Chapter 234: 235: Midnight ride

Frigid wind blows through Fresh’s hair, pressing past her face as she holds onto the broom so tightly, that she isn’t sure if she’s ever going to be able to unclench her fists or her clamped down legs ever again. She has never been really afraid of heights before. But then again, she’s never really been anywhere high enough to be worthy of being afraid of.

But now, looking down at the very, very, very distant landscape below, Fresh is pretty sure that, even if she wasn’t before, she’s definitely afraid of heights now. Crying for a multitude of reasons, she howls as the broom shoots her through the moonlit night. Wind rushes past her ears, fluttering the fabric of her hat and robe loudly. She certainly has control of the broom, in a sense, but right now it feels more like that it’s a rocket which she’s been strapped to, rather than something which she herself is flying. The broken lantern rattles against the wood of the broom that it’s attached to and she finds herself making a small correction in her movement, as it tilts the broom down into a somewhat flatter angle.

She’s doing something really stupid and bad, her friends are going to be so furious. Not only is she sneaking out by herself without telling anyone, which is not exactly forbidden, but discouraged at the very least, but she’s flying, which she has been explicitly and clearly warned about. She’s also heading towards the central-city, which she has been explicitly and clearly warned about and even worse than that, she’s going to find the hero, who she has been explicitly and clearly warned about. That’s all ignoring the other ‘cursing an innocent’ and ‘keeping a low-profile’ issues, which she is also going against.

This is really bad. This literally couldn’t be worse. Jubilee, Basil and Shamrock are going to throw her into the dungeon and tell her to spend the rest of her life with Mr. Monkey, she’s sure of it. They’ve been willing to forgive her for a lot of nonsense and hardship, but this is too much. “Jubileeee~! I’m soooorry~” she howls, her voice being drowned out by the wind.

The landscape rushes by and she has to keep her eyes closed for a while to keep them from drying out from the biting, icy night-wind pressing itself against her face. By the time she opens them again a few minutes later, she sees the desert coming to an end. She’s crossed the entirety of it, what had taken them days in the cart, in a matter of maybe twenty minutes. Flying is a really, really fast way to travel.

It’s also horrifying.

Fresh screams, perhaps having never stopped doing so at all for the last half hour, as the broom takes a sharp turn and she almost smashes into a very confused and surprised owl. She takes a sharp nosedive, hurtling towards the ground like a falling rock. A tug comes on the broom from the front end, from the enchanted lantern and her path corrects itself, the broom pulling back up just in time as her feet hover only a foot above the ground which she is soaring over, heading straight towards one of the small forests on the western border of the desert. Terrified, she pulls her head down, clambering to the broomstick like a drowning man would to a piece of driftwood, as she shoots into the tree-line. Not having a modicum of control over it at all, the broom shoots left and right through the trees as the lantern does all of the work for her, pushing her through the small clump and forest and then back up into the air.

She makes a promise to fix the lantern with all the love and care in the world after they get back. If they get back. It’s probably going to be the only one she’s going to have to talk to for the rest of her life.

The large, expansive forest begins to come into vision and she finds herself flying above a sea of seemingly endless green, not much longer after that. The broomstick seems to have slowed down a little bit, but she finds herself unable to enjoy the beautiful view of both the world and the unblemished night-sky from up here, as her stinging eyes are both too wet and too dry at the same time to see clearly.

And soon enough, with the witch’s moon at her back, Fresh sees the massive tree of the central city come over the horizon. It’s taken her about an hour, if she had to guess, to get here from home.

Now what? Can she just… fly into the city? Do they have any sort of magical defenses to keep strangers out? And then? How is she going to find one person in an entire city? And then? Is she really going to curse an innocent stranger, who has never done anything to her?

Visions of her dream return to her mind’s eye as she flies in towards the city under the cover of the darkness of night. Thunder cracks around her, causing her to let out another scream that she didn’t know she had left in her, as the heavy clouds which have loomed above her head this entire time begin to let loose. Rain begins to fall in her wake, never quite reaching her, but falling heavily enough from the thickening clouds that the starlight behind her seems to be swallowed entirely. She grits her teeth, doing her best to not let the befouled water touch her just yet. She isn’t really surprised at this turn of events, the fountain is a ‘god’ of sorts, after all. Who knows what else it can do?

The world becomes louder, but it also becomes darker. All of the lights of the night-sky seem to become swallowed and hidden from sight, leaving only the glow of the moon and of the city ahead of herself to fill the void. The lights of the central-city rise up the trunk of the gigantic tree, which is now really just starting to come into scale for her as she approaches. Even the tallest building in the city barely reaches up to the base of the trunk, most houses rising only to the gnarled roots of the thing that spread around the landscape, being as much a part of the city as any of the white-stone structures.

The circular city with the tree in the center is abuzz, even in this late hour. The many roads and alleyways are glowing with magical light and even from up here and this far away, she can see the swarm of people moving through the many streets. She isn’t sure, but she assumes that it looks like some kind of festival, given the many colorful decorations and lights she can make out from here. Maybe to celebrate the arrival of the hero?

At the base of the tree is a large structure, it looks a lot like the cathedral from the north, only far larger and grander. Next to it, placed high atop a root and nested into the wood of the tree, is a second structure that all of the roads in the city seem to diverge up towards eventually. Some kind of castle or palace, high above the rest of it all.

So far, so good. She hasn’t been blasted out of the sky yet and nobody has come to fly her way and intercept her. Fresh lifts up higher into the sky, rising out of the glow of the city as she slows down, hovering over the walls. She’s arrived.

The broom is shaking. But not because of any magical force being worked upon it, rather because of her pale, bloodless fists which are still clenched tightly around it, carrying the shaking tremors of her body into the thing.

She hovers there for a while, staring down at the city below herself and then, the broom slowly starts to descend, slipping in through the shadows of the boughs of the giant tree as she lands on the flat roof of some random house with violently shaking legs. Taking a second to catch her breath, she does her best to stand up and quietly peeks over the roof, down onto the street below. One hand holds herself steady against the rim of the house, while the other presses the top of her hat down to hide her silhouette. The rain doesn’t seem to have come into the city with her, as if it wasn’t able to cross the walls.

“Sweet-bread! Get your sweet-bread here!” calls a jovial man, gesturing to a young couple walking past him, hand in hand. They’re probably just on the cusp of becoming adults, by the looks of them. “How about you, boy!” he boisterously calls, picking up a piece of bread shaped like a large heart from his stall. “For the lady? Only twenty Obols!” The boy and the girl look at each other for a moment, clearly both embarrassed and flustered as they quickly avert their gazes away from each other, yet still holding hands. The baker laughs loudly, his voice overpowering the buzz of the crowd flowing through the streets. He shoves the bread into the boy’s hands, flashing him a wink and nudging him with his elbow, sending them away without taking any payment.

“Let’s go to the dungeon tomorrow!” says a voice from the side. Fresh turns her gaze over towards what looks like a small party of adventurers. Some caster, red in the face, is talking with a full festive-mug in their hand. “We’re gonna get him this time! I feel it!”

“Please,” laughs some dark-elven woman walking next to them. “We’ve been trying to get that boss for a week.”

“Tomorrow’s the day!” argues the caster, spinning around and walking backwards, lifting their hands and the mug high into the air.

“Not if you keep drinking like that,” replies the dark-elf with a smile, placing her hands on her companion’s shoulders and spinning them back around, so that they face back forward. She pulls them back closer towards herself and the two of them awkwardly walk like that in connected, hugging half-steps.

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“That’s because I’m drinking alone, you need to be drinking with me!” argues the caster, lifting the mug up backwards and forcefully pressing it against the dark-elf’s face, splashing what Fresh assumes is a lot of beer all over her front and their own back. But rather than getting angry or upset, the dark-elf just stands there and drinks the rest of the contents being poured into her while the caster and the rest of their group start cheering her on, clearly ready to have a festive night tonight.

Fresh turns her head towards the right, looking at a group of three, very drunk people who are standing at a chair-less street-table, covered in a tower of empty plates of what Fresh jealously assumes could only have been the streetiest of street foods.

“You guys are my best friends!” cries a large, muscular orc with a huge mace at his side, gripping his two, apparently very good, friends in a bone-crushing hug. “I love you!”

“Do you have to say that in public?!” yells one of the people he’s squeezing, another orc, but she’s much smaller than the norm, being only the same size as the human next to them. A ‘fucky cloak-type’, as Jubilee would dub them, who is trapped in the emotional giant’s other arm.

But rather than getting upset, flustered or embarrassed, as Fresh would expect from the shadowy, stubbled man being crushed to death with affection, the rogue, thief, assassin or whatever other ‘cloak and daggery bullshit’ he’s supposed to be, simply returns the hug, laughing as if he were having the time of his life.

Fresh blinks, looking around. Everywhere she looks, things are like this. People are having fun. People are being nice. People are being festive and joyful and adventurous. Comradery and friendship and even the dreaded ‘L-word’ are clearly all visible no matter where she looks on the busy main street of the festival. No face is angry or cold or full of despair. Nobody looks as if they feel any distress or hate or suffering. Everyone is…

- happy?

She ducks back down behind the wall, staring off into the distance for a moment. Feeling deeply confused, lost and also jealous, Fresh feels a little bit of Jubilee’s energy channeling into her personality as she scratches her cheek.

“What the fuck?” asks the witch, surprised at the words coming out of her own mouth.

Fresh pops her head back up, looking down at the fair happening below her, if only just to watch for a little while longer. She has a few minutes to spare.

Razmatazz

-) *gasps* How... unexpected?

-) Early days, but I'm in informal talks for the production of DIS audiobooks on audible (No, really!)

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