Chapter 464: POV Pilgrim

Meli hated change.

Unfortunately for her, she had not been left with much choice in the matter. Her grove was, well, not wholly beyond repair, but it would take years of slow recovery to get it back to the way it had once been. Possibly even decades, considering the damage done to the animal population. Whole herds of boars and deer were dead, drastically lowering their numbers. All but two of the silver bears who had once roamed the forest were gone, and those two were already migrating elsewhere due to the forest fire.

That was a whole extra disaster right there. The fires could have been worse, but not by too much. The rain hadn’t come for four days, which gave the slowly spreading fire plenty of time burn more than half of the trees down to their roots. Even if Meli regrew her flower fields, it truly would be decades before the trees that had once surrounded her grove grew back to even half of their previous splendor.

The final chop that cracked her trunk were the bees. All of the local hives were either dead or fled. Meli knew that they would come back eventually; it wasn’t as though the forest would just stay a withered mess of ash and soot forever. All of the plants and animals that had once thrived on the small patch of land would do so again, eventually. But with the bees gone, Meli found that her motivation to stay had gone with them. She didn’t have the magic to make plants pollinate and grow on their own, so without bees, the progress would be even slower than she feared it would have been with them. Aside from planting seeds and clearing the land of unhelpful debris, there wasn’t much for her to do without the help of bees.

No, there was no point in wallowing in her burnt grove. She could plant herself deep and sleep for a few years to pass the time, but her sap rebelled at the thought. She had a new motivation burning inside her core like the hateful fire that had taken her grove from her.

Meli wanted vengeance.

While her two classes weren’t the best for growing plants or tending to magic beasts, Meli was a capable fighter. She knew she wasn’t a beast on the battlefield the way some people were, but she could hold her own. Meli had been attacked twice now by Demons and both times she had come out worse for it. Certainly, she was alive and those who attacked her weren’t, but she had lost too much. She was tired of being on the defensive. Meli wouldn’t let any of Samleos’ foul monsters attack her grove again. She was going to bring the fight to them, this time.

Not that she really knew where to start when it came to enacting her revenge. Meli was a fighter, but she wasn’t exactly a battle-hungry warrior, either. She knew that Demons could be found on the borders of the empire, but she was pretty sure that if she just ran off to the closest Demon-infested land she would just get herself killed. She needed some kind of direction, as well as support. Fortunately for Meli, she did have a good idea of who she could go to for help with her vengeance.

All she had to do now was find her.

The first place Meli had checked with was Brightstone. She knew that Jadis’ lover, the orc woman Bridget, had family there since that had been where she had gone to alert the Nephilim to the attack on Cold Brook. However, when she had arrived, she found that the farm she had briefly visited that day half a moon ago was completely abandoned. The large stone houses stood empty and all the personal possessions were gone. The only people she found were a couple of sour-faced guards who were arguing with a handsome orc man who did not look like a farmer about who was supposed to take ownership of the fields now that Clan Warsong had vacated the premises.

Meli hadn’t bothered trying to talk to the men there. They didn’t seem like the type who would be helpful, or the sort who she would want to trade any words with even under normal circumstances. She had left Brightstone disappointed, but not disheartened, since she knew of another place where she might find Jadis.

Falk’s Reach probably should have been her first visit, since it was closer than Brightstone, but Meli had honestly thought that speaking to Jadis’ family, or extended family, was the best way to start her approach. That, and she still felt a twinge of irrational guilt every time she thought of the displaced villagers. Then again, maybe just making a beeline straight for the warrior was the right call. Jadis had directly invited Meli to join her, hadn’t she?

It seemed that the direct approach was the only way, as there wasn’t really anyone for Meli to talk to at Falk’s Reach, either. Apparently, Jadis and her flying wagon-ship-thing had already come and gone a few days before Meli’s arrival. Many of the villagers were still there, but some had left to be with family in other villages while a few had gone with Jadis to seek work in the capital. Those who remained that she spoke to were only able to tell her the bare minimum of information, most of which she already knew. Namely, that Fortune’s Favored was located in the imperial capital of Eldingholt. Whereabout in the capital and how she was supposed to find them, they couldn’t say.

Undeterred, Meli set out for the capital city the next day. She knew where Eldingholt was, even if she had never visited the supposedly colossal city. All Dryads knew where Eldingholt was, since it had been built around the base of one of the First Trees, Eikr. Meli had never seen any of the first, though she had always planned on going on a pilgrimage to Askr or Thollr, or maybe even Lindr. Eikr had never been high on her list since she knew the sacred tree had been surrounded by a city of all things, which had always seemed sacrilegious to her. At least Villthyrial had a temple in the city, so Meli knew that the ancient tree would never be mistreated, but still. She felt the presence of city walls surrounding one of her god’s most glorious creations would spoil the experience if she were ever to pay homage.

When she eventually found herself standing on a hill overlooking the impossibly vast collection of stone walls and shining towers, all crowned by the most beautiful tree she had ever seen in her life, Meli had to admit that she regretted putting the trip off.

Staring in awe at Eikr’s splendor was not Meli’s reason for coming to Eldingholt, though. After spending a few moments in respectful prayer to Villthyrial for making such a glorious tree, Meli headed for the gates of the city that she could see on the northern side of the wall. That was where the wide, well-maintained cobblestone road led and was also where hundreds of people were filing in and out of from what she could see. Meli couldn’t even begin to guess how many people lived in a settlement the size of Eldingholt, but she imagined that a person like Jadis was notable enough that at least a few of the people she could see entering the city would know where the Nephilim lived. If nothing else, her giant black beast of a flying wagon had to draw attention. Someone could point her in the direction of the strange creation and she could take it from there.

Even as Meli had the thought, she saw a large, bulbous thing float slowly around the western edge of Eikr’s branches. It only took her a moment to realize that the flying ovoid was a floating wagon, just like Jadis’ vehicle. Only, instead of painted black, this one had been painted white with a blue eagle heraldry on the side. Clearly, this flying wagon wasn’t Jadis’ wagon, since Meli knew those colors represented the empire.

Maybe asking where the floating wagons came from wasn’t going to be as useful a question as Meli had presumed.

It took some time for her to cross the distance from the hill she stood on to reach the city gates, which only further cemented the staggering immensity of both Eikr and the city surrounding it. Once Meli was near the gates, though, she politely got into the long line that had been formed by the locals rather than trying to sneak in through the huge open arches of the towering city walls. She knew well enough from stories her family had told her that those arches held some kind of potent magical protection, and Meli wasn’t interested in testing them. She at least had to give the city credit that the open design of the walls helped relieve some of the stifling feeling such places normally had.

The people who were in line ahead of Meli as well as those who subsequently queued up behind her gave her a wide berth. Not that they seemed scared of her, but certainly confused and respectful. Dryads didn’t normally spend much time with the other races, so it seemed likely to her that many of the people who were so openly gawking in her direction had never seen one of her kind in person before.

Actually, maybe some had seen at least one Dryad before. Tegwyn lived with Jadis in Eldingholt, supposedly, so that meant he could be a familiar face to the general populace. She doubted there would be any other Dryads in the city, at least not on a regular basis.

“Excuse me,” Meli called out to a middle-aged human man who was leading a donkey laden with wrapped packages. “Do you know where I would find either Jadis the Nephilim, or Tegwyn the Dryad?”

The man blinked at her like she had just sprouted an onion out of her nose. After a moment, she realized that she hadn’t actually spoken in the common imperial tongue, but her native Olea. Restraining a sigh of frustration, Meli repeated her question in the correct language.

“Ah,” the man said, looking at least less confused, if not less apprehensive. “I’m sorry m’lady, but I don’t know. I’ve heard of Lady Jadis, her being the Nephilim with the demon lover and all that, but I don’t actually know where she lives in the city.”

Meli received similar answers from everyone else she asked while waiting in line. It seemed that pretty much everyone had heard of Jadis, though their stories of her exploits varied widely depending on who she asked. Even the stories that were clearly about the same event had some significant differences in their details from one person’s recounting to another.

“—and then she rode the dragon all the way from Kalters Wall to Far Felsen. That’s when the Lady Jadis was inspired to create her flying airship,” the matronly woman nodded knowingly. “She learned some kind of secret dragon magic when she was riding the great beast. It only makes sense, since dragons are so big and all yet they still fly. Wouldn’t you say that’s right, Neely?”

“I thought I heard someone say the ships are full of hot air,” the thin man standing next to the woman commented with a mild shrug. “And that’s how they fly.”

“Only thing filled with hot air around here is your arse,” the woman laughed and slapped the man’s shoulder dismissively. “Oh! Beg your pardon, Lady Dryad. I didn’t mean to offend with my coarse speech.”

“If farts offended me, I wouldn’t spend so much time with animals,” Meli replied in all seriousness.

Somehow, her earnest response must have been interpreted as a joke, since both the woman and the rest of the people who had drawn close while they all waited in line let out loud guffaws of laughter.

“Farmers know what that’s like too, Lady Dryad!” the man with the donkey commented while he affectionately patted the animal on the head. “And I can’t say as I ever saw a need to complain about it. Ah! Seems it’s our turn!”

While Meli had been distracted by the interesting but unhelpful stories the many people in line had told her, time had passed and she had made it to the gates. The guards had to be efficient at their jobs to get through so many people so quickly.

Watching the man and his donkey, she saw that the guards checked him with a Detect stone, as well as quickly searched his belongings for any sign of Demons. The guard also questioned him about his name, his reason for coming to the city, as well as whether he had a residence in the city or where he would be staying otherwise. Overall, it was a fast and no-fuss interaction, though Meli only caught part of it as she was addressed by a different guard at the checkpoint after only a few moments.

“Welcome to Eldingholt, ma’am,” the elf guardswoman greeted her politely. “May I have your name for our records?”

“Meli,” Meli responded shortly with no intention of revealing her family lineage to so many strangers.

“Thank you,” the guard replied smoothly. “And while I wouldn’t ordinarily ask a venerable Dryad such as yourself to disclose their business, at times like these… I’m sure you understand.”

Meli could easily guess what the elf meant. The city was probably on a higher alert than normal thanks to the demonic invasion.

“I’m here to visit Jadis. The Nephilim,” Meli added the second part just in case Jadis was a more common name than she expected. “Do you know where she lives?”

“I don’t know myself,” the guard shook her head. “But I can tell you the way to the temple district. The priests there would most certainly know.”

The guardswoman quickly filled Meli in on a relatively simple set of directions and then let her pass through the gates into the actual city. She wasn’t sure, but Meli guessed that since she was a Dryad, she was getting some kind of special treatment as she was let inside even faster than the people who had been waiting in line around her. Not that Meli spent much time thinking about the guards or the lines. Her whole attention was occupied by the massive throng of people moving through the city streets before her.

Meli had thought the line leading into the city had been a crowd. Now that she was inside, she realized just how wrong her understanding of the word had been.

There had to be a thousand people at least in the large square, with thousands more lining the streets that radiated outward between the towering stone buildings. There were so many different sights and sounds from people and creatures that Meli was almost dizzy from the experience. Brightly colored flags were waving everywhere, choking the air in conjunction with the voices of vendors hawking their wares and the sound of some unfamiliar music playing. The sheer numbers were simply impossible for Meli to describe. She had never in her life seen anything like it.

Making her way through the vast press of people was an absolute nightmare. The sights, the smells, the sounds… it was all too much for her. Meli had never understood how anyone could want to live in a city, just by the descriptions she had of the places. Experiencing the city directly made her want to run screaming back to her burned out forest. By the time she had made it halfway across the huge open square, Meli very nearly did turn around and make a hasty retreat.

The only thing that kept Meli from making a run for it was the thought that she was in Eldingholt for a reason. She needed to strike back at the cultists and Demons who had destroyed her forest and grove. And to succeed in that goal, she needed to find Jadis. No one else would be able to aid her in that mission the way the insanely powerful giant could.

Meli kept an inner chant going inside of her head as she slowly and carefully made her way through the intense crowd. Her one saving grace was that most people in the city gave her as much space as they possibly could, just like the people in line to get into the city had done. There were a few who were either brave enough or impolite enough to try and talk to her, but Meli did her best to wave such interactions off after the first turned out to be a farmer asking her to bless his crops. Meli didn’t have any power to make crops grow, nor did she have any interest in interceding with Villthyrial on the farmer’s behalf. He could do his own praying.

It wasn’t until Meli had made it all the way over to one of the crowded roads that radiated out from the city square that she realized she didn’t remember where she was supposed to go from there.

“What are you doing here?”

Meli twitched as the gruff voice pulled her out of her racing thoughts. She had been standing off to one side in the shadow of a vegetable stall, trying to decide what she was going to do about finding the temple district and had not noticed anyone approaching her. Not that it would have been hard to sneak up on a person in such a crush of noise and activity, but Meli was still surprised to be taken off guard so easily. Especially since the person who had addressed her was a beast of a therion.

The man was tall, broad, had large, curved horns, and was covered in dark fur that had light spots around his head and arms. Based on all the gray around his muzzle, the therion was well past middle age, maybe even elderly, but his muscular physique spoke of a highly active lifestyle. He was wearing armor and was carrying a large, curved sword at his side, which also drew attention to the silver buckle the man had on his belt. Meli had never seen one in person, but she recognized the symbol on the buckle as one that marked the therion as an elite among elites. This man had surpassed CLR one hundred.

The symbol was impressive, truly, but what really caught Meli’s eye was the look of the therion. She felt almost certain that she had seen him somewhere before, though where exactly that had been she couldn’t remember at the moment.

“This isn’t a place for Dryads,” the dark-furred therion rumbled in his growling tone when Meli didn’t immediately respond.

“No, it is not,” Meli agreed. “But I need to find someone here, so I don’t have much choice.”

“Need to get to Villthyrial’s temple?” he asked as his yellow eyes drifted across the crowd passing them by.

“Yes,” Meli answered. “Unless you know where I can find Jadis the Nephilim? Or Tegwyn, who is a Dryad like me.”

For some reason, her answer caused the man to jerk his head back to look at her appraisingly. After a second or two of staring, he let out an explosive snort of amusement.

“Of course. Her luck would bring us together, wouldn’t it.”

“I don’t understand what that means.”

“I know where Jadis lives,” the man said without explaining his odd statement. “And that curly-horned Dryad.”

“Oh, that’s good,” Meli blinked in pleased surprise. “Can you tell me where to go? I want to get out of this… mess as fast as possible.”

“I’ll take you there,” the old therion said as he started to push his way into the crowd. “I was going to visit that pup soon anyway. How fast can you run?”

While Meli wouldn’t ordinarily follow along with strangers so easily, she was lost enough that she was ready to grasp any help that came her way. Besides, she doubted a CLR one hundred person like this therion was a threat to her. The empire wouldn’t let someone with that kind of power walk their streets freely if they were the type to cause harm to others.

“Agility is my greatest attribute,” Meli responded as she followed closely behind the big warrior. “I can outrun anyone. Except for Jadis,” she amended her statement. “She has me beat.”

“Hmph,” the man made a noise in his throat. “We’ll see.”

Navigating his way through the crowd with a ruthlessness that Meli could admire, the therion led her to a section of the road that was mostly clear. There were some people on it, but those people were all running at a fast speed, far faster than any of the crowd were likely capable of moving. Nowhere near the speeds she could reach, but still fast.

“Keep up,” was all the old therion said before abruptly sprinting off at a prodigious pace.

Meli immediately dashed after the man. She was able to catch up with him easily enough thanks to her high Agility. However, once she had, his speed picked up significantly. She was able to match his pace once again, but as soon as she did, he went even faster. It wasn’t long before Meli was forced to use some of her self-enhancement spells to boost her Agility even further just to match the warrior’s insane speed. Even then, he still managed to go faster, forcing her to push herself to her very limits. In no time at all, she was panting with the effort to keep up with the therion, her bare feet pounding on the cobblestones and her old toga flapping wildly in the wind. She very nearly collided with several much slower runners as she was forced to make tight turns at incredible speeds just to stay within arms reach of the old man.

The most frustrating part of the whole experience was the fact that she could tell the therion wasn’t even going his full speed. In fact, he wasn’t even breathing hard.

“Alright, we’re here.”

The words almost didn’t penetrate Meli’s focus, so intent was she on matching the man’s speed. When his words finally registered, she realized that he was slowing down. Following his lead, Meli slowed her own pace until the two were moving barely faster than a brisk jog for a few dozen more yards until eventually coming to a stop in front of a large three-story building.

“We’re here?” Meli echoed, nearly out of breath.

Looking up at the building, Meli saw that there was a large sign attached to the wall over the large entryway door. The black sign read in large, white letters, “Fortune’s Favored – Mercenary Company”. Below that large sign was a second, smaller sign that read “Ahlstrom Aviation”. While Meli understood the first sign well enough, she didn’t have a clue what the second sign was supposed to mean.

“She’s been busy,” the powerful old therion said as he looked up at the two signs.

“I guess,” Meli shrugged, not really sure what the standard level of activity would be for someone like Jadis. “Do we… just go in?”

The therion didn’t answer right away, his eyes drawn to the left of the front door. Meli followed his gaze and saw that there was a large wrought iron gate closed across an alleyway between the building and the one next to it. There was an orc man standing on the other side of the gate, watching the two of them. He had on armor and was leaning on a pike, so Meli assumed he was a guard of some sort. He couldn’t be an imperial guard, though, since his tabard was black instead of white and the heraldry on the chest was a very simple three-point star, painted in stark white.

“You’d be Noll, wouldn’t you?” the orc man said once the therion fully turned to face him.

“Yes,” the old man said in acknowledgement of his name.

“We have orders to let the ‘old wolf’ in should you be coming around,” the orc said in an accent Meli had some trouble following. “I’d ask you to take the test, but there ain’t no one who can fake running at those speeds. Who’s the stick?”

Meli frowned in confusion at the reference to some kind of test, then scowled further when she realized that the orc had just called her a stick. However, she didn’t get the chance to object since the orc had immediately moved to open the gates while Noll answered the man’s question.

“She’s looking for Jadis,” the old therion replied.

“Who isn’t,” the orc laughed as he let them both in through the gate.

Noll led the way and Meli followed behind him, quickly passing through the alleyway to find a bustling scene of noisy activity. Just behind the two large buildings was a huge stockyard filled with all kinds of lumber supplies as well as many large racks with dark wool cloth drying on them. She could see there were a few smaller buildings off to one side, one of which appeared to be a forge while another looked like it had been made almost entirely out of glass. There were people moving around two and from those smaller buildings as well as the four large buildings that seemed to be directly linked to the yard. However, most of the activity in the large, wide space was centered around a strange wooden effigy that had been constructed near the center of the yard.

At first, Meli wasn’t sure of what she was looking at. The wooden timbers almost looked like the ribs and spine of some great beast. There were no arms or legs though, nor was there a head on the bizarre construction. She really had no idea what it could be until she saw one of the workers gathered around the huge thing attach a panel of black cloth to the timbers. Witnessing that addition helped her realize that the strange thing was some larger variation of Jadis’ airship, except with none of the skin on yet.

Not one of the workers gathered around the half-constructed flying wagon had noticed her or Noll enter the area, but one of the people moving between the other buildings did. Meli recognized the woman immediately, too. She had been at Cold Brook with Jadis. In fact, Meli was certain that the brunette human was one of the local villagers. Hadn’t her name been… Thea?

“Noll,” the woman said with some surprise as she approached them. “Hello! Ah, M—Meli, you came here, too? T—together?”

“Sort of,” Noll replied with a one-shouldered shrug.

“Hello, Thea,” Meli greeted the girl with a polite bow. “I came here to speak with Jadis about joining her war party. Is she here?”

Thea looked even further surprised, but didn’t voice any confusion. Instead, she pointed off to the side of the forge where a great deal of steam and smoke was pouring from an open wall.

“One of Jadis is, ah, over there.”

Following the direction of the human’s finger, Meli spotted the figure she had missed at first glance. When she did, her heart skipped a beat as she felt her sap quicken with a flush of unexpected heat.

Jadis was standing to the side of the building, wearing not intimidating black armor, but a pair of short cloth pants that exposed her legs all the way to her thighs and a white tunic that had no sleeves and a deep neckline. She had clearly just come out of the forge, as she looked like she had been sweating with hard work and had some soot marking her snow-pale skin. She must have been hot, too, as she was in the middle of dumping a large bucket of water over her head.

The wet display of Jadis’ tunic clinging to her toned body was… distracting. Meli only realized that all conscious thought had fled her mind after Jadis had turned her way and grinned broadly. Upon seeing that dazzling smile, Meli’s stomach leapt in a peculiar way that she hadn’t felt in more moons than she cared to count.

The first coherent thought she was able to put together before Jadis crossed the distance to join them was one she realized moments later was wholly uncharacteristic of her usual way of thinking. Not that she could deny the truth of her feelings on the matter, at least in the moment.

Maybe change wasn’t all that bad after all.

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