Chapter 92: Book 2-09.3: The Long Road

The next morning, an hour before dawn, Yuriko got up bleary-eyed from bed. Unexpectedly, Kato was already up with his gear in his backpack, face and hair wet from washing.

“Good morning, Yuri,” he said simply.

“Morning.” She yawned. “This is unusual.”

“What?”

“You, up this early.”

“I don’t want to hurry just before boarding. The Tram will leave us if we’re not there on time.”

“Oh.”

She grabbed a change of clothes, a towel, and her toiletries, then hurried towards the common bathroom. When she came back to her room, fresh-faced, Kato had packed up her bag too.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

“Hey, Kato?”

“Hmm?”

“Who was that woman you were talking to last night?”

“Why so nosy?”

“Just curious.”

“The definition of nosy.” Kato bopped her on the nose.

“Hey!”

“Hahaha! Fine, it was Master Antiga from Agaza Academy. She’s one of my mentors. She’s taking the Commuter Tram to Rumiga City.”

“Oh! What’s she like?”

“Pretty serious. Straight-laced and no-nonsense.”

“Oh, you mustn't get along then.”

“A bit, yeah.” Kato yawned into his fist. “Hey…wait…”

Yuriko snickered while dodging out of the room.

“You take that back, Rotter!”

“Don’t curse at your little sis!”

The common room was already bustling with the scent of grilled sausages and melting goat cheese wafting through the hallways. Braden and Orrin were already there, standing around a centre table heaped with breakfast meats, bread, fruits, and cheese.

“Good morning,” she greeted, coming up behind them.

“Oh, Yuri! Hope you slept well.” Braden grinned. His cheeks had regained some colour and he didn’t look as scrawny as before.

“Well, Kato didn’t snore much, or at least not loud enough to wake me.”

“I did not,” Kato growled as he came down the stairwell. “I do not snore.”

“Well, you were asleep, how would you know you snored?”

“Cae…ahem,” Kato coughed. “Nevermind. Just eat.”

With an arched eyebrow, Yuriko stared at Kato’s back while he filled his plate with half a dozen sausages, three dinner rolls, and a small bowl of freshly churned butter. She did the same, picking up a small bowl of ripe lavan berries, a slice of melon, and some strawberries and cream, and followed him to a table.

Braden’s plate had normal portions this morning while Orrin settled for some oatmeal with lavan berries. The Travellers’ Inn only offered hot tea and cold water for breakfast, no kaf.

“The goats eat them,” Kato said when she remarked on the lack.

They finished breakfast a few minutes before the stated departure time and they hurried to the station next door. The Commuter Tram’s engines were already humming. They settled down in their original seats and waited for the rest of the passengers to board. Master Antiga boarded at the last minute, giving Kato a nod and Yuriko a searching look. She nodded a greeting to her and she seemed satisfied.

“What did you talk about last night?” she asked Kato quietly.

“Huh?” He grunted and shook his head. “Er, not much. Just some gossip from the city. Freethinkers, well, former freethinkers, caused trouble in the docks and were rounded up for their trouble.”

“Freethinkers?”

“Just a group of radicals. Nothing for you to worry about.”

“Oh.” Yuriko yawned into her fist, wishing that the driver and conductor would get on with it already. It was still early but the thought of another day stuck in the tram made her a bit fidgety.

Soon afterwards, the Tram trundled out of the station with the rising sun. Preparing herself for another mind-numbingly boring day, Yuriko stared out at the window as they passed through town. The Tram moved slowly most of the time, giving the goats loitering in the middle of the road time enough to get out of the way. Half the time, the red-faced conductor leapt out of the Tram and chased a couple of stubborn specimens with a yell or a snapped cloth.

“It’s always like this here,” he grumbled when he got back in.

Soon enough, they made it to the town’s outskirts, the last building being the militia barracks.

“What’s that?” She exclaimed when what she thought was a tall wooden statue, suddenly moved.

“Oh?” Kato yawned, taking a look out a window, “You don’t recognize a Colossus?”

“I thought they were made of metal,” Yuriko said sheepishly.

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“Only those found in ruins, artefacts in their own right,” Kato grunted. “These are Koinos class Colossi, commonly made from lacquered wood, though the internal framing might be made of metal.

The Koinos was nearly two storeys high, about four paces, and nearly as wide. Yuriko stared wide-eyed at it. It looked much like metal armour of antiquity, though the wooden slats of its outer frame were covered in glowing runescript. The head turned towards them and it gave a salute, hand over the heart. The sound of its huge fist striking its chest plate sounded like thunder, jolting half of the passengers out of their stupor.

“A Colossus!” Orrin yelled, jumped out of his seat and rushed at the nearest unoccupied window seat, which happened to be the one behind Yuriko’s. His eyes sparkled with wonder and awe. Yuriko felt that way too and she couldn’t help staring fixedly while it waved at them.

Just before they got out of sight, the Colossus knelt and a panel opened from its back. A young-looking looking man crawled out of it and leapt down.

“You’ll see more of them in the Zarek Mountains,” Kato said. “Every outpost along this road and the surrounding regions has at least one.”

“Huh, why?” Orrin asked from behind them.

“What do you think those giant suits of armour are used to fight?” Kato grunted.

“Gi…giant beasts?”

“And more.” Kato shrugged. “Don’t worry, the road is pretty safe. There is only one incident out of every ten trips.”

“That’s a lot.”

“Most such incidents are no more than sightings,” Kale called out from a couple of rows over.

“That’s right,” Kato agreed. “We might see a Stonetoise or Rocksnapper, but that would probably be from hundreds of paces away. Settle down now, you lot,” he huffed.

Orrin returned to his seat somewhat satisfied, while Braden shook his head and grinned at Yuriko. With the excitement done, she leaned back against the seat and caught up on her sleep. She had stayed up a bit too late with practice, meditation, and finally, Facet use.

She burned through most of her Animus in an attempt to see something new and well, she had succeeded. Sort of. The Golden Silhouette demonstrated a new sword dance eerily similar to Kale’s Sweeping Gale Style. The movement of the Animus around her involved sending strands out of her physical body and infusing it around the blade, keeping tight control of its movements. She hadn’t had a chance to use it yet but she was eager to try this evening.

The road entered a pine tree forest soon after leaving town and it meandered to and fro while steadily climbing up the slope. Every now and then, one side of the road opened up and showed a breathtaking view of the foothills and the areas past it.

This high up, Yuriko thought she could see the Caradec clearly, and certainly the brown, freshly harvested wheat fields around town. The haze prevented her from seeing more than a league or so out, with everything turning blurry the farther away it was. If she had reached her Da’s level with enhancing his sight, she could have clearly seen the Tidelands’ borders from here.

She yawned and her ears popped, leaving a ringing tinnitus that lasted for a few moments afterwards.

“Ah!” she gasped, remembering something. She grabbed her bag rummaged through the contents, eventually finding the small pouch Heron gave her, ‘for the road’. She undid the string and peered inside, finding rabbit-shaped gingerbread cookies inside. She nibbled at the ears, then plopped the entire thing in her mouth, crunching down happily. In short order, nothing was left except crumbs.

Later, she tried her hand at reading past Basic Runescript’s introduction from sheer stubbornness and boredom. She had drained a good half of her Animus reserves already and Kato warned her not to dip below half during the trip.

She tried doing what Kale did, of thinking about what she did wrong in the past and determining what to do instead, except she couldn’t think of any. Except for the battles in Shillogu Woods anyway, where she could have certainly done better. But the mere fact that after everything happened, and all of them were alive and well, undermined that particular exercise. How would she know that if she had done something else, it would have resulted in something worse? Certainly, if they had persisted in attempting to return to the Outpost they would have wandered in the thick of things instead of avoiding it.

So, the introduction wasn’t all that bad. Unlike the preface, the author didn’t attempt to use the longest and most complex-sounding words in an effort to sound knowledgeable. Instead, in a no-nonsense tone, the introduction used simple and concise words that someone entirely unfamiliar with what runescripts are would understand.

Simply put, runescripts are letters and words in an ancient tongue that absorbed and manipulated ambient Chaos to create an effect.

The Scribe’s ability and intent didn’t matter after the runescript was inscribed, and anyone who has Animus can use an inscribed runescript. The switches for the lights at home, and in every modern building, used runescript to turn the light panels on and off. The light panels were created with runescript, with the materials chosen for longevity and efficiency. The Tram moved by utilising runescript to convert the power of the Radiant Sun’s rays, the driver’s Animus, and the reserved neutral Animus from jade cartridges.

The complexity came from knowing which runescript words meant what, and how their combinations affected the ambient Chaos and what effects it would generate.

“This is simple memorization,” she muttered crossly. The rest of the book detailed a few runescript words, their common combinations, and a few tried and true sequences. The first one was a sequence used to create a little tongue of flame, using ambient Chaos as fuel.

“Who even uses candles these days?” Shaking her head ruefully, she closed the book and leaned back against the headrest and quickly fell asleep.

She jolted awake when the Tram screeched to a halt, the sudden stop nearly made her head hit the seat in front of her.

“Wha-? Is it time for lunch?” she mumbled drowsily.

“Hurk!” Kato grunted and shook his head. “Where are we?” He glanced out the window, prompting Yuriko to do the same.

The view from her side of the Tram was a grey cliff face that extended dozens of paces above. On the opposite side, it was open air with seemingly low hanging clouds. There wasn’t a village or rest stop in sight.

“Weren’t we supposed to go non stop?” Kato muttered.

Both of them stood up, looking at the front viewport to see why they were stopped. Boulders and dirt, broken trees and leaves, covered the road, with dust still hanging in the air.

“Oh, Ancestors!” the driver cursed, while the conductor opened the door and walked in front of the Tram. He clambered up the rubble and came back a few minutes later, hands and shirt covered in dust.

“It extends several hundred paces past,” he announced upon entering the Tram. “We’ll have to backtrack and detour.”

“Chaos, that’ll put us half a day behind schedule.”

“Nothing to it. We can’t clear this stretch of road by ourselves. I’ll send a report about this.” He quickly wrote something on a messenger crane. The paper was at least twice as thick as what Yuriko and the others used in town, at at least twice as big. The resulting crane was thus nearly twice the size. He sent it flying out the door while the Tram backed up to a roomier portion of the road, made a U-turn, and they trundled off.

A couple of longstrides away, they came to a fork, and they took the other road. This one was a bit narrower. Two Commuter Trams could conceivably pass each other by but there would barely be an inch clearance between them.

This road meandered downhill for quite a while, nearly a couple of hours long. They were truly inside the mountain range now, both sides of the road showing either a cliff face or opened into a valley or gorge.

“Where are we going?” Yuriko couldn’t help but ask out loud.

“This road leads to a mining camp,” Master Antiga replied, her voice was deep and melodic, nearly hypnotic in its cadence. “It will merge back into the Rumiga Road after we pass the camp.”

“Thank you, master, for answering.”

She snorted. “I’m not your master, not unless you pass the elite trials.”

Yuriko shot Kato a questioning look and he nodded in response. Yes, he talked about her to his instructor.

Perhaps an hour later they reached a wider valley, and from their vantage point, they could see the mining camp flushed against the cliff wall.

“Chaos and Burning Moon!” someone cursed.

From her seat, she could see the camp. She could see a couple of Koinos Colossi. And she could see the gigantic semi-spherical moving boulders that dwarfed the Colossi, swatting them down, and stomping on little men and women running on the ground. Like ants.

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