Chapter 70: Introspective Travel

"Who the hell was that, Kaylin!"

Anselm did catch up with us, those are his first words as we continue to sprint out to the carriage.

"Uh! He's..."

"We'll talk about it later, for now let's just get out of here!"

Finally, at the carriage, Anselm takes the reins and hustles the horses out of the stables and into the street, heading out for the gate.

It'll be a while before I set my sights on Aste again. It's a bit bittersweet leaving with all I've learnt over my two day stay here and the experience, the recent one too? Well, I'm sure I'll cherish them very dearly.

Someday. But for now, we hustle out of the gates, propelling our way out of the city after a few minutes of riding with haste.

Once we're out Anselm presents his question yet again.

"Who. The. Hell. Was that, Kaylin!" he still manages to scream.

Kaylin huffs, looking rather embarrassed at what's happened as she cradles the bag of several alchemical liquids on her lap.

"He's my…he was my boyfriend." She sighs.

"Did you tell him I was you new…" I start out my sentence awkwardly and she immediately shakes her head vigorously.

"NO! I did not tell him anything of the such. He came to that conclusion all on his own!"

"Why did he try to attack us? What's that all about?" Anselm says, still yelling at the top of his lungs.

"He's a half-elf, he's cautious of anyone that's human and many of his customers are of different races."

"What does that have to do with us?" I ask.

She pulls off a shrug that matches well with the bump we just flew over, "He's always been a bit erratic with humans, humans are crude and can't really tell the difference between a half-elf and an elf, or perhaps they don't want to."

"I think he got angry because he thought you were going to take me away, and do bad things, human things to me." 

Human things? 

"A lot of his friends, our friends have been taken or forced to give their freedom up and subject themselves to humans. I don't know. Maybe." She sighs.

At this I can only hum. If his hostility is based off of paranoia then I can't exactly blame him. I'd be paranoid too any time I find my persecutors walking into my home or store.

"That's terrible." I speak. It's all I can offer for now truly. My sympathy and my grief.

The carriage goes quiet after that and we settle into the solemn and traditional travelling vibes of just thinking all to ourselves.

Occasionally, Kaylin would bug Anselm for a chance at the reins and he'd glare at her. Her persistence pays off though, as he eventually gives in an inch and starts showing her how it's done.

Out at the front the hold conversations with each other, I don't bother interrupting them even when I hear Anselm joke about the horse's speed being reliant on whether I kill it or not.

Personally, I busy myself with the bag of alchemical liquids Kaylin snatched off the shelves of her poor Half-elf ex-boyfriend. A lot of them held some kind of shine to them.

Of various colours and bottle sizes the most prominent is the red liquid. With my limited knowledge of RPG's, I know enough to identify or at least insinuated this as a health potion.

There are purple liquids, green ones and even blue ones, blue I hope is a mana potion, I'd love to have those alongside the reds.

It would prove far more useful that looking about for an opportunity to use Soul Drain on some unsuspecting pleb the next time I get mortally injured or maimed.

"Hey Asher!" Anselm calls from the front, pulling me away from my fiddling with the alchemical bottles.

"What is it?"

"We're coming up on the lodge, Audwin and the boys." He pauses, "Should we stop by?"

I think about this for a minute while Anselm explains who the Audwin and the boys are to an ever curious and nosey Kaylin. She's proven to be very chatty if given the chance.

Is there a point in stopping by to see those guys? I'm not very eager to see the Matron again, or bear snide remarks from Audwin. I never spoke much to any one of the kids either, that was more Anselm's thing given his little bond with the one who gifted him the book.

Shaking my head, I sigh, "Perhaps another day, we need to get back to Carbina. Leriva and a second boon is waiting for us."

I hear Anselm groan a bit; I'm not sure what he had in mind to do over at the lodge but we can't afford to waste any more time travelling, especially now that the Horse isn't undead.

Lotar has promised me a new boon if I kill the fourth Gamma warrior, if it is anything like Circle of Death then I expect to be well fortified for any other battles to come my way.

***

On the second night of our travels, before we settle down for a good nights sleep and set the horse out to rest and graze, I pull Kaylin to the side for a rather important conversation.

"Have you ever been in a fight before?"

She blinks, "You mean…"

"Yes, an actual battle, life or death, you or your opponent?"

She breaths, whipping her white hair back as she looks about herself, anything to avoid my eyes.

"Answer me." I demand.

Surprisingly, she rolls her eyes at me and huffs, "Other than practice with Mother? Yes."

I raise an eyebrow at her reservation. I still can't figure her out. "That seems to bother you?"

She stutters a bit, looking at me in shock, "Yes! Yes, it does bother me!" shaking her head, her mop of white flying around as she stutters and struggles to reconcile my question, "Wouldn't you? Wouldn't you feel something at taking a life? An intelligent life!"

"Shush, you're screaming." Quieting her I reflect on her words. The last I thought along those lines was…so long ago. I've been living life as a survivalist ever since.

"You'll be a liability if you hesitate, Kaylin. You could ger us all killed if you don't commit to protecting yourself, to defending yourself."

"…"

"It was a human wasn't it? Trying to capture you and you mother." It's plainly obvious, perhaps the only thing that is clear to see about her is the difficult relationship she shares with humans.

Although, I suppose it's fair to say that those difficulties are wide spread across all of her race.

"What type of Mage are you?" Best to know the skills of my ally from here on out.

Her eyes stick to the ground, still unwilling to meet mine. "Evocation. I practice Hydromancy like mother." 

Hydromancy huh. If Perlman is anything to go by then I suppose I can expect her to be competent and dangerous with it, and since she's an elf, then that goes two-fold for her.

"Okay, I can work with that. So long as you don't hesitate. The Cult isn't any regular bunch of humans, they may be intelligent but so are you, so are we. So, don't let us down."

Grabbing her by the shoulders and giving them a firm squeeze I force her to look me in the eye, "Understood?"

After a near awkward bit of staring in my eyes she speaks, "Yes, I understand."

***

The journey back is less interesting than the journey to. Simply following the route, we find ourselves closer to Carbina with each waking day.

And with each waking day we find that we're filled with dread and apprehension. There are only two more Gamma warriors left and they will be beset on upon by three B-rank Mages and an indestructible soul.

And yet, my nerves grow restless with every passing moment.

The Bull General…With all that I've learned in Aste, specifically the fact that the Bull is the weakest level of the Cultists, that there are higher, stronger and more sinister enemies waiting in the shadows to set themselves on us…

Well, it's enough to make me rethink becoming an enemy of Phien. 

But the Bull knows about me, Phien knows about me. It is a certainty the Gods, however many they are, know about me too.

And I want to know how, I want to know if I was brought here for a purpose, I want to know why I was given a second chance.

I never once thought about this in this manner, but knowing that these Gods exist, these Gods are warring, I've decided that this is no fluke of the universe.

"We're coming up on Carbina!" Anselm yells.

It's late in the night and we can't see much of anything, we'd decided to push through the last lap of the journey and make it in one go so the darkness of the night has fallen upon us.

Sticking my head out the front with Kaylin not far behind, I squint and try to make out anything ahead.

"Where's the post we set up?" Anselm mutters quietly, slowing down the horse as it's neighing becomes desperate, disturbed and erratic; it wants out of here.

"There's something wrong with this place." Kaylin says, shivering next to me.

I can feel it too; the air is saturated with mana and not the fun kind.