The Road Less Taken, Chapter 12

Brigisel, viewed from a distance, presented an image of a town slowly recovering: half the buildings were covered in improvised scaffolding, and only one or two were still mere heaps of sandstone rubble; the cobbled stone of the streets was entirely intact (or at least, Tymor thought to herself, as intact as cobblestone could be whilst still being considered cobblestone); and the locals had none of the ash sickness that had haunted Meirch.

Tymor had arranged to meet her fellow merchants just outside the town, on the edge of a small lake; a local woman by the name of Melith had agreed to accompany her there. The lake, Tymor already knew, wasn't quite what it once was: before the eruption, the banks would have been lined with fishermen, but the waters had become corrosive during that terrible event and what few fish remained weren't biting again yet.

'You're doing a good job with this place,' the tinkerer smiled.
'Thanks, but I can't take credit. The mountain shields us from... you called it the Charcoal Wastes, right? Shame, to see the Setward Woods become something so terrible, although it hardly comes as a surprise.' Melith was a few inches shorter than Tymor, and the tinkerer couldn't help but find her rather attractive: she wasn't sure whether it was her beautiful reddish-brown skin or her densely packed coils of black hair, carefully styled into braids and worn long, swept back from her face, or her mannerisms: whenever she spoke of her home town, she seemingly couldn't help but smile a little. She was doing so right now, in fact. 'Still, there's no denying Brigisel has recovered more than most, based on what you're telling me; hopefully we'll be able to lend a hand to the rest of the Townships before too long. Maybe then, things will start to improve.'
Tymor nodded. 'I... there's something I've been meaning to ask,' she said.
'If it's about what I think it's about, then... my apologies, but I realised a while ago that romance isn't exactly my cup of tea. Romantic love always made me feel uncomfortable more so than anything else, and that hasn't changed. If we'd met a few days ago... well, who knows? You could well have woken up in my bed this morning, rather than in my old inn.' She flashed the kind of smile that made Tymor wish they'd met sooner. 'I'll take it as a compliment, however.' She pulled Tymor into a hug: the merchant couldn't help but inhale the sweet scent of her gorgeous hair.
'Actually,' Tymor smiled, pulling away, 'I was about to ask-- not that I don't think you're the most beautiful woman I've met out here, of course; don't get me wrong, you're quite stunning-- but I was going to ask... whether you think I've really made a difference.'

'Honestly?' Melith replied, after a few moments of careful consideration. 'I'd say there's no way of knowing yet. The trade route with the Goblins you mentioned likely won't start up straight away, the situation in Llwchyn could still go either way, and Meirch isn't likely to recover from its ash problems any time soon. After all, the Setward Woods, back when they still stood, were quite impressively large. I visited them once, a few years before I took over the inn. So calm and peaceful...'
'I heard talk that you're replanting,' Tymor said. 'Somewhere just out of town, right?'
'Right!' Melith's smile returned, and her deep emerald eyes shone. 'We've been planting a brand new forest across the lake. It wouldn't be too much of a detour for you, if you wanted a closer look.'
'I'll have to look into that.' Tymor smiled.
'Still,' Melith smiled, 'you're welcome in Brigisel any time. Next time... who knows? Maybe I won't be so busy with politics.' She gave another of those overpowering smiles, almost a promise of what would happen if Tymor returned.
'Y-you don't see yourself staying in office?' Tymor asked, deciding to steer the conversation away from the bedroom.
'I want to run an inn,' Melith shrugged. 'It's what I'm good at. The moment someone else wants my job running this place, they're welcome to it.
'You'd be surprised how dull politics can be, compared to running a busy inn.'
'Having fewer drunks around probably takes the edge off things,' Tymor smiled.
'Actually, there are about as many,' Melith said, smiling widely. 'It's just that they're drunk on power instead of alcohol. Usually, at least; if there's one thing I've learned in the past few months, it's that the two are by no means mutually exclusive.'

The two of them reached the trade caravans a few minutes later: they went their separate ways with a lengthy hug and several longing looks, Melith walking back towards her home and Tymor joining Aelod and his apprentice in the back of the middle wagon. She soon learned Archoll and Perl hadn't arrived yet; Hierach had, as was seemingly his way, been there long before the others.
'So,' Aelod smiled, watching Tymor vaulted up into the wagon. 'You and that mayor, huh?'
'Unfortunately not,' Tymor said wistfully. 'If I'm out here again, though? Hopefully.'
'I don't know how you do it,' Aelod said. 'I wish I were half as lucky with men as you were with... almost everyone who isn't a man, more or less.'
'Pretty,' Tymor agreed. 'I mean, I'm bi for women and anyone non-binary. The male side of the whole gender thing just... doesn't interest me.'
'Still,' Aelod said. 'You keep finding women and non-binary people interested in you. I won't lie, I'm jealous. Have you ever actually had to go to a...' he glanced at Pryfed and paused for a moment. 'A seamstress?'
'Once or twice,' Tymor shrugged. 'I rarely need to, in all honesty.'
'Is it just luck, or...?'
'I don't rightly know,' Tymor admitted. 'Maybe they just think I'm cute. I know I sure do.' At least at the moment, she thought to herself; in general, she was pretty insecure about her appearance.
'Is it really just that?' Aelod asked.
'I wouldn't know,' Tymor shrugged. 'If you want to know why people are attracted to me, you'd best ask someone who is.
'Oh!' she remembered. 'Is it okay if we take a little detour, head around to the other side of the lake?'
'I'm fine with it,' Aelod said, 'but I can't speak for the others.'
'That's true,' Tymor realised. She'd have to check with Perl: the herbalist had been stimming nervously more and more often over the past few days.

They sat there in silence for a long moment: Perl and Archoll still hadn't arrived, although they were by no means late. It was to be expected, too: when Tymor had left the inn that morning (she had ended up sleeping there rather than in the wagons mostly so she could get a better view of the sunrise), neither of them had been awake.
'What did you think of Brigisel, Pryfed?' Tymor asked.
'It was good,' he said sagely. 'It was like Meirch was.'
'And there was the nice man who taught you Golemancy,' Aelod smiled.
'Why was he sad?' Pryfed asked.
Tymor realised they meant Sillaf, the Sorcerer she had briefly met as she tried to track down Hierach (without any luck: nobody had seen him).
'He lost someone very important to him in the eruption,' Aelod explained.
'Oh...' Pryfed turned his gaze downwards, and all three of them fell silent; for a time, they simply sat there gazing out at the road ahead. Tymor had been this far from Sorvale before plenty of times, but never in this direction: the vast expanse of nothingness between Brigisel and home, broken only by the Dead Woods, made the city of merchants seem all the more remote.

Tymor was suddenly jerked back to reality as Archoll and Perl arrived, heading towards the front wagon. The tinkerer dropped down and hurried over to them.
'Hey!' she called. 'Is it okay if we take a little detour? They've planted a forest on the far side of the lake; it's still in the early stages of growth, but I thought it might be an interesting sight.''
'Well, Perl and I have spent the past couple days out there working on the soil. But,' she concluded, turning to Perl, if you want one last look at the place, I'd be happy to oblige.'
Perl's face remained neutral for a minute or so as she thought it over. 'No,' she said.
'Am I okay to head around the other way, meet you and Archoll on the far side?'
She nodded.
'Be seeing you, then,' Archoll smiled, climbing up into the wagon and shaking the reins. Hierach's wagon set out, almost of its own accord, behind them: clearly, he wasn't interested in the woods either.

Tymor returned to Aelod and Pryfed, setting out along the dusty road that would take them around the shimmering surface of the lake and into what would, one day, become a replacement for the Setward Woods.

'That looks like a pretty incredible place to swim,' Aelod commented. 'Reminds me of back home. There's this lake on the family estate: not as big as this, and much colder, but great in the warmer months.'
'I can imagine,' Tymor smiled. There had been a small lake not far from the River Orth where she had learned to swim: it had always been relaxing, especially during the early rainy season: after the near-constant downpour had started, but before the Orth threatened to burst its banks, as it often did.
'I can't swim,' Pryfed said simply. 'No lakes near Meirch.'
'None?' Aelod asked, puzzled. 'Where did you get water from?'
With all the certainty in the world, Pryfed stated: 'the kitchen.'
'I don't know what you were expecting,' Tymor laughed. 'I don't know where the water is sourced from in half the places on our trade route.'
'I prefer to know where the water I drink comes from,' Aelod explained. 'I don't like questionable sources of the stuff.'
'Not everyone has that luxury,' Tymor said.
'A fair point,' Aelod admitted. 'You know...' he fell silent, gazing out over the clear, still water.
'What?' Tymor asked.
'I feel like I should do something about that,' Aelod said. 'See about getting the other smaller settlements on my family estate onto the same water supply as the mansion, when I take over from my father.'
'A good idea,' Tymor nodded. 'Definitely worth a shot.'

They rode on in silence for almost two hours, simply drinking in the scenery (and, in Aelod's case, occasionally the clear, clean waters of the lake); Tymor stopped for a sip once or twice, handing the reins over to Aelod, and found the waters to be surprisingly sweet-tasting. Nicer by far than the Orth, at least presumably: she had always reasoned it wasn't a good idea to drink water when it was that murky. Her old hometown, a small village a day or two away from Sorvale towards the mountains, had always taken its water from a fairly sizeable spring that had once fed the Orth; now, however, it fed the fifty or so citizens of Ffynhonnel Springs. She had never quite known why it was called that: after all, to her knowledge (and she knew the place as only someone who had grown up there could: she knew the best hiding places, the stores whose owners would give you free food, the trees that were easiest to climb, the best places to take shelter from the rain, and even how far the Orth usually reached when it burst its banks during the rainy season), there was only one spring.

Eventually, however, the New Woods came into view: the freshly planted trees stretched out around the edge of the lake and away from it towards the ocean, right to the horizon. They were roughly waist height (at least for Tymor: they would have fallen short of Aelod's waist and just barely reached Pryfed's chin), and wobbled slightly in the gentle breeze.
'These things are stick-thin,' Aelod commented.
'And that surprises you?' Tymor raised an eyebrow.
'Anyway,' the Elf said, 'this isn't quite what I was expecting. Calling this place a wood creates a certain image, y'know?'
'And it'll have that image,' Tymor explained. 'In your lifetime, maybe even Pryfed's lifetime, if not in mine.'
'Maybe,' Aelod admitted. 'Although... could they not call it a wood then, when it actually is one?'
'What should they call it in the meantime?'
Aelod paused for a moment. 'A twig field?'
'Maybe,' Tymor shrugged, 'but I've got a better idea. Why not call it a wood?'
'Because it isn't a wood yet,' he insisted.
'Then what is it?'

The conversation continued in this manner for some time, until they were clear of the woods. Aelod suggested, among other things: a woodlet, a tree nursery, a baby forest, a field of leaves, a copse-to-be, a lot of twigs, and an is-there-a-collective-noun-for-saplings.

By the time they rejoined the others on the far side of the lake, finding a fire already made and a pot boiling atop it, the Elf was already exploring this new question.
'A gathering of saplings? A lumber of saplings?'
'Perl,' Tymor asked, deciding if anyone would know, she would, 'is there a collective noun for saplings?'
She shook her head.
'So... what?' Aelod realised. 'I've been looking for something that doesn't exist this whole time?'
Tymor jumped down from their wagon and sat down by the fire between Aelod and Perl. Hierach sat around from the herbalist, and Pryfed beside the Elf; Hierach, as usual, had elected to remain in his wagon. 'If there's no word for it, does that mean you get to invent one?'
'Doesn't matter,' Aelod decided. 'I'm inventing one anyway.'
'Well,' Archoll said, adding a handful of herbs to the pot in front of her, 'you three had a fun time in the new woods, I take it.'
'Aelod doesn't think they should be called that,' Tymor smiled.
'And rightly so!' the Elf insisted. 'I've seen woods. I've lived in woods. That back there isn't even close.'
'Questionable plant life aside,' Archoll sighed, 'is anyone in the mood for fish stew?'
'Definitely,' Tymor realised. It had been a while since she'd had any-- the last time would have been on the last leg of their return journey to Sorvale during the last caravan season, almost a year ago. 'How long will it be?'
'We've got about a half hour still to go,' Archoll shrugged. 'I still had some stock left over from last time.'
'You got anything else stored away?' Hierach rumbled.
'Enough meat to last us until Sorvale, if it has to,' Archoll said. 'None of it cooked yet, though. I'm making a start on that right after the stew. It's not like I can't cook while I eat.'
Tymor nodded. 'It's not like stew is hard to eat.'

'So,' Aelod said, after a lengthy silence. 'You folks get up to much in Brigisel?'
'A little,' Tymor nodded. 'I fixed up a couple prosthetics, taught the local tinkerer a thing or two.' Both prosthetics had been damaged relatively recently during trips to the Charcoal Wastes. She had also taken a fresh look at Archoll's leg with the ash in mind: she hadn't been able to do a thing about the core, but she had been able to clean the prosthetic up a little, which restored a little of the basic functionality. The limb still wasn't back to its old working order, but it would be much easier to repair now, once she'd found a new core.
'Pryfed and I spent most of our time there with the local Sorcerer,' Aelod explained.
'I met him, I think,' Tymor remembered.
'He was nice,' Pryfed said happily. 'He taught me lots about golems.'
'I had half a mind to apprentice Pryfed to him,' the Elf said. 'In the end, though, I figured he'd be better off in the Kingdoms. End of the day, neither he nor I could cover everything Pryfed can do.'
'Always an issue with apprenticeships,' Archoll nodded. 'I know a guy back in Sorvale who ended up going through three masters before he found one who could actually do everything he could.'
'That's pretty rare, though,' Aelod said. 'Sorcery runs in the family, and usually parents can teach their children what they know.'
'Not everyone is raised by their birth parents,' Hierach rumbled. 'My father couldn't exactly teach me what he knew, and my mother didn't have a drop of Sorcerous blood in her. That said, neither of them raised me.'
'They didn't?' Tymor asked.
'My mother and I never really saw eye to eye,' Hierach explained. 'I suppose I reminded her of my father. She tried to teach me swordfighting in my teens-- she'd been an adventurer by trade, and had actually met my father whilst crossing the Wyrm's Spine--, but I never really took to it. I never much needed a sword. Or any weapon, really.'
'I can vouch for that,' Aelod chuckled.

'Stew's ready,' Archoll called, after another few minutes. She sunk a ladle into the pot and used it to fill the first of several bowls. A few moments later, everyone was eating noisily, (save for Perl who had somehow mastered the art of eating stew without making a sound); going by the expressions on everyones' faces, Archoll's cooking had lived up to its reputation. Tymor took her first mouthful, and felt it warm her whole body: Archoll's fish stew had always been to die for.

Abruptly, however, the tinkerer's bowl clattered to the ground, spilling most of its contents onto the sand. Tymor's hand had flared up for a moment-- it had only done this twice before, both times on the road to Sorvale before she had met Perl and gotten her hands on something to help with the pain.
'Aargh!' she hissed, teeth gritted and eyes wide.
'What is it?' Archoll asked, alarmed.
'My hand. I'm really missing Perl's painkilling stuff right now.'
'I have some,' she said, leaving the campfire and climbing up into her wagon. Aelod sat there, her hand burning, for a few moments: the herbalist returned with a tiny glass vial, half filled with a yellowish ointment. She handed it to Tymor.
'The last of it,' she said. 'Careful.'
Tymor nodded, carefully unscrewing the cap and clamping a piece of cheesecloth over it. 'Thanks. I'll pay you for it when we get back to Sorvale.'

She had to run it across her palm three times before she got the complete width of the old injury: eventually, however, it grew numb and ceased to hurt.
'Do your scars ever hurt like this, Archoll?'Tymor asked.
'Every now and then,' the Orc nodded. 'One or two twinge a little when I remember how I got them, but... most of them are fine.'
Seeing an opportunity, Tymor decided to ask something she'd been wondering for a while: 'How did you get them all, anyway?'
'Well...'

Archoll pointed to a series of large on her left arm first. 'This one was an Orc with a mace, this one was Dwarf with a club, and this is from Orc with a Dwarf. Anything can be a weapon if you swing it hard enough. These two--' she pointed to a pair of scars from puncture wounds on her hand-- 'are from arrows-- well, an arrow. Hurts more going out than it does going in, especially when there are still bits of you attached to it. These--' she pointed to a huge cluster on her right forearm-- 'are all bite marks: mostly wolves, the occasional dog, and one particularly angry Elf.' Tymor smiled: she had been there for that one. Surprising how violent some people can get when they find out the price of having a large art installation Enchanted.
'These--' Tymor pointed to several long, thin scratches-- 'are from border skirmishes. The Elves had a habit of "accidentally" invading our territory, and I ended up having to do front line duty again.'
'I remember that,' Aelod murmured. 'We had a few soldiers pass through our land once or twice. Not our soldiers-- definitely not ours, we don't train soldiers. The Kien family has been allowing us to pay off a debt to them by letting their soldiers pass through our territory since before I was born, though.'
'That seems questionable,' Tymor murmured, wondering what the alternative would have been.
'Anyway,' Archoll continued, 'these--' she pointed to a trio of long scratches, running the length of her arm-- 'are from my first attempt to domesticate a wolf. This--' she raised her arm, showing the largest bite mark yet-- 'is from my second. These--' another two bite marks, the same size, near her shoulder-- 'are the result of my third.'
'You gave up after the third, right?' Tymor asked, worried.
'No,' Archoll shrugged. 'I just found another wolf.'
'Wait,' Aelod realised. 'Those were all the same wolf?'
'Yeah. Call me dedicated, call me a slow learner, call me foolish... I wouldn't argue. Once bitten, twice shy really doesn't apply to me.' She smiled briefly. 'Anyway, that's the worst of them. The rest are all more run-of-the-mill, really. The usual disagreements or Elven bandits.'
'So that's it?' Tymor asked.
'Almost,' Archoll nodded. 'There are these.' she pointed to a few scars on her fingertips. 'I didn't get this good with a knife without practice, and... Well, like I said. I never really went in for the whole "once bitten, twice shy" thing.'

The conversation died down after this, and soon the group found themselves returning to their wagons for the night: Archoll took first watch as she finished cooking enough biltong to last the journey home, and Tymor took last watch, just before dawn (the group's sleep cycle had normalised during their time in Brigisel). She sat there alone, watching the sun rise over the mountain for the final time, and prepared to get going: she would be driving first, with Aelod and Pryfed sleeping behind her. Every eight hours, give or take, she would switch places with the Elf; each time she woke up, the scenery would shift slightly, but they would still be in the desert.

Tymor kept track of time as best she could, but every now and then she'd wake up, freezing cold, to discover the night had taken her by surprise. Still, at least this added variety: her sleep was usually dreamless, after all, and there wasn't exactly much of a view. After something a little over a week, a tiny flicker of grey appeared on the horizon: after another day, this resolved itself into a narrow strip of green beneath a larger band of grey-brown. Rarely before had the Dead Woods been so welcome a sight.

Abruptly, Aelod, who had been curled up in the back of the wagon and sleeping soundly, sat bolt upright.
'A grove!' he cried. 'A grove of saplings!'
Tymor snorted, struggling to contain her laughter. 'You were dreaming about trees?'
''S wrong w' that?' Aelod said, between yawns. Tymor was familiar enough with this: on their regular trade route, he would usually wake up in the middle of the night, get in one or two coherent sentences-- usually about her snoring-- and then struggle to string four complete words together.
'Well?' Aelod asked, equal parts tired and puzzled.
'Nothing wrong with it,' Tymor smiled. 'It's just... not something you hear about every day.'
'You've been to th' Territories,' Aelod said. ''S a lot of trees there.'
'So dreaming about trees is normal for an Elf?' Tymor asked.
Aelod yawned loudly. 'Normal enough.'
Tymor nodded: now that she thought about it, on the rare occasions she did dream, she usually dreamed about rivers or intricate machinery (or, on one occasion, both, with the former passing through the latter-- the river had somehow ended up flowing uphill and the complex had mechanisms all rusted into a solid, grey-brown brick).
'The dead woods,' Aelod said, scratching the back of his head and joining Tymor in the front. 'They far?'
'Looks like we'll reach them tomorrow,' Tymor shrugged. 'Shouldn't be too long.'
'So we'll be back home in... Two, three days?'
'Mhm.' It would be good to get back to Sorvale after all she'd been through; she made a mental note to write to Jalsward the moment she got back to her store. No doubt she'd be interested in what it was like inside the Goblin warren, for a start. She decided it would probably best to leave off the fate of Lludwa and the rioting in Santyllia: that stuff would no doubt be too close to home, in more ways than one.

The Dead Woods were more or less exactly as they had been weeks ago, when they had last been there: that said, the crumbling trees wouldn't be overwhelmed by the ever-growing plant life any time soon. Tymor had heard it said (she didn't recall who by, although she felt like it had been Archoll) that plants were as violent as animals; the only difference was they saw no reason to hurry. This made sense, at least to her: if you had hundreds of years to strangle and starve the next plant over, why do it tomorrow? Maybe it was all the sunlight they got: after all, there were humans who spent all their time sunbathing, and they never seemed to get a whole lot done.

It was around this time that Tymor realised she had been awake for far too long: thoughts like that, to her knowledge, didn't come from keeping a good sleep cycle.
'Aelod? You okay to take over?'
'I guess,' he shrugged. 'Are we stopping in the Setward Woods?'
'No idea,' Tymor said. 'You'd have to run ahead and ask.'

Aelod climbed down and sprinted ahead, catching up to Perl and Archoll after a minute or two. He remained in their wagon for a while before climbing down and jogging alongside the dusty road: Tymor reached down to help him up, but he shook his head, continuing back towards Hierach. Tymor turned her attention back towards the road ahead: after a little while, Aelod came alongside the front of the wagon again, raising his arm. She was about to reach down when she realised which side he was on.
'Other side,' she said. 'I don't want to strain this hand.'
'My bad,' Aelod said, struggling for breath. He fell back into a jog, and then a minute or two later came alongside the wagon once again, this time on the right side. Tymor grabbed him by the wrist and hauled him up; she then handed him the reins and retreated into the back.

Before getting some sleep, she decided to check on Pryfed: the youth was sleeping curled up inside a large, empty crate, too small for anyone else but around the right size for him, that they had filled with cloth. Clutched against his chest was a wooden figurine, one of the two or three figures he usually practiced his Golemancy on. Who exactly it was a figurine of at any given moment depended on his mood.

Seeing Pryfed was okay, Tymor settled down on the wooden floor, allowing the steady, gentle rocking motion of the wagon to send her off to sleep, as it had done so many times in the past.

Tymor awoke to find the wagon had stopped: peering out from beneath the canvas hood (and being careful not to touch any of the stains), she found it was dark out, and realised they had reached the Dead Woods already. As she stared out into the semi-darkness, a fire sprung up, illuminating Archoll, Perl and Aelod: the Orc was surrounded by cloth bags and cooking equipment, no doubt containing everything she needed to cook their meal for the night.
There was a creaking sound behind Tymor, and she turned to see Pryfed climbing down from his makeshift bed, looking wide awake.
'Was I snoring?' Tymor asked.
'You sound like a horse when you sleep,' the youth said, stepping past her and dropping down onto the carpet of tall grass.

Tymor joined her, taking a seat by the fire: Archoll was still setting up an impromptu grill over the flames.
'I've been saving these,' she explained. 'Steak, aged for almost two weeks. I figured it was worth saving them for a special occasion, and... Well, this is probably our last dinner as a caravan.'
'It's been nice,' Aelod mused. 'As much as I like our usual group, it's been great seeing Hierach again.'
'If this has been my final caravan, then I couldn't have asked for better company,' Archoll smiled. 'I admit I wasn't sure about this at first, but it proved... worthwhile in ways I never would have expected.'
Perl nodded her agreement. 'I don't like breaking my routine, but this was nice.'
'I just wish it hadn't cost me my leg,' Archoll said sadly.
'I've been thinking about that,' Tymor said. 'I can fix up something temporary, if you'd like. It'll be comparable to what we did for that horse back in Meirch, but I should be able to get it... not quite working, but closer than it is now.'
'By all means,' Archoll said. 'How soon can you start?'
'How soon do you want me to start?' Tymor asked.
'Well, I'll be sat down for the next hour anyway,' she shrugged. 'Any chance you could make a start while I'm working on these bad boys?' she gestured to the steaks, and Tymor found her mouth watering.
'Sure,' Tymor nodded. 'Let me grab my belt.'

She climbed back into the wagon, grabbing her hefty tool belt: when they set out, it had been equipped for more or less everything, but now she was running low on a few components, and was had entirely run out of several more popular ones. Fortunately, she still had a couple of leather belts left: she could use these to patch up Archoll's leg.

Returning to the fire and buckling her tool belts into place, she set to work. Almost immediately, however, Archoll flinched away.
'Not those belts,' she said quickly. 'I can't stand the feeling of leather against my skin.'
Can you not... wear it over something else?' Aelod asked.
'How would I buckle it?' Archoll asked. 'What if my hand brushed against it?'
'I'll find something else,' Tymor said, searching through her many pouches and pockets. 'How about this?' she held up a large loop of metal. 'I could set it up to tighten and loosen via a screw.'
'If you can get some fabric between that and my skin, then sure,' Archoll said. 'There's a piece of the stuff I like in my wagon, the round box near the front.'

Tymor retrieved the box, and then set to work on attaching the fabric to the metal loop, leaving enough room for it to tighten and loosen comfortably. Meanwhile, Archoll kept working on their meal: as she turned the steak, she opened one of the small cloth sacks beside her, taking out several large, flat mushrooms. 'Field mushrooms,' she explained. 'Had an expert forage them for me, so they're definitely safe to eat.'
'They should be nice,' Aelod said.
'Blech.' Pryfed pulled a face. 'Don't like mushrooms.'
'More for me,' Tymor smiled, as she finished affixing the cloth with a thin but powerful glue. 'Assuming you don't mind, of course.'
There was a chorus of 'of course' and 'be my guest' and 'go ahead', and Archoll added the mushrooms to the grill.
'Okay,' Tymor said, unscrewing the metal ring as wide as it would go. 'Let me know if this is uncomfortable.' She slid it carefully up Archoll's leg and began tightening the screw.
'Comfortable enough,' she nodded. 'I can handle it, at least, as long as it's tight enough to hold in place.'
'I'll let you adjust that for yourself,' Tymor said. 'Now to the rest of it...'

She worked for several minutes, murmuring to herself the whole time, until the steaks were ready; after that, she took what was only meant to be a quick break, but what ended up being significantly longer. She savoured every mouthful of what had to be the finest steak she'd ever tasted: rich and juicy, but with a perfect crust, the kind she'd rarely seen on anything less than well done. She began to think Pryfed had been onto something: maybe Archoll was secretly Ellecon. It was an impressive disguise, if she was: who would have expected one of the old human Deities to manifest in the body of an Orc?

The steak (and both the mushrooms-- also cooked to perfection) having finished cooking, Tymor set back to work on Archoll's leg. Over the course of an hour or two, she hooked things up as best she could: a temporary solution, but a big improvement over Archoll having to drag her leg, or use it like a motionless wooden one. Setting down her tools, she took a step back, and--

An unseen hand grabbed her shoulder, hurling her to the ground. A figure clothed in black leapt past her, hoisted up Pryfed, and held a knife to his small throat.
'Okay,' they hissed. 'Nobody move. See, I've fallen on hard times. Back before the eruption, I'd get... six, maybe seven travellers a week, all saved from other bandits less scrupulous than myself. I could live comfortably on that.
'Now, however? I take what I can get. You think I'm a monster, then so be it.
'So, my point! Hand over your Quartz. All of it. Every last piece, along with any other valuables. Or... well.' He swished his knife through the air menacingly. 'You know what'll happen. And don't think I won't either. I can kill Goblins, I can do the same here.'
Tymor took a moment to take in his appearance-- more to hand over the Sorvale's guards than out of curiosity: he was tall, thin and remarkably pale. He would have reminded her of Folvis, the rather questionable merchant she had briefly encountered before departing for the Townships, had it not been for how... oddly handsome he was. He looked like precisely the kind of romanticised bandit that appeared in the low-quality books that seemed to flood Sorvale's literary district. She'd read one or two herself, in her youth, and never much felt anything for the leads: this had been one of a few factors that had led to her thinking more about herself, culminating in her realising she wasn't attracted to men.

Presently, the bandit resumed speaking. 'You five, all nice and cosy here... you must have quite a taking.' He backed slowly towards the nearest wagon, keeping Pryfed between himself and the rest of the camp the whole way. Tymor glanced around: they didn't exactly have much of a taking-- they hadn't been looking to make a profit, after all-- and she was worried what their assailant would do when he found out. He didn't seem the kind to accept their work as charitable and move on, after all. She cast her eye around the others: Perl was whispering frantically, naming plant after plant, Archoll's eyed kept straying to her sword, then back to Pryfed, then back to her sword; Aelod was...

Aelod was struggling to contain his laughter. As Tymor watched, he sniggered, then started to chuckle, then burst out into a riotous belly laugh. She had never seen him like this before.
'What's so funny?' the bandit snapped. 'This is life or death, pointy-ears.'
'Sorry,' Aelod said, wiping away tears. 'It's just... there aren't five of us, and you really couldn't have backed up against anything worse.'
'Huh?' His face twisted into a snarl.

Without a monstrous bellow, a terrible roaring unlike anything Tymor had ever heard, Hierach burst from the wagon, revealing himself at last.

Tymor had never been quite sure what to expect from her strange travelling companion, aside from his height: her rough guess of eight or nine feet was accurate. Beyond that, however? He was like nothing she had ever seen. His fingers terminated in black claws, surprisingly neatly trimmed, instead of nails, and his eyes were a curious shade of dark yellow, with jet-black slits for pupils. As Tymor watched, his slender Elven lips were peeled back, revealing rows upon rows of pointed teeth and a forked tongue. He was clad in light brown leather, but wore nothing from the waist up; he looked disproportionate, his Elven build not suiting... whatever the other side of his heritage was.

His most striking feature, however, was his skin: it was pale blue, and appeared to be scaly.

Hierach grabbed the bandit by the throat with one hand and gripped the sword by the blade in the other: it didn't appear to puncture his azure skin. He wrenched the weapon out of the bandit's grip, hurling it to the ground, and spun him around by the neck until they were eye to eye. It took Tymor a moment to realise that this left their rather unfortunate assailant's feet dangling a good foot or two above the ground.
'Now,' Hierach said. His voice had gone well beyond rumbling and into thunderous; the only time she'd heard anything comparable was during a tremendous storm, the kind that can strike without warning in the Dark Lands; Tymor had witnessed a bolt of lightning strike a huge, lonely tree, no more than ten feet away from her. Her ears had been left ringing for hours afterwards: Hierach managed to capture that same effect, that same primal fear, in a few terrifying syllables. 'Now. You'll let us go. You'll turn yourself in to the Sorvale authorities, serve your time and come out a changed man.' His tongue flicked out, the forked tip flickering inches away from the bandit's face. 'If you don't... I'll be coming for you. This whole region, everywhere between Brigisel and Sorvale, is under my protection. Do you understand me?'
The terrified would-be-bandit nodded weakly.
'If I ever hear of anyone harassing travellers in this region, if their methods have even the slightest bit in common with yours...' his golden eyes flashed menace. 'You'll never see another piece of Quartz in your life. Are we clear on this?'
Another weak nod from the bandit.
'Now.' Hierach smiled, his face contorting into the kind of expression a wolf makes before tearing its prey to shreds. He held this horrific grin for a few seconds in silence; long enough for the bandit to break out into a cold sweat. 'Run.'

He let go of the bandit's neck, and their would-be-assailant sprinted off into the Dead Woods.

After another few seconds, Hierach burst out laughing. 'Did you see the look on his face?' He turned to regard his companions, but saw nothing but fear on their faces.
'You're...' Archoll murmured.
'Oh,' Hierach said, his voice losing its thunder and its rumble. 'Of course... I probably owe you something of an explanation.'
'If you... wouldn't mind?' Tymor asked, subconsciously taking another step away from this huge figure and towards the fire.
'Well, my father was something of a ladies' man. Sort of. "Man" isn't quite the term; men don't tend to have wingspans of fifty feet, nor are they known for breathing fire. But anyway, my old man-- man still being a relative term, of course-- seduced an Elven adventurer, travelling the Wyrm's Spine in search of her fortune, and... A few years later, I showed up.
'My father descended on the village where I was born, terrifying everyone there, regarded me with first one vast, Draconian eye, and then the other, before proclaiming a single word: Hierach. My mother always assumed that to be my name, although she didn't speak a word of Draconian. I didn't find out what it means until recently.'
'When was all this?' Archoll asked. Dragons were rare, after all; word would surely have reached her about one descending on a village, Tymor thought to herself, even an Elven one?
'Let's just say I'm as old as any two of you combined. Older, probably.' Hierach scratched his head, dragging his claws across the smooth scales. Perl flinched and climbed up into her wagon, retreating into the darkness.
'So,' Hierach said. 'That about brings you up to speed, I suppose. I was hoping I wouldn't have to reveal myself like this, but... you can all be trusted.'
'I've seen you,' Archoll realised. 'In Sorvale, performing. You always wore robes that covered your face.'
'And with good reason,' Hierach nodded. 'You saw how that bandit reacted. People see a face like mine, there first thought isn't so much "I wonder if he knows any of my favourite tales" as it is "Highest Highest oh Highest please spare me from this terror".'
'See, I always maintained you were handsome,' Aelod shrugged. 'If a little terrifying. Seamstresses took to you well enough, at the very least.'
'I was a reliable customer,' Hierach explained. 'My Quartz was always good and I never tried to talk them into anything they weren't comfortable with. That, and I usually paid over the going rate. Understandable, given my... rather unique heritage. They usually found me rather off-putting.'
Tymor nodded slowly. 'So... will you be staying out here, by the fire?'
'I suppose there's no sense in hiding now,' he shrugged. 'I'll return to my wagon by the time we reach Sorvale, but I see no reason to hurry. I'll stick around, at least for the night.'
'Glad to have you,' Aelod smiled. 'Must be a while since you slept under the stars like this.'
Hierach nodded. 'It would have been back on your father's estate, after you left to start your education but before I ended up, through no fault of my own, on a caravan headed for Sorvale...'

He recounted the tale of his journey from the Territories to Sorvale briefly: he'd been travelling through unfamiliar land when the village he had been passing through was attacked by Orcs. he'd tagged along with a caravan of merchants, and had encountered something (he refused to go into details) on the Plateau. From there, he had taken a fairly non-standard route home, bypassing the Dwarven Fortresses entirely to favour trade within the mountward regions of the plains and the marshland. As he recounted his journey, Perl slowly crept out of the depths of her wagon, and ended up sitting perched on the edge. She was still clearly scared of Hierach, but... Tymor had to admit she was too. Everyone was, really, except for Aelod. The Elf was as at ease with the half-Elf, half-Dragon as though the two had been brothers. That said, with an age gap of... what, thirty years? Forty? And she had met Aelod's mother, albeit briefly. She had been nice: her husband managed the family estate, but she ran several businesses across their land. She had actually been one of the first people Tymor came out to, years ago: Lady DiBriod had spoken freely of years gone by (and of lovers gone by: men, women, and plenty who identified as neither). It was possible that she was Hierach's mother too, Tymor supposed, but... it felt unlikely. She didn't seem like the kind to climb mountains in search of fame, fortune and glory.

All in all, Tymor thought to Hierach's journey hadn't been particularly unusual: she knew a few merchants who had started out as passengers, all of whom couldn't think of another destination and defaulted to Sorvale.

Still, something about Hierach remained a puzzle: just what had he seen on the Plateau? He had mentioned Penllaya, the former capital of the Human Kingdoms, in passing, but... it sounded like he'd actually been there.

That said, Tymor realised, if anyone could visit that immense ruin, filled with Kobolds and-- if the legends were true, far worse-- and live to tell the tale, then surely it was Hierach?