“It was truly an honor to meet you, sir.” Bernard, the stout chief of Kellister’s hunter, shook Sir Toren’s hand gratefully. “It could’ve been a rough time for us if it wasn’t for you and your squire.”
The false knight accepted the gratitude with a gentle smile. “It was no trouble at all, Bernard. You’ve a great village here, full of wonderful people. I have no doubt you and yours would have handled the situation just fine, even in my absence.”
“Perhaps sir, perhaps, but I’m thankful to not have to find out.”
“Noble’s name, is he crying?” Alyssia asked Caden, her voice low enough to not carry.
The two were sitting on a low log on the side of the road leading out of the town, the two older men giving them the space for their own goodbyes.
“I think it’s sweet,” Caden said. Then, after a moment of inspecting the chief hunter’s bushy and increasingly damp beard, he corrected himself, “Maybe not.”
The two laughed and turned away from the scene. “So where to next for you?” Alyssia asked.
“Wonderful question,” Caden replied with an eye roll. “You’re asking the wrong person. He’s the one who plans our route.” Caden hiked a thumb at the tall so-called knight.
“Well… if your path ever takes you through Elliven, make sure you stop in to see me, alright?”
Caden arched an eyebrow. “Oh? I’m just gonna show up, sweaty and covered in road dirt, ask to see the eldest daughter of a noble family, and your guards or what have you will let me in?”
Alyssia chuckled. “I’m honored you think my family can afford guards.” Then she carefully added, “Although… maybe do take a bath first.”
Caden pretended to be affronted for a moment, before returning the laugh. “How much longer do you think you’ll be staying here?”
“Not long,” Alyssia said grimly. Caden grinned at her tone, as if she was daring the world to prove her wrong. “I already got my gift of the skirmisher to Initiate, and my gift of earth is so close I can taste it. Then I’ll do my trial hunt, get the gift of the hunter, and get out of here.”
“Back to the Wastes?”
Alyssia nodded. Then, after a moment, she sighed. “You know, I’m a little jealous of you.”
Caden’s smile widened, and a little huff of helpless laughter escaped his throat. “You’re almost Initiate level, with a noble name and an established cadre in the Arboreal Wastes, and you’re jealous of me?”
Alyssia nodded, her face distant, thoughtful. “I am,” she insisted.
“And why is that?” Caden asked, still smiling, baffled by the claim.
“Because you’ve got… so much in front of you. You can do anything you want, go anywhere you want.”
“And you can’t?” Caden couldn’t quite keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “I’m pretty sure your title and money travel fairly well.”
“You’d be surprised,” Alyssia replied dryly. Then she shook her head. “It’s not that easy for me. Being a noble is as much responsibility as privilege, Caden. Between my obligation to work in the Wastes, then the duties I’ll owe my family when I take over for my father…” The older girl sighed, and she suddenly didn’t look so bold and self-assured. “If I’m lucky, I might be asked to travel to the King’s Court one day, or to serve a term in the Lunar Wastes. But otherwise… This might be the only time I get to spend outside of Elliven in my entire life.”
Caden’s smile dropped away by degrees as Alyssia spoke. As much as anything else, her words made Caden think of his mother, and of the other hunters in Felisen. They were just as bound by the responsibility of their role as what the noble girl described. Yet Caden had turned away from that responsibility, setting off with Storyteller, exploring the Realm in a way many of its citizens never would.
Yet that flash of guilt that realization inspired didn’t dull the allure of the open road. If so few had the chance to wander that he was now taking advantage of, that was all the more reason to covet what he had, wasn’t it?
“Well, I’ll just have to come share stories of my travels with you then, right?” Caden asked, trying for cavalier with his tone.
“I’d like that,” Alyssia told him.
“Then it’s a deal.”
Alyssia smiled, but the expression was too sad to look genuine. “First Oli, now you…” she reflected.
“Oli… that’s your brother, right?” Caden asked.
“Mhmm. He left home a little before I did, actually. With a real silver knight.”
Caden bumped his shoulder against hers and laughed. “So he’s out wandering too? What happened to noble obligation?”
Alyssia’s face, after such a brief distraction, darkened again. “It’s an obligation that’s supposed to go both ways.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean…” Alyssia sighed. “I mean my brother had his own reasons for leaving. And I can’t really blame him for doing it.”
“You said his name’s Oli?”
“Short for Oliver. He’s traveling with a knight named Adeline.”
Caden nodded, remembering the name from their first day in Kellister. “Right, right. Well,” he grinned, “I’ll tell him you say hi if I ever see him.”
“Good. You can make him come visit me too.”
“Deal.”
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Their conversation tapered off, neither knowing what else to say. On the road, Bernard gave Sir Toren a final pat on the shoulder, and was turning to leave.
Caden heaved a breath and stood up. “Looks like it’s about time then,” he told Alyssia.
Next to him, the noble girl stood up too. “Good travels, then.”
“Good hunting,” Caden replied with a grin.
Alyssia looked from side to side quickly, then leaned forward to press her lips to his. The kiss was soft, shallow, and brief. When they parted, the slender girl kept her face close to Caden’s, and whispered huskily, “Next time we meet…”
Caden smirked. “Yeah?”
Her lips suddenly turned up in a dangerous smile. “You better be ready for a rematch.”
Caden huffed a little laugh. “You’ve got it.” He hesitated, then added, “Thank you. For helping me… for giving me the words to express who I am.”
“Thank you,” Alyssia told him with a wink. “For being my first celestial.”
The two kissed again, the contact again brief but warm in a way that made his heart flutter.
And then Caden turned to follow Storyteller, absently wondering if the words were real, if they’d ever see Alyssia again, if she’d even want to see someone she had spent a couple nights with in a little village so far from her home.
Only one way to find out, the celestial promised themself.
#
“So where to next?” Caden rested his hands on the back of his head as they walked. Overhead, the bright summer sun shone in a clear blue sky, with not a cloud in sight. The air in the small wood they passed through on their way out of Kellister smelled like growing things and the gentle breeze carried the smell of grain even as it swept away the humidity so common to the warmest season in the heartlands.
“Hmm?” Storyteller arched an eyebrow down at Caden. “I thought you were content to let me be the one planning the route.”
Caden rolled his eyes. Of course Teller had been listening to his conversation with Alyssia. “I am. But occasionally, I would like to know where exactly we’re bound for.”
“Destinations are overrated.” The tall adventurer rolled one of his shoulders and grimaced. “Ugh. I spent too long as Sir Toren back there. It’s gonna take me a week to work that steel out of my spine.”
“Then how about you start relaxing by telling me where we’re going instead of dodging the question?”
Storyteller gave the teenager an arch look. “I’m starting to think we’ve traveled together for too long. I can’t tell you how long it’s been since someone spent enough time around me to start picking out my habits.”
Caden frowned. “Storyteller?”
“Yes?”
“WHERE ARE WE GOING!?”
“Fine, fine, no need to shout.” Caden folded his arms and stopped moving, glaring at the man’s back. Storyteller made it a few more steps before he turned around. “What?”
“You still haven’t told me!”
“Adventurer’s travelsack, FINE.” Storyteller lifted his arms to the heavens and spun around brusquely. “Where are we now?”
“The Heartlands.”
Storyteller gave Caden another sharp look, and the celestial grinned innocently. “More specifically, please.”
Caden arched his own eyebrow. “The outskirts of Kellister?”
“No, less-” Storyteller pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “Okay, let’s try this another way. We’ve been traveling west along the Lumber Road, right?”
“More or less,” Caden agreed with a shrug. The Lumber Road was a long and meandering route that cut horizontally through much of the heartlands, from east to west. Felisen, Kellister, and all the villages they had passed through along the way all based their economy on supplying wood to the merchants who traveled that highroad.
“Okay, so, what’s at the west end of the Lumber Road?” Storyteller asked.
Caden suppressed a sigh. Of course, it was another lesson. He closed his eyes, trying to picture a map of the heartlands as best he could. On one side of the Lumber Road, far closer to Felisen, was Elliven, the bastion city. On the west end was… “Correntry, right?”
“Correct!”
“So that’s where we’re going?”
“No, of course not.”
Caden glowered up at the tall adventurer, and cast a wistful glance back towards the village. “I wonder if Alyssia has any room in her cadre…”
Storyteller barked a laugh. “Don’t be so quick to leave just yet. How much of our journey have we actually spent on the Lumber Road?”
Caden thought on it for a moment, then shrugged. “Not much. You always have us wandering through the woods, or on little side roads like this one.”
“Ah, there we go!” Storyteller pointed a finger at Caden. “Keep going, follow that logic! Why aren’t we on the Lumber Road?”
“Well, it would be faster, and easier, but we’re not really trying to get to a specific place at a specific time,” Caden reflected. “And staying off the road let us find a lot more monsters to practice on… because there’s no wardens?”
“Right! We’re adventurers, we’re the ones who go where the wardens don’t bother to. Forgotten woods, abandoned trade routes, little villages. We don’t just follow the highroads unless we have good reason to.”
Caden nodded slowly. The logic made some sense, given what Storyteller had explained about adventurers over their time together. But… “You still haven’t said where we’re going!”
Storyteller waved a hand. “As I said, goals are overrated. We’re going to find people who need help. But, if you need a destination so very badly…” Storyteller raised a hand to his chin, then looked up towards the sun. He lifted his arm, as if sighting down it, then turned to follow the line of the road. “I would say we’re probably headed to… that direction.”
Caden sighed again. He once again tried to think of the map hanging on the wall at Kellister’s nameless inn. “Well, we’re pretty far south of the highroad at this point, and…” he pointed a hand in the same direction as Storyteller, “‘that direction’ is southwest. So we’d be angling towards… not quite the Cliff Road, we’d have to go farther south for that, and we’re still too far west for the Valley Hearth, so… I think that’s the bottom of the Flax Road, isn’t it?”
Storyteller sighed, and flicked a hand through the air. His eyes lost focus a little bit as he made a couple more quick passes with the fingers of one hand, as if he was looking at something Caden couldn’t quite see. In fact, it was almost as if… “Do you have a map ability?”
“Hmmm?” Storyteller gave Caden a distracted look. “Oh. Yes, that little Know Direction ability of yours becomes a map once you hit Initiate.”
“What!?” The simplest ability among all of his gifts, it was easy for even Caden to forget about Know Direction.
Know Direction–Active, Utility–Learn the direction of true north. No cost.
“Well. At least it’ll be useful eventually.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty handy.” Storyteller turned his attention back to the empty air and made another small motion, before nodding. “Good on you, you were right. We head this way for about a week, we should reach Jellis.”
“Jellis?”
“It’s a town at the bottom of the Flax Road, a bit of a trade hub for the area. Kellister must be just outside of its influence.” Storyteller made another sharp motion, as if batting away an errant fly. Closing his map, Caden assumed. “Good enough?”
Caden blew out a breath. “Jellis. Yeah, that works for me.”
“And thank the Adventurer for that. Let’s go.”