It was around midday – the next day – that Aerean noticed something peculiar sticking out of the only partially closed backpack Elion had on him.
“Hey, mind if I take a look at something?” she asked as she walked up behind him and took the spiked sandals given to him by Elia out of his bag. Elion turned around in surprise, but soon mumbled something along the lines of “sure, why not?” before turning back around.
Aerean inspected the sandals, specifically the small spikes that were embedded into the bottom. She soon realised that she had correctly identified them as her own.
“How did you get these?” she asked.
Elion – barely aware of most things that happened around him due to a healthy mix of exhaustion and boredom – blinked a few times before the question fully hit him and he remembered their strange encounter with the goddess Elia – or auntie Ellie, as the others remembered her.
“We got ‘em from some strange lady selling some very specific items by the side of the road. Gave all of us a very fitting gift, and then handed Elion those,” Randan interjected.
“Did this ‘strange lady’ say anything about them?” Aerean asked.
Elion shook his head, “not anything specific really, just that she didn’t feel like waiting another few days to give them to us.”
Aerean took another look at the gem embedded into the sandals – one half in each. How they came to be embedded in them she did not know, but she could feel the magic residing in them pulsating – reaching out to her. They were meant to be hers, no doubt about it. The gem was once embedded into a small bracelet, one small enough that it could fit around her legs when in avian form.
Her bracelet of awareness, as they’d called it. More of an experimental technology developed by the wizards. They had chosen to test it on her – willing to help as she was – but not designed it specifically for her. It heightened her senses by adding a kind of hyper-mode that allowed her to slow down time from her perspective. She couldn’t move any faster than normal, but she could think and react way faster than usual. It was not a complete success however – not to the wizards who developed it anyway. They had wanted to use it to be useable on anyone, but for some reason it would only activate on her.
It had been discarded – considered useless. She wondered…
Aerean dug the gems out of the sandals, held them in her hands, and concentrated.
“What are you do-i-n-g…?” she could hear Elion’s voice slow down as the crystal of awareness started to affect her senses. She opened her eyes and took a look around – her head moving awfully slow from her perspective, but she couldn’t move it any faster if she wanted to. She could hear the birds chirping in the forest, the sound carrying much farther than it usually would have. In the distance, she heard another sound – one foreign to the forest – cart wheels. They came from behind them. She could hear the thumping of hooves walking through the sand, heavy breathing of soldiers forced to wear their armour, and voices. She focused on the conversation in particular, trying to decipher what they were saying despite the slow speed at which she heard them.
“We should notify the council ahead of time, you know Octari doesn’t like it when we show up unannounced,” an anxious voice said in the northern Elven language.
Another voice sounded in response to the first, “Octari will understand our secrecy surrounding this project. After all, we succeeded in our endeavours.”
At this point, Elion and the others were starting to worry about Aerean’s silence, and their voices were getting harder and harder to filter out by the second.
“Aery, are you okay?” Ali asked, her hands on Aerean’s shoulders. Aerean slowly opened her eyes again, losing focus on purpose to stop the effect of the crystal.
“We need to get off the road,” she said. “A caravan of carts is approaching, elves – I doubt they’re all that friendly.”
They dove into the bushes by the side off the road, laying down so no one on the road would be able to see them. As they waited silently, Aerean focused on the crystal fragments again. She honed in on the sounds of the caravan, trying to get back to the conversation the two people in the large cart were having. It became harder to focus by the second, the sounds of the cartwheels growing in intensity as the itching and pressure of the dirt beneath her increased by what felt like a thousandfold. It soon overwhelmed her, and she was forced to let go of the fragments.
She turned to Elion – who was laying in the dirt next to her – and saw the worried look on his face. It made her feel strange, seeing him look so genuinely concerned for her sanity. It took a while for the caravan to actually come within earshot of the others, so she couldn’t really blame them for thinking she had gone insane. As the carts got closer, the five of them all began to look for as far as they were able without drawing any attention to themselves. Wisely, Tallioth decided to just keep his head down. He was not the stealthiest person – never had been.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
It was a caravan of three carts in total – two smaller supply carts and one bigger cart that appeared to be the most heavily guarded out of the three. Even without her enhanced senses, Aerean could hear mumbled voices continuing the conversation she had been eavesdropping on before. Unfortunately, they were mumbled to the point of unintelligibility, and she could not understand a word they were saying. At least, not without the gem.
An idea occurred to her, and she softly ripped off a small piece of cloth from Elion’s bag. Elion looked around, surprised but barely protesting. He figured Aerean knew what she was doing. Without her, they would have probably been spotted and taken to Nyth’Aren as prisoners. The guards, they wore the crest of Alen on their chests. These were men of the Church.
Aerean ripped the piece of cloth into six thin ribbons and used them to bind the two gem fragments to her wrists – one ribbon to cover her wrist, the other two to hold the gem in place, three for each arm. That way she could avoid direct contact with the gem while still being able to utilise its enhancing effect – albeit a significantly weaker effect. At least it wouldn’t overwhelm her as quickly as using the gem raw.
She gently touched the two halves of the gem together between her wrists and immediately noticed the world slowing down once more. She tried to focus on her hearing only, which was made considerably easier by the fact that the gem’s effect had been weakened. Now by only focusing on one of her senses, she could block out the others almost to the point of no enhancement at all – allowing for a more targeted use of the gem’s effect.
Aerean managed to pick up the conversation going on inside the large cart again.
“Are you sure this thing won’t randomly activate and start killing everything around it? Us included?”
“That’s why you’ve been so on edge all this time? Listen, I – we – created him – not a thing – to kill one specific person. Perhaps two if you believe the rumours about Octari’s true motive. Neither of those possibilities would suggest anything about him being able to kill us, so he won’t.”
“I get that, it’s just scary. The damn thing – because that’s what it is, an object… a weapon – can level cities for crying out loud. But then again, I just did the body, you did the brain. If you say it can’t do something, then I’m sure you’re right. Still, I’ve seen this thing wreak too much havoc in the lab to not be at least cautious whenever I’m around it.”
“I really wish you would stop referring to him as a mere object.”
“And I really don’t care what you wish. Just because you twisted a few knobs and injected a couple of chemicals doesn’t mean you managed to create an actual living creature with an actual personality. You created nothing more than the operating system behind my machine. A very intricate operating system, not a personality.”
“Fine, I won’t try to change your mind. I know better than to argue with ignorance.” The other scientist – the more mechanically oriented one as it seemed from the conversation – scoffed and said nothing in return. A rather tense silence followed for a few moments, before the mechanic sighed and walked out the backdoor of the cart, joining the guards in their walk.
“Make sure you keep your eyes open. I don’t care what Uriel says, that thing could destroy us in an instant if it decides to. Do not lose focus. Is that understood?” the guard nodded, continuing his march with one hand on his sheathed sword.
Aerean lost focus again, realising just now that she had been holding her breath that entire time. As she gasped for air, Elion turned to face her and panicked.
“Aery? What’s wrong?” he asked just too loud to be considered a whisper. Realising what he had done he quickly pressed himself onto the ground, pressing down on Aerean’s shoulder so that she would do the same despite still silently gasping for air.
The gem of awareness was a fickle tool. Focusing on it too little could result in getting overwhelmed, focusing on it too much could result in being drawn in too much and losing control over your own body – such as losing the ability to breathe without thinking about it.
The mechanic turned around after hearing a noise coming from the trees. He scanned the treeline, but saw nothing behind the foliage.
“Oltario, get back here. I have more things to discuss with you!” Ulriel called from the cart. The mechanic turned back around, blaming what he heard on paranoia originating from a lack of sleep before walking back to the cart.
From their vantage point, Randan and Aly caught a glimpse of the thing that laid on the table in the large cart. A giant stitched-together corpse. A weapon meant to kill a demigod. They would soon learn its name; “The Gutter”.
What should I do with rewritten chapters?
