Chapter Five: Crossroads
I am a bit more careful this time as I spend the next few days walking, whistling, and chatting at the core. I can feel my connection to the core growing with every passing day, its once alien presence now slotting comfortably against the back of my mind as a nearly constant presence. I can tell it still doesn’t understand me, but I am starting to feel a sense of… contentment? Pulsing from it when I speak to it, maybe it’s just my imagination, but I think it is starting to enjoy the companionship. Honestly this connection is already far more than I thought I would get from the core, especially before I performed the ritual the Turtlmyn had spoken of. I’m still pondering a name for it though, none of the ones I have come up with are right, I’ll wait until I get to know the core better… Names are important, they inform how people will first react to you, and shouldn't be chosen without care.
On the second day I run into a small trading group who turn out to be a band of all the local forest villages. They have a few handcarts, farmers to pull them, and about twice as many guards on a weary alert. They are heading back towards The Crooked Lantern and warn me that the local monsters are acting strange, being seen out of their territories, most likely due both the king's failed campaign and deserters displacing them from their homes. I share a drink with the traders as I take a moment to heal one of the guard’s arms, who has a nasty bite from a recent encounter. I end up writing out a marriage contract for a different guard who was planning on using this trip's wages on a proposal once he gets home. I don’t charge him, for which he thanks me a little too much… It is an easy thing for me to do, and newlyweds need all the coin they can get to start their new lives.
Another day of walking, no whistling this time, instead I spend the time thinking about what my new home is going to be like… honestly this was the main reason I had become a Sage in the first place, the fact that once I graduated, I would be sent to live somewhere that actually needed and wanted help. That I could actually be part of, and make a difference to a community, that I could spend my time doing some real good in the world… Even now it still seems like a dream. At Fallowhold I am supposed to act as their local mediator, advisor, healer, and really just try to make myself available and useful to the people there. The thought makes me giddy, I can’t wait.
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The morning of the fourth day has me arriving at a major crossroads in the forest, it's here that the Endymion City road intersects with the major trade road which spans nearly all of the Eudaimonia Kingdom from North to South. Just off to the side of the crossroad is a large shrine with a statue of a multi-armed elephantmyn sitting in a meditation pose. The shrine is ancient, vines crawling up and sometimes through its stonework, even to the point that a small tree is growing out of the head of the old monk. I run my fingers along the base and can feel the indentations of what once must have been a message carved there, but whatever it said has eroded and been lost to time.
I take a moment to sit at the base of the oldmyn, leaning my back against him and closing my eyes, trying to remember the map I had studied. This is definitely one of the landmarks I have been waiting to run into. Hmmm… I’ve mostly been traveling west so far, but now I've reached this crossroad, I need to swing north? Yeah, for another four days or so… Then I’ll reach the lake town of… Slyphrena’s Scar? Sounds right, and there I am supposed to catch a ferry which will take me down a massive river and finally plop me out only a few days from Fallowhold.
I get a little carried away sitting there, just breathing, enjoying the sounds, smells, and peace of the forest. I might have stayed much longer if it weren't for the huge caravan who I heard long before I saw. As luck would have it, they were going my way and were happy to take on a sage in exchange for my services. I manage to snag a cushy seat in a potato wagon and for a while I just swing my legs and look up at the clouds as the caravan trundles off north.
