Chapter 115: An Unexpected Find
Simon stayed in Lyndon Hills for only one night before he headed north to Kawsburl. He probably could have gone right back to the city of Darndelle after that, but he continued because the story resonated so much with him.
The hills part of Lyndon Hills was no joke, either, that town sat at the edge of the bottom lands, and the edge of proper roads, so from that point on Simon was reduced to game trails and doubling back to avoid washouts.
It was tough going, but honestly, it wasn’t so bad. The weather was nice, and the game was plentiful, so he took his time with it. As a mountain range slowly rose above him to the north he wished he had a camera to capture the rugged beauty of the vista, but sadly he had no way to capture it.
“I guess I’m just going to have to learn to paint,” he sighed after another attempt to get his mirror to ‘take a picture’ for him. The thing would faithfully render what it saw, of course, when asked, but it had all the soul of an architect's elevation or an engineer's technical drawing.
On his third night out of Lyndon Hills he was ambushed by a small nest of goblins. Fortunately he woke up before the first blow was struck and had time to smash the head of the first one to come at him.
After that, he used a word of lesser force to leap to the top of a large boulder and used his bow to take them out one at a time while they searched for him. Many times he missed the shot and had to fire twice which lead to him chastising himself.
“You can’t use magic to solve everything,” he grumbled. “That’s how you’re going to die horribly one day!”
That was his mantra these days, both because he thought he was using it too much and because he needed to resist the urge to drain these little guys dry like some kind of energy vampire. The very fact that he still felt the urge to after weeks without uttering the word Zyvon was worrying to him. It was like quitting smoking or something.
The rest of the trip beyond that was fine, and after a few more days of walking and a day spent waiting out the rain, he finally found the town he was looking for. Village was probably the better word, though. It had seen better days.