We exit the house and march into the already busy square. Soldiers and adventurers alike are polishing their weapons and preparing their gear for an advance into the forest and towards the enemy encampment.
“It’s ridiculous to think this isn’t even a small part of the army this empire had, yet even that is too much to spare.” Sam comments.
“They got their hands tied, nothing much they nor we can do about it I’m afraid.” Sid replies.
“Let’s just focus on doing our job.” I say, grabbing my girlfriend’s hand and giving it a gentle squeeze.
“Hmmm.”
“Amicia, let’s go and tell the upper brass that we are moving out.” Veanya beckons Sam and me forward.
I nod and drag my girlfriend along while Gamma and Sidolphus follow close behind us.
The longer we are in view, the more gazes we are pulling from the crowd around and almost immediately many of the soldiers start bowing down in reverence, even a couple of the adventurers seem to do the same.
In the officer tent, the officers are busy plotting attack directions on their map and telling runners where to go. Their attention is so focussed that it takes quite a while before they notice us standing beside them. We decide not to interrupt them for too long and just bring them up to speed with the fact we are leaving. They all salute us and wish us good luck for the tribulations ahead of us.
After this short stop we move out towards the edge of the settlement while Veanya calls the horses she summoned to our side.
“Is this the time for the flying horses?” Sam asks.
“I would say so.” Veanya nods. “But let’s wait with the flying part till we are at least somewhat further in the forest.” She says as she gets on her steed.
“Alright.” Sam looks to me and helps me to get on my horse too, not that I need it as I’ve gotten pretty used to riding horses thanks to my adventures here, but who in her right mind would not allow such a galant gesture of her loved one to bear fruition. I, for one, wouldn’t dare to let such an opportunity go to waste.
“Thanks, Sam.” I blow my girlfriend a kiss.
“Hehe.” She chuckles and then gets on her horse as well.
Gamma rolls her eyes as she gets on her horse too and Sid swiftly follows suit after.
After a couple of minutes we are well passed the defensive lines that we were holding yesterday, battle scars still clearly visible in the terrain. I do notice that there are no husks remaining, not even burned piles of ash are visible.
“Did they clean up the husks already, Sid?” I ask.
Sid shakes his head. “No, after you blew up the purple devil, the husks and their remains just simply vanished into thin air. It looks like their essence was tied to him.”
“It was probably the devil who was spreading the purple miasma too and commanding his little puppets through that.” Gamma ads. “So you removed the head of the snake and the rest just crumbled around it.”
“So if we kill the big devils who are in charge we will cripple their entire effort?”
“Probably.” Sid nods. “But you saw how difficult it was for us to compete with them yesterday. I don’t think it will be much easier to compete with others.”
“And that’s not even considering the fact that there’s a mastermind behind all of this too. We will have to deal with them as well.” Gamma replies. “But that also means that if we take them out…”
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“Maybe the rest will follow suit automatically?” Sam finishes Gamma’s sentence.
Gamma nods. “Yeah, so if we manage to get rid of that, we might save ourselves and this world a lot of problems by getting in a prolonged fight.”
“Hmmm. Whatever the root cause of this is, it’s going to be near the portal we have seen before.” I reply. “It would be nice if we could limit our time fighting though. I would much rather this planet returns to normal as soon as possible. That way we can just adventure to our heart’s content without having to worry too much about world-ending threats.”
“Well-said, Amicia.” Veanya smiles. “World-ending threats do get rather tiring after a bit, don’t they.”
“And there’s always a more serious one afterwards.” Sid lifts his finger matter-of-factly.
“Sometimes there’s less serious ones in between.”
With that talk aside, we ride our mounts slowly into the forest where a couple of adventurer groups are already slowly making their way forward. From the looks of it, it seems to be only the really high level parties who are doing so, paving the way for the lower level parties and the army who will come after them.
None of them seem to be in a rush and plenty of them also left their mounts behind which is why it only took us a couple of minutes to disappear out of sight from pretty much everyone.
Veanya does one last quick look-around before she gives us the go-ahead. “It’s to take to the skies.” And with her closing her eyes for just a second, spectral wings appear on the sides of our horses.
“Are they hard to control?” Sam asks, giving the horse a pat on it’s head.
“No, just think about where to go and the horse will follow.” She replies.
Sam nods back, looks hesitant for just a second before she braves herself with one last breathe and then without pause her horse takes off. “Wow, effortless.”
“Told you so.” Veanya smiles and follows my girlfriend’s example, with Cid and Gamma following swiftly after. Leaving me on the ground.”
At last I also focus on imagining my horse flying through the sky and just like that, we are both airborne as well. A weird sensation flows over my back. “Wow.”
“Easy, isn’t it?” Sam smiles.
“It is, but it feels a bit weird.” I smile back.
“How so?” Sid asks.
“I’ve gotten used to flying by myself already with my own wings. Sitting on a horse that flies is a very different experience, it actually makes me activate muscles in my back where my wings normally would be…”
“Ah, is it a bit like equestrians who watch others compete? Like muscle memory kicking in automatically.” Sam starts to ride next to me.
I chuckle. “I suppose you could say that.” I see that Sam has a rather pensive expression on her face. “What are you thinking about?”
“Well… it might sound weird, but when I see you flying it always looks so effortless. I don’t really think about it being such a conscious act for you to move your muscles like using your legs for example.”
“I guess in a way it is rather effortless.” I shrug. “It’s not that I think about ‘and now I need to move my wing like this, or like that’. You don’t really think about using your legs when you walk either unless you deliberately want to stretch your leg, right?”
“That’s true.” Sam then thinks for a moment. “Well… At least one of my legs.” She then grins.
“Ah, shit, I forgot.”
Sam chuckles. “It’s fine. Sometimes when I’m in this body I actually do forget about my leg at times too.”
We fly off in the general direction of the enemy encampment, quickly leaving behind any trace of adventurer activity below. As far as we can tell though, there seems to be no enemy activity below either which bodes well for the advance. On our flying steeds it does not take long for us to reach the ruins we camped at last time. The ruins look as deserted as ever, apart from the fact that a lot of the walls that still stood up last time, were now knocked down.
“It’s not far now.” I say to the entire group.
“I can feel it.” Veanya replies. “The air is starting to feel real thick again. Even blindfolded I could point you in the right direction. Although there is one area here that feels a lot lighter than the rest. Almost radiant at that”
“Would it maybe be the pit over there?” Sam points towards the big pit where the cursed graveyard used to be.
“It is, why?”
“I cleansed that area the last time we were here.” I answer. “I think it was one of the pits they used to summon spirits and bodies from. When we camped here we got attacked by an army of ghosts… or at least what comes down to being ghosts…”
“Brrr… Ghosts.” Gamma pouts, her ears fall flat against her head. “Not a big fan of those.”
“The ghosts appear to really not like electricity.” Sam replies. “We used that to not get swamped.”
“Interesting.” Sid comments. “Did you deal with the summoner as well?”
“There was no sight of them.” I shrug. “They are probably still out there. It definitely wasn’t the purple devil though. Those ghosts weren’t really in the same theme…”
“So that lightning comment might prove even more useful than I first thought…” Sid looks over to Veanya and gives her a wink.
Veanya nods back. “Noted.”