Chapter 91: Homeward Bound

  Alabaster

  The trip north was a long and mostly uneventful affair. By Alley's estimation, the most ‘adventurous’ thing the boys got up to in those weeks was hunting small game, with a close second being climbing a tree at one point to check the state of the road ahead. They were slowed by fall storms which frequently got heavy enough that Alley and Darius had to seek shelter rather than continue their journey.

  Still after despite all of that Alley kind of enjoyed the slow mundanity of it all. He knew he needed to focus on speedy growth but it was nice to have some time that wasn’t devoted to life and death struggles.

  Denderra even made the occasional appearance though after their last interaction the girl seemed a little coy and unwilling to engage with Alley. Still after significant prompting and some hilariously over the top flirting attempts from Darius they managed to get her to open up a little. Apparently getting closer to Cursed Isle wasn’t going to put Alley at any greater risk of possession. The ghost actually scoffed at the suggestion.

  “Something as pitiful as distance is no obstacle for my brother.” Were her exact words. According to Denderra the only reason Anaten hadn’t seized Alley’s body already was a combination of her direct intervention and an unwillingness from the incorporeal being to harm his little sister in overpowering her.

  Not one of the three could explain why Darius would periodically gain the ability to see and hear Denderra, but Alley was glad he did. There was something about the redheaded boy’s complete willingness to try and woo any and every girl he encountered who wasn’t already married that endeared him to the ghostly maiden.

  It really was every woman too, judging from the way she had kept laughing and threatening him with various cooking utensils. Alley was pretty sure Darius had even flirted with the old Forstlander woman. Regardless of the exact reason when the hunter tried his ‘charms’ on Denderra despite her status as both ancient and dead it inevitably got the white-haired girl laughing.

  Once she was laughing, getting her talking was a much more simple matter and by the time they were within a few days walk of Cursed Isle both boys concurred she was being honest about Alley’s relative safety.

  While the boys and ghost reached The Deep River; the huge green waterway that Deep River Country was named after within a few days. Once there they found it disappointingly low on traffic heading northward. Alley wasn’t surprised exactly, the All-Isles Festival would have just recently ended. So while it was only natural that most of the riverboats they saw would be going southward away from Medius, the boys had hoped they would encounter at least one on its way to the capital.

  Unfortunately for them it was not to be, Alley consoled himself that at least there was usually a path or road or some sort running alongside the river, though they had a tendency to cut off suddenly. On top of this they could at least share news by shouting back and forth with the slower moving riverboats headed south.

  Every man, woman, or child they spoke to had more or less the same thing to say. There had been a tragedy at the All-Isles Festival, the patron of the festival and guardian of the river itself Aparator had been murdered in cold blood whilst the ascended crab was meditating.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  It seemed none of these travelers knew for sure who had committed the killing, but all agreed the most likely suspect and man the Medius authorities were seeking word of had been a powerful southerner with blonde hair, and according to some rumors a pair of flaming wings.

  Alley’s blood had run cold at the description, even before the mention of the wings he was all but certain Soren Creed had been the one responsible. The list of people in this country who had the power required to defeat Aparator was to Alley’s knowledge extremely short, and only one had the motivation he was aware of to even try.

  If Soren had in fact turned the river guardian into a Card Alley shuddered to think what it might be capable of. Arcadia Roe had Challenged Aparator on four separate occasions. She had been defeated in all of them but the second in which she had won her signature Dragon TerraNullis.

  The Card Arcadia had become was monstrously powerful, and she had been Aparator’s lesser.

  Alley had enjoyed his time spent walking peacefully with his friend and his nights spent pouring over the journal of a woman he was beginning to suspect had been a genius. With the reminder that Soren was still on the move and still committing atrocities, Alley couldn’t help but feel spurred on.

  Looking to speed things up the boys decided the best move would be heading home to Cursed Isle where they could salvage one of the riverboats formerly owned by the deceased residents of Valeton.

  The idea of returning home so soon left Alley with a lump in his throat and a raw feeling in his chest. Still, it was the practical choice and he wasn’t about to disrespect his mother’s memory by leaving such an obvious resource on the proverbial table.

  So after days of marching along muddy paths, and through wet or boggy glades Alley, Darius, and Denderra found themselves standing on the bank of The Deep River discussing how exactly they would make the crossing to the gray stoned island in the center of it.

  Alley and Darius could swim the distance, and had done so more than once before. The issue was between the size of the river, and the strength of the currents, swimming across would take most of the day, and would require them to leave their gear behind. Logically the move that made the most sense was to send one boy over while the other waited with their packs.

  Neither Alley nor Darius wanted to spend hours exhausting themselves in increasingly cold water, followed by spending the night alone on Cursed Isle before getting a riverboat back across without assistance. So naturally they had resorted to the only fair way to assign such a task. Sword, Hammer, Canvass.

  The boys were on their sixth consecutive tie when Denderra cleared her throat and gestured out onto the dark green river. Pausing their contest both boys followed the gesture to a rather odd sight making its way downriver.

  “Maybe she can help” Offered the ghostly maiden.

  “Yeah…” Said Alley “Maybe she can.”

  It was a girl of similar age to the boys with dark brown hair and a black top bearing the Empty rectangle icon of the Spell Framer’s Guild in dark ink across her chest. It was weird enough to see a representative of the Framer’s Guild out and about in the world, but the real strangeness was her method of transport.

  It was a duck, but one almost the size of a wagon and clad in ornate armor. As it approached the Resonance and stat runes above its head came into focus, a clear sign the creature was a Manifested Card.

  [Amelio The Mighty

  Resonances: Beast, Sky, Featherkin

  Unique

  Cost: 1 Vial

  Power: 4500]

  “Hey!” Called Darius. “Do you think you could spare five minutes to help us?”

  Sorry for the delay on this chapter guys. I had to drive cross country for a funeral I wasn't expecting.