PreCursive
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Chapter 87 - Journey Anew
🕑 Added 2023-09-29 17:00:06 +0000 UTCAN:
So, uh, I was looking at what I'd posted recently and realized something. I think I kinda forgot about the existence of Interludes for like a solid month lmao. By this point in book 1 & 2 I'd done at least one and was nearly at a second.
Oh well.
In my defense, I think of book 3 as a much tighter story, with less downtime and room for them. I'll think up something and try to fit a couple into the book.
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“Are…you sure?” I asked Grey hesitantly.
Grey rolled his eyes from his place on the driver’s bench next to me. “Yes, Nathan,” He said patiently. “As I’ve told you, driving a wagon isn’t hard. The horses do most of the work.”
I made an irritated noise, drawing the attention of Fade sitting in between us. “I’m not talking about driving the damn wagon. I’m talking about being the face, Grey. You really want me to be the one doing the talking if we run into people?”
Grey let his left hand fall on Fade’s head and start scratching his ears. Fade leaned in, panting. “It will be fine, Nathan. I may not have been present, but Azarus did tell me about your little performance in the court of Prince Elysael. I’m sure you have the Acting ability to present a believable front.”
After Grey’s mission statement back in Hollow Hill, we had all piled into and onto the wagon. Grey had asked me to join him up on the driver's bench at the time, but he had been the one to lead us out of the town. We didn’t actually get much attention on the way out, despite the most famous member of our party sitting in plain sight. I guess it was understandable, though. We weren’t trying to be flashy this time, unlike when we got here. All of us had changed out of our fine black and silver clothes that denoted us as members of Grey’s entourage. Instead, we were deliberately dressing down.
I was back in my handmade leathers, sans the cloak, with a spiffing new straw hat on my head courtesy of Grey. He was wearing a nondescript brown robe as well as a straw hat to conceal his face and distinct eyes. Most people hadn’t even looked twice at us, on our way out of the town. Honestly, I wasn’t surprised. Grey mostly looked like an average bald-headed old man, when you couldn’t get a good look at him.
Behind me in the cabin, I could hear low conversation from our companions. Couldn’t tell you what it was about, though. They weren’t sitting close enough for me to tell.
I snorted at Grey’s words, accepting the reins of the wagon gingerly from him. The horses didn’t stutter at all, uncaring who held the reigns. “Yeah, and I bet it doesn’t hurt that I’m just a regular looking human guy. I’m guessing that Loyalist patrols would get extra curious if they saw any of those guys,” I jerked a thumb over my shoulder at the cabin. “Up here. Especially our Sculpted friends.”
Grey huffed a short laugh and nodded. “Indeed. It would cause quite a ruckus.”
We lapsed into silence for a moment, simply watching the countryside pass us by. The noise of the cart trundling along the dirt road, the muffled conversation behind us, and the sounds of nature around us…
It was honestly pretty nice. I sighed peacefully, letting my worries about what I’d found in the bunker rest for a moment. You know, I could see the appeal of being a traveling trader like Gren, up here in the driver's seat. I reached over to scratch Fade’s ears myself, leading to him laying his furry little head in my lap.
Grey watched our interaction idly. He broke the silence. “An odd creature, your Fade,” He mused. “In all my years, I can count the number of times I’ve seen Spirit Wolves on one hand.”
I made a curious noise in my throat. “What were they like?”
“In a word, mysterious,” My mentor said, cupping his chin in his hand. “They primarily live in the deep woods, and only truly appear as guardians for the helpless. In my scant few encounters with them, they demonstrated some frankly odd abilities and a level of insight that was downright uncanny. They can grow quite large, you know. As large as these horses,” He nodded at the absolutely massive workhorses pulling our wagon. Grey smiled at my incredulous stare. “Oh, indeed. It could be decades before young Fade reaches that size, however. You don’t quite have to worry about your potential Familiar eating you out of house and home just yet.”
I made a mental note at the ‘decades’ thing. I guess I didn’t need to worry about Fade dying of old age anytime soon. I raised my eyebrow at Grey. “Familiar? What, that’s a thing?”
“For Magi, yes,” Grey nodded at me. “It’s not the most common practice, and it’ll be some time before you can go through the bonding process. Both because you’re not quite a Magi yet, and because of how young Fade is.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I rolled my eyes at Grey. “You’ve told me before. I need to reach the first ‘Breakpoint’,” I sarcastically made air quotes. “In order to actually become a Magi. When is that again?”
“Level one hundred,” Grey said, unphased. I imagine he’d gotten worse from students over the years. “At that point, you’ll be able to undergo the process to generate your own Mana. It will entirely replace your Stamina on your Status. Incidentally, what level are you now?”
“Thirty-four,” I told him, idly petting Fade. My pup winced when my hand ran over the small bumps on his head, just before his ears. My brow furrowed. “Do you know what these are?” I asked Grey, concerned. “Honestly, when I found him I thought he’d run head first in the portal stone or something.”
Grey choked on a laugh at my words. “Those…those aren’t injuries, Nathan,” He got out. “Those are his horns.”
My eyebrows shot up in surprise. I leaned in closer to inspect the bumps more closely. Carefully, I brushed the fur back from them. Underneath, the skin looked very thin, and a bit irritated. “Horns,” I said wonderingly. “Is that what a Spirit Wolf is then? A horned wolf?”
Grey calmed down, still smiling at me. “That’s part of what a Spirit Wolf is,” He corrected me. “I think young Fade is getting to the age where his first set of horns is coming in. He’ll likely be cranky about it. I know I would be, if I had horns suddenly started pushing through the skin of my forehead.”
I moved my petting down to Fade’s back instead and nodded at Grey’s words. “Yeah,” I murmured. “I’ll see if I can whip up a pain-relieving cream or something for him later. I know we brought some Alchemy ingredients and a few recipe books with us.”
“An excellent idea,” Grey said leisurely, leaning back on the driver’s bench to watch the horizon.
We lapsed into a comfortable silence at that.
Yeah, I thought to myself, one hand on the reigns and the other petting my wolf.
Driving a caravan wasn’t too bad.
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From what Grey told me, it would take us about a week to reach the coast. From there, it would take us a few more days of travel to reach Marrowmist. Grey wanted it to be the two of us up on the bench whenever we were underway, in order to minimize risk. According to him, you never knew what kind of spies could be lurking in a bush or something. That didn’t mean I only had my mentor to speak to for the next week, though. There was a small latch behind the bench to let us speak to the occupants of the cabin. Other than that though, it was mostly peacefully watching the countryside go by.
Mostly.
Later that day, we actually had a monster charge the wagon. That sure as hell hadn’t happened during the trip to Hollow Hill. Maybe because the caravan had been so large it had deterred them?
Anyway, the monster pretty much looked like a giant, fucked up groundhog. The actual attack was pretty sad, actually. As we’d been trundling down the dirt road, Fade sat up from his nap on the bench and started barking at the horizon. Following his gaze, I saw as the monster emerged from over the top of a hill, charging down at us.
From over a mile away.
Nonplussed, I glanced over at Grey on my right. He had been staring back at me with an amused smile. He swept his arm in the direction of the charging beast in a grand gesture.
“It must be young, otherwise a Dirtgnawer would have set an ambush for us,” He told me. “By all mean, engage in some target practice.”
I rolled my eyes at him slowed the wagon with a snap of my reigns. Once it had stopped, I stood up on the bench. Raising my arm and pointing a finger gun at the monster, I closed one eye to try and steady my aim. Lining up my ‘shot’, I started pelting the monster with Poisonthorn Shot’s.
My first few missed, as it was still a bit far out. But the thorns themselves actually did reach that far. I hadn’t actually known how far my thorn skill could shoot.
Neat.
Eventually, though, I did manage to hit the ‘Dirtgnawer’, causing it to stumble. Now that it had stopped moving, it was much easier to hit. It only took two more direct hits with my thorns for the monster to puff into a greasy cloud of Miasma.
I huffed a small laugh, shaking my head. How anticlimactic. I guess that was why fighting at range was so preferable.
With a yip, Fade hopped down from the bench and raced over to where the monster had died. I blinked as I watched my wolf dig around at the patch of dirt, before grabbing something in his mouth. Fade bounded back over to the wagon and jumped back up on the bench. Clenched in his teeth was the small chip of a monster core that the Dirtgnawer had dropped on death, no bigger than a finger nail. The pup dropped it on the bench with a tinkling noise and stood over it, panting.
I raised an eyebrow at the young wolf. “Thanks, I guess,” I said to him, amused. Reaching down to pick it up, I noticed that Fade’s eyes continued to track the core pinched between my fingers. He had a hungry look in his lupine gaze.
Flicking my gaze between the core and Fade, I made an exasperated noise. “If you wanted it, why did you bring it over to me?”
Fade just panted at me, gazing tracking the core. I rolled my eyes and tossed the core to him. Fade snapped the gem out of the air like it was a dog treat and gulped it down in one go. He panted happily for a moment, before laying back down on the bench and promptly taking a nap.
I shook my head and said back down, to the backdrop of Grey laughing. As I was picking up the reigns, I heard the slot behind the drivers bench open. Azarus’s voice drifted out of it. “Oi, why did we stop? Is somethin’ wrong?”
I snapped the reigns, prompting the horses to get back underway. I rolled my eyes unseen to my dwarven friend. “Don’t worry about it.”
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This cycle repeated itself for the next few days. Unlike during the caravan trip to Hollow Hill, we didn’t stop when the sun started to set. We didn’t need time to set up a massive camp to accommodate the needs of over a hundred people, after all. No, we kept driving well into the night, and typically only stopped sometime after midnight.
I’d been getting used to telling time in a world with no easily accessible clocks.
Wait. Couldn’t I make one myself?
Adding it to the list.
Speaking of crafting, some of us were getting a little bit of work done during our downtime. I know Azarus and I were. I actually managed to get a prototype of something I was working on done during those hours. None of us needed much sleep, even though it was nice. I think the only reason that we didn’t drive for longer was so we could rest and care for the horses. They seemed to be holding up okay under the strain, to my untrained eye.
Some of us chose to use the bunks in the cabin, while some seemed fine just fine sleeping under the stars. Venix didn’t seem like he was sleeping after all. He told us matter-of-factly that he would be covering all guard shifts overnight, and would take care of anything that approached.
It was on the third day of travel that something changed for us.
We encountered a Loyalist patrol.
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