Approximately halfway from Roko to Fespen, I stopped, surveying the area. I was reasonably sure that I was where I had found a convoy destroyed by a pack of pannids all those years ago. Further up the road would be where I saved another convoy from a similar fate, though the land would long since have recovered from the fire I had started to do so.

I turned to look back east, where there had once been a rank B dungeon inside a forest full of beasts, including some that were quite powerful.

“Time to go get some additional help,” I said to my beasts.

There was a convoy ahead which I had initially caught up to before falling back far enough to be out of sight, and I glanced south to make sure there was no one coming up on our rear that would see me. All clear, I unhooked my tarands from the wagon, removed their harnesses, and placed the entire wagon in my inventory. Saddling up Horsey, I mounted my steed, and together the six of us left the road north and made our way towards the forest.

When we returned to the road, already at the height of summer, it was with two new companions. The first was an urstrig, like Hella’s, which I had already fed a fortune of dracosaur meat to and trained up to its nocturne evolution before leaving the forest. It was one of only a few rare beasts which did not grow larger in evolution, so there was no reason to wait. The second was the master of the skies over these forests, one of very, very few rank C beasts I had seen in this world, a true powerhouse: the alcewing, or as I liked to call it in my head, the Pegamoose.

I would have loved nothing more than to spend years grinding away with the winged moose until I could evolve it, but there was just no way it was happening before the tournament, even if I force-fed the beast all the dracosaur meat I had, particularly due to the diminishing returns of a single source of experience without additional conflict. Perhaps, had I been back in Freehold, he could have fought and eaten shuggopotami, another rank C beast, and combined with a few other difficult battles and a varied diet, evolution would have been possible in a shorter time frame. I had managed to evolve a shug, after all, although it had partaken in the battle against the dracosaur directly. I had no idea when, if ever, I would encounter another rank B beast for the alcewing to engage.

His evolution was something to look forward to far in my future, but as a rank C, he would still be a magnificent addition to the team for the tournament, especially with the couple of levels I had already helped him gain while training the urstrig and from eating dracosaur meat.

I was getting impatient to evolve my other rank Ds, and was ready to get a move on. We got back to the road without drawing any attention, retrieved the wagon from my storage, hooked the tarands back up, and continued on our way, the wagon slightly heavier with the nocturne urstrig, the alcewing either leading the way or soaring above.

We soon reached Fespen, the walled city north of Roko which was a large part of the way to the capital, only encountering a pitiful attempt at violence against us by some pannids who must have been truly desperate. They had fled when my beasts leapt from the wagon, and my alcewing descended on them from the skies, gaining a modicum of additional experience towards rank B.

Beyond Fespen, banditry or beast attacks were unlikely. The stretch of Kingdom between the capital and the closest city was well-traveled and one could never go too far without encountering soldiers. Banditry was only really a problem for the cities more distant from the Kingdom, where the land and the living was a bit more wild. Fespen was safe, but that safety was at the expense of unwavering loyalty to the crown.

The last time I had passed through this city, it had been practically bled dry by the war effort beyond the mountain pass to the north. All the excess grain they had farmed had been sent north, and the able-bodied men slowly but surely disappeared into the ranks of the army. Years later, the city was recovering, but it was still a bit hollow. The only reason the city seemed so alive, at the moment, was due to the huge amount of traffic heading north because of the goings-on in the capital.

“Well that’s a sight you don’t see too often,” a random passerby spoke out as I made my way through the gate past the guards with my gaggle of beasts. I glanced over, and saw the speaker was decked out in reasonably good equipment with some kind of glaive over his shoulder.

“It’s a bit more common out east, although…” I mused in response, looking over my beasts. “Perhaps not quite to this level.”

A woman joined the first speaker, humming at the sight of the creatures. She was wearing lighter armor and had daggers strapped to the outside of each of her thighs, and I was pretty sure she had one tucked across her back as well. “Are you one of those new tamers I’ve been hearing about lately, the ones that use beasts to fight?”

I nodded, and the man frowned. “I take it you’re headed towards the tournament, then.”

“‘Fraid so.”

He sighed, and glanced at the woman from the side of his eye. She just shrugged. “Knew it was going to be a fight, but still… hopefully we won’t have to face him.” Then she glanced back at me. “No offense.”

I laughed, and waved her comment away. “I totally get it. Name’s Pilus.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The man nodded. “Gorban.”

“And I’m Shirel.”

“Where’d you two come from for this?” I asked.

“Taraponi,” Shirel answered for the two of them. “You won’t really find anyone practicing with a guandao further north,” she smirked, jerking a thumb at Gorban.

“Guandao?” I asked, interested. “I haven’t heard of it.”

“Guandao is a local name,” Gorban grunted. “Up here they’d just call it a polearm.”

I nodded. The first name they had used for the weapon had paired vowels, which I had only heard in legacy names from the absorbed southern kingdom. Gorban was definitely not a southerner, with brown hair and blue eyes, but he had evidently spent long enough in the region to learn a local weapon. Perhaps his family settled south sometime in the last couple of generations. It was subtle, but the way he said “guandao” was a bit closer to “guhandaho,” a northernization of the originally southern word.

Shirel, on the other hand, had black hair that could have been northern, but I was willing to bet was actually southern. It fell a little too straight for a world where people did not iron their hair, especially compared to my wavy black hair. The real tell was the fact that her eyes were a bit too orange to be brown. I guessed that she had family from both regions in her ancestry.

I glanced around and noticed quite a few more heads of silver and damascus paired with violet and red eyes making their way around Fespen. While not an uncommon sight in and around the Kingdom’s hub, it was slightly unusual to see so many southerners in the capital region.

I had always wanted to travel south, explore the region and see what I could learn about whatever history and culture had survived the north’s takeover. Events conspired to send me north and then east, and just as I had started planning to try to make my way south, I had been pulled north yet again.

Glancing up at the sky, I saw it was about midday. “Have you two had lunch yet? My treat. I would love to hear more about Taraponi, and Haklan, if you’ve been.”

* * *

I spent the afternoon with Gorban and Shirel before they excused themselves, and after renewing my desire to someday visit the south of the Kingdom—and perhaps beyond, if that were even possible, given the massive desert which stretched as far as anyone had ever traveled—I started looking for an inn with a stable so I could get a bath and a good night’s sleep.

Though I had burned a lot of my extra time training in the forest, I was still on track to make it to the capital for the start of the tournament, alongside a number of other potential entrants who were passing through Fespen alongside me. I did not particularly want to spend too long in the capital, on the whole, so I decided to spend a few extra days in Fespen, scoping out some of the competition and seeing what the city had to offer.

I was actually enjoying myself, until I saw a Velgein slave.

Immediately, my heart started to hammer and my vision narrowed. I knew, intellectually, that helping the north throw off the shackles of the Kingdom in their own territory would not magically free all the captured slaves that they had already brought back with them to the capital and beyond, but nonetheless I seethed seeing slavery in action.

My knuckles were white from my clenched fists, but slowly, I steadied my breathing and relaxed my tense muscles. There were going to be more slaves in the capital, and if I got too heated every time I saw one, I would probably end up doing something to attract the attention of the guards. I had done as much as I could for the northern people, as a whole, and while a part of me was now screaming to free every last slave, I had to weigh that against my work to better my community back home in Freehold. I may have left things in capable hands for the year, but I still had a lot that I wanted to do and teach to others back in the village I had fallen in love with.

Nonetheless, I debated what I could do. If I double-advanced Stealth and used 5-point magic, I probably could free many, many slaves. Could I free them all though? How would I feel knowing I may have left some behind? Would I be able to smuggle them through the pass back to the north, and if not, where would they go?

It had been something I had thought about a lot when I first returned to the Kingdom, and slowly had allowed myself to stop thinking about it. There were, no doubt, strong entities in the capital that could pose a problem even if I were determined to try it. I also had no idea what I was missing beneath the surface; slavery being legal, there could be any number of people living in the capital that were not citizens and were owned property, less obvious but still present, unbeknown to me even if I went looking. Even southerners who were captured generations ago in that war, whose children and their children and so on had become a line of a serving class to the wealthy, could be effectively slaves to circumstance and time.

So I had allowed myself to focus only on the part of the world I could influence and make better instead, and I felt like I had done that. Being forced back to the capital region did not need to change my decision. I could weather this tournament, then return home to the east.

I would still keep my eyes open for impropriety. If I saw slaves being abused or beaten, I was not sure I could stop myself from intervening. If I did, I would have to do it intelligently, keeping my identity hidden and finding a way to make sure the people I was trying to free were actually better off. At least I had a piece of land where I could let the people live free, but I had to be careful not to just become a new “owner” to them in all but name. I could allow them passage through my secret tunnel back into the north, although it was a long journey back to the nearest Velgein village. They had no magic, so I could not teach them to tame a tarand for the journey, but I could take them myself, if need be. I had options.

The Velgein who had set me on that line of thought was still in my line of sight, and I looked at him more closely. At the very least, he seemed healthy, and not miserable like the slaves I had seen shackled in the capital years ago.

I sighed. There was nothing I could really do about it at that moment. I needed to attend the tournament, lest the crown decide to come after my Guild in force. Rugnor’s interest in what I was doing was almost certainly not fleeting, given my “invitation.”

Shaking my head, I turned away and went back to the inn to gather my beasts and prepare myself for the last leg of the journey. “Let’s just get this over with,” I muttered.