Chapter 2: Chapter 2: Survive Together

“What the heck are you doing all the way out here?” he asked me, “I didn’t expect to see anybody but us this far away from the Kingdom.”

My brain scrambled to conjure a convincing cover story, “I was just… exploring. Surviving, you know.” I didn’t know how convincing that was considering I was freshly trimmed and dressed up like a costume party buccaneer.

The man shook his head, “You’re madder than a barrel of wolves if you think it’s worth staying out here on your lonesome.”

“Where are you all going?” I questioned in return. The old man tipped his straw hat upwards and huffed loudly, his breath stunk of tobacco. The cart he was driving was full to the brim with food, furniture and wooden planks.

“We don’t know. We’re going to keep going until we find a good place to stop.” The tail of the convoy was fast approaching, and despite my lone survivalist backstory, I did not want to be left alone in the middle of the wilderness.

“You don’t even know where you’re going? But there are so many of you,” by my count – at least sixty people of all ages. Some came in families, others on their own. I felt the eye concealed beneath my patch swell with some kind of force. The man was outlined in gold, like I was looking at him through a scope. I ventured to lift the patch from my eye, and when I did a flood of information filled my vision.

I could see his age, his name, his affiliations and even his job. Alongside that was a long list of individual skills from the mundane to the strange; cooking, cleaning, woodcutting, furniture carving, flute playing… I snapped the cover back down and the outline faded. What was that?

“What’s your name, stranger?”

“Shane. Shane Blackwood.”

He smiled a smile with several missing and yellowed teeth, “Emmerich. Nice to meet you Shane.” Much to my amazement, the name matched the one I saw through the eye. So this was the power that Celeste gave me? A way for me to appraise the people around me so I could plunder their skills like some kind of hoarder.

Emmerich looked to the front of the convoy and could barely contain his frustration, “Oh for heaven’s sake. It looks like we’re settling down here for the night.” I walked backward and looked to the head of the train, where several of the carts had peeled away to form a circle. A temporary encampment to protect themselves in the wilderness.

“You in a hurry?” I asked.

“I don’t reckon there’s much here for us,” he explained, “But some of them younger lads like to take their chances.”

“I think I’ll stick around for the time being,” I said, “If you don’t mind my company.”

“Do as you please, we’re all friends out here.”

---

I’d taken a moment to step out from the circle as the night fell. I found a nearby hill and clambered to the top of it. The moonlight illuminated a beautiful looking bay, with clear water and tall, natural pillars that reminded me of rural China. I fished the book from my pocket and examined the notes in more detail. It was a dense read, and there was little prospect of me absorbing it all in one go. I flipped through until something caught my interest.

A detailed map of a large continent. There was no name attached to it, but I suspected that it was a map of the world I had been transported to. There was another copy of the map where borders and colours had been used to separate the various nations. In some places the borders were clean and well defined, while in others they were spotted and intertwined with each other like the pelt of a cheetah. The map was too large scale for me to use in a local sense. I had no idea where we were, or what bay we were camped out at. If I could press some information out of Emmerich, maybe I could triangulate our location by using the nation's borders…

I slammed the book shut and headed back to the camp before the cold seeped into my bones. The fires that the wanderers were huddled around could be seen for miles, but there was safety in numbers, and Emmerich had insisted that this land belong to no-one. The rare piece of unclaimed Earth in a world defined by borders and warriors.

Emmerich was alone near his own cart, away from the jovial tales of the others. “There’s a lot of people out here,” I observed.

 “Aye, there’s no shortage of vagrants wandering these lands now,” the older man sighed, the fire tickled his bearded face and illuminated the valleys and crags worn into them by years of turmoil, “The Kingdoms have been foolish, and scorned those who build the foundations they lay upon. Corruption, strife and hunger. They rot from the inside.”

“It’s all so familiar,” I pondered aloud, “The only thing I can say is that kings can’t be trusted, and if you want to see a change – you have to be the one to bring it about yourself.”

He nodded, “A place of our own, free from those meddling nobles. Now that’s an idea I can get behind.”

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“If only it were that easy.”

“Every great City started somewhere.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

“In the old days, people would just take their claim on a spot and build an entire village there within a month. That didn’t last. Now every two-bit noble wants to claim divine right on the land that is rightfully ours. To collect taxes from the men and women who work themselves to the bone in exchange for nothing more than their prattle and tyranny.”

I felt the King’s Eye pulse again. I peeled off the cover and looked to see what new information it would provide me. I was nearly blinded as dozens of golden outlines appeared. Under the ground, in the forest, flowing rivers that came to and fro, and even the animals that roamed in the forests for miles around. It overloaded my brain for a moment before I realized what it was trying to show me.

Resources.

Trees, ores, clean water, food to collect. The King’s Eye had seen it all and transmitted that information to me. I closed off the magic instrument and took a moment to consider where it was pushing me. I wasn’t stupid – the eye has reacted to the conversation we were having, prodding me and telling me that this was an ideal place to settle that very village that Emmerich was wistfully dreaming up next to me.

“This place, why don’t you stop here?”

Emmerich’s brow quirked, “Here?”

I held out my arms, “There are many resources here if you’re willing to look.”

He gave me a sceptical glare, “And I suppose you’ve prospected everything we’ll need yourself, have you?”

“There’s water, fertile ground, wood, ore to mine, what else could you need?”

Emmerich sighed, “It’ll be a hard sell for the rest of them. Many of them want to keep moving until they find the perfect home.”

“They’re not going to find perfect,” I insisted, “One day, you’re going to have to settle down somewhere.”

He leant forward on the fallen tree, a glimmer of excitement in his tired eyes. “Ah, but to start our own village, our own city!”

“We would have to worry about the surrounding Kingdoms.”

“Aye. But with the conflict within their own borders, many of these less developed places have been abandoned. These used to be nothing more than a military outpost for watching the coast, you can see the tower from here.” He pointed through the fog to a nearby hill, where a vague black pillar stretched out from the ground and travelled up three stories. “On a clear day, it’s a good position to keep watch.”

“Do you think there are any buildings we could repurpose?”

“No. The armies to the east prefer to use tents for their soldiers. They would have taken it with them when they left for home.”

Emmerich seemed more and more enthused by the idea by the second. I found myself feeling the same way. What better way to get a new start in a new world? I didn’t know what I could contribute to the process of founding a village, but I wanted to be there and see it progress. “If they’re planning on moving on, we’ll need to ask people if they want to say.”

Emmerich nodded, “I’ll pull a few strings, and see what they think. I’m tired of travelling.”

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