“Stop touching it.” Martin admonished.

  Adam jolted and dropped the hand he hadn’t realized was rubbing his smooth face. The beard had been sacrificed to the cause, along with Devon’s flamboyant outfits. Now the three of them could be mistaken for any trio of Laskarian travelers. Including heavy packs with their supplies. Even millennia ago, spatial storage had been rare. More so for any device that would work for a mortal. So they had to carry their belongings instead, or at least appear to do so.

  “It looks good,” Devon assured him. “You should keep shaving.”

  “I look like a child,” he grumbled back.

  “Trust me, you don’t.” Martin said with a wink.

  Their hike ran into a section of hills after that and Adam didn’t have breath to spare for complaints. Instead he stored them up inside. Chief among them was that they should have warned him to increase his physical exercise ahead of the trip. The sect-wide morning practice had made him fitter than he’d ever been, but that was still below the level needed for wilderness expeditions.

  “Remind me,” Adam puffed when they crested a rise, “why we had to go ten kilometers out of the way again?”

  “Because we need to be as unmemorable as possible. Strangers appearing out of the wilderness are memorable. But travelers passing through on the main road are easy to forget.” Martin explained. The bastard looked like this was no more than a casual stroll through the palace gardens. “We need to be far enough up the road that no one sees us wandering out of the woods.”

  “Don’t you have some magic technique that would make them not notice us?” Adam could understand the logic, but did they really need to be this far out of the way?

  “Eh, there are some ways to avoid notice, but they aren’t foolproof. Besides, unnoticed means as little magic as possible. From what George said, it’s doubtful the Laskarians will have enough cultivators to be stationed in every town or village, but there still might be some around that are sensitive enough to notice. Speaking of which, your veil is slipping a bit.”

  Adam groaned but focused on his mana flows. Any spare moment during their crossing had been spent teaching Adam how to hold a veil. The process was a finicky one. Instead of letting mana flow through his body at a constant speed, he had to slow it down in the areas closer to the surface. The result, to the casual observer, made him look like any other mortal. It had surprised Adam to discover he was actually quite good at it, when he paid attention. The fine detail work required fit his meticulous nature. Only when his focus drifted for too long did his true presence start to leak. Devon and Martin could hold something much more complicated and more difficult to pierce, but that was the result from decades of practice. It was heartening to have a real success to point to when it came to cultivation. Even something as minor as being able to hide.

  They reached the road just before lunch and turned south. By the afternoon, the countryside had bled into freshly tilled land, and they passed a series of turnoffs, likely leading to the farms responsible. When the protests from Adam’s stomach were at the point of open revolt, they finally came upon their target.

  The town was underwhelming. Or rather, the town looked exactly like the country towns he’d seen in his rare trips outside of Verilia, which hardly made it worth crossing an ocean for. There were a few dozen buildings, mostly wood with gray slate or thatched roofs. The sounds and smells were the same as the countryside anywhere, people making merry at the end of a workday, the faint aroma of animals and acrid tang of coal smoke reaching his nose. One building was more bustling than the rest, standing three stories tall, with laughter and lantern-light leaking out onto the street. Devon and Martin made for it without hesitation, Adam trailing behind. He was catching snippets of conversation in Laskarian, and he was suddenly very grateful they had made it clear he should speak as little as possible. The accents were almost indecipherable, far from the clear diction of his university instructors.

  They pushed into the tavern and made their way to the bar, where Martin negotiated rooms and food. At least, Adam caught the word for dinner and was hoping he was correct on the rest. He knew they would be camping for parts of the journey but he had no desire to start tonight.

  It turned out he needn’t have feared, they left their packs in small but serviceable rooms on the third floor before descending back to the dining room for dinner. They may as well have eaten trail rations. The stew was greasy and bland, the bread mostly stale. Adam longingly pictured the dining room at the sect, where Esther had no doubt served up a dinner worthy of a top restaurant, surrounded by people he could actually understand. Instead he choked down what was served and listened to Martin and Devon mutter to each other in an impressive mimicry of the regional accent. Halfway through the meal, Devon went back to the bar and came back with another round of bitter ale and a folded newspaper. He flipped through, reading a few pages, before passing it off to Martin, who handed it off to Adam when they retired to their own rooms for the evening.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  With nothing better to do, Adam settled in to read. The paper was two weeks old, having been brought from the capital. Facts he noticed only after the headline shouted at him, “New Evidence For Magical Meristan Plot, Should We Be Worried?.” The story that followed was sensationalist drivel. No evidence was presented. Rather the article was thinly veiled propaganda, describing how Meristans had manipulated magic, causing monsters to appear around the country, in an attempt to weaken the empire. And the noble imperial authorities were being forced to learn the necessary tools to subvert that control.

  For anyone with a shred of knowledge it was a government desperately backtracking on a generation-long ‘technology is the future, magic doesn’t exist’ policy. But how many of these townspeople had that knowledge? A memory of dinner flashed into his mind. Only this time, his imagination took hold and he could understand every conversation. They decried Meristans as evil, perverted mages, attacking the empire with subterfuge, setting up rampaging monsters to destroy civilians and infrastructure. Laurel even made a named appearance, as the corrupting witch responsible for the worst offenses, including a rampaging herd of deformed elephants that had come for the capital several months prior. He slept poorly that night and woke in a foul mood.

  Adam held his tongue until they were well clear of town the following morning before voicing his concerns.

  “It feels wrong to just leave the town without doing anything,” he said. His voice was a low murmur, more aware than ever that his accent could give them away.

  The other men exchanged glances but it was Martin who decided to answer. “There’s nothing we can do.” He rephrased when Adam began to object, “rather we are doing what we can already.

  “The more resources we keep from falling into our enemies hands, the better. Getting the Legacy Stone from Devon’s sect is a major part of that. Even if we could convince those people – people who’ve heard all their lives how terrible we are – that the paper was printing lies, what then? We’d pull attention to ourselves we don’t want, and probably give away our goals in the process.”

  That was as unsatisfying an answer as any Adam had ever heard but he kept quiet. They were right that changing a few local minds wasn’t going to win them the race they’d become embroiled in. The fields gave way back to untamed prairie as they trudged on to the next town.

  This one at least looked foreign enough to justify the trip. Adam still had no idea what it was called, but the roofs gleamed in metal sheets that would cause a horrific noise in the sleet and rain of a Verilian winter. There was architecture to speak of, with some taller buildings sporting decorative carvings and other flourishes, surrounded by walled gardens. They could only be noble manors, or the regional governors as they preferred to style themselves here.

  The tavern they found themselves in, however, could have been a perfect copy of the last one. Not that taverns were ever really that different, no matter the time or distance between visits. People wanted cheap beer and dinner, and the template for how to get that service to the masses had been minted in time immemorial, and copied over ever since.

  ************

  Much like the last town they’d passed through, Martin settled in to listen to the local gossip. More of the everyday complaints that would always dominate the local drinking establishment. A concerning amount of angry rumbling about how it was all Merista’s fault that magic was so present in their lives. Most interestingly, a few men in the corner complained about being ‘strongly encouraged’ to volunteer in the local militia to hunt down monsters. That last bit was the only good news. It confirmed they didn’t have enough cultivators that were able to perform the same duty, and the official military was stretched too thin to take over. If Meristan reports were to be believed, that was mostly to do with the ongoing offensive with the nomad tribes to the northwest, and the jungle kingdom south of the nomads, both of which Laskar was trying to take over. Things hadn’t escalated to open warfare yet, but the testing of borders and low level violence were keeping the Laskarians busy.

  If he felt bad about mortals being forced to fight spirit beasts, that feeling was eroded a little more each time they cursed Laurel for causing the problem. Besidesm they had guns. Most of them would survive.

  His mood was thoroughly soured by the time dinner ended and he wished the others good night. Just as they entered the rooms, Devon slipped something into his pocket and shook his head just enough for Martin to see. Another shred of good news. A town this large, almost reaching the size of a very small city, would have an established Core. Devon’s tricky little device measured whether or not it showed any signs of cultivation, while being the closest thing to undetectable. Martin was under no illusion that this would be the case as they got closer to the capital, but he would take the small win while they got their feet under them. For all his confidence in starting this journey, he was very aware that should things go wrong, they would end up deep in enemy territory, the three of them against an empire.

  *********

  Adam stared at the beast in front of him. Large, powerful, conquering it would be the worst ordeal he had faced yet. A puff of air hit him from two large nostrils, causing him to rear back. He summoned every ounce of courage to begin his approach.

  “No point in delaying, it will hurt either way,” Devon said. “Just get in the saddle.”

  Adam didn’t bother answering. Hoisting himself up the mounting block, he gripped the worn leather and hauled himself on top of the beast in an inelegant sprawl. The ostler tweaked some straps and buckles with mysterious purposes, and slapped the horse's rump as he walked back to the stables.

  “And we’re off. Adam, hold on and try your best to move with the horse.”

  With those limited instructions from Martin, they left the inn at a plodding pace. Adam couldn’t help but notice the animal he’d been given was dull and drab compared to the other two, gray hair and placid eyes that barely flickered as he tried to clamber on. When Devon had returned with the mounts for the next part of the journey, he had mentioned asking for “the most even-tempered horse they had”, which apparently translated to ‘whatever is closest to keeling over’. The spirited black gelding Martin was on had almost bitten Adam when he approached, so he kept his complaints to himself.

  At least he did until that evening when he got off the blasted thing and collapsed in a heap on the ground, moaning about the evils of horseback.

  Martin came over and crouched beside him. “Yeah, it would have been better if we’d had a chance to get you riding practice before we left, but that’s life.”

  Adam groaned in response.

  “Here. I can’t take it all away or it won’t get any better, but I can help a little.”

  Adam felt a warm pressure from Martin’s hand against his upper back. A breath later, the warmth began to spread, concentrating in his aching thighs and backside. When the magic dissipated, he found he could move his legs without weeping. The twinges were still there but he would be able to sleep at least. And then tomorrow he would do it all over. And the next day, and the day after that. He wanted to cry again.