No Strings Attached - Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty - 

56th Day of Spring - Year 1758 of the Golden Era

Shorefarm, Yellowfield, Draya Calyrex

“I think that’s it,” Carnel said.

They had hid in a large bush a hundred paces from the base of the cliffs, diving into cover just moments before someone came over to investigate.

The road, now blocked by several stones larger than a man was tall and hundreds of smaller boulders, was entirely impassable, and with the cliffsides being as sheer as they were, Viridian was certain that no one would be coming down from the main highway, not unless they put a lot of effort into cleaning out the road first.

A few soldiers had scampered over the new blockade and had searched the other side, but they never strayed too far. Eventually they were recalled by a man on horseback and in knightly armour and the force cleared out.

“I think that’s it,” Viridian agreed. “Now what?”

“Now we do the other part of our mission,” Lazur said. She turned and looked in a northerly direction, which happened to follow the base of the cliffs. “To Three Lakes.”

“There’s a road to there, right?” Viridian asked.

“Yes. I saw it on Magus Maldrak’s map. But it starts closer to Shorefarm. If we cut that way, we’ll eventually find the road,” Lazur said.

Carnel hummed. “You’re very confident in finding where you are out here,” she said. “But we don’t have a map.”

“We have a compass that points to the ship. That’s enough,” Lazur said. “As long as we follow the cliffs, we’ll eventually find the road, or Three Lakes.”

“I suppose,” Viridian said. She didn’t want to argue, and the morning was passing quickly. The bit of fog around where they were was lifted already, and she knew that they’d burned through the early morning already. Three Lakes looked far. It might take them days to reach and she wanted to be back already. “Let’s just go? If we become very lost we can backtrack to Shorefarm and take the road.”

“But we won’t,” Lazur said. She sounded confident enough, and Viridian didn’t want to fight it, and so they set off.

Following the edge of the plateau was easy enough. The ground was rocky and filled with little dips and depressions, and a few ponds of stagnant water surrounded by scraggly bushes, but it was relatively easy to traverse.

They couldn’t tire, so the walk was pleasant enough, at least initially. Eventually they found a space where they had to circle away from the plateau. The ground was too rocky and impassable, with a chasm dug into the earth by a small waterfall plunging down from the cliffs above.

They moved into a forest, walking on for some time before exiting in a place where no plateau was visible at all.

“We got turned around,” Carnel said. She turned, then pointed back. “The cliffs are that way. We started to go west instead of north.”

Lazur made a noise of discontentment, like a cat meeting an unfamiliar stray, and pulled out the compass she’d been given so long ago. She didn’t seem any happier to learn that Carnel was correct.

“We should continue west,” Carnel said.

“No?” Lazur asked. “Why would we do that? We need to go north, to Three Lakes.”

“Because we know where west is. And there’s a shore. And if there is a road like you said, eventually we’ll cross it on the way.”

Lazur went quiet for a long, long moment, but eventually she simply nodded and they started in a vaguely north-westernly direction, this time circling around any patches of forest they came close to.

The trip wasn’t entirely uneventful. Eventually they found a large swampy space where several small rivulets and streams fed into a large basin filled with reeds taller than any of them and where the ground was filled with deep, muddy waters that only moved at a trickle.

A thousand frogs occupied the space, croaking and chanting constantly to compete with the buzz of mosquitoes.

Viridian froze when she saw the first mosquito to pass by. It was as large as her hand, with a needle that looked sharp enough to pierce even a thickened hide. A few buzzed near them, but they didn’t seem interested in trying to poke or prod them.

“Sometimes I’m happy we have no blood and warm bodies,” Lazur said.

Carnel shifted around, pulling her axe out of the beltloop that she had it in.

“Why are you taking that out?” Viridian asked.

“Because they need to feed on something.” Carnel said. “And that means there is something that can feed a bug that large around here.”

Traveling through the swamp wasn’t a good idea. They didn’t attract the mosquitoes, and they couldn’t drown in the stagnant water, but the mud was dangerously sticky and thick and treacherous, so they took the long way around.

The first and only warning they received that they were being attacked was a shuffling in the mud then the sudden movement of reeds.

Viridian stumbled back as something dark darted out of the swamp, then fell back as massive jaws clamped around her legs.

“Hah!” Carnel shouted as she spun around and brought her boarding axe down. The head chopped into toughened scales, cracking them, but not doing much damage.

Viridian went down, the weight of her aggressor pulling her to the ground even as she fumbled for a weapon. Her sword was in its sheath, and hard to grab while on the ground. Her pike was too long.

So she resorted to punching and kicking as best she found.

The area filled with a series of quick thumps as Lazur started to fire spells into the monster, but it was Carnel’s axe that did the most work. Three blows into the monster’s back were enough to break the scales and start to dig into flesh.

The monster let go of Viridian and spun around, only to be pinned when Lazur stabbed down with her pike.

Carnel stepped on its head, then started to chop like a woodsman trying to break a hardwood log. It took six swings, but eventually she cut into the monster’s neck and blood started to spray out of it.

Viridian picked herself up, pulled her sword from its sheath, and... stared. The beast was dead.

“What is that?” she asked.

The thing was long, flat, and scaly, with lots of teeth and dragon-like eyes.

“Some sort of dragon-kin?” Lazur asked. She turned to Viridian and scanned her up and down. “Are you broken?”

Viridian looked herself over as well. There were new punctures in her clothes, which was upsetting, and a few dents in the wood of her leg where the monster had bitten her, but no cracks and no cuts that were too deep. “I’m fine,” she said after a while. “Carnel was right.”

“I was,” Carnel agreed as she tugged her axe free. “Keep your sword close. But first... this thing has essence, right?”

They mimicked mosquitoes as best they could, but it first required turning the corpse around onto its back to expose its softer, mud-covered belly. Their syringes couldn’t punch through the hide on the monster’s back.

Viridian was tempted to see if she couldn’t take some of that hide herself, but she didn’t have the tools for it, and dragging this thing back to Shorefarm wasn’t part of their work.

They sucked essence out, and Viridian was happy to see nearly a hundred points’ worth already. Enough to make the minor damage worth it, she hoped. Still, they chose not to take too many more risks and circled further away from the swampy area.

Eventually, at about the same time as the sun reached its zenith above them, they discovered a road. It was narrow, and pitted and poorly maintained, but it was definitely a road, and it definitely led towards the north.

“I told you there was a road here,” Lazur said.

“Sure,” Carnel replied.

Viridian ignored their bickering and carefully slid her sword back into its sheath. She kept her pike close, however, even as she took the lead and started walking.

They didn’t cross any monsters for the next few hours, but that didn’t mean that there was nothing concerning to see. They came across a hamlet, seven or so small buildings, including a barn and a small shed, with fenced-off fields around them. It was just off the road, and it looked like it had been set to the torch only a few days prior. There were still small wafting trails of smoke coming from the collapsed homes.

Further out, they passed by a crossroad where a man’s naked body was laid out on the road, each limb stretched out as far as it would go, but his head was missing.

They went around it.

None of what they saw made Viridian feel any more confidence in their trip to Three Lakes.

***