofe spied in the distance. They were useless-looking things covered in white fleece and bleating like children. She could not imagine anything like that surviving in the Green. She avoided them and the few other small groups of people she saw and did not meet another person for the whole three days until she finally sighted the walls of Anar Fyndel, and finally came to understand the true scale of an Aedwyn fortress-city.
What must be understood about Eofe—and really most of the Surag in general—was that they lived in the wild. As a rule, civilization could not thrive in the Green, so they made do with the closest thing to civilization they could manage without drawing the ire of the wild's Goddess. This meant their idea of architecture was seeing how far out of the way they could get from nature while still having a roof and optionally a door. So, while an ordinary person such as a farmer from out in the country who had never seen the “big city” might gawp at the high walls of an Aedwyn fortress-city and say something plebeian like “Wow! They're so big!”, a girl who hadn't ever seen more than two rocks stacked on top of each other might be forgiven for being struck dumb by the sight of them.
The white stone walls stood over a hundred feet tall, enclosing the inlet that poured into the sea. They were inlaid with whirling gold patterns whose meaning Eofe could not decipher, but accurately guessed were in some sort of arcane language to power the walls’ enchantments. Seven tall towers rose from the walls in even intervals, each topped with a ballista loaded with cruel looking bolts. Small specks of guards could also be seen patrolling the walls, their steel armor glittering in the light, each bearing spears and shields or longbows.
The river passed through a metal grate on the north side of the city, with the only entrance from land being the eastern gate, where a straight road paved with white bricks led further into Aedwyn lands. The city was far larger than Eofe expected and it took an excruciating walk through the plains to reach the eastern road from the river. Every step was plagued with anxiety as she felt the guards' gazes upon her. Had she already committed some crime she wasn't aware of? Was she not supposed to walk so close to the walls? Maybe they would just shoot her with one of those ballistae, at least then she wouldn't have anything to worry about anymore. She [Assess]ed the guards as she neared the wall, finding them all above level 40 and each with the [Anarin Guard] class.
Eofe stopped when she finally sighted the road. There were hundreds of people on it. They came as individuals, in groups, some driving wagons or leading hand-pulled carts, many accompanied by an assortment of pack or draft animals, only some of which were of a species she recognized. She was also introduced for the first time to the stratifying social gap between the aristocracy and the commons as a gilded carriage rolled past the long queue waiting at the gates to secure a place at the head of the line.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
Eofe trudged to the back of the common line for foot traffic heading towards a small side gate. She made sure to keep her head down after catching the suspicious eyes of the first few travelers. While it can often be said that the feeling of being stared at in a public place is unfounded and grounded in paranoid delusions, this was certainly not the case for the Elf fresh out of the Green. Her [Wildwood Scout] instincts screamed at her that she was being watched, and she wasn't finding the warning the least bit helpful at the moment. Neither did it help her self-esteem when curious children were yanked back by their parents with a warning to stay away from the “wild creature,” followed by a quite stereotypical “don't you know they steal children,” which Eofe found especially hurtful as she didn't like children at all.
It should be said that had Eofe come to this very same road just a hundred years before, she would have received a much warmer welcome. Meaning that she would have been dutifully ignored and treated like a common peasant, which was still several marked steps above being regarded as a wild animal. But she lived in a time when the Bloom was a threat just over the horizon, and the Aedwyn had begun to see the signs. Already, the occasional seed blew out of the Green to taint cultivated fields and gardens with its wild growth. And the few communities who dared to live close to parts of the Green had reported sightings of unknown beasts that seemed drawn from their very nightmares. The tentative peace between the Aedwyn and the Surag would hold for now, but the moment the Bloom was in full swing, the Aedwyn would retreat to their fortress-cities even as their fields were overrun with wild magic and further trampled by their distant cousins. So long as the Aedwyn did not contest the wild growth, the Surag would leave them in peace behind their walls, and they could wait a year until the Bloom had run its course to take back their lands. This was a valuable lesson they had learned after the brutal wars of the first Blooms.
Eofe pulled up her hood in a sad attempt to hide her identify, but her clothing and the darkwood bow peeking over her shoulder betrayed her lineage just as surely as the antlers on her head would have. She kept her eyes on the ground and tried to ignore the whispers. An eternity and an hour later, she finally came to find herself looking up into the suspicious eyes of a pair of [Anarin Guard]s.
They each wore a tabard bearing Aedolin’s mark over a full suit of polished metal armor. Metal! There wasn't much mining in the Green, so the Surag traded for what they used, mostly for weapons and tools. The idea of making a whole suit of armor out of it seemed excessively wasteful. Their pointed helmets also looked a bit silly, but Eofe wisely kept that opinion to herself.
“What’s your business in Anar Fyndel, Surag?” asked one of the guards, placing such an emphasis on the final word that Eofe couldn’t help but feel offended.
“I’m going to Orith to be an adventurer…”
“What was that? Speak up, girl.”
“I’m going to Orith!” Eofe said a bit loudly.
“Hmph,” the guard frowned. “It’s five crowns for a Surag to enter the city.”
Eofe couldn’t tell if she was being fleeced, and there wasn’t anything she could do about it anyways, so she decided to pretend everything was fine. She pulled five coins out of her pouch and tried to hand them to the guard, who had such a look of disappointment on his face on seeing the coins that Eofe could immediately tell she had done something wrong.
“I said crowns, girl,” he spat. “Don’t you know the difference?”
Eofe looked at the coins in her hand, which came in an assortment of different colors that Eofe had initially assumed to be decorative. Upon closer examination, she noticed that the silver coins bore the face of regal Elf wearing a crown, while the copper coins showed that same Elf wielding a sword. Her single gold coin showed only the four-pointed star within a circle, the symbol of the Highgod Aedolin.
A flush crept up Eofe’s neck as she picked through her pouch for five silver crowns, praying her assumption was correct, and trying to ignore the snickers coming from the people behind her. By the time she handed five silver coins to the guard and was waved through the gate, her face was bright red and she kept her eyes glued the ground. So it was, her first introduction to the city was to its excellently cobbled streets.