The Curse of Arcadia

Dawn came cold and clear, the north gate already busy with the caravan's preparations by the time the party arrived — six wagons lined in careful order, horses stamping impatiently in the early chill, Gerald directing the final loading with brisk, practiced efficiency.

They settled into position easily enough, Ana and Kaelid taking the front, Tatsuya and Eric the rear, Aria given free rein to move as she pleased given her ranged capability and keen eyesight. The gates groaned open ahead of them, revealing the open road stretching north beyond Avalon's walls — the first time in months any of them had left the city for something other than a job that ended the same day.

"Right on time," Gerald called from the lead wagon. "Move out!"

The caravan rolled forward, wheels creaking, horses settling into an easy pace, and Avalon's walls slowly began shrinking behind them as the road unfurled ahead.

Raichas. Kaelid turned the word over, equal parts curious and strange to say out loud. For him and Aria, it was somewhere new entirely — a city that existed only in secondhand mentions and Ana's quiet nostalgia. For the other three, it was something closer to a homecoming nobody had quite decided how to feel about yet.

He glanced sideways at Ana, walking a few steps ahead of him, expression unreadable in the pale morning light.

Here we go, he thought, glancing once more at Avalon's shrinking walls before turning his full attention forward. Raichas. Let's see what you've got.

The road north settled into an easy rhythm within the first few hours — wagon wheels creaking steady over packed snow, the caravan's pace slow but consistent, guards and merchants alike falling into the low, unhurried conversation that long travel tends to produce.

Kaelid walked alongside the lead wagon, close enough to Ana that conversation came naturally without either of them really deciding to start one.

"You alright?" he asked eventually, catching something distracted in her expression. "You've been quiet."

"A little. Not about the road — Gerald seemed competent, and the route's supposed to be safe. Just..." She paused, considering. "It's strange, going back. I haven't set foot in Raichas since we left for Avalon."

"Wait, you're actually from there? All three of you?"

"Not exactly. It's more complicated than that." She considered how to explain it. "I was born in Eclipse — that's where most of my family still is. Tatsuya trained out near Gravewood for years before any of us met him. Eric's a little different — his merchant caravan was destroyed when he was young, and Raichas was just where he ended up afterward, trying to rebuild something out of nothing."

"So how'd you all end up together there?"

"Circumstance, mostly. We were a party based out of Raichas for a while before we crossed paths with you and Aria. None of us actually grew up there together — we just happened to be there at the same time, doing the same work, and it stuck." She said it simply, though something in her tone suggested there was more history under the surface than she was volunteering right now.

Kaelid let that sit a moment, filing away the new pieces — Gravewood, the destroyed caravan, Eclipse — without pushing for more than she was offering.

"Guess we'll see it together, then," he said instead. "Even if it means something different to you than it does to me."

That got a small, genuine smile out of her, quiet but real. "Guess we will."

"Anyone in particular you're worried about running into?"

"No, nothing like that." She paused, searching for the right way to put it. "It's more that... something in me feels different than it did when I left. It hasn't even been that long, really, but going back still feels strange. Like I won't quite fit the same way I used to."

"That's fair. A lot's happened since then."

"Yeah. One month can change a lot." She let out a small, wry breath. "Though it does feel like it's been much longer."

The first day passed largely without incident — cold, long, but uneventful, the caravan making steady progress north as Avalon shrank further and further behind them and the unfamiliar stretch of road ahead slowly became the only thing left in view.

Camp that first night went up efficiently, Gerald's caravan hands clearly practiced at the routine — wagons circled, horses tended, a central fire built up against the deepening cold while the party fell into their usual watch rotation without needing to discuss it.

"I'll take first watch," Tatsuya offered, already settling into a spot with a clear line of sight over the camp's perimeter.

"I'll join you," Aria said. "Not tired yet anyway."

That left Kaelid, Ana, and Eric to the fire, along with a handful of Gerald's hands who'd drifted over for the warmth and, judging by a few curious glances, the novelty of traveling with an actual adventurer party.

"So," one of the caravan hands said, a younger man who couldn't have been much older than Kaelid himself, "you're the ones who cleared out that ogre den a couple weeks back. Heard about that in Avalon before we left."

Kaelid blinked. "That got around?"

"Three ogres instead of two, one of you nearly dying? Word travels." The hand grinned, clearly more impressed than concerned about it. "Guild boards love a story like that."

"Wonderful," Ana said dryly. "Glad my worst week this year doubles as entertainment for strangers."

"No offense meant."

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"None taken. Just an observation." She managed a small smile despite the deadpan delivery, and the hand seemed to relax, apparently reassured he hadn't actually caused offense.

Eric, for his part, seemed to be enjoying the attention more than either of his companions, recounting a slightly embellished version of the fight that had him personally holding off the third ogre single-handedly for a solid five minutes before backup arrived. Kaelid let him have it, mostly because correcting him would've meant admitting how much of that fight he genuinely didn't remember clearly himself.

"You're leaving out the part where you got launched into a river," Ana pointed out, unable to help herself.

"That part's not as flattering."

"It's the part that actually happened."

"Minor details."

The caravan hands laughed, and the conversation drifted easily from there — questions about Enlightenment, about what fighting monsters was actually like versus the stories, about whether the rumors of a unicorn sighting near Avalon a few months back had any truth to them. Kaelid caught Ana's eye at that last one, a silent, mutual agreement to let that particular rumor stay exactly as vague as it currently was.

The fire burned low eventually, conversation thinning into the comfortable quiet of a group settling toward sleep. Kaelid lingered a while longer, watching the flames, Ana beside him doing much the same.

"First day down," she said eventually, watching the fire. "Strange, thinking there's still days of this left before it's real."

"We've got some time before it gets real," Kaelid said. "Plenty of time to get used to the idea."

"Optimist."

"I contain multitudes, remember?"

She huffed out a quiet laugh, the same one from the front steps a few nights back, and the two of them sat there a while longer in comfortable silence before turning in for the night — the fire slowly dying down behind them, the caravan settling into its first full night on the road toward Raichas.

The second day brought them deeper into unfamiliar terrain — the flat farmland surrounding Avalon giving way gradually to rolling hills and sparse woodland, the road narrowing in places where the caravan had to slow to accommodate tighter turns between the trees.

Aria ranged further ahead than usual, restless with the change in scenery, calling back the occasional update on the road conditions or wildlife sightings that amounted to nothing more dangerous than deer bounding off through the underbrush.

"Feels good to actually see something new," she said, falling back to walk alongside Kaelid for a stretch. "No offense to Avalon. Love the place. But it's nice to remember the world's bigger than one city."

"I feel the same," Kaelid admitted. "Kind of wild, thinking about it. Three months ago the biggest thing I'd ever seen was my village's chapel. Now I'm out here looking at hills I didn't know existed."

"World gets a lot bigger once you start actually moving through it instead of just dreaming about it." She said it with the easy wisdom of someone who'd done a fair amount of moving herself, chasing her own goals long before Kaelid had ever left his village. "Wait until you see the ocean someday. Actually changes how you think about everything."

"You saying that from experience, or hope?"

Something flickered across her expression — brief and then gone, the kind of thing Kaelid was learning to recognize as the edge of her Cyprus grief surfacing before she pushed it back down. "Experience. A long time ago. I'll take you sometime, if we ever get the chance. It's worth seeing, even with everything that happened there."

He didn't push further, letting the offer sit as the quiet, meaningful thing it clearly was rather than turning it into a bigger conversation than she seemed ready for right now.

"I'd like that," he said instead, simple and sincere, and she gave him a small, grateful smile before falling back to her usual scouting position ahead of the caravan.

They made camp again as the light started fading, the routine of it becoming familiar — wagons circled, fire built, watch rotation settling into place. Ana took the healing supplies out for a routine check despite nobody actually needing them, old habits clearly not interested in taking a vacation just because the trip so far had been uneventful.

"You don't have to keep doing that," Kaelid said, watching her work through the familiar motions. "Nobody's hurt."

"I know. It's not really about that." She continued regardless, methodical and calm. "It's more that I feel better knowing everything's ready if it's needed. Habit, I guess. Maybe more than habit."

"Charity," he said, half-joking, half-genuine. "That's what I'd call it, if I had to guess. Always giving something, even when nobody's asking."

She glanced up at that, something considering in her expression. "Maybe. I've never really examined it that closely."

"Just an observation." He echoed her own words back at her from the night before, and she huffed out a small laugh.

"Fair enough."

The fire crackled between them, the caravan settling into its second night on the road, Avalon further behind them now than it had ever been in the months since either of them had called it home. Somewhere out past the treeline, an owl called once, distant and lonely, and the quiet of the unfamiliar countryside settled comfortably around the whole camp like something that had always belonged there.

Sleep came easier the second night, the day's walking finally catching up with everyone despite the lack of any real danger. Kaelid drifted off early for once, the steady rhythm of travel doing more to wear him down than any training session with Yami ever had.

He woke sometime before dawn to quiet movement near the fire — Ana, already up, feeding the last of the night's kindling into the embers to bring the flame back before the rest of camp stirred.

"You're up early," he said, voice still thick with sleep, sitting up against his bedroll.

"Couldn't sleep past a certain point. Old habit from home, I think — early risers, most of my family." She glanced over at him, faint amusement in her expression. "You're usually not far behind me most mornings either, come to think of it."

"Guess we match on that." He stretched, working out the stiffness of a night spent on hard ground, and moved to sit closer to the growing fire's warmth. "Anything happen on your watch?"

"Quiet. Nothing worth reporting." She settled back onto her own spot, watching the flame catch properly now. "It's strange, being out here again. Different direction than I'm used to walking, I suppose — usually I'd be heading the other way, back toward Eclipse, not toward Raichas."

"You visit home often? Before Avalon, I mean."

"When I could. Not as often as I probably should have." Something quieter settled over her expression for just a moment before it passed. "It's a long trip from wherever we happened to be stationed. Harder to justify once we started taking on real work."

Kaelid considered that a moment, turning over the shape of a life he'd never really asked about in detail before now — family in a capital city, a whole history in Raichas he was only just starting to hear pieces of, a mother he still knew almost nothing about beyond a single offhand comment days ago.

"You ever think about going back? For good, I mean. Not just visiting."

Ana was quiet for a long moment, staring into the fire like the answer might be sitting somewhere inside it.

"No," she said finally, certain in a way that surprised even her, judging by her expression. "Not anymore. Wherever this is — wherever we're building, with all of you — that's home now. Eclipse is just where I'm from."

Something warm settled in Kaelid's chest at that, quiet and unexamined, and he didn't trust himself to say anything clever in response. He just nodded, letting the moment sit exactly as sincere as she'd meant it, the fire slowly building back to life between them as the rest of camp began stirring around them into the day ahead.