Arc 7: Chapter 3: Into Winter
We traveled into the sprawling countryside of Reynwell. I left at night, taking a side gate out of the city to lessen the number of people who’d mark my exit. I kept my cloak’s hood up.
Only once did I look back, when I ascended the hills beyond the coastlands and looked down into the river valleys that fed into the bay. Dawn crept over the horizon, slowly illuminating the capital of the Accorded Realms. The city sprawled even from so far, a forest of bridges and churches and storm walls enclosing all that humanity. The Riven Sea looked cold and somehow lonely.
That would be my last sight of it for a long time. I could see a single ship out in the bay. It must have been massive, a carrack perhaps, but I could barely make it out from this distance.
An icy wind curled along the back of my neck. Even despite the warmth of auratic fire in me, I shivered at that gust. I turned to look into the endless expanse of wilderness and winter battered kingdoms that waited for me.
It suddenly seemed very quiet.
I spurred Morgause on.
Pure white snow carpeted the rolling fields. Hamlets and castles vassal to the great city I’d just left offered warmth and company, but I passed them all by. Bare trees with icicles hanging down from frozen branches grew more numerous as I left the croplands and tamer woods behind.
We traveled for many hours, then stopped in a dense copse of woods so my chimera could rest and I could eat. I used my crossbow to catch a wolpertinger the size of a big dog. It’d been hunting me for many miles.
I ate strips of the dead predator, tossing some of the uncooked ones to Morgause so she could snap them out of the air. I’d made a fire, and idly stared into it and let my thoughts drift where they would.
The cold woods were quiet and dim, the sky overcast and the canopy grown thick enough to shadow my nook. So it didn’t surprise me when they drew close.
The dead.