A large man who looks in his late fifties walks on the gravel floor against the flow of the river.

His granddaughter told him someone asked for him specifically when she was out foraging for fresh tistis mushrooms.

This happens every few years, but never out of town; nevertheless, he’s always welcoming to challengers.

“You’ve aged, A’krozni…”

He hears a very familiar voice behind him.

Turning around to confirm his surprise, he’s welcomed by a smiling face he thought he’ll never see again.

There stands a tall and athletic woman with a beautiful young face. At a whopping 273cm, 30cm above the tallest of men, she can’t help but look down at the old friend.

A large black cloak covers most of her right side, with her left side revealing a beautiful top of silk full of yellow and red patterns and comfortable blue pants.

Not the most fashionable of looks, but she was never one to know what looks good.

“You haven’t aged a day…”

That means the rumours were indeed true.

His heart is in conflict with itself, not sure how to feel about her sudden visit.

He thought surely she must’ve forgotten about him; her life, afterall, is full of people that come and go.

And yet, here she stands before him, Vezirva.

“I don’t even get a hug?”

With shock still in his face, he approaches her slowly with open arms.

She wraps her left arm around him until he recovers.

“It’s good to see you boss…”

His composure returned not much after and a comfortable smile formed.

“I see you’ve settled down.”

They’re walking towards the very small town as they’re chatting.

His posture is much more relaxed on the way back as he doesn’t have to be on the defensive anymore.

“It’s not impressive compared to most places… but it’s a place I can call home.”

It’s very true.

The entire town is composed of less than 60 buildings.

Less than half of them are reserved for actually living while the rest are occupied by various purposes, from storage to workshops. It’s mostly storage though.

“I rather disagree, this place is much more impressive than you think.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Just 1 generation before your time, this place wasn’t inhabited at all… there was nothing as far as the eye can see.”

“Oh? You’ve been here before?”

“This used to be a popular merchant road, if you’re ever going towards The Nail from the east, you’d probably pass through here.”

“People still do that, it’s our main source of everything really.”

“The view here was great enough that some nomads decided they’ll settle here… it’s funny how it used to be just a camp of 12 or so tents and mad enough people to try and live off nothing.”

There’s nothing much here in terms of resources.

Sure there’s a river for water but that’s about it.

The closest forest is about 6km away and practically no stone hills.

Food is viable for any half decent hunter and forager but to populate a town, it’s asking too much.

They still managed to build a sizable town, mostly out of pine logs but that didn’t stop them from getting creative with it.

The buildings in this town expand horizontally, with most only having but a ground floor. It’s compensated by having a much larger area.

You can tell which buildings are houses as they each have their own stone decorations built in the foundation to contrast the fully wooden stores and facilities.

Vezirva has to lower her head before heading into his house.

They walk past a large courtyard with a skylight above a fountain with seats around it. From there, there’s many entrances to various parts of the house.

It’s not uncommon for entire families to live in large houses like these in small communities.

They are no exception, as Vezirva’s immediately welcomed by a young maiden the moment they sit down in the beautiful garden.

“Luminations, dearest guest.”

Vezirva answers her bow with a nod and a smile.

The girl quickly rushes over somewhere soon after her welcoming.

“I hope the place is to your liking.”

“Very homely… must be very active during the evenings.”

“Haha… yeah, the kids like to have their fun.”

There’s various toys spread everywhere.

“Did you ever end up having a family?”

“I can’t say I tried, no… I’m not the type to settle down in one place for longer than a few years.”

Before that could go any further, the girl from earlier came back with a tray of treats to put on their empty table.

A teapot and a couple of plates with different kinds of biscuits.

“This is my granddaughter, Ashna.”

Ashna smiles and nods her head while a slightly confused look forms on Vezirva’s face.

“Wait, grand...daughter?”

Ashna looks at her with a puzzled look of her own while A’krozni has a hearty laugh.

“And this is Vezirva, a Golden Raven.”

“Oh my, you’re one of gramps’ old teammates?” she asks with excitement.

“Something like that yeah…”

“Well, she wasn’t my teammate… she was the boss.”

Ashna’s eyes widen even larger than before.

“OH! You’re THE boss? Wrath’s Blade?”

Vezirva couldn’t help but laugh at that. It’s very entertaining to her that she didn’t recognise her name at all but knew her nickname.

“I heard a lot about you… I’m sure gramps exaggerated a bit but if half of it is true then you’ve led an amazing life.”

“Oh, adventuring is overrated most of the time. An ordinary life can be equally amazing if not more.”

She doesn’t mean it.

“You could share some of your stories over tea.” A’krozni’s also interested in what she’s been up to over the many years he hadn’t heard from her.

“Well, I had a couple of decades rest after escaping from the Sand Flakes so the closest story to after we last saw each other must be our hunt for the Demarian Larva.”

“What are the Sand Flakes?” the girl asks.

A’krozni is more surprised by how casually she mentions escaping it.

“It’s a desert of white sand… known to be the deadliest location to exist…” he explains to his daughter.

“I picked up the team from their long vacation and immediately headed south. A Demarian egg hatching was quick news to get around, so we luckily had a couple of weeks to work with.”

She obviously wanted to skip over the impossible bit of the story.

She shared some of her stories as they had tea.

The girl was very excited throughout the sitting, constantly jumping between disbelief and amusement, while her granddad was happy to hear that his old teammates are doing well.

But then he remembered something that made everything past that point very weird.

“Wait… I just remembered that when I last saw you… your arm...”

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He just now realised she’s been eating with her left.

How has he not taken notice of her cloaked right side?

It’s like it was always just out of his attention.

“Haha, I was hoping you wouldn’t notice.”

Ashna looks confused at their exchange, as nothing is out of the ordinary about Vezirva’s arm.

It’s only now that he notices bright blue symbols marked all over her cloak; A distortion rune, a ripple rune, and some connecting runes he’s never seen before setup in a matrix.

She slowly removes the cloak to reveal a grey arm below it.

The arm is beautifully sculpted in some sort of grey wood. The arm is a perfect mirror of her left arm in a relaxed position, but somehow, its form has a weird beauty to it. Perhaps it’s the sheen and wooden texture.

Though the shape of her arm is the same, there’s deep engravings throughout the wood; identical carvings in the shape of an eye spread throughout her non-arm without a clear pattern.

“It’s Tanaran Steel, Carved by yours truly…”

Vezirva strokes her arm and the eye markings glow a little.

Her shirt covers the connecting point in her shoulder, and it’s probably for the best.

“Wow…”

Ashna can only utter words of astonishment.

“You’ve gone without a right arm this whole time?” His question has a hint of pity.

“Oh, it’s alright… it was fun learning to swing a sword with my left.”

“Ha! You still refuse to get with the times huh.”

“I am the times! Rune carvers just aren’t as efficient as my swordsmanship yet.”

They share a laugh between each other while Ashna’s still admiring the carved wooden arm.

Swordsmanship is now a thing of the past. Mainly taught as a novelty, and in other situations, as a hand to hand combat emergency situation.

Vezirva on the other hand, still uses the blade in any type of combat that requires a weapon.

She’s a well established rune smith and very skilled at carving; so much so, that she taught A’krozni the foundation and some very advanced techniques for carving.

Her choice to stick to a form of primitive weaponry and both admirable and questionable.

That is the case until you see her in combat. She can indeed pull off more with a sword than 63 men can with rune carvers. Maybe she can do more with a rune carver of her own? Nobody quite knows since she never showed interest.

Vezirva and A’krozni walk through the large open streets of dirt under the unpleasantly hot sun.

“You did a rather splendid job at setting up the running water channels.”

“We may be a small village, but it doesn’t excuse having to go outside to a spring for simple needs.”

“Very fine craftsmanship throughout.”

There’s a small silence afterwards.

A’krozni remembers well how socially awkward she can be. If anything, it’s impressive she lasted this long as the one taking the initiative for small talk.

“If I may ask…”

“Mhm?”

“Why is it you decided to visit after a lifetime?”

He was bound to ask at some point.

“Oh yeah…” Rather than finding it an awkward thing to bring up, she just forgot.

“I came to warn you that you’ll have an extended lifespan.”

…

…

A’krozni bursts into a hearty laugh, stopping in his tracks.

She looks at him with a hint of confusion.

“Oh… so sorry… it’s just…” he laughs some more. “Yeah.. thanks… I noticed when I outlived my wife by a couple of centuries.”

“Oh, you knew?”

How could he not know? He still ages but at a very decelerated rate.

“Yeah… I figured it out a while back.”

“Oh… well… I’m glad you’re taking it so well.”

“Did you just realise this?”

He continues his walking.

“It’s impressively difficult to find out information about True Artefacts… that and I had to make sure there’s capable Golden Ravens before I left on my own personal quest.”

So… she stopped training newer generations…

“What’s a True Artefact?”

“Not quite sure…”

He can only respond with a confused face that spells: ‘seriously?’

She doesn’t need to look at him to know that he’s asking why she brought it up then.

“From what I gathered, it’s a very specific type of powerful object… but that’s all I got.”

“It feels like you told me nothing there…”

“Well, the Serverous Pulse was such an item… they’re usually sought over by powerful beings, and we just happened to be misfortunate enough to look for one that was wanted by a dragon.”

Is she gonna keep name dropping things that don’t make sense and need explanation?

“A dragon?”

He’s still curious about it so he doesn’t mind being inquisitive.

“All I can tell you is that the creatures from myth and old aren’t the only things considered dragons.”

She actually has no idea about that one.

They stand before a large building with a higher ceiling than most.

“Here we are.”

To her request, he took her to one of the farm houses.

They enter through the large double doors to a huge open room with pots of all sizes arranged to fill the room; there’s even rows with pots floating above another set, some stack twice while others thrice, depending on what they’re growing and how much headspace they need.

Various light runes are carved into the ceiling of both the building and the floating pots, providing luminescence to the sun-craving plants.

Water flows along the ground and upstream, almost in a self regulating manner.

They did well to hide the forcefield runes that keep the water in check. She guessed that it was A’krozni’s touch.

Vezirva pulls out a slip of paper with marks written on it and slides it under her coat for it to touch one of the eyes on her carved arm.

A pinkish beautiful wave of energy bursts out, slightly distorting the air around her for a second before settling back to normal.

The yellowish light runes change hue to match the pinkish wave that passed through them.

The runes themselves grow extensions that don’t quite seem like helper runes, or like runes at all; as if they were misspelt.

“What did you do?”

A’krozni’s not at all worried about her casually messing with one of the village’s sources of food.

“Slight enhancement I wanted to try out…

“In theory, this should accelerate growth and help the local micro ecosystems thrive.”

A’krozni bends down and looks at the small insects burrowing in the dirt.

Four people come from different directions to check out what had happened, but the moment they see the old man checking out their pots, they return to their stations.

“Should I tell them to give special attention to the little things?”

“Nah, their numbers won’t grow, the individuals will be healthier.”

Vezirva has a satisfied smile on her. She had thought of this mutation a couple of years back, but never really had the opportunity to use it.

“When does the market place open up?”

She has a general idea of how many of his kids live at the house, and she wants to get them something.

She couldn’t help but pick up on it as her instincts don’t come with a turn off button.