“What do you…. Mean?” I say to the disembodied voice as I sprint through the narrow alleyways up the hill. There probably is still a bit of time before complete darkness, but I’d rather hit the main streets before then. It’s already difficult enough to navigate these streets with daylight. It won’t be any easier at night with only lanterns to guide me. If anything it’d be more difficult.
And this little spirit going on tangents is not helping.
“Sorry, but this… has been coming…. for a few years now….” Yeah, this running up a slope and talking isn’t working, so I slow down to a walk. Still at quite a pace, but not quick enough to make me out of breath. I’ve basically made it anyway, only a few more blocks and I’ll hit Pirin-Avenue.
I take in a few deep breaths to calm my heartrate back down and steady my breathing. “Look, I really need to go on this expedition. You know I’ve been looking forward to it ever since they announced it a year ago, even before I met you. So sorry, but we’re going on the expedition first. After that we’ll have a look in the Old Cathedral.”
*Sigh* “So can I go back to my run now?” The docks are still far away after all.
I pick up my running speed as the sky quickly colours orange. This part of town is build on a slope so running within it isn’t the easiest thing to accomplish, but this is the quickest way to Pirin-Avenue, so I’ll just have to do it. Maybe with a little help, I can still reach the top before dark. So with that in mind I focus on my heartbeat. After a few beats, a steady pulse going in tandem with my heartbeat becomes detectable.
I burst out of it and right onto the Avenue and fall right on my bushy tail. *Oof* I hope no one saw that. But that hope is immediately shattered when I take a look around, because a group of scantily dressed women are now looking at me, a few of them startled, one annoyed and the rest of them just look at me with a hint of amusement. The annoyed one is the one who speaks up. “Hey! Mind the speed girl, people are trying to work here.” At that my ears flatten on my head and my tail droops. One of the amused women just shakes her head a little while coming to my rescue. “Aaaw, just leave her be Tilly. She’s clearly in a hurry.” She then turns to me. “Go on love, you have someplace to be, right?” I nod at her while blushing furiously. “Uhm, ye-yes ma’am. Sorry for the disturbance. And thank you.” I quickly turn away and start running South along the Avenue.
“Oh, shut it.” But the blush does not leave my face for a good while. Not until we finally reach the Zenith of the hill and the buildings make way of a full way of the city. And it’s a breathtaking view. A sea of lights is spread out before me, ending leagues away at the marshes, with in its middle twin dark snakes. The Twin Rivers, Neu and Rin. The rivers split the city right in two, from the marshes until they reach the sea. And hanging right over this beautiful display almost framing it, the Great Disk almost completely lit because of it being the end of spring.
We follow Pirin-Avenue for about an hour, entering the densely build area of the city, all the way to where the Avenue ends. The streets are still quite busy, but it’s starting to thin out a bit. The end of Pirin-Avenure extends right onto the Eastern Old Bridge crossing the river Rin. Right before the bridge Pirin-Avenue intersects with another street, Bulwark-Avenue, which follows the river Rin both ways. It got its name from the four forts which line Bulwark-Avenue to the north of here. We could follow this road south, but it’ll take us away from the docks first, before winding back towards it, so the quicker way is just crossing the river here.
On the other side of the bridge is one of many islands that split the rivers Neu and Rin apart. I can see the Cathedral Zeph really wants to visit from here, but that’s still a few islands to the south. We won’t be passing any closer than this today. This specific island, though, is one of the larger ones named Commerce Island. It houses the Great Bazar as well as the main seat of the Merchants Guild. Two more bridge connect to this island, one to another island where a lot merchants live, and the final one is the Western Old Bridge crossing the river Neu, connecting the two sides of the city together. There are only three other places where you can directly, or almost directly, cross both rivers, with the Eastern- and Western Old Bridge being the largest and by far the oldest.
There are three streets that connect to the bridge. One follows the river both ways just like Bulwark-Avenue, named Rodwin-Boulevard. One side is adjacent to the river while the other is lined with buildings of at least three stories tall. The other, the Merchants Strip, leads from Commerce Island directly to the Docks, making it one of the busiest streets in all of Neurin. And also the one that’ll get us to the Docks the quickest. So we go along the strip, along with hundreds of drawn carriages and other modes of transport. Because there is so much traffic here, they’ve split the strip into two, the centre of the road for all bulk traffic and the sides for pedestrians, with a few crossing points spread all over its length.
It'd be to dangerous to run within all those carts, so I keep to the pedestrian walkways. They’re mostly empty now anyway, it being night and all, so I won’t really be bothering anyone if I run here. I can really pick up the speed here, since this part of the city is mostly flat, unlike the Eastern part where I live. While I’m running across the Strip, the amazed voice of Zeph sounds again in my head.
Since it’s so flat here, though, I can take my time answering her without running out of breath. “Well I guess this area made a prime location for a harbour, pulling people in for fishing and trade. And that generated opportunities for more people to work her, so more people come. And that just keeps on happening over hundreds of years until you end up with a city like Neurin here. And why not the surrounding land? Well, this was all once surrounding lands of the initial town. It just grew that much.” It reminds me a bit of a tale from home “At least, that's how imagine it'd have gone here, that's how it went where I was born at least. An oasis isolated by hundreds of leagues of desert. One small town starts and before you know it all of the oasis is inhabited.” That thought makes me a little homesick. No. A lot of homesick. It’s been almost ten years already, but I still miss it dearly. I lose myself a little in my bout of melancholy, just running along the strip. Until I hear Zeph scream in my mind.
That snaps me out of my thoughts, just in time to see a man coming out of an alleyway to my right. There’s no way I can stop in them or dodge him to the left and there’s a building to my right, which leaves me only one way to go, up. Time seems to slow down as a focus on my heartbeat. I focus harder than I’ve ever done, and with the first beat I sense the pulse. Wasting no time I will it towards my feet and immediately eject it, sending me half my height in the air. Not enough to clear the guy, but it’s a start. The next pulse happens with my full focus on it, enabling me to send way more energy of the pulse towards my feet. With a small blast of wind I get launched way up, easily shooting over the man and leaving me enough room to do a completely voluntary flip. A soar over the man and head back towards the ground, but before I reach it I’m grabbed by my collar, leaving me hanging just a foot from the floor. It only takes me one more beat to start flailing and shouting. “HEY, WHAT’S THE IDEA HERE YOU BIG, HULKING PIECE OF….”
“Uhm, could you put me down? It’s getting hard to breath.” That seems to wipe that stupid grin of his face. He puts me back down on the ground and lets go of my collar. I should teach him a lesson immediately. “You know, it’s kind of dangerous grabbing people by the collar like that. They could choke.”
But that just gave him an opening for a counter. “That’d be just about as dangerous as running full speed over the sidewalk without paying attention.” And his victorious grin is back. Damnit. And to top it all off, Zeph decides to jump in. Not that Rolan can see or hear her.
“Zip it.” I say to her under my breath. Rolan at least doesn’t appear to have heard it, being to busy laughing at himself. “Hahaha. Well, we all do some dangerous things sometimes.” He says with a shrug, still with a smile on his face. “I’ve got to applaud you on that jump, though, Zarys. Absolutely magnificent.” His grin widens a bit more and this time I’m grinning with him. My tail even start wagging a little. “I know right I never thought I would make that, but I did! Hahaha.” He starts laughing with me. “Hahaha, exactly. Especially with your height. I’d almost think you’d have an artifact on you.” He says that playfully with a wink, but it makes me stop wagging my tail and my ears perk up. Those exposing traitors.
His face gets serious at that. “Wait, you do?” When I don’t answer him he quickly pulls me into the alleyway he come from. “Zarys, no more games. Do you have an artifact?” I sheepishly nod at him. “My uncle gave it to me. He said to keep it a secret to everyone.” I show him a ring I’m wearing. That’s actually a lie, though. The ring is a gift, yes. But it’s no artifact, just a normal ring. But I’d rather get caught with an artifact than someone finding out that I moved Essence myself.
Rolan lets go of me again and breathes a deep sigh. “I swear, that man.” He shakes his head, takes a step back and looks right into my eyes. I can barely hold his, because this man is almost half my height taller than me. And standing like that in front of me is quite intimidating. Intimidating enough at least for me to flatten my ears. A little longer than this and I’ll start crying, but he breaks eye contact before that happens, thankfully.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
He stands there scratching his head, looking like he find a conundrum which he doesn’t have time for. That’s probably exactly what’s happening, but it at least gives me some time to recover from his gaze. I calm down just in time for his attention to fall back on me. “Fine, alright. You know what’s supposed to happen, but I’ll let it slide for now.” He looks me in the eyes again, this time curious.
“Where were you running too, exactly? It’s not really the hour to be speeding across the city.” Aaah, I was hoping he forgot about this. Think, Zarys, think! “I, uhh, was delivering some papers to Professor Agatha. Uncle would do it normally, but he was kind of busy with the Expedition so he asked me to do it.” I show him my little backpack. “At night, though?” Rolan still seems sceptical. “He said it was important and couldn’t wait, so here I am. Speaking of which, I’d really like get back to it. If anything I’d like to be awake to see the Expedition leave.”
“Fine, be on your way. But you better believe I’ll have a talk with your uncle about this.” He rubs his finger across his shaven chin. “In fact, I might as well go his way right now. Still have some Expedition things to talk over with him anyway.” He nods once, coming to his decision. “Anyways. Go on. I’m sure miss Agatha would appreciate it if you didn’t knock on her door too late.” He turns around and starts walking the way I came.
“Oh, right. Rolan!” He turns back around, looking a little confused at me. “Tell uncle I love him.” And before I can hear is reply I turn around and dart off towards the docks. Not suspicious at all.
I run along for a moment before Zeph decides to speak up.
…
An hour or two later we finally reach the docks. Well, part of the docks. This entire area is so big, it could be a city in and of itself. Which makes finding the correct dock quite the challenge. It’s still busy, even as night has long since fallen. But that’s the life here, it just continues non-stop. At day you could crawl over the people, because going through the crowd would simply be impossible.
Right now it’s a good kind of busy. People are still walking around constantly, but you can easily make your way past them. Now to find my Expedition. Talk about finding a needle in a haystack. Good thing I have a cheat for these situations. “Hey Zeph, what do you think?” An excited voice immediately answers me. I tend to forget how young Zeph still is, so many things she has never seen before. She’s still so filled with childlike wonder.
“I know, right. It’s what you’d expect for the biggest port at this side of the continent.” I voice of wonder enters my head again.
“Sure, have fun. But please get back quickly if you get tired. I won’t stray too far from here.” “While you’re looking, could you keep an eye out for the Expedition. Uncle’s papers said there should be two ships which are very distinct. They won’t look like any of these ships around here at all.”
I slowly walk along the docks, looking around me and occasionally dodging a pack animal or a carriage. It’s really amazing how many ships are actually here. There most be hundreds of them of all sizes. From small fishing boats to giant three-masters blocking entire sections. I would’ve never seen this in Senan, or any of the other Oasis-cities. No, don’t think about that. You’ll get sad again. Just think of the Expedition. Expedition great. Expedition wonderful.
“Li’l Fen!!” A booming voice snaps me out of my thoughts again, it’s so loud that it actually hurts my ears a little. I turn around to find a, well, a mountain of a man standing there. I can’t even see his face from down here, cause he’s almost twice my height. It’s amazing how big someone can be, but seeing as this guy probably is a Baeron it’s a little less surprising. Still though, I’m in awe at the sheer size of this lad. His booming voice once again pull me out of wherever my mind was. “Li’l Fen! Could ya please step aside?!” While being lost in my thoughts I didn’t see I was blocking a path so I step aside to let him pass. A few beats later it occurs to me that I could probably ask directions from him, so I run after him.
“Wait, please, sir.” He turns his head to look behind him, but doesn’t spot me. He looks right over me. “Sir, down here.” Now he spots me and his big bushy eyebrows move up a little. “Ah li’l Fen, what do ya want?!” This guy is way too loud, so I cover my ears. That seems to get to him, cause he moves his arms in a placating manner. “Sorry, li’l Fen. It’s difficult controlling yer voice when yer not used to it, harharhar.” I uncover my ears, cause he’s now speaking at an acceptable volume. Still loud though, but not loud enough it hurts.
“So what’d ya want?” He sits down on a barrel which might as well be a chair for him. “Eh, yes, right. Uhm, would you happen to know where I may find the Expedition.” He looks puzzled at me. “Erm, what Expedition do you mean, li’l Fen.” That answer just wipes my thoughts. That’s wasn't what I was expecting. Everyone should at least know of it! “You know, The Expedition. To search for the source of the Essence-disturbance? It’s been all over the news for months.” His puzzled face cracks and he lets out a full guffaw. “Harharhar! I’m just messin’ with ya li’l Fen. O’course I’d know of it, I’d be daft if I didn’t. I’m on it after all.”
Oh shit. “Yo-you are?” If my falling ears didn’t reveal something, my stammering right there certainly did. “Aye, isn’t that what ya were lookin’ for?” If he noticed something is up, he at least doesn’t make it seem like he did. “Uhh, well. Ahem.” Come on Zarys, get it together. “No, I just wanted to see the Expedition before it leaves. I’ve been interested ever since it was announced. I’d really like to take a look up close.”
He seems to consider it for a moment and I swear I see a hint of mischievousness in his eyes, but that quickly disappears, almost as if it didn’t happen. “Aye, I can take ya there. No passin’ the gates, tho. Them won’t let anyone unauthorized in.” I perk up, wagging my tail along. “That’s plenty. Thank you, sir?” He guffaws again. “Harharhar. The name’s Barin. Now, follow me. It’s still a little while away.” He gets up from the barrel and starts sauntering if. I quickly follow the Baeron right behind.
When we’ve been walking for a bit Zeph comes back to me.
Maybe half an hour later we arrive at a large compound guard with a high fence and soldiers all around. Passed the fence, behind all the people and the crates and barrels I can make out two high masts. “Is that them?” I ask to my bulky companion. “Aye, that be them.” He points to my left towards an elevated platform right by the fence. “From there ya will have an amazing few of the compound an’ the ships. Just don’t be seen, cause ya’re not exactly allowed to be up there, but ya didn’t hear that from me, harharhar!”
He starts to walk off towards one of the guarded gates, keeping me somewhat in his sight. “Thanks Barin. Thank you so much for that.” I really mean that, but maybe not for the reason he might think. He still chuckles and answers me. “Harharhar. Don’ mention it li’l Fen. See ya around!” And with that he turns fully and makes his way passed the gate.
I leisurely make my way towards the base of the platform. There’s no one guarding it, but the gate to the stairs up the platform are firmly shut. Good, thing a won’t need that.
“Right.” I look up towards the platform. The ledge is about four times my height away. It should be doable if I take more time to gather some Essence. Just gotta watch out I don’t overdo it. I take position a few steps back, so I won’t hit the platform and shoot a little passed it. I focus on my heartbeat again. As soon as I feel the first pulse, I send it to my feet, but will them to stay there. After four beats it’s getting hard to maintain all of it within me. So I nod once, hoping Zeph gets the message, and then I release.
Well, I guess I build a little too much charge, because I shoot right passed the platform. I soon after reach the zenith of my jump, almost reaching twice the height I was supposed to. That platform seems an awfully far way down now, as does the ground, but a puff from Zeph at least sends me towards the platform instead of the ground. I quickly fall down towards the platform, but a final puff from Zeph cushions my fall, and I land on the platform with only a little *yelp*. I take a moment to catch my breath, cause that little stunt really got my blood pumping.
When I’m finally back to complete calm, I shimmy my way towards the edge of the platforms while prone, trying to keep well out of sight of any spying eyes. Luckily there is only one guard posted around this part of the fence and he doesn’t seem to have noticed me. His rifle does scare me a bit, but as long as all of this goes well, I won’t be at the wrong end of one. I can see some netting a few paces away from him. Maybe something to break my fall. Good thing this platform is close to the fence.
I stay up here watching the compound for some time, occasionally taking a peak at the ships, because they are two marvels of engineering. Both of them have three decks with 12 cannons on each deck. The hull is completely covered in metal plating. A first in the world, as far as I know. But the strangest thing of all is the one mast. You’d think a ship of this size would have at least three, but these have only one. And it doesn’t even sport sails. Instead what they use for motions is one new invention. The water engine. A series of water-Essence artifacts, pushing the water passed and making the ship move forward.
But marveling at that comes later. I first got to get onboard. I’ve slowly been plotting a route through the compound, past the guards and closer to the ship. The only problem left was finding a way onto the ship, but that’s now nicely presented itself as a group of barrels that need to be lifted on board. I need to be quick if I want to get in one, though. So operation stowaway is a go.
First, get down there. That’s relatively easy. I just need Zeph to distract the guard. I tell her in a whisper “puff him in his right ear right as I land in those nets and give me some time to hide, alright.”
Phase two is rather easy as well, because only once saw a patrol in between these crates. And the crates conveniently reach all the way to the ships. So I slowly make my way to them, keeping low and silent. I make my way all the way into the shadow of the first ship, only a few paces away from the barrels that still need to get loaded. The way is clear right now. No one seems to be watching the barrels. But that makes me hesitate. This is going way too well for such a high security compound. But then again. How many people have help from a spirit, not many, as far as I no. None actually. No, not the time for tangents.
There’s still no one watching the barrels, so I stealthily make my way to the nearest one. And to my surprise and extreme suspicion, it’s empty. I check two others to be sure, but they are all full of jerky. A loud voice notifies me that I need to be quick. “Get the last ones on board, then we can round all of this up!” I hesitantly look towards the empty barrel, but against better judgement open the lid, jump in, leave a little room under the lid for Zeph to get through and when I feel her but the lid back in its place. None to soon as only a moment later I’m picked up and carried onboard, where I’m put on the deck. Presumably with the rest of the barrels.
They remain on deck for a little bit as a lot of feet move around outside, but soon I hear a familiar voice coming from right outside my barrel. “I’ll take this’n to the galley, admiral. ”A female voice answers him. “Fine, go on then.” She seems distracted, though. Likely too busy with the final stretches of the loading. I don’t get long to linger on that thought, as the barrel I’m in suddenly lurches up and is carried away. After only a moment it’s put back down somewhere. The little peekhole doesn’t show me anything, though. It’s completely dark outside of the barrel. A well, might as well get some shuteye. It’s been an exhausting night after all. I quietly whisper to Zeph “I’m going to sleep. You can have a look around if you want but be careful.”