Night had settled like a soft shroud, cold and dry, the kind of quiet that made every crackle of the campfire seem too loud. The sky above stretched clear, painted with stars, their light illuminating the treetops.
Yorrick sat with his back against a supply crate, legs outstretched toward the fire, picking idly at a strip of dried fruit. The third night on the road. If his guess was right, they’d made around seventy miles. Give or take.
"Ten miles more," Gaesh said with a mouthful of what seems to be a roasted potato, sitting cross-legged near the flame. "We'll be in Helstown by midday tomorrow. Heard it's the smallest town in all of Kidia. Barely counts as a town, really."
“Yeah,” Urbhel added, poking at the fire with a stick. “More like someone built a few stone houses and decided, ‘Yeah, this’ll do.’”
“It’s only even a ‘town’ because it hugs that river... what’s it called again?” Gaesh snapped his fingers. “Roth... Rothburn?”
“Rothbury,” Jesh corrected without looking up from her book. She was seated on a folded blanket near Yorrick, her voice smooth and neutral. “Rothbury River connects north to the sea. The capital, Lympscast, rests right on the connection point. Trade flows through it like blood in a vein. Without Helstown there, even the Magocracy would feel the pinch.”
Urbhel made a low whistling sound. “Mages and their metaphors.”
Jesh glanced sideways at him, but there was a ghost of a smirk on her lips. “You’re not wrong. Kidia’s small and it has tight borders. It also contains only a handful of large settlements. Yet despite it's lacking in other fields. Kidian mages are something else. They're top class. Even though the term ‘mage’ only gained popularity a few decades ago... after the Surge.”
“Surge?” Gaesh asked, cocking his head.
“Magic’s awakening,” she answered. “The point when everything changed. Before that, it was just superstition and minor tricks. After? Mages started making names for themselves and rewriting the rules of the world.”
“Heh,” Yorrick let out a short sound—neither amusement nor agreement—as he threw a small pebble into the dark. His side-eye lingered briefly on Jesh before he looked back into the fire. “Rules don’t mean much when they keep changing.”
The fire snapped in agreement, casting tall flickers over their faces. Somewhere in the distance, an owl called once and went silent again.
Gaesh glanced toward Yorrick, then back to Urbhel. “Still think your snow-hands trick could get you a seat in Lympscast?”
“Hey,” Urbhel grinned. “They just haven’t seen what I can do yet.”
Jesh arched a brow without lifting her head. “They’d likely classify it under ‘parlor charm’ and move on.”
That got a bark of laughter out of Gaesh, who thumped Urbhel on the back again.
Yorrick didn't join the laughter. He continues on watching the fire. The light danced in his eyes, but his thoughts were elsewhere. It was on what lays ahead. He closed his eyes for a moment.
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"Survive the road. Survive the pay. Survive the ones beside you." He chanted in his mind as if it's his mantra.
---
It was the afternoon of the fourth day when the caravan finally rolled into Helstown.
Yorrick had heard the teasing words of Gaesh and Urbhel yesterday, but even those hadn’t quite prepared him for what the place really looked like. It was small, yes, yet it is also slightly larger than Gatford, the rural town where he’d first picked up this escort mission.
But where Gatford was all muddy and dirt paths, thatched roofs, and stray chickens, Helstown carried itself with the posture of a place that knew it mattered.
Stone-paved streets wound through neatly sectioned neighborhoods, most buildings stacked two stories tall with painted shutters and tiled roofs. Walls, thick and sturdy yet still engraved with beautiful patterns.
Every home looked like it belonged to someone who dealt in numbers and ledgers. Merchant flags fluttered from windows. Scribes paced with scrolls in hand. Even the children looked too well-dressed to be taken lightly.
“It's like every house owns another house,” Urbhel muttered as he passed a fountain sculpted in a design of a lion's head.
“Or owns someone who owns a house,” Gaesh added, nudging him.
Maybe it was because of the mage family living here—some bloodline of three known mages. Or maybe it was simply due to the town’s placement—Helstown handling trade between the Kingdom of Louth and the Magocracy of Kidia. From Whitford in the west to Reasingster in the south, two well-trodden routes passed through here. Not to mention the Rothbury River that led all the way to the capital, Lympscast.
The whole town was a bundle of wealth and connections. And judging by the number of wagons already parked near the merchant square, it stayed busy.
Jonesy, walking beside his cart with that sun-wrinkled smile of his, clapped his hands loud enough to call attention. “Alright, listen here!” he barked, standing up on the wheel spoke. “We stay for the night. That means you do what you want... drink, eat, bathe, cry to your mothers, I don’t care.” He paused, eyes squinting across the assembled guards and mercenaries. “But! First light tomorrow, we move. If you’re not here when I count heads, I’m keeping your coin and you can explain to the Louth border patrol why you smell like regret and hangover.”
Some groaned. Others chuckled. As for Yorrick? He just rolled his shoulder and went into one of the alleyways.
---
The morning sun had barely risen past the tree line when the caravan departed Helstown, wheels creaking against the dirt path. They had followed the Rothbury River for a while, with the soft sounds of the water running beside them, until the path gradually veered to the right, climbing into a wooded slope. They left the river, it was now hidden behind the thick groves of birches.
Gaesh and Urbhel, both riding at a lazy pace near the middle carts, were in high spirits. Too high, perhaps. Considering the alcohol they had drank the night before.
“I swear on my own boots,” Urbhel was saying, voice already too loud for the hour, “it was twelve. Twelve mugs. Big ones too, not those watered-down cups the old folks sip!”
“Twelve?” Gaesh scoffed, nearly choking on a bite of dried meat. “You were flat on your face by the eighth. I had thirteen, at least. You couldn’t even count straight by then, ‘member?”
“That’s because you kept spinning the table!” Urbhel barked back, elbowing him in the ribs. “You're like a damn gyroscope when you’re drunk. Nobody told me the chairs weren’t nailed down!”
The two of them laughed, loud and free, bumping into each other. Their laughter echoed off the trees, briefly drowning out the clatter of hooves and wheels.
Yorrick watched them from a few paces behind, one hand resting lazily on the strap of his gear. Their laughter stirred something unexpected in him.
For a moment—just a moment—he saw two other figures where Gaesh and Urbhel stood. A shorter one with a crooked scarf always slipping off, and a taller one with a lazy grin and half-buttoned armor. They laughed in much the same way. Carefree. As if the world was still worth laughing in.
Yorrick blinked.
A gust of wind—one that didn’t stir the trees—rushed through the image in his mind. It howled with phantom screams only he could hear, and with it, the two figures vanished.
His eyes returned to the present.
Gaesh was now trying to climb onto Urbhel’s back in some kind of victorious celebration of beer superiority. Yorrick’s expression, once briefly warm, flattened.
He frowned and looked forward toward the lead cart. Better to watch the road.
Info Dump #11
- Almost 3 decades ago. The world changed. Some call it cataclysm. Some a normal day. But history books often call it The Surge. The moment when the world awakened. The moment when magic awakened.