Sixteen Feet of Steel Chapter 30

*Before… Christiana

The longsword is glued to my hand by blood and heat from the spell.

More horns…?

No trumpets...bugles.

The ground shakes as cavalry rushes past us I recognize none of them as they chase after the Hobgoblins and Goblins and then I see the standard of Lord Caldwell.

And our Lady Tatiana’s standards as well...not many but a half dozen knights.

Adele’s there and she has some other druids with her sharing some power to me.

“Lady, Lady Christiana we’re done, saved….you can drop the spell on the blade lady.”

I look at her and Taylor passed me a skin and I drink deeply from it and drop the spell or spells from the longsword and it crumbles to pieces held together only by the shield.

I know it’s post battle humor but we look at each other and we laugh a little off.

Harold and Jessa are helping Nicole and she’s drinking a gagging through something in a gourd bottle he brought and Jessa has a big waterskin and she’s feeding Nic water and using some to spray her down.

Others are tending to us from the keep mostly the druids and I can see a train of wagons and pennants from our side in the distance and...I look to Adele.

“Help me?”

“Aye Lady.”

She lends me enough power that I reach out and make a light spell...soft light with Lord Caldwell’s standard in blue shimmering in it like a large moon to light their way through the battlefield and also that our people can see them.

The cavalry is meeting the enemy from everything we can hear.

There’s cheers rising off from the walls.

And The Gods and The Light is kind and the wagons come to us.

And John comes to me as they do and he picks me up and sets me on the tailgate of the wagon closest to us and he has a soaked cloth and he’s washing blood and filth and smoke from my face making me cry in the shock of a simple act of kindness and humanity in the aftermath of all of this and then...then he kisses me.

Deep, hard, passionate and a reminder that we survived.

*And Now…

My brain and my body and my blood is on overload as John and I kiss each other and it’s literally like we’re both under this whole animal instinct to feel something else other than what we had just been through.

Kisses lead to touches and touches lead to grabbing and we’re barely passed the gates before John picks me up and he carries me off to the bed quarters where we had been put earlier and we don’t go to my room but to his.

It’s a smaller room by far not more than a single bed and a night table but we don’t care.

It’s more kisses and then it’s a flurry of desperate shaking hands to get out of bloody, gorey and sweaty clothes and armor dropping gear and weapons wherever they end up falling before he picks me up and we both sort of fall together on the bed.

I’ve never felt like this even though I’ve had a couple of lovers, it feels like I need him, need this as much as air or even more.

I didn’t even really get how John was for size until he was pushing inside of me.

I gasp and cry out as I’m opened my inside flesh of my womanhood giving way to his manhood and it’s as much shock as this primal need getting met. I’m not thinking of anything else but this need to feel something else. Shivery gasps come out of me from the sensation and more as I feel my body react and grip him tightly but softly. He does the same shivery gasps as he is being held by me inside and that reality sinks in.

And well John, the rest of him is...

Tall and strong, his body is made of all this muscle made from his years of work as ranger. The trekking, climbing, hunting, fighting and it’s made him some one strong and lean but very handsome as well.

I’ve started to notice and like handsome in men.

I’ve definitely started liking John Holt as well.

Something was sparking a while back and now we’ve caught fire.

John moves within me and I feel full, stretched, filled in this way that is so very pleasing. Like the best version of that almost painful morning stretch you do in the morning in bed as you wake but deeper, inside, and very satisfying.

It gets moreso as we keep going and I’m adjusting, my body getting used to the acts of lovemaking.

There is so much more feeling down there, inside of there that I’m used to feeling in my everyday life. You don’t really notice how your womanhood feels inside until well you’ve something inside of you.

Or have your moontimes.

But I’ve had my potion so that’s not an issues.

And it’s not like I’ve had any chances to “thimble” as I think my sisters called it.

Oh this, this is good...it gets better when he gets this right angle and spot and his cock hums through me like that perfect sound when steel gets honed by the stone.

“There...oh gods and light John there!”

He groans as my body acted.

He does keep going there and that honing feeling leads me deeper into pleasure.

I feel like a violin or fiddle having notes coaxed from it until my body makes music.

Sexual release that just...it spurred me onward.

I’m not sure when I did it but my legs get up around his waist and use them to help pull him in not that he needs help but it does help pull me to meet him.

John’s hands are all over me and I’m really feeling his manliness. The sheer size of his body compared to mine is such a good solid thing, his smell, past the other smells is good and all that power in him.

It reminds me of the power I’ve felt under a fast or strong horse. And if you’ve ever fully galloped then you know the sort of sensation I mean.

And aside from his passionate kisses his mouth along with his hands is making me joyful of having breasts.

The sensations this mix of relief from their arousal ache to gleeful almost electric jolts that send tendrils of pleasure through me and get me even more intense.

“Oh gods princess, oh light Christiana you feel so good, you’re so sweet, so beautiful, so fucking brave.”

“Brave I was terrified.”

“I know so was I but you...you just kept going, kept casting, kept shattering troll stones.”

“Is this really bed talk ranger?”

He grasps my face in both of him hands kissing me and pumping into me very hard and fast. “Yes, yes...you saved so many, did so much...you make my heart leap watching you.”

I cry a little because it sounds so heartfelt and there is still part of myself that dreamt of people saying these things to me from my childhood dreams.

I wrap my arms around his shoulders and push back harder and faster in time with John until I’m overcome with “music.” again and he reaches past his peak and cries out and releases himself. The sensations of both combined is something timeless...everything is just washed away by this for scant seconds that feel like longer minutes and as things ebb down he is still kissing me like that with his hands gripping my face and burning with passion and intimacy.

We collapse as our strength fades fast and our bodies finding release give up from the other efforts of the day and we kiss more and John rolls us so he’s beneath me and to the side of the bed pressed to the wall and we snuggle getting the sheets up and over us.

A few more kisses before I drift away rolling over so I’m pressed to his body and his arms are round me and them it’s the darkness of deep, deep sleep.

I dimly remember Lady Tatiana there with Adele getting out clothes and her feeding me drink with a waterskin. Strong fiery spirits and I drink and drink barely able to wake fully and I think John did the same and I think she kissed me on my forehead.

“You did amazing Chrissy, all three of them are so proud they’ll outshine the stars tonight.”

She said something to John too and it must have meant something too because his arms tightened around me and he shook a little.

I drifted away again.

Battle, after battle has this exhaustion unlike anything else.

I woke again a little as Harold was there with soup and he fed us both and I felt out of body, like an eating puppet, then darkness again.

It was dawn and the need to use the jakes that woke me and the light here was dim and I crawled from the bed and took a robe that was left for me that looked my size.

Everything hurts, everything screams, I am bruises on bruises and little cuts and nicks everywhere that I don’t remember getting and weak...so exhaustedly weak that I’m using the wall.

There was a change to the scents around. Evergreen fires with many boughs being burned filled the air with the scents of herbal oils too masking the scents of death and destruction.

Passing a thin hall archery slit window I see our people camped and fires burning like I smelled and somewhere out there fiddles and flutes and pipes were playing soft sad soothing songs for the dead.

I stop and watch and cry.

It’s just starting to hit me the violence that we all just lived through and out there, out there there are others that are doing something so soothing and heartfelt.

I jump a little as I feel Lady Tatiana hug me.

I know it’s her, there’s no other being with a chest like hers.

And I recognize the smell of soap from the keep and just her as well.

She hugs me like she gets it.

“Open your pathways Chrissy.”

“Huh...mmm...magic? Now?”

“I’ll share power with you, it will help.”

I take some moments to breath and I open my magic and she’s pushing power into me and I feel like a new plant just sprouted taking in the heat and warmth of sunshine.

I’m starting just starting to grasp the things she told me of her being a Titan as well. Her power definitely works different than mine but it is still magic and she has enough control to share with me and recharge me.

She feels though like she is more magic than biological stuff.

But her care, her being here, her sense of justice, how she runs things.

Her heart is more than real.

I charge until my body reminds me why I’m up and I start to groan as I move.

“Sorry I need the jakes.”

She chuckled. “Sex after battle, nice but it comes with a price after the passion and adrenaline wears off.”

“I’ve never had that lesson, that’s something you should teach.”

She openly laughed. “And deprive you of this pleasure?”

“Gods and Light I feel like I was rolled down a bumpy hill in barbed fencing.”

“Was it worth it?”

I grin. “Yes, it was worth it twice.”

I feel better after using the jakes and then she walks me to the courtyard and we’re given rolled pancakes with honey made into a near paste with nuts to eat as we go outside the keep to where she has tents pitched.

I feel this sense of gratitude towards me? Admiration?

Emotions?

I’m making people feel emotional?

I’m blushing as we head away.

“You saved lives Chrissy, a huge amount of them every stone you blasted could have been so much death. And like all wizards you’re flashy.”

“I was scared and desperate.”

“So are many heroes Chrissy and yet you willing walked into harm’s way between them.”

“I was raised to.”

“I know, so are others but those lessons often never take hold.”

The rest are there. I can feel Nicole, Jessa and Taylor there in different tents.

“We’re out here?”

“More room for the locals that need it.”

“That makes sense.”

Only here though so many nobles home would invoke hospitality. Here being noble is putting folks ahead of title.

Some woman with a Caldwell patch in peasant clothes is at a cookfire and tables and I think we’re camped where the Hobgoblins were in the wreckage of the Druid’s outbuildings.

Everything has been cleaned up and has been cleared. No bodies, no ill smells and there are more folk camped here than I thought likely having followed the fighters. Workmen, tools, fresh logs from the forest on lumber piles.

“Come, let’s get you looked at.”

She takes me to her tent and it’s huge like a field mess tent and she has set up pretty well.

There’s an she takes me too where I can bathe and one is waiting and filled with herbs and the powers of the Druids.

“I wish I could learn this.”

“You can. Druidic magic is more an order that pairs with schooling and their philosophies you won’t be like them of course unless you become a practicing one but you can learn if they will teach you.”

I disrobe and sink into the tub moaning at the heat.

“It would be worth it for the antiseptic lore alone.”

She smiles. “That’s Deidre coming out in you from everything I’ve heard.”

“Not Aurora?”

“No, your mother traded for their works but she was raised under the thumb of her father her powers lead her more towards technology and energy uses and things like that.”

“Like the radios?”

“Just like that Aurora was a big believer in communication and the power it had.”

“I can see that, in battles and war that’s a big advantage. I just can’t help but feel towards the common folks and all the other times and dangers they live with all the time.”

“I know, and we need that in the world every bit as much Christiana. Use the blue bar of soap try and get all of your nicks and scrapes. I’ll be back with more food.”

She leaves me alone and the blue soap burns in the cuts and scrapes strongly and I lather them with it and then lean back and soak.

Sleep even a little more as the heat from the bath soaks into my bones.

Even here trying to rest I can feel thoughts towards me the strong ones.

At least it’s not hatred and I’m in good company with Nicole and Lady Tatiana.

~She fought, mage as she is she took up the sword.~

~She flew, they said there was a sorcerous battle and she flew.~

~Aye an those siege stones the trolls were fighting she blew those from the sky.~

~Lit her beacon, warned us all she did.~

~Arras, she waved enemy arras away saving folks.~

~Healer brave stayed right in some village right in a plague saved folks.~

~Lady Tatiana’s squire’s not good tore herself up good fighting.~

~Heard ol’ Harold brought out all he had in healing.~

~Ain’t seen nothin like that, the girl should be dead.~

~The girl should be knighted.~

I should block them out but it’s too tiring and instead I let the good words carry my mood to a good place and I learn other things too. Things other people did, locals and some displaced from other villages hit as the enemy marched here. I get news of the fighting of our rescuers and the harrying battle as they retreated.

They died to a man and monster their boats leaving them stranded here and by the reckoning of the fighting men their ships were dark humans likely allied to the Hobgoblins and from some of the dangerous nations of the south.

Apparently Lady Tatiana dropped everything she struck in s single blow.

I actually try to see it and not just hear it and it’s disjointed and too hazy to make sense of.

I feel Lady Tatiana coming and I think I felt her feeling me?

“Stop pushing yourself Chrissy, scrying is much more draining and harder than you think.”

“Was that what I was doing?”

“Likely I felt your power on mine. Be careful of that most casters and magic blooded folk like me can feel that.”

“I think I felt their dark mages, witches doing that in the battle.”

I smell food and open my eyes and rinse off myself feeling better for it and even moreso as I quickly wash my hair as she’s sets food out and healing supplies and another follows with clothes and other things and the cook that was there brings in hot rolls and scones in a basket before leaving with a courtsey to both of us.

Lady Tatiana passes me a towel and I dry off and them wrap the towel as other women have taught me.

My time with the women of Palfrey’s Corner and the other places has made me comfortable with myself in the presence of other women. She bids me to sit in a canvas chair and she passes me a mug of thicker soup with druidic boosted herbs and bits of meat.

She starts to apply potion or rather druidic ointment to my wounds along with leaves from the All-heal plant? Kingsfoil? Then she bandages my cuts and scrapes with good cloth and gauze them she places her hand over them and she pours power into them and myself.

Power, light, heat...I can feel the aching in places fading my muscle and flesh are the easiest to feel but there’s aches being soothed that are deeper like my joints and bruised bones.

And as she works we eat and talk.

“You did amazing Christiana, really and truly.”

“I was lucky, especially with the boulders.”

“That was quick thinking and tactical I’m not sure that Aurora would have figured that one out.”

“She never did it?”

“Not that I had ever seen or heard of. Other things you’ve done you could be her reborn.”

“Like?”

“Calling lightning, repelling the arrows, flying.”

“I’m not sure you’d call that flying it was more reverse magnet force against the earth’s”

“And Aurora called it something like that or Levitation.”

“You were here, I mean out there did you find the dark casters?”

“I found their bodies, one was a direct hit just lightning charged bones.”

“And the other two?”

“Just one other, the were just as dead.”

“Harold said there would be three.”

“Traditionally yes, Hobgoblin witches, most casters will work in a triad There’s power in it.”

“But she wasn’t there.”

She leans back and she gets some butter and the rolls for us and we take a moment to eat them hot some more sips of the soup.

“No I believe she escaped, which means that they know that there is a light sided caster out there with significant power.”

I sigh pretty hard and drink more soup. This won’t sit any better in my mind with my energy low from having nothing in my system.

“We took their camp hard and fast so they left a lot behind that we had to clean up afterwards. I think given their area as I saw it there was three but the third fled, likely their battery.”

“Battery?”

“One as shields, one for offense and one for battery and likely to run a scry of the battle.”

“I felt the shielder and the offensive spells for sure. It was nothing like I ever felt before.”

She nods. “I’m going to agree that you were lucky there. Most wizardresses at your level of training and experience don’t survive magical battles.”

“I know I was lucky.”

She butters another roll. “You know why they were here?”

I nod. “The Key, they have the one at Lyonnes don’t they?”

She frowns. “Likely so and that means ill tidings given what was sent here.”

I look at her. “They’re magically moving the Goblins and such around aren’t they? That’s how they got ahead of us the other time before we came in right?”

She sighs. “Unfortunately so.”

“They can’t gate from other worlds can they not without all of them but can they gate from place to place here?”

“I don’t know but it sounds likely. Gates are powerful magic from one place to another and I have not seen many in my life but with a Key as a battery with the power it has and access to a ley line that makes it even more powerful. I think that they could do it.”

“That’s how The Gorgon struck Lyonnes. That many men, battleknights, siege weapons that doesn’t ambush anything. We had zero warning.”

Lady Tatiana eats and asks between bites. “But they used ships here.”

“They did so that means that they can’t make big ones here? The Western Mountains maybe?”

She nods. “They have their own powers up in them in places from the old wars that might interfere with things or they don’t have as strong of casters on this side of things.”

She finishes her roll and passes me a small dish with jellied bird on it with carrots and some other things inside. I take it and start eating it with the offered fork.

“We might have to look to the southern nations too. There are dark powers in places down there. They have not moved up here in ages on ages but we can’t count them out. The Hobgoblins are southern mercenary monsters.”

“What nations down there are like that?”

“Sulphuria for one. They are in the central mass of mountain lands in the southern continent. A nation of old hates.”

“Sounds bad just from the name.”

“There are three volcanoes in that region and the land is ruled by Fire Giants.”

“Fire Giants! Those are real?”

“Very, The giant races are few in this era mostly dead from the ancient wars. They ruled over the smaller races with an iron fist. Hobgoblins and the Dark Dwarves flock to them because as their willing servants they’re placed over other people like humans.”

“And they’re interested here?”

“They truthfully always have been but their local issues have usually kept them south. They are landlocked and the nations closest to them do not wish to lose their power that they have.”

“Like?”

“Kafar.”

“Sounds like Kaffet.”

“It is where it comes from that and coffee. The Sulfurians region blows volcanic ash down the plateau and into the surrounding regions. Kafar gets the most of it and they have massive farms of all kinds of goods that bring them trade and riches.”

“So they’re at war.”

“Usually yes, The Raja’s of Kafar will not let go of their prizes and power it brings them.”

“So not like the fire giants?”

“Still a maybe, they could have sent units here under hire. I would imagine that with enough coin one of their neighbors would let them use a port.”

“And there are others?”

“Many, our humans came from the Southlands originally and the cultures there are ancient. These became changed and altered in the rift war when all of the realms fought and there were alliances made and founded. Some of these beings stayed after the gates closed and there were even ships from the fleets and dark fleets that landed here.”

“Dark fleets?”

“Humanity and others had enemies that had starships and technology as well and some of them were stranded too.”

“Oh...oh so that’s not good. This is so much bigger than…”

Lady Tatiana cuts me off.

“Don’t look too big at everything Chrissy. Yes the world is dangerous and it is complex but that is not all aimed at us now.”

I sigh. “So likely mercenaries?”

“Likely and likely on promise of resources here or land or use of the keys.”

I sigh. “Are we moving the key?”

“We have to. We can’t leave it here now that they know.”

“So where will we be taking it?”

“Into Asguard.”

“......................”

She smiles. “The dwarven capital.”

“Oh will it be safe with the dwarves?”

“It would if they would have it around but they didn’t want it before when it was offered up.”

“Then why are we taking it there?”

“Because we’re going to go and see your sister Angeline in Braitheholde, we’re going to her wedding.”

“My sister…”

I sit back deeper into the chair. “Angeline doesn’t know.”

Lady Tatiana nods. “No one does and hopefully we can keep it that way for as long as we can.”

“She might not understand.”

“Many people won’t understand that transformation. That requires very advance spells Christiana some of which I can’t even fathom to either transform you to a lad or vice versa.”

“Neither can I.”

Lady Tatiana nods. “We need to check in with her and then your other sisters as well and Braithholde has the underways so that will be an advantage.”

“The underways?”

“Boats, the ancient Dwarves moved things through the underground avoiding things like weather and other things by joining underwater bodies of water together and made a canal system.”

The thing is knowing some Dwarves and seeing them at the keep and learning of them it’s not surprising and at the same time it is still amazing.

And how secret is this?

It seems a lot of knowledge and lore and even our own past is hidden from mankind by the elder races.

Then again given what happened home and who or what The Gorgon might be allied to... What sins have we might have already done that no of us humans are mentioning.

We’re short lived and people can forget what isn’t right in front of them, give them a generation or two and it gets even worse.

Like my grandfather.

Rory Blackhand one of the few men that could use magic. Reduced to what is starting to become a boogeyman.

“So we will be going to see The Dwarves.”

She grins. “Yes, yes we will King Wayland will need to be informed.”

“So are you his vassal?”

“Yes and no. We are the closest region to Asguard so we have the closest relations with them. These lands are also the ones most able to bring trouble and war to them so in part of our treaties with them he gets to have a voice in who is Lord Marshall of The West, Like The Elves do with Lord Marshall of the East.”

“That’s my grandfather.”

She honestly looks surprised. “Oh, oh damn that’s why Aurora would go to Whitespire.”

“What was my mother’s role in things?”

“She was the Guardian. The most powerful caster in the realms as far as anyone knew of and decidedly neutral about things. Aurora was dedicated to making the lands stronger for the folks that lived in them and she helped advise on things and carry messages of great importance as well and if need be help enforce the peace.”

She is looking at me. “Your mother spent most of her life trying to lift folks up. She tried her damndest to undo her sins and those of her father.”

I nod while sort of hugging the empty pot of bird. “I have so many questions still about her.”

Lady Tatiana nods and gives me a kind smile. “Aurora was my friend. I will try my best to do right by her and you.”

“Thank you.”

She stood and she helped me up and held my robe open for me. “For now though you need more sleep. I have a tent here for you with your things in it and you need sleep and to recover.”

“We’re not in a hurry?”

“A hurry won’t change things most times Christiana I’m waiting for things to come here from home that we will need before going to Asguard.”

I nod and the though of rest combined with the food and medicine and healing has me drifting and thankfully my tent is very close to hers.

There’s a cot and mattress and blankets and quilts and I do a heating spell to warm all of it. “Lady? Why can Harold use magic?”

She helps me sit and even tucks me in. “Druids use stored power and lore. Magic spells use mystical constants gathered together into formula to make magic spells. Druids do the same but their lore is the deep lore of nature and of plants and animals and using that lore like a mage would with their own words of power to wake that power into stronger things.”

“Men cannot safely be mages, mages channel their own power and the power from the world through them Chrissy. This power in all beings amplifies who a person is inside.”

“So what happens they turn bad?”

“Many do, many men have a need for power. It’s far too common a trait. Others that do learn they...they pull too hard, they do too much too often and they will burn themselves out more often than not.”

“Why not women?”

“Oh they are just the same. But it’s is a mentality of things. Women do not crave the power as a body of a folk like men do. There are women that do and turn dark. There are real evil ones out there. As a folk though men cannot handle the power as responsibly, this has buried itself into the power itself and breeding too.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Magic ability follows bloodlines, ruined male mages literally end up ending theirs when they do too much. Mad Men with power have been hunted out and killed as have their families.”

She gets up. “The rest is time. People think that men cannot be mages so the power flows less towards them. Like anything that lives by the power that defines it magic is moldable in that way.”

“How does…”

“Go to sleep Chrissy.”

I yawn hard and nod and it wasn’t long before the warmed bedding pulled me under.

I have dreams this time definitely.

They’re so strong too of my mother, both of them but mostly Aurora and the things that I’ve seen here do. The way she was and the things that she did. Then there’s dreams or nightmares of Lyonnes falling and her fighting.

Her losing and dying.

Then of me, and the fighting, everything I did on the walls and with the stones and the trolls to fighting sword in hand.

I dream of the key.

I dream of green power of Harold sitting and whispering to leaves and herbs in his cupped hands like they’re his chickens.

As always I wake to use the jakes and find them easy enough and it’s dark now. Deep nighttime and I can sense the others here in tents and in Nicole’s tent I can feel Lady Tatiana healing Nicole.

It’s not light either it is her deep into her power and pushing far more of it into Nicole than she did me. And for longer as well long enough I go and find the cook lady and there’s a younger girl there instead and I look at her.

“Lady Tatiana is healing Squire McKinnon, what do we have that I can take them?”

She’s staring at me for a few moments then gets to her feet from the chair that she was sitting in and peeling vegetables.

“Uhm...yes...I can find something just wait, I’m so sorry Lady Stormbringer I wasn’t meant to be slackin.”

Lady Stormbringer?

“Relax, peeling vegetables is a long job and it’s night time take your ease.”

“But Lady…”

“It’s fine….please be at ease. I’m in service to Lady Tatiana so I’m just trying to make things easier for her and my friend.”

She swallows and nods.

I can feel it though, she’s heard the stories.

We have some bread and I slice it up and we put together that with some cold meats sliced off the joint and some cheese and pickles and then there’s some more biscuits that get butter and dollops of pumpkin jam.

She’s nervous the whole time and looking at me as I take the tray and I use some of the molasses that we have here and I make some Hot Sully which is a hot spiced punch with molasses as the base to it that my grandfather used to make. It’s a good drink for the night air and she as well as Nicole will need the sweet.

Making that calmed the girl as she watched and she learned how to make it having never see it before.

I take the food into Nicole’s tent and I wasn’t prepared to see her like that.

Very, very bandaged.

Bandaged and there are herbs and she looks pale and not well at all. She’s not even conscious as Lady Tatiana is healing her.

“She’s that bad?”

“Hadn’t she been fed that healing potion straight away she’d be dead now.”

“Exhaustion?”

“Yes that until the point of shock plus stress injuries. Getting bad hits from the Trolls in a Squiresknight is as bad as in a Battleknight. If it moves you move and if the gods have mercy your rigging will snap sometimes but other times you have the chance of getting twisted and broken or torn. Nicole is all of those things plus weakened from the fighting and the previous battles she was in.”

“She should have stayed clear then?”

“No, her Squiresknight was still the best weapon that you had here other than you. Nicole did her duty and she took the fight out past the walls where she could move and pick up speed and momentum.”

“She was amazing.”

Lady Tatiana looked down at her and she smiled.

“Raw talent, I’ve never seen anyone I’ve taught move like she does. It’s her family. They build them but she, she dreams of being a battleknighter.”

“I had the same dream.”

Lady Tatiana smiles. “Of course you did so many do as pages but it’s different with Nicole. She feels her rig like a sailor feels his boat and how it flies with the wind and waves.”

“I seen her fight, I thought that was your training.”

“Well that’s true too, I’m a Titan so I’m old Christiana. I have piloted battleknights ever since they were invented.”

“Why?”

“Because they changed the world. They changed the way kingdoms were going to run and exist. They equalized the races of Human and Dwarf against Trolls and Giants and other monsters.”

“Most things that are storied from where I’ve grown up.”

“The Middle Kingdoms were the home of the biggest fleet group of Humankind it’s your ancient ancestors and they took those lands hard and held them with many things that they don’t have in this age.”

“Like?”

“Technology, powerful technology as powerful as spells could be.”

“Why do they not have them now?”

“Mostly when the fleets landed here they had lost power, their versions of electric were down. Then slowly they ran low and then they ran short of other things and many were targeted.”

“Targeted?”

“The weapon caches, the builders, those that could fix things. People with less than they the other races figured out who some of these people were or the smithies were that made them and struck those.”

“And the Elves and Dwarves? They seem to have some of that technology.”

“Some was stolen, some was traded. The Dwarves had their mountain domains and the lands around them and while not gifted with that level of technology they had their own ways. They also had highly protected lands and shelters and still do. So most was done in trade and the dwarven advances mostly came through life span.”

“And the Elves?”

“Elves tend to their own ways still. Technology was a plague to their realm as it was less defensible being island and forests and it wasn’t until they made their powers known that they had been left in peace by Humankind.”

“We attacked them?”

“No certain Humans of the landing eras attacked them, this did a lot of damage and weakened the Elves who by and large are a folk that are peaceful.”

“By and large.”

She smiled at me. “Elves are a people and their culture is very close to what you’d see as druidic they still have their questionable people or have and questionable periods of their history.”

“Like?”

“Like when they invaded what would be The Riverlands which had been pirating them for a century and cleansed the land of Humans there forcing them into The Midlands.”

I stare at her setting things out for her to eat and drink. “I’ve, I’ve never heard of that. So they drove them back into the midlands for how long?”

“Most have not, it predated the first kingdoms of what we call the Kingdom Alliance now really. It’s older than me just a story I heard when young. Many people still lived in or around the ships which were still being dismantled into fortresses. But they didn’t drive those humans back they drove them from the Eastland ships and settlements into The Midlands and kept them out for half a century. When their descendents returned they were a generation and a half removed and their old ships and settlements that had been there had been scoured away.”

“Taken?”

“Maybe, but elves have other powers than their druidic ways.”

“Such as?”

“Elemental magic.”

“Elemental magic?”

She stopped healing Nicole for a few minutes and stretched some popping a few joints loudly which made me wince before taking the food and Hot Sully.

“You know there are elemental forces in magic, well these same forces have life forces too. These things represent the interaction between life and nature and creation itself. These like any other forms of magic have languages all their own and powers from dealing with them. More than most other beings Elves have powerful lore over these things.”

“Oh...so they used this?”

“Likely, I have seen them do powerful things with their powers.”

“So they could have destroyed everything that was left there.”

“Very likely.”

“Have you been to The Elven lands?”

“A few times. Much more in my youth than these days.”

I sit taking a folding canvas chair and sit next to Nicole who has a bit better color now than when I came in. “What are they like?”

“Alathasia is a small continent or a massive island depending on how you look at it and from the start of getting there you have constructed reefs that are secret and dangerous keeping foreign powers from their shores.”

“How do they trade?”

“They bring boats out to trade stations, large steading like rafts they have built for trade away from their islands that also do things like sea farming plus fishing and preserving of fish and goods like that.”

“I’ve never heard of those either.”

“They’re distant and few as well, the Elves are cautious in many ways, their lands were indeed ravaged in the earliest days in horrible ways.”

“Alathasia is nice?”

“It’s stunning, they have a incredible land that is built very close to nature. It is also incredibly deliberate.”

“Deliberate?”

“Elves are one of the longest lived races and with that comes this way of doing things that is done more than right. It comes with the thought and experience of hundreds of years in everything that they do and build and make.”

“Sounds very strange.”

“Oh it is, or at least to us.”

“Us? Titan’s don’t have a culture?”

“We did, and it was not too different than that of some of all the peoples. We were long lived and we had power. We think to stay from the reliance on things that are too permanent in the world like The Elves and Dwarves. We were a culture of scholars and warriors that sought to use our gifts to help those that were unlike us survive and be free.”

“Is that what happened to your people?”

Lady Tatiana nodded. “This world called Titan was named for us as we were the first ones here in the rift wars. We settled it and used it as a base for our forces from what I was told growing up. When all the gates were destroyed we were stranded from our other worlds and the rest of our people. And over the other wars and ages trying to keep our ways most of us have died out.”

“So this world was a Titan garrison then?”

“Yes, exactly that.”

“And you were born and raised here.”

She laughs. “Yes Chrissy, I’m very old by human standards but nowhere close to that old.”

“How long ago did my people come here?”

“Thousands of years ago.”

“How many were you then?”

“From things I know Titans were just under two thousand people including our non fighters and such.”

“And we killed you off?”

She shrugs. “Somewhat, but there were dark powers trapped here too Chrissy and numerous other races. There were some that went to war immediately we suffered losses like all others did. Your kind died too then. I have people out there of a sort but pulled back.”

“Pulled back?”

“Balance and survival. There’s scant handfuls of us left but our power is just that very powerful given life here we have pulled back and away to keep a bit of balance and to have our own lives, raise what children we can and just live.”

“But you’re here?”

“I am.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m neutral and because I’m here as a bit of a scout and guide.”

“Scout?”

“In cases like people like Rory or The Dead Kings.”

“The Dead Kings?”

“Powers from the evil side of that war, necromancers that were so powerful they became lich kings and they sought to rule here in our Western Mountains they were the threat that formed the very start of The Kingdom Alliance.”

“I’ve never heard of them.”

“It was long ago, and they were destroyed as much as could be and sealed away in their Barrows.”

“Oh...so they’re The Barrow Kings...I’m heard of them a little.”

“Yes and they are still there under guard and protections but I came here to be part of that guard.”

“To keep them from getting out.”

“Or from having others get in.”

I nod. “That would be bad if they got out.”

She nods. “Or shared their secrets. Fighting undead is often like fighting puppets, they don’t stop easily and the stronger ones are as dangerous as some demons. Their evil still lingers in pockets, stragglers beings, ghouls and ghasts and vampires.”

“Oh of course they all had to be real instead of Hallow Eve stories.”

She chuckles around a mouthful. “All to real, but we are fighting to stop these things so you can grow up as you have done. Peace and stability is what we fight for.”

“And you think we can do this?”

“It’s better than the alternatives. The dark forces never stop because we do.”

“It sounds endless and with few rewards.”

“We saved the folks here, we drove them back, evil things died never to do more harm and their boats left them here so they were not just soundly beaten but broke faith as well.”

“But they can come back.”

“Aye true but we have this happening. It’ll help push more need for unity, more help of others and we’ll do more to help here before we leave. And on that note you need to get back to rest.”

I yawn. “I’ll not gainsay that Lady.”

She smiles at me. “Good and Christiana...thank you for the food.”

I get up and kiss Nicole on the cheek and stroke her hair some. “Peaceful dreams Nic.”

I head back to my tent and crawl back into the bedding and get some more sleep.

I get a few more hours but I wake to use the jakes and them start getting my things and studying my books, writing notes, thinking on the things that I did and how I used the shields for the troll stones as well as my powers with the longsword and my flying. All in between studying with power words and a few naps and eating.

Nicole is still healing but Jessa and Taylor are up and while still in that post battle shape as me they’re doing things.

Taylor is writing letters and other things for people here and he takes breaks to join the recovery teams.

Jessa is with some others and she’s teaching then on mending leathers, rope, and fixing small repairs to salvaged things from the township and there’s a whole section of this with her and others going through arrows and bolts, bows and crossbows salvaged from the battle.

Lady Tatiana is everywhere running things like having the bodies disposed of safely and the melting down of some of their gear that isn’t safe to salvage as is.

She did ask me to think of working on my heat spells to do things like cure and harden mortar and firing bricks from clay.

After she and I did rounds setting up heated water where it was needed and other things that I’ve done to help with before.

Most of my day and evening is spent studying and mostly in spell crafting for what she wanted. Curing requires heat, drying as does making bricks.

And as it turns out I can do neither spell without working with both and feeling my way through the process of how mortar and clay cures and hardens.

Plus learning from people on how to make bricks and mortar the regular ways.

There is a lot of me getting dirty, nearly burned by hot spatter and other variances on failure.

It’s like the medical work with the pox, trial and error,

Write and record, adjust mystical formulas.

That’s an equation, it’s representative symbols for heat, drying, water, earth, all those things and amplitudes for each along with the order in which the casting must happen. Each level or pinch of power is based on the common light spell.

That’s an example of how much magic we use called motes. It’s language most casters will get.

It’s hard work and tedious work as well but at the same time it is fascinating as the working of those inspires other ideas that beget their own notes.

By the time Lady Tatiana comes to get me to go around and help with heating things and warming other things and doing light spell after light spell I’m more than ready for the break and the walk.

And helping out with the cooking and other chores.

It’s good to have this sort of break as I peel, chop and help with the cooking and help serve food to the soldiers and workers, then heat the waters for the laundry and the baths.

It feels like such a mental break to just socialize with people.

And when I have a chance to sit with the others Nicole is up and looking better and eating and drinking.

As soon as I put my food down I go over and give her a gentle hug.

“You look amazing.”

She smiles a bit of a mixed smile. “I’m lucky, and more than privileged...I’ve received healing others haven’t.”

Marten sighs as he eats a spoonful of venison stew.

“Nicole you’ve done things that no one else could literally do, you will do more yet still.”

“I know it’s just I feel like others have more need than I did.”

He nods. “I understand that but you’re still hurt which means your brain is still fighting through this. Pain and exhaustion takes as much out of you emotionally. Lady Tatiana was right in helping you, you are her squire she is duty bound to do that as well as making sure you are able for you to help others.”

Jessa chimes in hugging her from the other side. “And besides she helped others and the druids helped you too.”

She sips at the drink in her mug shaking some in her hand. “I just feel like others needed it more. I know in my head everything you’re all saying it’s just that it hurts still.”

I lean in on my hug a little more. “We get that Nic, and we’re here.”

She leans back and her and I and Jessa just stay like that as we eat together and talk.

Marten, Jessa, John and Taylor are all better recovered than Nicole and I so they’ve been working to help with things that need doing like hunting and foraging.

Taylor’s been also doing more than scribing work and things for the post with him working on mending clothes and working on weaving grass plaits to well...make thatching.

Yes apparently more than just being a stealthy man and well numbered and lettered and a knife man he is skilled at those two trades that make up his name.

A young man like him my father would have had stay around as well.

And as John joins us with his meal and the cooking folk bring more we’re getting filled in on just how much is going on and how much went on.

The invaders took and razed two small coastal hamlets most died and some survivors fled as best they could we lost also the two coast lights there as well.

Keep Millstone fell on the way here a small steading that was literally named for milling flour and storehousing grain. Their lord there put up a good fight from the little we gleaned from those that survived and fled with all of the lords horses and wagons and are here. His heir is back at Sanctuary.

Cloverfold was taken and not a keep but sort of walled sheepfold and partial shelter on the outer edge of things here in the hills. They were decimated utterly and some of their building stones were hauled here for weapons.

Five Beeches suffered the same fate though it seems the battle there cost them some as there was a hedgewitch there or a few of them and they made a deadly last stand with medicines as weapons and all the dangerous things that one with even some alchemy knowing could do.

They bought time for their few folk to get here.

Our men are working to find survivors and more are on the way this was a serious incursion, a full raid with three large vessels and land troops.

Once the cook staff have left I share with them my thoughts on how they’re moving around.

Marten nods. “That’d explain why they had the numbers they did. Wargs are not good swimmer and would balk at the boats as would the trolls.”

John adds in. “And we Rangers would know if they were moving through the land in large numbers.”

Jessa adds in. “After Palfy’s Corner we ran into trouble with a Goblin and Warg War band, they got ahead of us and if we follow that track they didn’t know where to look for Christiana so they sent out portals maybe at likely spots.”

Marten and John nod. “From your story Chrissy what we know is that how you got here they had to think someone was alive.”

Nicole straightened up. “And when they didn’t get you then they shifted tack and came at here.”

John says. “Or the attack was already in the plans just was sped up.”

I shrug. “I think that they did try for me but they don’t know I’m alive or they didn’t. Now they know more than likely but at the same time they might not have heard or known about me.”

The other’s look a little confused but Nicole and Jessa and Taylor nod.

I look at John….No I’m not going to tell him about me beforehand.

“Christiana Blackhand of Lyonnes wasn’t heard of until this.”

He and Marten nod and Marten says. “Well if they have spies they’ll know, if they got work to their other forces from one of the Witch-Hobs then they’ll know of you now.”

I nod and sigh and take a drink from my own jack. “Well I’ll be vanishing for a time past their reaches I think. Lady Tatiana will be setting out soon for Asguard and from there Braitheholde.”

There’s some nods and Jessa starts telling tales of her time in Asguard.

My brain can’t imagine cavern cities and all the things that she is talking about but I want to see it. The huge statues, the giant columns, Dwarven made lakes and bridges and a realm full of electric even more than back at Sanctuary.

Nicole asks about the shops and the smithies for their weapons and that becomes lessons in Dwarvish for us all. Please, Thank you, Mistress, Master, Father, Brother, Mother, Sister, How much, Too much money.

I know some and so does Nicole from our lessons but a refresher is still fun and Marten needs some polish like we do and it’s all new to John.

And then just for fun and to lighten the mood Jessa starts teaching us the insults.

I like that they use Gourd.

Yes like the fruit.

As in sweet inside but hollow.

Vinegar faced is another I find apt for a diverse amount of people as well as curdle tongued. That’s a good one for those that can never seem to say good of anything or anyone.

It’s all interesting things and a good distraction for others as well as a break for my head.

We just relax doing this for a few hours and then we’re off to bed.

John and I share a look and we both sort of nod and he follows me to my tent.

We’re slower this time.

Undressing and taking each other in.

And as much as he might have been me if I’d grown into that he’s so not me as I am now and the difference in good.

He’s well cleaned up and so am I and he smells good. He feels good too, his frame is so strong and sturdy and powerful and he’s so much bigger than me he has all of this warmth and body heat.

I like his size, I like the tough of his hands.

Strong and large and pretty erotic with that much touching my skin with such gentleness.

We have the time to enjoy ourselves.

Have you ever made a man moan from running your hands over thick muscles or do biting kisses to his abdomen and that divot where thigh meets hip.

I really recommend it.

We went from all of that to more and it’s slower and less rushed and there is so much more to savor.

John is still of a very good endowment, and in very good shape so when we do speed up and our passions take over it is so amazing.

He takes me to my bliss three times and I take him to his release twice.

We kissed, love bit, touched, stroked, laughed, gasped and smiled before, during and after and we really connected.

And after we snuggle and I drop into this amazing sleep.

Fed, relaxed beyond relaxed I slept with John pulling me in tight and close and he gathered the sheets around us and I fell off into slumber without dreams for at least four glasses.

That’s when the dreams started and not the nightmares from well everything that I have to have nightmares over but of magic.

Of things I was doing and learning and trying to figure out all swirled around inside my brain and sometimes showing me combinations...and power words and formulae.

It got so busy that sleeping was impossible after a time and I had to get up and get cleaned up and then grabbing my books and notes and a robe I headed out to one of the common eating bench tables outside and cast a light ball and began working again.

It wasn’t some middle of the night realization, no magic idea popping into my head but this just not getting out of my head because I had like fifteen different ideas to parse out and try.

And one idea spawns others or I’ll do something that gives me ideas on another thing and I have to write them down.

Wizards should not be left alone.

That addlebrained absent minded thing is this way that I’m doing things, that other magic folk might do things literally left unchecked until it becomes a behavior.

I’m not sure when but at some point Lady Tatiana joins me and she has some bread and drippings with a shake or three of pepper and a drizzle of molasses.

It’s far better than it sounds and with a flagon of deeply black tea that’s had stimleaf added to it it’s perfect.

Perfect enough that I will likely pepper my bread and molasses from now on if I’m able.

“So can’t sleep?”

“I’ve too much in my head.”

She nods. “Aurora was like that too.”

I eat and nod. “And other things too.”

“She did like her men.”

“Apparently so do I.”

“Nothing wrong with that.”

“I like women too.”

“Nothing wrong with that either Chrissy.”

I blush some. “Well for me it’s all very different.”

“I couldn’t even imagine, I’ve never felt out of place as myself.”

I drink some to clear away some of my red face. “I’m not feeling out of place so much either. I should but I don’t.”

“Your mother’s magic most likely, or your true nature…”

I nod. “I thinking both? Like she laid some charm on me that keeps my thoughts from obsessing about my change. But I don’t feel ensorcelled to like this. There are lots of bad with all of this and it just feels like there’s such a learning curve to how to live and act.”

Lady Tatiana nods. “And if this was all just spell then it’d be too easy to know things and to do things and the like.”

“Pretty much.”

“Here let me see some of these piles Christiana.”

She goes over some of my notes and borrows a quill and pens in some symbols of her own. She’s not a caster but she knows so much just from her age and her time with other casters like my mother.

She teaches me how some of them sound, and that some of them are power-phrases instead of just words.

Like spell language has not just definitions but metaphor as well.

So not just my Teacher in arms and thinks of nobility but she’s helping me learn my craft as well.

We are still at it for hours and she has her own work brought over and she is writing a lot of letters and orders.

A glass before dawn and I spell cure or bake some clay into a hard bit of ceramic.

We try it over and over and over until we’re sure that it works and then testing how much the basic casting will effect.

Then testing it on mortar and then other forms of clay.

And with a few tweaks it will cure wood.

Less heat that dryness and that plus pulling the moisture out of it.

I’m ecstatic and Lady Tatiana is too as we spend the morning with me heating all of the water and cook pots and laundry...I can do more than heat the water after another fast tweak I can dry clothing.

Dry fruit, vegetables and herbs.

Lady Tatiana goes with me as my battery or source for me to channel from and All the pots are boiling all the wash is done and dry and all of our wood is as well.

She sends me off to bed until we’re breaking fast at least and I’m that excited and full of energy that I slip out of my robes and into bed with John where he is still sleeping and I kiss him and stroke his manhood until he is ready and for the first time in my life….I take top.

Lady Tatiana and I talked about sex as we did the various chores testing out my spells and I was red faced and sometimes even giggling at the things that she said but it was sort of a talk between women.

And she is right, so right it is very good, and very different.

I woke him up as I was stroking him and he stared at me as I mounted him and then it was just.

Primal, aggressive in this really strong womanly way.

It feels amazing, and I liked the control too. In a way it was getting back some of that in bed power that I thought that I’d have had as a lad.

I blissed twice before John cried out and erupted inside of me.

I was hungrily kissing him when Marten sticks his head in while I am naked and on top of him.

“John, good you’re up. Get ready we have a lot of work to do today.” he smiles at me. “Christiana you’re looking ravishing this morning.” he dipped the hood of his ranger’s tunic like a cap and he was gone.

“Bye Marten.” I said while smiling and blushing.

I look down at John and we kissed and I rolled off of him. “Go before he makes you eat on the trail.”

“That wasn’t fair or him at all...this was amazing Chrissy.”

We kiss again and I shove him the rest of the way off the bed. “Go before we both regret it.”

He leaves grabbing his clothes to get washed and I slip into his bed divot and tuck some sheet between my thighs to catch the spills and I fall deeply asleep.

It’s the afternoon by the time Taylor shakes me awake and passes me kaffet and several biscuits still warm and drenched in butter and thick old dark honey. It’s not honey like I know it but aged? There’s a definite tang to it.

“Lady Tatiana wants you, there’s a lot of things for you to do by the look of things.”

I eat fast and nod and then kiss his cheek. “I’ll be right out, get me a wash bucket?”

He nods and I take a good sponge bath there and them but with some power like a shield I start from my inside and push everything that’s not part of my body off of my skin, then use power to dry myself off.

I get dressed and eat slipping into my work clothes that I have with me just the tunic and the drawstring pants we’re given. I put on my boots and am still eating and drinking my way to where I can feel Lady Tatiana.

She introduces me to people that we’ll be working with and we start building.

We have framers and joiners and brickmakers and we start.

Baked and cured bricks by the wagon load and with men that look like they’ve been molding all night. Barrels sliced in twain as troughs for mortar and we start with cellars.

With me curing and fusing them, in together with them and then it’s sills and raw lumber that I’m drying and curing and controlling so the wood doesn’t split or crack or warp.

Brick walls, clay coated chimneys.

Stop after stop, house, shed, cottage, people everywhere soldiers, locals, druids, and most of us all getting people out of the keep and back, back into places they can call theirs.

And it’s hard, even with the druids helping me channel even with the ley line open for us all and with Lady Tatiana it’s much more than the magic.

It’s a lot of just hard work that I’m more than happy to do.

Laughing and talking.

Joking and grunting.

Lots of swearing.

Everytime I get in the cellars and lift and lug and work side by side with people Lady Tatiana and her people are there doing the same.

The approving nods and smiles are like fuel to me.

I’m not some wizard that holds herself aloft over others while work is being done.

And with so many people working we get so much done.

By the time evening meal rolls around there are folk moving into the homes we have built. Sure they’re threadbare and no one has a lot of things to start over but the feelings there, here, the way people are so happy they’re crying.

I cry too right along with all of them.

I wish I could do this home.

I wish that I could have done this home.

We eat all together with stew having been made with deer and wild herbs and onions, garlic, and other things. Lady Tatiana helped and added things from her stores in spices and there is bread and rolls and potatoes.

She made pudding.

A dessert in these big pans with a custard of a little flour and eggs with milk or cream to gentle it and some other things. But it was a custard that was made of molasses that had set up like a gelatin. Served with ginger biscuits and hot mugs of tea.

I crashed hard after eating and then getting cleaned up.

Someone had washed and dried my bedding.

I slept the sleep of a job well done and scales of life getting balance.

Hours and hours later John came to me tired and washed and smelling of soap and I moved myself and made room for him as we settled in and slept.

Sometime after the midnight glass passed by we had woke with him feeling ardent.

And frankly I was as well.

So we quietly kissed and talked, touched again and tasted each other’s lips and skin.

He and Marten and Jessa plus others had been hunting and foraging and ranging for all of this and to set in supplies as much as they could, or that we would be.

I tell him of things here, and what had been going on and all that we have done.

All as we get closer and closer as we make love.

Some of that is all this connection.

And some of the best parts are the smiles, the care on our faces as we make love together just being quiet and drinking it all in, us drinking each other all in.

I love this, the hardness, his hardness, his heat, the way my legs are up and wrapped around his waist holding him in place and pulling him in even as he moves.

And all that lean muscle, John’s a ranger, a warrior a fighter but he’s also a man that runs and marches all day long and carries game and wood.

All that power moving into me, through me, filling me.

And when it gets to where our passion flows wilder and wilder it’s still so good.

I could see where people fall in love, why they find that person and get married.

I honestly feel that, that thing where I could do this, be with him for that long, for maybe life. Start a life, grow a life.

Oh I could avoid the truth of it, the way I feel pushed aside for duty and station but I don’t. I know that we have very different lives but I don’t hold back when these feelings start welling up inside of me.

And the passion, the want, the way my body wants more and more after John has brought me to my bliss.

We really should’ve stopped after that after he found his release but our blood was too hot with how we felt for each other and the hope of the day and we made love hotter and harder.

I think that my power reached out to him and renewed him.

I lost track of how many times I blissed, it just seemed to stretch into this whole fever-love-sex dream.

When we were spent we were spent.

We barely made it to cuddling.

And morning came far, far too early.

And again Marten came for John in the early morning.

Though this time the scent of us made him cough.

“Up John we have work to be done. Christiana lovely as ever, you might want to fetch some lavender though and leave your flaps open.”

I blushed and hid under the blankets and my pillow as several people outside guffawed including Lady Tatiana.

John lifted the pillow off of my head and took my face in hand and kissed me sweetly but soundly before leaving and scooping up his clothes grumbling. “Blood and Ashes, That man is named after the beast for true.”

I giggle into the bedding as we can hear him calling out. “Slow down! Who put cockleburs in your smallclothes this morning!”

People are a little more tame in their teasing of me. Still after I cleaned up and dressed there were a lot of knowing smiles.

It turns out at the height of last night we were lively.

I’m still teased and I still blush as I eat and get ready for more. It’s a lot like at Palfrey’s corner when I was washing and cooking with the women there. There’s this camaraderie of women with this, with the feelings of discovering yourself this way. And there’s even this whole side version of that from the Ladies in Service out here like me who’ve had their potion.

My mother would not find some of the jokes funny.

Neither mother.

Gracia...Gracia would be of course right here contributing with the dirty talk.

And even if my face was more hot and red than I’d like while having breakfast I still found myself smiling and having a good time.

I stuff my face though after seeing and smelling what’s offered.

Stimleaf tea, Hot-Sully, Soup made with leftovers from last night with tiny little dumplings so that it’s like hot porridge with herbs and bits of meat and bone broth, Griddle-cakes, Porridge from oats and Porridge from red cracked wheat...butter and drippings and ranger butter.

Ranger butter is pan drippings that you fry wild herbs and onions and garlic in and then add foraged greens to and once it all cooks down it’s whipped in a mortar and pestle until it’s this green thick ooze that hardens up like butter when it cools.

Ranger’s make this when they have time and jar it.

Spooned over fish, mushrooms, over cooked tubers even on bread it’s good.

Lady Tatiana made this batch and it’s laden with bacon drippings, deer fat and marrow, some of the onion was charred and the garlic is slowly roasted and then just all of those herbs gathered and greens gathered and she was liberal with the salts and pepper.

It’s using everything really.

Something they do so very much here.

It’s still something I like and I actually enjoy eating with the folks just like they do.

We’re faster and a lot better organized today.

All last night beams and lumber were felled, hauled, cut and shaped.

More cellars and the like dug even stoned and mortared and waiting for me to cure and harden them.

And today I’m spiking and nailing with my magnet force. I’m holding two bundles in my power and I put in nails and spikes where I know some to go and how but also where they tell me too.

We’re a lot faster in getting things done today.

Which is good as Lady Tatiana has me doing things like drying and curing the firewood that’s gathered and being supplied. And I’m curing meats and fish and game for the very close and oncoming winter.

Some things the Druids are doing and can do but their focus is on medicines to come.

Dear gods I’m understanding why my mother thought preserving jars were treasures.

If you can or could can some medicines, tonics, and the like you would save lives.

Which they are doing.

And there are things we’re inventing while we’re using power to dry and cure things.

Lady Tatiana comes up with stuffing squabs with garlic, onions, peppercorns and other things, then we cover it with salt and pepper and herbs, then sliced vegetables that we all layer and stick them together while wet and fresh and then I dry them really hard and we dip them in wax to keep out any air and moisture.

One of these will make a stew for a family in lean times if there is nothing else, thin it out some or do that and add some filler and you can feed a lot more.

Lady Tatiana smiles as we’re working and doing all of this. “We know what we will be doing back home a lot.”

I nod. “I want to do things like this. I want to get places set up like this for need.”

“We’ll need to be careful of that too, your power and magic isn’t just a weapon but a resource. Look what we’ve done here today alone.”

“How much longer will we be here?”

“Nicole’s able to move a lot better now and I’m not waiting for a replacement rig so we’ll be going tomorrow.”

“That soon, we’ll need to in order to get to Asguard before the weather turns on us.”

I sigh.

I was very much looking forward to more of John tonight.

“Will we be taking the wagons?”

“Of course.”

I sigh again. “Then I better do as much of anything and everything here that I can before I have to go.”

“Aye, best that.” She smiles at me with pride and that feels good.

Once I set my mind to doing it none of it is too bad.

Curing and drying things, heating water, and doing it over and over again.

Going from doing that to eating as we change my focus to splitting stones.

Like the boulders but clean splits and cuts.

And I make and cut stone needed to fix the druid’s keep.

Once I have that done Lady Tatiana has me doing the same to logs.

A thin blade of shield energy into the wood and push it through the wood.

Learning to limb with it and de-bark with it and to shear off edges for making beams….and planks.

Without the leyline this would not be possible, the power to push the blade through wet wood is a lot. Too much for me really to do more than a few times with my own reserves.

And Lady Tatiana has me doing that as well as using the chains and hooks to haul them around, move them to where she wants them, where we need them and I’m drying and curing everything that goes with all of this.

Winter fuel is winter fuel.

And we get as much done as we can while we are there.

Then more brick curing in stacks after stacks of it.

Then more drying of timber, making light spells for folks to work and to see by until evening supper is done and ready.

And while not drained of power.

Everything hurt, everything was sore and my nerves burned, hummed like violin strings that would not stop.

Harold made me some of his special teas.

And after I washed he spelled me to sleep.

Nicole woke me in time for the food.

Stimleaf ground into coffee and cooked down thick like this terrible wake me syrup and gentled with a dollop of heavy rested cream and honey. All in a shot like glass that one would take whisky from.

By the time I’ve gotten myself scrubbed and scented Nicole is helping with my hair and into a nicer shirt than what I’ve been wearing and and we even take some time and some care with my hair and my face.

I am very much not used to doing anything for my face.

I’m still learning or I was but by the time the little accents are done and a little of this and that and my eyes are done and my lips are done I do not look like myself.

Well I do, but so much more than that.

Mother, Aurora never did anything like this that I can remember.

I have to admit I like this and more than I thought that I would. And this is easier than doing all of this for court or high table.

We head out and there’s a large gathering of people there for the evening meal and it’s sort of high table here tonight with us and Lord Caldwell and others most of us cleaned up to at least look pretty presentable here.

There’s still no servers really and the food line is where we’re getting our own things from the dishes and big bowls and pots.

It’s not a party but there are so many of us together the mood is cheerful if tired and I see a few new faces and some fresh uniforms and tabards here with more people here to help, and to rallied to help.

They brought supplies as well and the cooks must have gotten to them while I was sleeping.

Potatoes in abundance are here, baked, braised, roasted as well as boiled, mashed and put into stews.

There’s vegetables that likely came from gardens not too far away as there is a massive pot of Hodge’s Porridge which isn’t actually cereal at all but baby potatoes and peas and carrots and beans as well all cooked and cooked until fall apart tender then a sauce is made with butter and milk and flour. It’s all seasoned with ample salt and pepper.

There is roasted beef mince there done into loaves heady with onions, bread, herbs and mushrooms with a gravy over that. Platters of sausages, roasts of pork and sides of lamb and ham.

I’d say that I made a pig of myself with how hungry I was but that’s only part way truth. I had a sausage, a little pork fat mashed over a pair of boiled potatoes and a large, large helping of the Hodge’s Porridge.

It was all so good and I was starving but past that simple pleasure was seeing the looks on the faces of the people.

These folks were poor peasants to begin with for the majority of them. Add in their losses and all the days this was going on and all those mouths to feed...it’s been too lean. Even the troops that first were here were getting thin as they or we rather had been feeding folk here from the supplies that were brought.

It turns out that I have a really happy spot in me for smiling elders, laughing and playing children and parents just able to stop, breathe, and smile while leaning on each other lovingly.

Both Marten and John aren’t here which is a little disappointing.

And there’s a few players out that are playing some tunes for us all to listen too and we’re taking things slow.

We’re at a table that is most of us nobles and such and people keep coming up there’s a little talk an lot of thanks and while it’s a little embarrassing for me at how much this is happening for me well it’s happening to Nicole too and I’m just really trying to be as warm and as calm and kind as my mother.

Either of them.

Dessert or Pudding is corn cake drizzled with molasses.

We have it with tea mostly and then it’s more talking for a time before we start doing things.

There are always evening and camp things but this time, this time is us getting ready and pulling out.

So it’s packing up tents and tools and then getting everything in the wagons as we need them. Nicole is changed into armor and has her weapons close and she gained a crossbow and a large box of bolts with her and Jessa is there with her things and bow and several extra quivers and Taylor’s there too and with us is Lady Tatiana and this bulky strong looking young man with us called Wyatt.

Scruffily bearded but it’s a young scruff and a shaggy mop of brown hair he’s certainly attractive. Not too tall a bit short of six feet he has these very muscled broad shoulders and that just sort of continues all through his body, not fat but definitely not lean either, and thick, wide, big hands and feet….yes I know the wives tales and he has these very intense pale grey eyes.

He reminds me of a wolf.

A sword on his back that has an odd sheath and a one handed war axe on one side and a crowbill on the other. And knives, he has many knives in many places.

The wolf has teeth.

He stared at me in that wolf like way too, like he was measuring me.

And he did it to Nicole as well.

He sort of just kind of nodded at Jessa and Taylor the only one he spoke to was Lady Tatiana and in a dialect of something that I don’t recognize.

Then once we were ready we set off with the wagons.

There’s a chest that we have with us that I can tell is something my mother Aurora made.

I don’t know when that got here.

But I am sure that I know that The Key is inside of there.

I can’t feel it but yes, I’m damned sure of that.

We leave heading north and for awhile it’s easy going with the moon out and bright enough and the road is well enough honestly.

It’s still rough going as it’s a very barely there road.

More of smoothed dirt with grass coming up in the center and wheel tracks worn over the years but it’s definitely something that does not see traffic from caravans or trading guilds.

Farmers and the like.

The world is so much different than what I have known.

So much outside The Middle Kingdoms if different and very poor.

No, not poor when you look at the resources from a noble standpoint or a realm standpoint but it’s so not central it’s never had the generations of folk developing things here.

It’s both good and bad in a lot of ways.

It’s a long ways that we’ve been going and it’s across the land with a steady slow rise in the land. We have to cross as the hills go from a few that we can just go up and crest over to these massive hills that are very, very steep.

Fine for a goat or a sheep or on foot if you were mindful or raised here but you could never take horses or a cart directly up here.

Wyatt or Wolf leads all the way to this open bairn place in the top of the third hill by dawn.

We stop to rest the horse and ourselves and to enjoy the sunshine.

We are really high, hundreds if not over a thousand feet over the land below us and everything spreads out all around us as dawn lights the land.

I’m getting the love for the highlands.

We didn’t have these home.

Lyonnes has hills, but they are hills and knolls little places really that seemed large to me. Our castle was built on the biggest hill a huge thing that must have been a hundred feet high...a hundred feet high...that seems almost quaint now.

I make black sully for us using Wolf’s recipe. A blend of flavorful roots and the like with most of it being chicory and stimleaf and it’s deep and it’s dark and potion like and we sweeten it with molasses.

I like it, I could drink this in small doses. It reminds me a little of coffee or kaffet.

Lady Tatiana has us eat some scone’s with drippings and piled thick with jam as we’re stopped and we kill a whole pint of it. We could have been sparring but she had us finish it all for the energy.

Then we’re back on the trail again and this time now that there’s light there’s my turn to study in the wagon as we go with Lady Tatiana breaking that up with some meditation when we stop to rest or the we stop when Wolf see’s something that he wants or we need to fix?

And not with our gear either though we check traces and harness and hoof while we’re stopped.

Sometimes it’s replacing a rope for a well that I never seen just off the path that is broken.

Another time it was mending a bit of fence for someone that was nowhere near in sight or any animals.

Once was to fill a mudhole in the trail that when he tested with a branch was plenty deep and wide. Lady Tatiana wanted that done anyways so she had me breaking up rocks and stones while others filled it and then I used my powers to heat the mixture until I baked the entire thing into brick.

Twice we fixed ditches that drained things away or should to have better flow for the land. My powers called on to get in there and pull out overgrowth and marsh plants. Using small shapes of shield power to grip and then pull them clear or to use those shapes to actually be the tools needed to dredge out the ditches.

And through all of that we travelled and we forgaged.

It’s a different sort of thing here than what I’ve seen Jessa doing.

He’s teaching and showing her as we’re doing all of this, it seems close but in this shared secret sort of way.

Sure we forage and take greens and edibles like those that are easy like that.

But there’s a whole other quality and quantity of things here that are very different when it comes to that and rangering.

For one I didn’t know that burdock was harvestable or edible?

Then there’s mushrooms ranging from Chicken o’ the land to Hedgies to Singers or Chants and even Puffballs.

And Wolf/Wyatt has me drying things like that too with my powers as much as Lady Tatiana does.

We add to our stores decently.

Lunch is eaten at a well stop that he knew of that’s more of a clay sealed cistern of stacked stones making a basin for a natural spring that has this amazingly fresh and cold water.

We forgages a few things near there and I see him plant a few others as well?

“Is this a garden?”

“Aye, farmers ‘n shepherders and ranging folk us this water so all rounds here parts we’ve a tradition to plant forage and field here. Some fer all and none go without.”

“That’s a good idea.”

He just gives me a nod and a bit of that stare of his.

“Y’ain’t like I’d heard or thought.”

“Oh and what was that?”

“Some say yer a young lass as green as moss and that seems t’be true enough but on the other I see you obviously high born but out here travelin and living rough and doing the rough things and not balking from it.”

“And others?”

“Say you’re a Tempest given life and that you ten feet tall and a slayer of trolls and of goblins and other monsters.”

I laugh a little and do a bit of a shield over all of us to keep off some of the drizzle and to hold in some heat as well.

“Truth is I’m very green. I’m noble raised but one of the younger children so nothing deeper than some very basic fighting was shown to me as well as books and numbers for helping the surgeon and the chamberlain for the keep. I’m from The Middle Kingdoms which is far, far from here and I had never even heard of The Freelands or Lady Tatiana and never seen real battle until it claimed my home. Everything since then has been finding allies and trying to learn while settling in and finding out that my birth mother was Lady Blackhand.”

Wolf nods. “Well for my two coppers you’re holding up remarkably well.”

“Thank you, I’m trying.”

Lady Tatiana rests us here for a bit and we go over the horses and the wagons and I heat and dry some clothes some more and she and Wolf make sure there’s a small stash of food bundled and hidden as well as some tinder and some firewood decently set aside and covered before we leave.

I should suggest something like this home.

I know commoners have springs that they use while travelling I just thing some roadside things like this as well as better roads is something that would help a realm.

All realms maybe.

I keep the thin rain shield up as we go at Lady Tatiana’s suggestion as practice as I sit in the wagons and study and make notes.

Which is hard to do in a wagon.

Which becomes a riding lesson in of itself from Lady Tatiana.

Control of and over my balance senses and my nerves through my power electric within me. To flow nd adjust with all that movement to keep on track in my readings.

And run a light spell...and the shield.

We’re on the road for many more hours. Up over the crest of this hill and down but not fully down more like down and across and into another set of hills further behind or rather north than these ones. We’re still climbing even if it feels like we’re leveling off and for quite the long time and into the dark we’re following the road track such as it is with this small river that’s running between everything.

We travel into the night even as both Jessa and Wolf scout ahead and travel and forage.

I swear Rangers just keep going and going and going.

Even Taylor and Nicole and Lady Tatiana are taking turns being on watch as we are traveling and driving and hunting.

Even myself.

It was fairly late when Lady Tatiana passed me one of the crossbows and told me to go and walk for awhile and see what I could get.

I cheat, I’ll admit to that. I cheated using my powers to see things further and to use some levitation to go up and over rocks and outcroppings and things that would take a lot more effort and time and noise.

It helped me find and surprise a bunch of these big fat black feathered grouse that were using this pocket in one of the outcroppings as a nesting area and I took one with the crossbow pretty decently with a clean shot without help and the other I had to drop because the danged thing flew at my face and I beat it with the crossbow and broke its wing and I put it out of its misery.

Sometimes hunting just goes like that.

I searched around and found a few eggs as well and carefully wrapped those in a shield and made my way back.

The kills were well received and we waited until we got to this crossroad in the hills where the small river went under a bridge and there was a nearby dell? Well it might have been something before that but now it was this cozy hollow out of the wind and close to water were we made camp.

Lady Tatiana shows us where this was all dug out for road stones and for the bridges a couple of hundred years back and there’s a place here built right into the side of the hill.

A large slab of stone is over the door mantle as a sign with a carved picture of a platter of food and two mugs and dwarven written runes that say Dell Corner Inn.

The sign is somehow lit from this little awning over it?

Lady Tatiana walks to the door and knocks boomingly calling out clearly for the landlaird.

The Doors have a window which opens and Lady Tatiana moves her cloak aside and lowers her hood both to show herself and that results in the doors being flung open and a Dwarven woman hugging her while her man drops to a kneeling bow.

We’re soon let inside and there are more than just the two dwarves here but a whole family of them and several human families as well.

It’s much bigger here inside the hill than on the outside.

And there are many things I’m learning right away.

Dwarves by custom have bootmen.

That’s someone that takes your cloaks and takes care of your boots for you and cleans then while they give you hide slippers line with fleece or sandals if that is your preference.

My dwarven is getting a hard working as they don’t exactly speak what I’ve been taught so far and it’s this pidgin mixture of Dwarven and Hillman or Highlander which is not the common tongue of the realm.

The ceilings are taller than I thought and there is wood panelling all about the place mostly as decoration and to warm the place up to the eyes. It is a Dwarven place and going right along with all of the myths and rumors most of this is stone.

Lovely stone, worked with love and care and kindness. I was expecting measures and hard shapes and engineering and while it is all there it just has to be in how the place is built there are so very many curves and rounded shapes like they’re a folks that just understand the need to run and trace your fingers over things.

Worked stones that are like cuttings or slices of things that are pretty and in frames. Geodes here and there of varying kinds on shelves and nooks and then there are the fossils.

Lovely and interesting fossils found and cleaned and set out on display for the treasures that they are.

And so many potted plants in here to sweeten the air here.

We part with some forage and game and Wolf/Wyatt is as well thought of here as Lady Tatiana is.

I find out the sign outside is lit through candlelight bounced through a mirror so it shines from the awning down onto the sign.

People left too while we were getting taken in and our things taken to some rooms and our horse cared for as well.

I can feel things.

Which has me trying to feel more as I take a hot bath with very nice sop and get changed and meet up with the others.

I take a seat beside Lady Tatiana. “Something is off. I can feel the folk here worried and they’ve been this way for some time now. They’re very, very relieved to see you.”

She nods and pours me a combination of things something that looks like brandy and then mulled wine over that in a mug. I take it gratefully and sip at it since the mug is very hot and I sigh.

The spices are deep and warming alone and the wine is a deep red and very sweet but that’s literally balanced from the spices and some other flavors like citrus peeling maybe and a sour brandy perhaps that she put in the mug first.

Cherry maybe? No, here they’d be chokecherries most likely, currants would be much easier to come by.

The whole effect is very nice and soothing.

“I know, something is definitely off and I’ve been feeling it pulling at my senses here in the hills.”

“Leftovers from the invasion?”

“Perhaps, maybe trouble sent to cut us off from The Dwarves.”

“That sounds as likely honestly.”

Nicole and Taylor join us as does Jessa and Wyatt and we sit around talking about what we’ve been picking up from the locals here.

Wyatt’s drinking a spiced hot ale and he moves from us. “I’m a goin to smoke folk have bin sent fer, I want t’see who’s coming in and see if I kin savy what’s going on here.”

Lady Tatiana nods and she looks at Jessa. “You’ve been working on the map?”

“Aye lady, getting a better look at things and putting then down as you wanted.”

She gets up and we all move to a table and Jessa comes back with a folded map in a well sealed book and a waxed canvas and she takes out a pretty large map of the area and there’s symbols I don’t know and some numbered glyphs and I see the book is notes as well as a legend key.

I didn’t even know she ordered such a thing but now I know what she was doing running all over as we travelled.

Wells, washouts, deep muddy spots, property and fences, farms and settlements away from the road we didn’t see, wooded areas and so much more.

And I just learned how to command and use Rangers and such little bit more as a ruler.

Nicole thankfully has the same look like she’s just getting that as I have.

Lady Tatiana sends Nicole for her writing kits from her room and a bag of coins and she sets up things like she’s getting ready to add to the map. Then she goes to speak to the landlaird.

I slip off to go and get changed from the relaxed bathing robe to a clean hooded tunic and a skirt and I get my staff and try and look presentable as a mage when I head back out.

People are starting to filter in getting taken care off and there looks like Lady Tatiana paid for extra service and hot drinks are poured and wet cloaks and wraps are taken and it tells when the folks that show are bringing their young ones and elders with them.

It reminds me of a meeting of a local hall or like a guild hall where folk gathered to hear father talk.

Lady Tatiana says to most of them. “Drink, get warm, eat first. Then we’ll speak about the troubles.”

I’m washed over with puzzlement and this mixture of awe and rightness and relief.

The young ones don’t know how she knows there’s trouble, the others do because she is who she is.

They believe so deeply that she’ll fix it that I’m definitely in awe.

The food is good, they set it out on the tables with a chowder of salted fish and dried that is offset with potatoes and some kind of delicious and food stretching dumpling.

Bread, cheeses, pickles, potted meats to spread with fat and meat pies made from our own offerings we brought with us.

Grouse and bacon with many, many mushrooms and herbs and other things in large pans all stretched further with neeps and potatoes.

There’s enough for all folks here.

And we all eat and while I’m eating I see Wyatt back inside talking first with folks and then with Lady Tatiana.

It takes three hours for the food to be done, the drinking to start sinking in and for the old and the young to sleep.

Lady Tatiana finishes her drink and pours a few once and she says.

“We came through to stay the night and pass through from troubles in the Lowlands and to go and seek my brothers counsel. I felt the unrightness in the air and water as we’ve traveled in. We’re staying until their righted let that be clear now. Now come and speak to me of the woes.”
Slowly they come forward urged by Wyatt who knows folks by name and they start talking. Talking of stalking terrors in the night and of things stealing herds of sheep or goats and crops and leaving track of great beasts and those of much bigger things.

We map them out with folks pointing out places where things have happened.

I can’t understand most of their words but Wyatt and Lady Tatiana do well enough and between them and the Highlanders and what they know of the attacks and the lands and water sources they figured out that these creatures are living in the ruins of Old Fain Castle.

There’s almost no eyewitness accounts most folks barring their doors and have been very, very lucky so far.

The entire ordeal has been going on for more than a week but likely less than a fortnight.

She urges everyone to stay here the night and that we will leave.

Right now.

“Now?”

She looks at me. “Aye, we know where they will likely be and if they are what I think they might be they’ll be out right now raising hell and ashes out on the land. They’ll hunker down in the light of day and they’ll set guards as well. They won’t be expecting us to come for them now.”

I nod. I am tired as all of us are and it’s cold out and up here and the weather is damp and foul right now but she is right. They won’t expect this.

I get up and go to my room with Nicole and Jessa and we get ready. We’re travelling light but armored and armed. And while we are doing so we’re given more food, sugary things like bread with jam and stimleaf tea brewed so strong I could use it to cast a shield spell.

Leather jerkin on and my quilted shirt under that and some greeves and my staff, sword, knives and my staff and my wand and the others in their battle gear themselves. The landlaird offers up two quivers that Jessa can use and Taylor and I carry one each for her.

Then we’re out.

Out into the gloom and the wet with Wyatt being the wolf that he is knowing the land and leading the way.

We’re travelling fast and dark and more than once I’m lifting us over ravines nd outcroppings of rock and taking us past things that we normally could not. Flight, lifting, levitation whatever you wish to call it i’m shaving hours off our hunting.

And as much as Wolf is looking for tracks I am looking for them as well. Feeling for their electric life force, feeling for the metal in their weapons.

I’m the first one to cat a whiff of these raiding monsters.

Goblin tack and Goblin steel with their swords and weapons as they are close to some homestead. They’re searching and circling looking to get in and to kill and to steal.

I stop them and tell each of them what I feel and them using my mage sight or electric sight what I see and show them.

My grainy world of greys with shapes made into outlines filled with other shapes of grey.

A full dozen Goblins riding Wargs and we make a plan.

Wyatt and Taylor will sweep wide and they’ll cut them off, Nicole will lure them to her with Lady Tatiana looking like two travellers while Jessa and I will find vantage points in higher ground so she can use my sight and her longbow.

I’m nervous and so is Jessa at being exposed to magic even if it’s mine.

And it’s hard to watch our friends going out ahead of us.

Gods and Light Wyatt and Taylor move very fast and from what I can tell very quiet and well out of sight.

Then it starts.

The Goblins see Nicole and Lady Tatiana walking in just the two of them alone and in cloaks with the drizzle coming down on them.

We all can hear the howls of the Wargs in the night and the war screams of the Goblins in their feral glee.

They all come, the first half the closest ones to charge in, looking to circle the two of them and to likely go for a slow kill.

They just start to circle them when Jessa has her arrows in flight striking three Wargs that were closest to us and behind Nicole and Lady Tatiana.

Then the cloaks come off of Nicole and the lady and swords flash out from sheaths and in that flicker of the goblins reacting to the Wargs going down they get their first strikes in.

Nicole shield bashing a Warg in it’s mouth and running through the rider and by the time the Wargs head snaps around to bite her it’s mouth is driving itself into her sword.

The Lady literally beheads a Warg with a single sword cleave and with a slight turn of her body cleaves the goblin rider in two as he pitches forward as his mount dies.

Jessa fires more arrows felling the Goblins that were getting up from the Wargs she had shot.

Wyatt was in their back ranks with him pulling a Goblin off his Warg with one hand and killing the Warg stone dead with the spike off his crowbill through the side of it’s head.

I didn’t see how fast he threw a knife at another or when he drew his axe and hatchet killed the Goblin he pulled clear of his Warg.

The others tried to respond to him but with the hell Jessa was creating and Nicole and The lady their attention was divided.

Taylor somehow killed a Warg dropping it like magic and as it dropped down he simply shoved his crossbow in the riders face and shot hit out of his saddle.

It went just that fast.

The Lady literally grabbed a dead Warg with one hand and she threw it at another one.

Jessa had more arrows in the air.

Taylor threw a dagger through the back of the head of another goblin.

Nicole stepped into one of the Goblins using it’s shield to block Jessa’s arrows and it’s Warg distracted from an arrow in its side. Her sword went through the ear of the Warg. The beast fell and like her knight mistress she stepped aside as it pitched forward and as the rider went with it she cleaved off his head from behind like an executioner.

I literally lost track of the rest of how things ended it went that fast.

We, well they were bloodied and the goblins managed a few strikes but armor and skill took the effectiveness out of them.

Battle move fast sometimes, sometime too fast and this was like that.

We made no victory yells or celebrated even.

Lady Tatiana looked to me. “Can you move the bodies with the metal one them?”

“I can.”

She pointed. “Pile them there near the road path it’ll be well enough away from the homestead and the well.”

I gathered my power and I slid a shield under them using it to be a slippery mat and I pulled them to where she pointed and she dug through their corpses until she found jars of pitch they were intending on using on the locals maybe and she poured them over them and I lit them up with a bolt of lightning.

Then we ran tracking them into the remainder of the night.

Wargs and soft ground made them easy to find by tracking as did my mage senses.

The others were moving in threes and fours.

Evil as they are they took the bait we offered up every time. Too bloodthirsty to see death coming for them on skillfully fletched wings.

Or blades hurled with magnets force out of the gloom and the black.

Or the Thatcher and The Wolf coming in for them from the sides as they came for me or for Jessa or for Nicole.

It’s dawn by the time we reached the ruins of Old Fain Castle.

Not even close to being a castle really this was a pile of rocks and mosses and what looked like maybe smoke seeping out from what must be underground cellars of old.

Some Goblins were waiting, there keeping watch as a group of three rode in hard and fast and definitely panicked. I don’t speak Goblin but they were panicked. Screaming, swearing, gesturing with weapons.

We creep close as we can Jessa getting a clear line of fire and the others in position and I prepare myself and what I’m looking to do. The Lady gives the nod and I throw heavy shield into the entrance of the cellars to block escape and muffle the sounds. I use flash spell to blind the ones on the Surface and arguing.

And with a surge of power I send Electric power to all of the metal that they are carrying to both shock them and to heat the metal.

Arrows fly, Taylor’s crossbow goes to work point blank again and Lady Tatiana and Nicole and Wolf are in the thick of it and taking down each one of them in the chaos.

One runs getting clear of the ruins and he doesn’t get far as I lock onto him with my senses and call down lightning leaving him fried to a crisp.

It literally is locked onto his body’s own electric and magnet forces it cannot fail, it will not miss.

Then it’s over.

At least on the surface.

We don’t go into the cellars.

We leave my shield up and with all of the pitch jugs and other burnable things we have we pitch them through an opening that I make and anything else that will burn and I seal it back up.

I will admit that there’s a part of me that had these boyhood ideas of going into there like some adventure tale and fighting in the deeps.

Part of me thought too about the chivalric aspects of this.

And part of me the greater part of me knows what we have stacked against us and remembers what happened home.

I cast my senses inside and I feel them more than watch their power, the electric inside them down there. Another eight Goblins from the feeling and the sizes and I feel them try to get out but they can’t.

My shield is so tight that none of them get out and the smoke claims them all.

Again none of are smiling or laughing, there’s no victory celebration just us looking at each other.

They had a troll.

It was sleeping in some other deeper pocket of the place and the smoke woke it it charged out roaring.

Lady Tatiana said. “Let it come through, don’t let it give you backlash from breaking your spell. Ready a flash as well.”

I let my shield drop except for the lowest two feet of it.

That got a nod from Lady Tatiana.

It charged straight up through the opening tripping over my leftover shield bit and I cast a flash spell in its face.

The troll roared and reeled covering its eyes even as it fell and shook the ground as it dropped hard and Lady Tatiana stepped up as calmly as could be and severed off it’s head while it was trying to get up.

That was...well that was a troll.

That was quick.

Lady Tatiana cleaned off her blade and looked at the rest of us. “We wait, we wait for stragglers either inside or to come in.”

We waited.

Rested.

Wyatt seemed like nothing at all happened and he and I made a small pot of oatmeal with me heating up the water and we all ate it from the pot with spoons shared out and even unadorned it was good.

It was a decent two hours later that we went inside the cellar.

It was gross.

It was turned into this living space where none of the creatures were tidy with their food or butchering or their body wastes. Fat and grease and feces and bones. Some of the bones were livestock and some looked to be people. Some we couldn’t tell who they were.

Wyatt went through everything, everything including the sewer abattoir on the floor looking for clues.

I could not do that.

He made me gag watching him.

In the end though he found belongings. Charms, earrings, rings, bits of a sweater, a knife and that was it.

Lady Tatiana and I found a gate scar.

Opened from the other side to here. And one of the dead Goblins looked different. His body had tattoos and markings that didn’t look like anything that Goblins might have done on their own.

I reached out feeling. “The marks feel like the gate.”

Lady Tatiana nodded. “Some kind of new thing...I think they came through here in a small group. And this son of a bitch is keyed to the gatemaker.”

“This isn’t good is it?”

“Not one bit. I’m going to wager that they’re not just doing this with goblins and that this is how they made a gate to Lyonnes so easily.”

“We need to let other know.”

“We do Chrissy. I think that we’re done here.”

I look at her and give her a smile. “We’re not resting long are we?”

“No, we get back and we spend the night and that will be it. We will have to head out.”

We looked everything else over and once we took the bones of the victims out and away from that place I started shattering stones, breaking what was holding the cellar together as well as the rest of the ruins.

We only stopped long enough for Wyatt.

He walked carrying the bones to the nearest stream and walked into the cold meltwaters and he washed himself. He washed himself, the things he recovered and he washed every ounce of filth off of the bones or what remained of them.

And he talked, he talked in something that Lady Tatiana called Old Hillfolk and she told us when to say “Heard and Witnessed!”

He talked and it was more like he was ranting, talking to the gods? And singing.

He sang as he made and built a fire.

Lady Tatiana had me dry the wood out with my magic and he sang as he salted and then burned the bones.

I don’t know the words but he sang loud enough for that to carry out over the hills we were in.

This was nothing, nothing like any holy rites that I seen in any church or temple that I’d been in.

This was old, this was highland and it was pagan.

It was poetic and it was haunting and it was beautiful.

Then he dressed and we headed back to the inn.

Like before I used my powers to get us past obstacles that would have slowed us.

There were more folk there gathered when we arrived and there were cheers.

People talking.

A lot of people talking.

Seen the smoke from the first fire.

Something changed in the air some of them said.

I made my apologies with all of the sensing, lifting and casting I headed for my room and after washing as best as I could and dropping things I fell into bed exhausted.

I dreamed of Wyatt that mad highland wolf.

No one woke me until it was time to get ready to leave.

I hurt.

I hurt and I’m sore from the walking and the running and the climbing and everything from last night.

A bath does help and so does the fact that everything is clean.

The dwarves here they cleaned all of it and laundered my clothes and they did the same for everyone else.

The breakfast was excellent as well.

Good bread fried in butter and there was bacon and there was poached eggs to break over the bread. Rolls, Stimleaf tea, Hot Sully and fried potatoes.

There still are some locals here after everything and only a few are up this late and mostly what looked like the leaders and some of the elders.

And I can feel them looking at me.

I can feel and hear the stories that were told by the others while I was asleep.

Lady Stormbringer….

I hear that whispered as I very much stuff my face in a very unladylike fashion.

Looking around there’s some of the same going round for Nicole and for Hawk.

Jessa deserves it though since when I think of it last night. Last night she took out close to a third of the enemies we fought and assisted most of the rest.

Hawk the Ranger….

And I’m understanding why Ranger is said here with such a different tone in the whole word than we ever would back home.

Nicole, Squire Steadfast…

It’s amusing in a strange sort of way trying to take it all in and ignore it at the same time s we eat and then get ready to hed out.

Wyatt is the Wolf, people just see him here for whatever he is.

Whatever that is he’s respected.

And then Lady Tatiana.

Respected, loved, honored. I see her with the folk talking and sharing food, laughter, shaking hands. People don’t care what she is, they expect this of her, she’s been doing this longer than all of then have been here.

It’s literally like she’s part of the magic of the land.

Oh…..

Oh that’s definitely it.

The only one getting ignored more or less is Taylor.

And the look in his eyes and the smirk tells me that he dodged any attention that might have fallen on him by telling stories of the rest of us.

At most while we’re there they call him Squire or Scribesman.

Mostly Scribesman as he did the same thing and offer to take and even write letters for the folk that were here.

There were quite a few from what I had seen and then there were people here to claim things that we had found from all of the victims with the odds and ends and the bones that we had found and that Wyatt had cared for so much.

It adds this sort of whole other worldly feel to life that morning.

I mean we went to temple when I was in Lyonnes, we followed the gods of Light and while not devout I think that i believe in my own way.

What Wyatt did though rang as sacred through me even though i had never seen anything like it.

And that carries over as the people are here getting the remains of their folks and putting them to rest.

The experience actually takes the edge off of the pain and soreness and we soon get everything we have together on the wagons plus all of the provisions that the locals had brought us as gifts and we head out heading further up the road such as it is and into the mountains.

I heat blankets and bundle myself in a warren at Lady Tatiana’s say so and I spend time between dozing and reading and writing in my notebooks.

I have ideas and I even try a few of them that I’m certain won’t go awry and cause some misadventure somehow.

The scenery shifts dramatically from this climb to this semi flatness as we move through the tops of the foothills and are at the base of the mountains.

It is very rocky here, and not just stone being everywhere but there are huge outcroppings and massive slabs and here and there it is cleared and cut and moved aside and away.

Some for travel and some for shelters and some to clear things like springs and to act as cisterns.

All of it accented with stacked stone things and sculptures of sorts.

Archways for nothing but just to be archways that are of stacked stones and held by weight and shape together with no mortar.

Lady Tatiana is sort of playing guide and explaining the art of it and the traditions in it and pointing out maker marks left so people or more to the point other Dwarves know who made it and showed that kind of skill.

I saw my first real waterfall next.

We have them home and I’ve seen portraits and pictures of large looking ones but this was so much different. Glacial mountain run off that was cascading down like a small river, not a stream or brook but a small river several hundred feet wide and coming down from this huge height that was three or four times that high and it all coming down crashing with the force and the weight and creating this ever present cloud of fine mist.

We stopped here and we ate and just watched it as only Wyatt and Lady Tatiana had seen Roran’s Drum before.

Apparently in winter it doesn’t freeze over but some of the water above does and when chunks break away and come over the falls it’s deadly if you’re too close but the crash and the walls of the area makes each chunk sound like the beat of some massive godlike kettle drum.

I loved the stop.

Loved watching the falls and seeing something that amazing just woke something in my heart.

Or it could have been me finally rested enough and all of the jam on bread we had and stimleaf tea.

But I’m finally getting that we are in the mountains, in real mountains and that being here is breathtaking.

We’re all taking heart from the stop and we’re pressing on through the area and the road and the stonework is getting better and better and there are places where the road goes off to other places.

I wasn’t expecting that to be as common as it is.

This place looks wild and desolate except for the well cared roads here. And it has me thinking once again at just how much of the world that I don’t know. And just how much of the things that I do know are human based.

I make light as things get dark and colder and I heat blankets and clothes for us and we keep going pressing on and on until it’s quite late and then we’re there?

At what looks like a dead end?

Lady Tatiana rides forth and she starts talking in Dwarvish and we get responses from the massive blank stone wall in front of us.

“Where’s this coming from?”
Wyatt points far up. “They have a guard house there, the stone be cut so ye canna see their lights but they kin see us.”

“Oh so we’re here?”

“Aye, we be at Roran’s hold.”

“I’m still lost.”

“Tis be a gate fortress Christiana, one meant fer trading and such but every gateway into Asguard be defended and guarded.”

“Why so much?”

“Dwarves have long memories and they have much in goods and lore and after all that has happened throughout time they’ll defend what’s theirs.”

“They can’t have that many enemies right?”

“Aye well right now they’ll have all the forces stacked against ye plus any others that think they would be wanting that of others.”

I nod and well honestly things are dire and he does have a point.

There’s this grating boom sound and I can hear chains, large chains moving and there’s a vibration through the ground itself as the whole section of dead end wall in front of us starts to rise up like a huge stone portcullis being raised.

Lady Tatiana starts leading us through and under the two foot thick door and into the lights they have going inside.