Chapter 143: Hofudstadr

FieryKathy

We eat up our breakfast and make sure our bellies are filled before we head to our rooms and grab our adventuring gear, Birdy included. Once that’s done we meet up outside, with Hilda coming out of the mansion last as she was taking our provisions with us.

“Where’s the walker?” I ask. 

“See that gate over there? It’s part of our mansion, it’s a small courtyard” Hilda points a bit further down the road. “It’s nothing much, I think the previous owners used it to store small vehicles so I decided to do the same. Gives me a good place to work on the walker as well.” 

We follow her along to the gate after which Hilda opens its lock with quite a big key. 

The gate swings open and reveals our good old trusty Walker. There’s some obvious replaced parts and a couple of new additions like a luggage rack and some big lamps. 

“Didn’t it have headlights before?” Sam asks. 

“It did.” Hilda nods. “These are very powerful lights though. I know most of us can see in the dark, but it can help us blind hostile creatures if they come a bit too close. I also installed a sound system too that screeches to scare off wildlife.” 

“Hilda is truly making this thing into a survivalist vehicle.” Lise slaps the back of the walker. 

“It can always come in handy.” 

“True.” Sam nods. 

I turn myself to the group. “Would everyone get in the walker? I want to try something first if you don’t mind.”

“Uh, sure thing, sis.” Lise hops in and helps Nikki aboard as well. Sam and Hilda don’t even say anything before they mount the walker. 

“You want to try teleporting the walker and us together?” Hilda offers me her hand to get in next to her. She’s installed a second seat in the front so we can have two people there now. 

“Yeah.” I give her a nod and take her hand. “Otherwise we will take the trip for naught.” 

“Alright. Maybe just try to teleport it to the front of the mansion.”

“That was my plan.” I smile. 

“As long as we don’t end up in the ocean it’s going to be all fine.” My sister jokes. 

“Please don’t jinx it.” Nikki gives her a tap on the head. “Let your sister concentrate.” 

“Okay okay.” 

I sit down on the seat next to Hilda and close my eyes. Forming an image of the empty road in front of the mansion. I then concentrate on channeling my aether into my surroundings and focus on casting the teleportation spell. I can feel wind circling around us. 

Then all of the sudden I can feel the space around me shift. 

“Oh wow.” My sister says. “That was funky as hell.” 

“Did it work?” I open my eyes and see that we have in fact all teleported to the spot in front of the main entrance. 

“You did good, babe.” Sam smiles and pats me on the head from behind. 

“Thanks.” I smile. “Noone is feeling nauseous or something like that?”

“No, not really.” Nikki replies. “But let’s only use it when we have to because it feels really weird. Very disorienting. 

“Can you describe what it looks like? Because I have my eyes closed when I do the spell.” 

“Hmm, I was just staring at a wall and an instant later, you are looking down a street, with no movement at all. It takes your brain a second to figure out what happened.” Hilda chuckles. “Maybe keeping your eyes closed while you teleport isn’t that bad of an idea.” 

“Let’s try that next time.” Lise says. “But we should probably go now so we don’t arrive too late at the florist’s shop.” 

Hilda nods and starts the car. “Alright, let’s go.”

Our walker walks along the main avenue towards the northern part of the city where the florist resides according to Hilda. On our way there we do draw a lot of attention from the capital’s populace. Word has probably gotten around what we look like so we get a lot of bows and the occasional cheer as we move through. The only thing we can really do is smile and wave as we don’t want to be seen as impolite. 

The neighborhood the florist’s shop is in, is a lot less busy than the other parts of town, with only a few people walking about.  

“You really went out of your way to find this person.” Sam says as Hilda stops the walker in front of the shop. 

“I did, but everyone said that this was the best florist in town, so who was I to argue with that? And they were correct in the end.” Hilda just gets up to dismount the walker before she stops herself and sits back down again. “Ah, looks like we don’t need to go and get her.” 

An Ulusu lady with long blonde braided hair steps out of the shop and locks the door behind her. She has a very big backpack on her back.  “Thank you for coming with me to the North.” She says while fumbling with her keys. 

“A deal is a deal.” Hilda says with a smile. 

The lady turns around and walks over to the walker. Lise has dismounted in the meantime to help her put her bag on the luggage rack. “Here, let me take that for you.” She then takes the back and gently lifts it in place, making sure it is secured.” 

“Thank you.” 

“No problem.”

The lady then gets in the back with the rest of our group, my sister mounting up behind her. 

Hilda then turns around so she can look at the back of the walker. “These are the people I talked to you about.” 

The lady nods “It’s nice meeting you all. My name is Brianna.” 

“It’s nice meeting you too.” I smile and introduce myself, my family does the same. “I heard we are going to a tropical beach?” I then continue. 

Brianna nods. “The flowers I’m after only grow in tropical areas but can survive perfectly fine in other climates.”  

“So we can just set up a base camp at the beach and then explore from there.” Nikki nods. 

“That would work.” Brianna nods again. 

“Brianna, is there a particular reason you wanted to have people going with you?” Élise asks.

“Because it’s quite the distance to travel on foot, especially if you want to carry anything back with you.” Brianna giggles. 

“Fair point.” My sister laughs. “So no dangerous wildlife or the sorts?” 

“There’s always that risk when you are traveling.” Brianna replies. “But let’s hope not.”

We leave through the Northern city gate, quickly losing sight of any kinds of civilization except for the road that we are on. 

“Is it far, Hilda?” I ask. 

“Hmmm, from what Brianna told me, I think we could get there by the late evening. Especially if we speed along like this.” Now that she says it, the walker does appear to be moving a lot faster and smoother than it used to. 

“Did you tune it?” 

“Of course I did.” Hilda smiles. “Might as well since I was replacing some parts. She’s a very smooth runner now.” 

“Quite literally a smooth runner.” Sam comments from behind us, provoking a chuckle out of both Hilda and I. 

“I didn’t make that pun on purpose, believe it or not.” Hilda says. 

“And we will be going by road the entire time?” 

“No.” She shakes her head. “We’ll follow the road up until a certain point before we’ll start off-roading. I don’t think it’ll take very long to reach the coastline but we’ll have to wait and see.” 

“Don’t the Dwarger have a settlement at the ocean?” Lise asks. 

“No.” This time it’s Brianna who replies. “The Dwarger really don’t like that kind of climate. It’s way too humid for their machinery to keep working properly. So they barely have any settlements in the tropical zone. The first settlements you’ll reach if you continue heading North are the border towns.” 

“Border towns? Bordering what, exactly?” 

“The Bozin desert.” 

“Oh…” 

“If you’d continue through the desert you’d end up in the Kingdom of Luja.” Hilda takes up the explanation. “Most of the non-Dwarger races who ended up in Dwarger lands made that crossing through the desert, probably when it was less… deserty… Or that’s what the man at the bookstore told me anyway.”

“They didn’t migrate along the coast?” Sam asks. 

Hilda shrugs. “That’s what I thought, or even by ships, but apparently the historians in this land don’t believe it’s important enough to research. You saw how little people were working on the ancient ruins too. When it doesn’t matter for engineering, they care very very little.” 

“Do you know where your family came from, Brianna?” I look to the back of the walker. 

She shakes her head. “I just know that my parents and their parents before them have lived in Hofudstadr.” 

“Huh, interesting…” 

-Wait… I think that’s the first time I’ve actually heard the name of the Dwarger capital city…-  

FieryKathy

It's getting cold again in Belgium. I'm not used to the cold anymore thanks to the very hot summers. Sadness. I do like the cold though. (Though the energy prices are gonna be shit) 

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