One of the best parts about magic was the ability to create warmth and comfort with very little effort.
My heat absorption ring had two arcane circuits, one to convert heat and another to pull the air through the foot-wide ring using the spiraling air current. It was mildly amusing watching the flames of my campfire spiral through the ring.
The energy ring was held aloft by three supports, each a foot tall, so it was almost completely above the fire. With consistent energy, all I had to do was draw a large arcane circle around where I rested, along with a dampener to regulate the flow of primal energy in response to the heat inside the circle, and just like that. I could sit in nothing but my small clothes in a cave in the middle of deep winter and be comfortably warm.
The carcass of the feline sat outside. The meat tasted strange, and it was rather tough, though my method of cooking might have been inadequate.
I just found a flat rock around a foot wide, drew another circle to heat the air, and just like that, I had a crude oven. Bear, I knew could have parasites, so with an overabundance of caution, I cooked the meat to near burnt. Eating leather would have been a more tolerable experience.
Still though, I gorged myself on shoe leather cat meat for over four days while the deep winter raged outside my cave. The morning after my fight with the feline, my body simply wouldn't move. The pain was too much. And while I can force myself through, I realised I put my body under too much stress and that would cause injury that no amount of will can correct. I needed to heal, and that required me to sit still, eat, and recover.
My silver and gold energy ring provided enough primal energy from my campfire to fuel one of my three lights, so now the night was only mildly terrifying. The aches in my limbs from the stress weren't gone, but now it was tolerable.
The feline wasn't as heavy as I assumed it would be. In fact, its size was mostly an illusion created by the thick fur. A part of me didn't want to kill it, since magical creatures were so rare. I did, however, take the claws and teeth; they had an odd silvery sheen I found quite fetching. The eye teeth were wicked sharp, almost as sharp as a needle, and as long as my hand.
My meals consisted of meat with a side of meat and, frankly, horrible-tasting soup. Without the unending threat of death by frost, I realized how poorly the dried soup was made. No herbs, spices, or seasonings to make it go down easy, just salty broth with all the water boiled away. But who was I to complain? I wasn't dead after all.
Much of this rest period was occupied with me, considering my time in Grenwood. Ashe and Mar were dead, and my stone was destroyed. All I had built was now in ruin. At the very least, Jenna would have a decent life, and Diane could put things back together. I had no regrets. In the end, magic was my goal.
How thoroughly would they investigate my actions in the city? Would the Baroness decide to tell the story as I wished? Derek was the only one who could say with reasonable certainty that I would head to Elieas County. A man like him would sell my secrets without hesitation.
But would he sell the baronesses? That would also reveal her mishandling of the orichalcum, and I had no doubt she would seek vengeance against the man for revealing such information. It could go any way, really, I was just guessing.
With my anonymity likely disappearing in the coming months, how I approach situations would have to change. I would be a hunted woman, and if I wanted to survive, either I would flee the empire or gain enough power to survive any attack against me. Safety and comfort were never my goals; only power mattered, and power meant going north. It would take at least two months to reach the capital of Elieas County.
I’d have to test the effectiveness of the Magisterium's information network. Was it robust enough to disseminate information even through a deep winter? I doubted it, but there was never any fault in testing.
I stood and stretched, my muscles complained, joints cracked, and a pleased sigh escaped my throat.
“One more day, the meat should finish drying by then.”
~
I left my cave the next day feeling north of human. With at least ten pounds of cooked and dried cat meat to peck on during my journey, I had no real trouble keeping up my energy. Sleep was actually easy to come by. The constant gale of icy wind barely registered in my ears anymore, and exhaustion was an excellent sedative.
After a week of travel, I exited the Birch forest to a large plane of white nothing. Likely grassland covered by snow. Checking my map, I estimated where I could be.
I was somewhere between the border of Harlock and Elieas County. Cutting through the plane and heading exactly east would be faster, but more dangerous.
Dragging my finger along the border, I mused about my direction.
‘Keep along the edge of the forest. It makes a curve northward, then east, a longer journey, but best not to leave the forest.’
I was usually not averse to risk, but even now, I felt an almost primal need to avoid it.
~
The forest thinned and thickened as the days passed until, after the fourth, I stumbled upon an oddity. In a long line, there were no trees; it took me a moment to realize that I was standing upon a road. It certainly wasn't on the map, but that wasn't so surprising. There were an innumerable number of unmarked and unnamed villages dotted around the empire.
In which direction the village was, I wasn't certain, so I decided to follow the road southeast, which was reasonably in my direction.
It took another three hours of walking before I found a village. No walls, just a cluster of 30 or so buildings along the road. No one was outside, of course, it was the deep winter.
Glancing at the simple ramshackled homes, I noted that there were no fires lit. Walking up to the largest wooden building, I knocked on the door loudly. No response came after a minute of waiting. Using my fire, I degraded the wooden doors to ash and stepped inside.
Death.
Dead bodies lay everywhere, men, women, children, all in various states of decay. I stepped inside, guessing that there were roughly 30 bodies. Their faces were emaciated and skeletal, clearly from starvation. Without obvious wounds, my only assumption was that they succumbed to the bitter cold.
The building, I assumed, was a small inn; none of the people looked in any way well-dressed. I guessed they gathered in this single building for warmth. Somehow, they all died together. This simple, ramshackle inn certainly wouldn't be a strong barrier against the wind and chill.
Navigating past the bodies, I went upstairs and ransacked each room, finding little of use.
~
I went from building to building, finding nothing of use. Each home was stripped bare of anything close to usable resources or contained the dead. Any food store had rotted away, long unusable. Looking at a building, the farthest from the inn of death, I entered, finding a single room home with a hearth. Thankfully, there were no dead bodies. Sighing, I decided to light the hearth and rest there for the night. The corpses all around me: men, women, and children, entire families dead from the deep winter, weighed on my mind.
I recalled the Baroness’s words about people dying in the winter. How she would resell the land over and over. It was rather morose to see it up close. What torture it must have been to slowly starve and freeze to death. I wondered if, in their last moments, they were relieved to finally die.
In those dark moments, as I stared into the fires of the simple hearth, I wondered. What would my death be like? Would it be slow? Violent? Would I embrace it with peace or rage against it until my heart gives out? Why do I have to die? I once joked with Beth about living forever in the now. But was such a thing possible?
I told Jenna that the dragon or phoenix was my favorite magical creature. The phoenix from the stories consumed its own wings, destroying its power to be cleansed and reborn into a new form. My entire existence, I fought to free myself of the cage that trapped everyone, the laws, the unwritten rules of society. Would the ultimate freedom not be to conquer death itself? Perhaps I was not the lion that was caged, but the phoenix.
~
The next morning, I followed the road for some time until it veered too far south. Instead, I cut into the forest to my right. If I was guessing correctly, in the next week, I should encounter a large track of rolling hills, then that would be my signal to turn north until I intersect with a highway. From there, I should be able to follow that for another day to my destination.
Getting inside would be a problem, but that’s what the coin was for.
Twelve Days Later.
My food ran out several days ago, even with rationing as I did, constant travel sapped energy from me faster than my meager rations could replenish. Even though I traveled along the highway for over seven days, not one carriage passed through. Not entirely surprising, by my estimation, it would be another week or two before the deep winter broke. The source of this content ɪs novelꜰire.net
In the distance, I could just make out Portsmouth, a decently sized town only twenty miles in from the border of Elieas and Harlock.
‘How to go about this? Entitled noble? Wondering warrior? Has information about me made its way this far north? Not impossible. Let’s test and see if they truly move that fast. This town has what, 150? 200buildings? not that much bigger than Farway.‘
I could handle any potential fallout. Assuming information about me had reached this town, how would they react? Fear certainly, depending on what version of the truth they had. Perhaps they could pretend not to know who I was while sending a rider, but I believed I could spot anyone faking around me.
Sneaking in was an option, but I wanted to do business with people, and a stranger, particularly with my distinct looks, would be noticeable.
I sighed, reached into my pack, and pulled out a small cask of oil and a comb. I spent a few minutes combing my hair. I straightened out the curls and oiled it to give it a nice sheen. I bit my lips over and over, trying to plump them up as Yarah taught me. Then I slapped my cheeks repeatedly to get a bit of redness in them.
Taking out a small silver mirror, I looked at my face.
‘Decent enough, just one more touch.’
My normally cold gaze softened, giving off a hint of vulnerability.
‘Good, let’s see if the ‘desperate widow’ works. If it doesn't work, well, that’s their own fault.’
Throwing my mind back to when I almost died from the cold. My gate became unsteady, my body shivered. I walked towards the wall almost mindlessly.
‘Hopefully, the guards are the chivalrous type; I would rather not have this shameful display be for naught.’
It was the late evening, and while the sun was obscured, I guessed with reasonable assurance that I had roughly an hour of sunlight.
The town itself was in an exceptionally large clearing, most likely from the logging efforts due to the 15-foot-high wooden palisade.
I smiled. At my approach, I spotted lanterns hanging from what I guessed to be guard towers on either side of the gate. At least the villagers weren't all dead.
My dark brown coat contrasted against the white snow, so it wasn't surprising that they spotted my arrival through the icy wind. I identified some commotion on the guard towers. People moved, and I was quite sure a few were pointing at me.
When I reached about a hundred feet from the wall, a man shouted above the wind, “Halt, who goes there?”
“Just a traveler, Ser. Please, I’ve come a long way.” I said, trying to sound desperate.
There was some discussion among the men on the wall.
“We ain't got no handouts, girl; back where ya came from.” A younger, angrier man shouted down.
Taking hesitant steps forward, as if I feared they would shoot an arrow down at me, I reached into my coin purse, pulling out a few silver coins, my hands shaking madly the entire time.
“Please, I-I have coin, don't let me walk back, I’ll..I’ll die.” Then the shaking became so violent, I dropped a few coins. Even though I could see them clearly, and I had many more in my pack and hidden on my person, I dove to the ground. Searching madly, loudly muttering, so they could hear.
“No, no, no. Please, by Anier, where did it go?” I could hear the grumblings of an argument on the wall. Still, I searched, putting on the desperate act.
‘Can you fools reach a decision already? This is bothersome.’
“Where’re you from?” The older man shouted down.
‘Finally.’
As if I had just found the coins, I grabbed them up with a cry of relief. “Blessed Anier, thank you.”
Then I stood, pretended to wipe a tear, and answered. “I’m from a village out west. It took days to get here.”
“Why come ‘ere and not stay with yer people?”
I shuddered as if the older man had reminded me of a horrid memory. “My village, we were all starvin’ ma’, pa', and muh husband died. The headman said we should wait it out, but I wasn’t plannin’ on diein’ with ‘em.”
“The headman won't like this.” The younger man said.
“And what, we leave the lass to die out there, aint no chance she’s making it back to where she came from.” The older man argued.
“Could be a bandit. Maybe she got people waitin’ in the woods. She got armor on.”
“I ain't no bandit,” I shouted, filled with indignation.
I took off my cloak, letting it drop to the ground. My hair blew in the wind.
“Was me ma’s. The only thing I've got is a dagger.” I put on my most innocent and worried expression.
They grumbled amongst each other for over a minute before the older man asked, “You said you got coin, lass?”
“Aye,” I shouted back.
“Silver eagles?”
“Quite a bit of 'em.”
Another minute of grumbling passed before the old man shouted again. “Wait right there, lass.”
The young man whose face I couldn't really make out stared at me. Five, ten, fifteen. The minutes went by as the sun slowly set.
I sat on the ground, annoyed by how long it was taking. I wasn't freezing, of course, but I had to remind myself to keep shaking.
~
“Lass, LASS.” The young man shouted. My eyes flew open, somehow I nodded off, sitting on the ground.
Recognizing the bit of worry in his voice, I remained with my head bowed, resting on my knees. Guilt was always a useful weapon. The man yelled repeatedly, his voice growing ever more desperate. Then something hit me.
That brought me out of my performance. I looked up at the man, still unable to see his face.
“Good, you ain't dead. Chew on that, Nat’ll convince the headman, don't worry.”
Look down to see half a steaming beet.
‘Was this supposed to be charity?’
I rolled my eyes, knowing he couldn't see them. Then lunged at the beet, chewing the bitter vegetable as if I had not eaten in days, which I hadn't.
“Bless you, kind sir,” I said, feigning tears.
“What’s yer name?” He asked.
“Nina,” I shouted back.
‘How many aliases do I have now?’
After nearly three-quarters of an hour, the gates slowly opened.