Chapter 33: 33. Noble Heights

Excerpt from Sivilyi’s ‘The Winged Sage’s Proverbs.’

“Judge a fellow by the lustre of their feathers, and judgement will seek thee with the sharpness of their talons.”

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There was a stunned silence following Eone’s admission. To Yenna’s eye, everyone seemed starstruck—as though the already larger-than-life Captain Eone had become something more in their eyes. Hirihiri had the look of someone who had been vindicated on a long-held suspicion, while the rest stared openly. Yenna wasn’t exactly sure what this meant, but it had confirmed her own suspicions besides. It took a few moments for the group’s excited murmuring to fade back to reasonable levels.

“So, does this make you a…princess, or something?” Yenna asked awkwardly, unsure of the correct terminology—once again, politics really was something she tried to avoid.

“No way! Me, a princess?” Eone laughed heartily. “Well, I suppose it isn’t that far above my station. Not that I care about those kinds of things, haha!”

Yenna sighed. It really did feel like a thing a princess would do, to not care about the fact that she was a princess. Still, Yenna had to ask. “What are you, then?”

“The official term is ‘heir.’ I’m the eldest of my sisters, so I’m meant to inherit the role of head when my mother steps down.” Eone frowned for a moment. “If I’m being honest, I’m a little afraid she’ll do just that—or order me to return to my duties as heir. It’s been a long time since I even heard from home, and now the call to return is urgent…I can’t help but wonder.”

“So, that’s it, then?” Mayi looked a little affronted. “You tell us we’re all off on some grand adventure, but we’re really just following you all the way to Milur so you can go rejoin the house?”

A few others took up the complaint, and Eone shook her hands emphatically. “Oh, absolutely not! This expedition means everything to me. It has been in the works for a very long time—if it comes down to it, I will bequeath the role to one of my sisters and move right on.”

Now it was Muut’s turn to look affronted. “Eone! Ye’d give up yer birthright? I know how badly ye want to go through with this, but isn’t that a bit drastic?”

As though out of the energy needed to continue standing, Eone sat down with a loud thump. She looked over at Muut, that signature carefree smile on her face. “You’ve been with me for ages, Muut! You should know better than to expect me to just sit down and be some proper noble! Frankly, this is why I didn’t want to tell everyone—it’d be better if I could have said all this after the fact. Now, let’s dig into our lunch and move on, eh?”

There was another silence, and Yenna was torn between trying to move off the topic and knowing that it was hardly appropriate to do so—instead, she stood awkwardly until Chime rescued her. The silupker’s gentle chimes were slightly more complicated than Yenna was used to listening to—it seemed like a fairly eloquent insistence that everything would work out fine. Eone nodded.

“Exactly! Well said, Chime! We’ll walk into Hilbar, meet with my mother, and then carry right on our way. No problems!”

Somehow, Yenna knew that it wouldn’t be that simple. As she sipped at her soup, another thought crossed her mind.

“Captain, is this entire thing the reason for the vagueness of our route? The strange direction we’ve taken?”

Eone laughed, and Muut sighed. “Yep! Pretty much. Kind of. Uh…”

“What the captain means to say,” Muut spoke up, “is that I was not allowed to plan a proper route in advance, for fear that we would encounter difficulties on the way if that information got out. For all the good it’s done us. All I could do is tell the captain which turns would get us closer to our destination, and let her decide.”

The captain let out another boisterous laugh—Yenna almost felt sorry for Muut. The mage wondered if Eone would have even received these summons, let alone followed them, if the reliable second-in-charge Muut wasn’t there to instill a sense of order over the captain’s wanderlust.

“After we arrive in Hilbar—come what may,” Eone added pointedly, “we will be there as briefly as possible. I’ll not have our trip to Milur be in vain, so I’ve asked Muut to give us a tour of some famous sights—and some more interesting ones, besides.”

“Not far from Hilbar is the Starfall of Sveli, a waterfall that cascades off one of the tallest peaks in the region–” Muut’s explanation was cut off by an excited Yenna.

“It’s positively fascinating! The water glitters like stars, even at night, and the flow of water is so slow that you can apparently ride a boat right down it—not that I can imagine anyone would be silly enough to try! Supposedly its appearance has to do with certain rare minerals at the peak, which cause a pseudo-gravitational anomaly within the local magical substrata first layer–” Yenna stopped rather abruptly as she realised that, not only was she veering dangerously into magical jargon, but everyone was staring at her blankly. “A-ah, sorry, Muut. I didn’t mean to, erm, cut you off.”

“...Quite alright. So long as ye don’t interrupt me on every one of these. The next one on my list were the Fire Mines–”

“The Fire Mines of Yahrehl! …Uh. Sorry.”

—

Over the next couple of days, the crew was uncharacteristically quiet. Yenna wasn’t terribly sure how to describe the mood—there was simultaneously a sense that their adventures might abruptly end, and hope that they were just beginning. Between travelling, magic lessons and doctor’s check-ups, Yenna managed to find time to ask Eone more about her past—now unburdened by her secrecy, she was more than happy to explain.

“I spent all my time as a little kid learning all the proper noble stuff.” Eone told Yenna as they sat by a warm fire one night. “Letters and numbers, proper etiquette, sword-fighting and troop command, that kind of stuff. But I always loved those books that were full of ancient legends and far-away stories—I knew I wasn’t going to sit around and run businesses or what-not.”

“Which is why you just had to drag me along on your ridiculous adventures.” Mysilia, having returned from a scouting mission, was sitting cross-legged on Eone’s shoulder. Despite having been flying around all day, her dress was immaculate and her feathery ‘hair’ neat and straight. Eone immediately ruined it by patting her on the head, causing the diminutive mereu woman to scowl dramatically.

“First of all, I believe you came along because Muut asked you to keep an eye on me, and because I asked very nicely. Then, Muut decided to just come with me—could have left at any time!” Eone teased. “Also, my adventures were not ridiculous. They were grand.”

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“What does that make Muut, then?” Yenna interrupted before the two could start bickering.

All eyes turned to the man himself, and Muut quickly swallowed the mouthful of travel biscuit he was chewing through as he answered.

“I am, first and foremost, a retainer of House Deepstar. Specifically, I am part of a branch family, House Greenstar—the eldest son of House Greenstar dutifully serves the current heir of House Deepstar. In short, I am Eone’s steward.” Muut gave a courteous bow, made slightly awkward by his seated position, and the half-eaten biscuit in his hand.

With a sigh, Yenna looked around. “Is anyone else here a member of the nobility?”

Hirihiri raised her hand with a mischievous chuckle. “Yeah, and I’m a princess of the long-forgotten kingdom of Asova!”

“Wow!” Tirk bounced up, spilling a mug of water everywhere. “Really?!”

“Gah, you’ve made a right mess, boy! You’re lucky we’re outside or I’d have you scrubbing!” Hirihiri gave a half-hearted frown, though her eyes were smiling—she rustled Tirk’s hair until he complained.

—

As they drew closer to the border, the terrain swiftly went from steep hills to proper mountains. Peaks loomed in the distance, visible even over the tall trees that crowded the roadside. Yenna was quietly thankful that someone, long ago, had bothered to mark out the road with a series of road markers—she could imagine that with just the dirt track, it would be incredibly easy to get lost.

“Say,” Yenna wondered aloud, “why haven’t we run into any towns recently? We were coming across one every day or so, and then they all just stopped.”

“We’ve come to the Border Forest.” Muut held up a map, showing a wide swathe of green marked alongside the dotted red border. “It’s a rather innocuous name, but the wilderness is something else out here—it’s been a long while since anyone bothered to try and tame it, though mostly for the lack of anything worthwhile out here. Ye’ve got trees, sure, but even loggers would rather set up a town by the side of the forest, rather than in it.”

“What about towns on the road? If this is a path that can lead us into Milur, then wouldn’t it be populated?” Yenna looked over the map and immediately realised the problem—Muut vocalised it.

“As ye can see, we’re coming in rather to the back end of Milur. There’s plenty of far more reasonable, well-kept roads in and out of Aulpre and Milur. We’re coming here for that exact reason—because hardly anyone else does. This road’s a holdover from Aulpre’s more expansionist days¹.”

The road markers suddenly made a lot more sense. They were simple lumps of rock made to withstand the elements, but they held only the simplest of markings—on one side, the first letter of Milur, and on the other, the first letter of Aulpre. Yenna politely stepped away to observe one and, despite their age, could confirm that they were conjured. They bore no signs of carving, not even around the weathered engravings—they had simply formed like that when war-mages had passed through, leaving behind a trail to direct them through the forest. It also explained why this dirt road had lasted like this for so long—kesh hooves had a habit of churning up the dirt far worse than yolm feet. Even a minimal amount of traffic along this path would keep some of it from growing back again.

It was around mid-afternoon when they spied their objective. The path had begun to wind and weave upwards through the shallower slopes, though it gave Chime no trouble—they joked that they could climb straight up a sheer cliff face in the rain, and Yenna was inclined to believe there was at least a grain of truth in there. However, as they made their way out of the forest and above the densely packed trees, they could see a cliff set with an unusual building. Yenna recognised it immediately.

“That’s…that’s an elevator! It’s massive—I didn’t even know they made them this big!”

From the outside, it looked like a tall tower had tipped slightly to lean against the cliff face. Huge brackets held the building against the wall, and even from down here the group could see a building perched atop it that led to the ground atop the cliff. Yenna had seen some examples of elevators created with physical mechanisms, but one this big had to be built in the traditional Aulprean style—with a lot of very careful spells. She couldn’t wait to see the interior.

Before that, there was one more obstacle. The base of the elevator wasn’t just guarded, it was fortified—there was quite literally a fort built into the narrow, precarious strip of ground around its base. In Aulpre, if one wanted to build something as serious as a fort, one contracted a team of architect mages to do the work. They could flatten the earth, conjure walls of stone and reinforce it with struts of magic-infused metal. Aulprean forts and towers were thus constructed from a single continuous piece of material, which meant that damage to any piece of the wall was nearly impossible to replace normally. A known flaw, it was made up for by the ease with which one could simply conjure another wall from nothing. In Milur, it appeared the opposite was true.

The fort up ahead had low walls made of large blocks of dark stone, occupying the entire space from cliff-side to cliff-face. Little higher than Eone, the walls themselves were only part of the defense—Yenna could see light shimmering from the top of the walls, and could sense the powerful defensive magic projecting an invisible dome of force over the fort itself. The low walls had the advantage of making it very easy for defenders to peer over the top—which they had been doing for quite some time. Yenna felt distinctly uneasy, knowing full well that a pair of armed and armoured yolm silently observed their approach, and that they likely had a number of tricks up their sleeve to repel an invasion—or visitors, if they were so inclined.

There were all sorts of lightly concealed traps around the place, Yenna noticed. She wasn’t much for spotting any mundane trickery, but there were signs of gathered magical energy all along the roadside—possibly exploding symbols that could be triggered from within the safety of the fort, or even something as nasty as teleportation traps². Even knowing that they were highly unlikely to be blasted apart or teleported to goodness-knows-where, Yenna couldn’t help but quietly panic even as Chime pulled up to within shouting distance of the walls.

“State your name and purpose!” A yolm guard, a young man with a thunderbolt-shaped horn jutting out of his helmet, bellowed from atop a platform—he held a loaded crossbow, though it wasn’t raised. Simply a precaution, Yenna convinced herself.

“Maya of House Freshfed, and associates,” Eone shouted, “to meet Miyomiyo of House Freshfed.”

Yenna hid her confusion behind her hat—Eone wouldn’t be lying like this if she didn’t have a reason, she assumed. The guard shouted back into the fort and waited a few moments for confirmation. After what felt like an eternity, the guard gave a simple nod and made a gesture—Yenna recognised it as a simple spell-trigger, which caused a section of the wall to recede into the ground to allow them entry. A yolm woman, almost as tall as Eone, stood on the other side—her horn spiralled around her temples like a halo, though she wore a chainmail coif underneath it in place of a helmet. She gave a slight bow.

“Welcome, daughter of House Freshfed, and associates, to Milur. I am Sergeant Myuu, your assigned escort. Follow me—the elevator is ready to take you up.”

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¹ - Around a hundred or so years before Yenna’s time, along with the rise of Aulprean magic, a great Aulprean unification effort began. Consolidating various communities with the diplomatic promise of greater prosperity through unity, Aulpre stopped being a region of the world and started being a great state. At the end of the unification, the mages attempted to push the limits of what could be called Aulpre by expanding further. By force of charisma or magic, further independent states were absorbed into the Aulprean state until it reached the more capable limits of other realms, such as Milur.

² - Teleportation isn’t exactly a simple magic, but with careful preparation, short distances and the acknowledgement that your spell will only work once before you have to reset the whole thing, you can craft a teleportation trap. When one of the sides of the trap is activated, whoever or whatever is there is teleported directly to the other side. The simplest use is to have the trap send foes who have drawn too close right back to the start of your defensive gauntlet, though crueler methods involve dropping those invaders into spike pits, sealed oubliettes or any other manner of horrible fates.

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