Chapter 65: Ch 65 – Direction

I spent a good chunk of the afternoon with Charlene. Something I’d forgotten about was socks. But to my surprise rather than socks she gave me soft cloth wraps. I could fold them around my feet before putting on my new shoes. I was pretty ecstatic about how everything fit and felt. I was honestly a bit disappointed when I had to put back on my human appearance and walk out wearing my new green dress, the orange one in hand. Mostly because it meant that I'd have to go back to trying to sort my own shit out rather than enjoying time with a friend.

Having left, I found myself longing for more of our candid interactions. It made me think that maybe Naan was wrong about people in general. That they wouldn't react so one-sidedly if they found my goblins or if they knew what we were. But I'd also seen Gerl's reaction to Emmett. If it wasn't for me, and what I'd built there perhaps it could have gone very wrong. I was almost certainly overestimating people's reactions. Whereas Naan was underestimating them. I suppose that all very much made sense. What trust would a rock place on someone it cannot hope to understand? Meanwhile, I wanted people to understand and connect with me, to the extent where I was willing to risk a lot. Of course, now that I was thinking about it, I realized there was a decision to be made there. Was it worth it to keep hiding? Or would thrusting our group into the light to be observed for what we were a better long-term option? I suppose for the moment I didn't want to make a decision, or rather deep down I knew that not everyone is trustworthy, and these were things that might get me killed. Maybe, it was just that prudence was a good thing in this case.

It was nice to have shoes, and the soft cool breeze didn’t sap the heat out of me either. It seemed like far too long since I’d enjoyed such a simple luxury.

But the downside was that there was more to do. I headed north to the town wall, just past the church. My plan was to maybe work with Naan to figure out a good place to dig our pit. But as I went to leave, the two men that were standing there stopped me. One of them spoke, “Miss, there might be enemy scouts out there.”

“So soon?” I asked them suddenly a bit uneasy. I had thought we at least had today to get out of here.

“Well. Maybe.” he replied, clearly not knowing himself.

What to do? My plan was pretty half-assed anyway. I doubted it was necessary, and at this point, there was no reason to draw attention to myself. “Alright.” I said then turned back to the old church. The few that were awake glanced up at me as I walked by, but no one else said anything. I was just another townsperson to them.

When I returned to the basement the man I’d noticed wasn’t moving earlier was gone. No one stopped me or spoke to me as I returned to the water, in fact, most were asleep a few showing signs of fevers.

With Naan’s help, I crossed over the water, and we hid the path once more.

I climbed up to find the goblins scattered about, with Gerl sitting on the side.

None of them looked particularly happy about any of this. I could sympathize as well, not that I had any real answers.

Scout was the one to step up to me as I approached. He asked the expected question, “Leave?”

“There are guards and people… Sleeping.” For the first time, I realized something. I’d spent all this time thinking about Naan and its abilities. I’d entirely forgotten about my own. In fact, weren't my abilities quite perfect for this? Wasn’t I perfect for this?

Scout stared up at me tilting his head at my pause.

“Tonight, I think I have a plan.” I explained.

Naan however interjected, “What? What plan?”

“I just came up with it. I think we can sneak the goblins north.” I explained simply.

I looked back to Scout, “I don’t know where you can stay… but maybe you can return to that cave you stayed in the other day?”

He just nodded.

I glanced over to Gerl, “Gerl… Do you want to leave? Nothing is really holding you back besides our own plans.”

Gerl shook his head, “Miss Anna. If I go out there I’ll be sent away to carry a message. I am a letter carrier, he’ll have something to send for certain.”

I considered that. Then again this all came back to the core of our issue. Where did we plan on going? What would we do?

“If you did need to do that, where would he send you?” I asked.

“The capital, Boen’s Point. It's northeast of here. It's the largest city in the kingdom. Mostly because it's the port.” He explained simply.

“What other cities or things of interest are there around here by the way?” I asked.

He explained that there were quite a few towns not unlike this one. But the kingdom itself was quite small, its main and only port was Boen’s Point, it was surrounded by a handful of small towns, some bigger, some smaller than this one. Apparently, most had relatively good relations with the beast kin tribes that shared the same space, trading wasn't out of the picture even if they mostly stayed out of each other's way. It was very much a small and out-of-the-way country. He explained that north of the Kingdom of Boen was the Jaren Empire, a much more formidable and terrifying existence. It was an empire of Dwarfs and Humans. At least primarily. Boen was actually a splintered faction that had been separated from the empire itself caused by curiously enough a certain now-deceased dragon.

The short version was that the Empire had expanded too far, and a dragon took notice of people intruding into its domain. Because of this, the people were left to fend for themselves too far away to matter. Dragon Smith was the one that had finally dealt with the dragon’s threat, so he was very much a hero to Boen.

Since then Jaren hadn’t bothered to try and reclaim the small kingdom, which maybe people just thought was them realizing their limit in conquest southwards.

There was also the main point that Boen really didn’t have any resources or much else. In fact, from what Gerl told me most of the big wigs in Boen’s Point thought the reason the elves started this war was that they were no longer tied to the larger Jaren Empire.

From what it sounded like no one knew for certain, but I could see why they would think that. Not that I was super interested in whatever political nonsense was going on here, but it was useful to know a little more about what was going on.

While thinking about that Naan and I commented between ourselves. The end result was that we were both pretty sure that sticking around in Boen wasn’t going to end well. At least based on the current tide in the war.

“We could always go south to the elves.” I offered to Naan after we’d finished our discussion with Gerl.

“Do you think this would be a good idea?” It asked me back.

I considered long and hard then shook my head, “I guess not. My gut says that they are nothing but trouble.”

Still, that left the other problems. There was more to this world than just kingdoms and armies. In fact, one thing that was particularly of note to me was that the Empire of Jaren was the home to a quite prestigious university of magic. So that was interesting. There were also various temples and sects that all revered some divinity or another.

The Order of Jerome was well known in these parts based on the people I talked to. Though I didn’t really know why. Maybe they were big in the empire as well. I guess I could see the interest in “order.” It was probably better than chaos, which seemed to be my perpetual condition as of late.

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With little else to do and noticing that Gerl was quietly sitting in the corner, I decided I’d help Kosue for a bit. We made good progress and two sets of hands helped speed things up. We quickly started going through the pelts that remained that were usable. I’d noticed that the newer ones we’d skinned had been removed from their place where the men were sleeping now.

I wanted to complain a little, but I suppose it didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. At some point I heard Devin reach out to Naan, asking where I was, and shortly thereafter he climbed up the passageway looking for us.

“Oh… You got your dress today.” He said first thing. Since he had noticed me wearing my new outfit.

I smiled up at him, “I did. I had no idea that you put in your own order.” I said smiling up at him.

He scratched at his stubble, “I… Thought you should have another one. Besides, I think that color would go really nice with your hair.” He said sheepishly.

I briefly left my work behind, and walked over to him, wrapping my arms around him, “Thanks, Devin.” I said relaxing my body against his.

He reached around returning the hug, “So… I guess that's the last thing we were waiting for right?”

I suppose that was true… We could straight up leave at this point. We just needed to get past the guards at night. I hadn’t really thought of it that way though. Somehow I’d been thinking that we were sticking around here.

We split up the usual lunch that Jenny provided for Devin’s work, and set down to discuss what came next. I decided to relay back some of the points I’d discussed with Naan earlier to Devin. The main topic was where we should go, and what we should do. I asked him what his thoughts were on the matter, and even invited Gerl to chime in. I’d rather know what they were thinking overall. Maybe someone would have some grand point to make.

Once I’d laid out most of the cards and such I let them reply. Devin seemed to be thinking more heavily on the topic, and Gerl who had discussed it earlier replied first, “I think the capital makes sense. A lot of people will be heading there, and the walls are big, and the city is safe.”

Clearly, he wasn’t thinking much about the goblins. I suppose it made sense, what did he care for them? I suppose we could somehow go our separate ways. Then again caves were always an option. This place was so troublesome because of the existing dungeon, and our time frame. We could have likely solved everything given time.

“I think we should go to the empire.” Devin said after a time. “It might be difficult to cross over the wall, but Naan can probably solve that, maybe go under it.”

“Wall?” I asked not having heard about that.

“Oh, right…” He collected his thoughts, “It's because of the dragon. They built a massive wall to signify the end of their territory and the start of the dragon's territory.”

“How would a wall keep out a dragon?” I asked.

“You’ve got it all wrong, it's not to keep the dragon out, it's to keep the people in.” Devin pointed out.

“Wait… you are telling me that the dragon had them build the wall?” I asked perplexed.

“More or less, yeah. It was an agreement they came to. All things considered, the empire didn’t lose barely anything. If we head up there we can find a place to settle down.” He finished.

“The magic university place?” I asked. It was hard to hide my enthusiasm for such a thing.

“Eh… If you plan on being a student I wouldn’t recommend it.” He said.

“Hmm? Why?” I asked.

“It’s all nobility and politics. Sure they learn magic, but they demand a kingdom's ransom to even claim you are a student, let alone actually learn shit.” He pointed out.

“You seem to know quite a bit about it.” I said raising an eyebrow.

“You remember when I told you about being a guard right?” I nodded and he continued, “I met someone that made the trip. He wanted to join up and learn all the fancy shit. From what he said he worked his ass off and the only person that taught him anything was a woman that hired him as a servant.”

I stared at him. “That… sounds sort of terrible.” I admitted.

“Pretty much.” He nodded.

“I was expecting magic to be more… available. That Dragon Smith guy had tattoos and he talked about magic more casually.” I pointed out.

“Oh, he's not wrong. That's just the university. It's not like that's the only place that teaches any kind of magic. There's guilds, trades, and most have some tricks to use for their own ends.” Devin pointed out.

Oh, that made sense. After all, I’d learned several alchemy-related incantations from an alchemist. While not truly meaningful to me, they did seem useful. Why did I think the university made more sense? Was it just because it was called something fancy? Or maybe it was just because I was kind of lazy. Trying to go all over a city to try and learn little tricks and incantations seemed like a massive pain in the ass. I wonder if there were any books? Scrolls? Disgruntled old professors, I could suck off for training? I pushed that aside.

“Still, being behind a big wall sounds helpful when you think about the elves.” I pointed out.

“I talked a bit to the soldiers out there. They’ve been giving them a good fight, but you’re not wrong. The best way to travel to the empire would be by boat as well. While the wall itself is only a month north of us, it's a week by boat, and then we’d end up in actual civilization and not the forests. I imagine most of the camps they set up to build the wall are long gone by now.”

I considered it all. Then Naan and I hashed out a few more things, in the end, I made my decision, “For now we’ll head to Boen’s Point. If things get bad we’ll find a way to travel by boat to Jaren.”

“Alright, so we leaving tonight then?” Devin asked.

I nodded, “I guess so.”

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