The Awakening of the Ancients

IV. Telthaion

I awoke to the rumbling of Ornn's low voice.

I sat up, spitting out the drool that had shaken hands with the dirt. My arm was numb from using it as a pillow.

"---should be in the capital by this evening. He needs to see."

I sat up and blinked sleep out of my eyes. They were huddled together, wearing serious faces.

"All right, but how do we explain...?" Myer queried of Ornn, leaning forward with a frown.

"This is better," Ornn cut him off.

My stomach growled for breakfast. They all turned my way. No more eavesdropping for me.

"You're going to the capital? Am I coming?" I was convinced they had been planning to drop me here at the tribe to make my way elsewhere alone.

They blinked at me, surprised to see me awake. I glanced out the tent to see the sky was still a medium blue before the sunrise. I yawned widely.

"Of course you're coming," Myer grinned.

My shoulders slumped with relief. I didn't want to be abandoned in the new land just yet. Not when I had friendly guides this time to make navigation infinitely easier.

"Do you know you snore?" he added randomly.

I shot him a disturbed look. "No? Was it bothering you?"

"No," he chuckled. "It was very cute. You sound like a snuffling pig."

I felt my cheeks warm with embarrassment at the word "cute". I cast a glance at the other two, but they weren't looking at me. Sarcasm dripped from my tongue like acid. "Thanks."

There was shuffling as they gathered their blankets to return to the elder. I followed suit, huffing indignantly to myself. I don't snore all the time. And I am not cute. A shudder rolled through me at the thought. I was a Sorceress. I was a warrior.

I was a tiny twenty-year-old human with a round face and wild long hair at the moment. Coupled with my muddied clothes, I imagined I looked like a swamp-bedraggled pixie to them. I sighed. I supposed they could be forgiven for their mistaken assessment.

We were well on our way north by sunrise. Ornn, thank the gods, had found us a ramshackle wagon hooked to two mules. The wagon seemed in danger of losing a back wheel every time we went over a bump, but the mules were surprisingly strong and we moved along at a fair pace for the weight of three giants and a human.

By noon, we had passed Pulmine on our right, the sounds of clinking and heavy carts drifting faintly across the wide grassy verge that separated the town from the main road. We continued north toward a tall hill on our left. It appeared to be two massive rises that had joined at the top. The road split off toward a pass that led beneath the connecting bridge of land. We didn't take this path. We took the one that led straight.

That didn't stop Myer from drawing my attention to it.

"See that?" he whispered conspiratorially. "That's the ruins of a mad alchemist's lab."

What an imaginative story. "Mad alchemist, huh?"

"Yes! He was ousted out of the capitol after performing a few unsavory experiments on some of the nobility. This was when Telthaion was still a monarchy, mind you. The king had to send him out of the city to avoid bad blood with his subjects, but he kept him as close as he could. They say out here he continued his experiments on animals. There have been tales in these parts of mechanical monstrosities roaming the hills and prowling around farms."

I gave him a flat look and shook my head. I looked at the small red-roofed farmhouses dotting the neatly tended fields around us and wondered how superstitious Telthaionans must be. Midahnis were superstitious as well, but we had reason to be. Ours was the land of myth turned reality. Of monsters on one's doorstep. To believe was to survive. Telthaion was too pretty, the land too unmutilated, for me to believe any such horrors lived here. And what fool would have set out to create any?