After sitting in the driver’s seat for several minutes, I jumped out of the seat and walked to the back of my carriage. I opened the door to the back of my carriage and saw my transmutation setup in all its glory. I realized that it was only with the sheer weight and momentum of hundreds of years of technological progress that I was able to create the miracle powder in the first place.

“‘If I have seen further, it is only by standing upon the shoulders of giants,’” I muttered to myself in English as I ran my hand across the leather spines of the books that I had acquired over those past six years. Most of them were historical in nature, but a few were treatises on the “proper” use of certain schools of magic.

Remembering the inscription on the interior of the rose ring, I withdrew a book entitled, On the Life of Etron Polaris, from a chest. Strangely, the book was written in Elvish, but I had learned enough Elvish under Beltane’s tutelage to read such a book. My pronunciation was awful, but I could carry out a basic conversation in the Language of the Elders.

With the history book in hand, I turned to the larger chest near the carriage’s entrance. I drew my wand and lightly tapped the top of the trunk, causing a silver skull and several warding circles to flash across its body. The chest had been heavily warded by Beltane, and the silver skull served as a warning to anyone with the temerity to attempt its theft.

I withdrew the chest’s only key from my pocket and placed it in the chest’s lock. Silver runes on the key flared in resonance with the wards, and the chest unlocked with little resistance. I lifted the chest open, revealing an inert ward on the inside of the chest’s lid. By placing the key in the lock, I deactivated an arcane circle that would have struck me with a conjured bolt of lightning. Even if any would-be thief had the skill to break the exterior wards, they would be caught off-guard by the interior booby trap.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Inside of the chest, I saw a glittering trove of gold coins that would fill a dragon with jealousy. Last time I had counted the treasure held within that chest, it held 912 Etronian gold coins. All told, it contained about half of all the gold I had made working for Sendrick over the past six years. The other half was set aside for running the camp, building my network, and paying salaries.

There was another chest in Eadric’s wagon where he had deposited that month’s payment. After the thirty gold coins had been deposited, the other chest must have held about eighty gold coins.

A man could retire on the amount of money contained on our humble wagons, so the extensive wards were more than justified. There was little to be worried about, however, as the roads of 630 CA were relatively peaceful. As long as the King still lived and the Kingdom remained unbroken, there would be nothing on the roads that two C-Tiers (maybe three on a good day) couldn’t handle.

I closed and locked the chest before returning to my seat at the front of the carriage. Crossing my legs, I placed my Elvish book on the history of Etron against my knee and started reading. By the time an hour had passed, and I had reached page two hundred of the book, a quick trill sounded from the front carriage. A moment later, it started to move.

I was so engrossed in the book that I hardly noticed the departure of the carriage in front of me. I heard Kinro shout from Eadric’s wagon, “Hey! Let’s get moving!”

With a frown, I dog-eared the book and grabbed the reins. Though my hands were on the reins, my head was in the clouds as we departed. There was one phrase that I couldn’t get out of my head, one phrase that appeared in that history book time and time again: “wild rose.”