“What can I say… You grow used to saying your final farewells with others when you live as long as I have, I guess.” - Saying attributed to the Silver Maiden.

After half a week of touring Ostmauer under Rollie’s guidance, Aideen and Celia finally departed westward on a carriage that Henrietta arranged to carry them straight to Ginnie’s retirement home.

Ostmauer itself was an interesting city to explore. The city itself was clearly built as a fortress first, and a city second. The entire eastern half of the city was a maze of labyrinthine passages that criss-crossed the area that served as the baileys between the three layers of walls that covered the eastern approach of the city. The area itself was clearly designed to be a killing zone to trap invaders in while the defenders rained death upon them with impunity from high above at the battlements.

Each of the three walls had their own respective keeps that guarded the gates, while there were no stairs that allowed one to climb from the bottom of the walls – each of which had their own deep moats on both sides – towards the top. The only easy way for someone to reach the top of the wall was to enter from the main keep deep within the defense lines, where it was connected to the battlements of each layer of wall by bridges that doubled as defensive chokepoints.

Honestly, the defenses of the fortress was something Aideen would have considered rather overkill. The three layers of walls – ten, fifteen, and twenty meters tall respectively, the inside walls being the tallest – combined with the moats, each of which was easily five meters in depth, alone would have stymied most invaders.

Of course, the underground defenses of the fort city spoke of the opponent they were intended to be used against. The bottom of the moats were reinforced with stone walls that extended a further twenty meters below the ground. The place was designed to be as difficult to assail as possible, and even with the gates opened, giving them a straight route through the defenses, it still took Aideen and Celia nearly an hour to reach the inner keep back when they arrived.

That was the straight route because many clever mechanisms allowed the defenders to manipulate the labyrinthine walls between the walls almost at will, creating an ever-shifting labyrinth to trap their enemies with. Given how the Kingdom Down Under and Knallzog had been at war six times in the past millennium alone, the fact that none of the invasion attempts ever managed to break through Ostmauer spoke for itself.

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The fortress city was the defensive bastion of Knallzog’s eastern border, the very first line of their defenses. While other nations might have preferred a defense that grew stronger the deeper they went, the dwarves were firm believers in making their gates as impenetrable as possible. The sheer amount of work put into Ostmauer and its success were prime examples of that doctrine.

From the fortress city – the western half of Ostmauer looked more like a normal city, though like most dwarven cities they also had an underground portion – to Ginnie’s home to the north of Knallgant was a nearly three-week trip. The carriage Henrietta arranged to bring Aideen and Celia there was drawn by special breeds of large rams known for their speed and stamina, however, and they reached their destination a week ahead of schedule.

When Aideen saw Ginnie once more, she noticed how the dwarven princess had really grown old. Her hair and beard had both grown sparse, and had turned almost entirely white with age. Both were signs of a dwarf who was approaching their final years, though Ginnie seemed to be in acceptance of her approaching end.

Then again, she was already five-hundred and sixty-four years old that year.

While they caught up to the old times – on top of introducing Celia to the old couple – Aideen naturally made sure to give Ginnie and her husband as best a treatment she could. She could not rejuvenate the elderly, but Aideen’s treatment at least helped to allay the way their bodies slowly started to fail on itself, and likely gave the elderly dwarf couple a few more years to enjoy themselves in good health. It was the least she could do for their help during her stay in Alcidea.

Ginnie also asked for Aideen to pass on a letter to the Bone Lord, one final correspondence from the old dwarf as a student to her master. It was a request Aideen had naturally agreed to, though Ginnie insisted on arranging a ship for them in return, despite Aideen’s insistence that she would have delivered the message regardless.

While it was a rather short trip by sea from Knallzog to Ur-Teros, some traders chose to take a route around the southern continent rather than unloading their goods at the northern port. It was a longer way around, but that also gave these traders a chance to cut the middleman and sell their goods at higher prices at the southern ports.

After all, when they sold their goods at the northern ports, there would be a lot more competition, while the local merchants would naturally later resell their goods in the areas further away from the port at a noticeable mark-up. If the traders from Alcidea were to travel to the south themselves, they would be able to earn a higher profit from their items while at the same time gain the chance to load up on specialties from the south of the continent at a cheaper price, since they were buying straight from the source.

Such a longer trip was naturally riskier for the traders involved, as there was always the risk that a stray sea beast might run across their path, notwithstanding the multitude of piratical scourges that ply the sea routes most commonly used. It was a worthwhile tradeoff for most of them though, and Ginnie arranged such a ship to take Aideen and Celia straight to Ptolodecca.