On The Road

The morning after the festival, those who had been selected to leave with the merchants were told to gather at the village square. Breakfast at the Bentley house was rather chilly, with Jacob and Mrs. Bentley not even looking at one another, much less talking.

However, as Jacob headed out the door, Mrs. Bentley broke the silence.

"If you ever need someplace to return to, come back anytime."

Jacob paused, but didn't turn around to face her, "Thanks, mom."

Outside the house, Jacob and Camelia parted ways as he went to go pick up Mia. So, Camelia headed to the square on her own. Usually, the streets would be bustling with people by now, but today they were mostly empty; everyone must have decided to sleep in after the festival yesterday.

At the square, Camelia met up with Rebecca and Father Dawson, who introduced her to the merchant Miles and his daughter Margaret, who would be taking them to the capital. Miles himself looked rather under the weather, which was understandable considering what happened to his caravan. He didn't say much, only nodding when his name was mentioned before leaving to check on the horses again. His daughter, on the other hand, greeted Camelia properly and thanked her for saving them. Camelia vaguely remembered her as one of the survivors that arrived by cart in the middle of the night.

Soon, the others who had been chosen to leave the village with the merchants arrived at the village square. Besides Jacob and Mia, four other youths had also been selected.

With everyone gathered, David appeared before them to give them some parting words, then promptly threw up and was led back home by some other villagers so that he could properly recover from his hangover. Instead, Father Dawson stepped up to give some words of advice.

"First things first: After you leave, you are free to do as you like, but I would recommend that you five come back to the village as soon as possible after reaching Sunfall city," He said, pointing to Mia and the four other youths that just arrived.

"As for you three," He continued, turning to Camelia, Rebecca, and Jacob, "you're also welcome to come back as soon as you can, but otherwise, go to the cathedral in Sunfall and give my letters of recommendation to whichever bishop happens to be there. I've already given the letters to Miles, so get them from him when you arrive."

Then, he turned back to address everyone, "You can choose to follow my recommendations, or you can choose to find your own path. However, regardless of what you do, be aware that the world is a dangerous place. It's not just demons, but also other humans that may cause you misfortune. The feelings of panic and fear you experienced just days before are the norm. There is a lot of effort put in by a lot of people to keep that reality at bay. That sense of safety is more consistent and apparent in the city than here, but you should never take it for granted. Protect yourselves. Help each other when you can. Think things through. Don't do anything stupid. And I doubt I need to tell you to enjoy yourselves."

With that, Father Dawson bid them farewell and Margaret split up the group, assigning them to different wagons. The caravan now only had ten wagons, half the number that it used to have, but still a sizable length.

Camelia wasn't assigned to a wagon; she couldn't help with driving them since she didn't know how to and, with her sword, there was no need for her to ride one. As such, she settled with a spot in the sky above the center of the caravan, just high enough for her to observe both ends of the train and watch out for any demons that may approach.

Leaving the village, the roads quickly turned from stone-paved to packed-dirt and even those quickly disappeared as more and more grass narrowed the trail the further they went. Soon, the only way to tell where to go was the periodic signposts nailed into the trees, which slowed their navigation.

Overall, the scenery didn't change much: there was just more and more forest. Occasionally, there would be a hill or ridge that the path would curve around, but it would never be so large as to cause too significant of a detour.

From her seat in the sky, Camelia saw the trees stretch onward for quite some distance. If she squinted, she could just barely make out the edge of the forest just before the horizon. Now that she was paying attention, Camelia realized that she could actually see quite far from her place in the air. Although, anything too far away was too small to make out clearly.

Being up high also gave her some time to herself.

{Hey, Neu...}

[Hmm…?]

{Well, it's just been a while since we last talked. What have you been doing?}

[Nothing much. I ran some experiments about preserving information inside our origin, which were pretty successful. I refined the control scheme for the sword. And I ran some battle simulations against water and earth type demons based on our previous experience with them. Oh yeah, about that, I feel like I probably need some more info on the water type for the sims to be more accurate. We killed that one a little too quickly for me to get any good measurements on its mobility. But, yeah… that's about it.]

{"Nothing much," he says...}

[What was I supposed to do? I had a lot of time. And since you started to actually sleep at night, I didn't have the opportunity to inform you sooner. By the way, why did you start to actually sleep at night? I just don't understand...]

{I've just been feeling tired… I guess...?}

[Interesting… perhaps interacting with all those people is more mentally exhausting than I assumed… well, I'll just add that to the backlog of things I'll need to investigate.]

{Any luck with that independent unbounded free flow form?}

[Independent unbounded free flow…? Is that what we're calling it now? Well, after I outlined and reexamined several methods for orienting our self within the world and isolated the common abstract features… you don't care… long story short, yes. In fact, I've been ignoring the anchors you've been sending me for a while now.]

{Wow, and I just said that as a joke too.}

[It was a good idea for an upgrade. Without it, there would be some unfortunate situations that would be difficult to get out of.]

{Okay then, what about your battle simulations?}

[Yeah, about those, there are many sets of assumptions that go into the sim, so explaining it all will take quite a while...]

{Well, we have time...}

So, Neu explained the variety of factors that he took into consideration, like the intelligence and mobility of the demons, the range, effect, and potency of their powers. He also voiced various suspicions he had about the details of their previous encounter.

[You know… I thought about it, and several things Father Dawson did in his fight against the earth types just don't add up.]

{Like what?}

[Well, he kicked the first earth type off the wagon, and then caught the second one by stabbing its arms with his daggers, right?]

{Yeah… that's odd.}

[We saw what happened to that farmer's arm when he was briefly grabbed by the earth type, and we saw that even tools like Jacob's steel hoe had started to crumble away just from being in contact with the demon at the moment he hit it. Knowing all of that… it just doesn't make sense how Father Dawson could fight the way he did.]

{And yet, he did.}

[So, there's something we're missing here.]

{There's also something else, though...}

[Huh…?]

{That earth type would rather run into and fight Father Dawson than face us… Is there something so obviously intimidating about this sword we have?}

[About that… there's one detail from a while back that I feel like is kinda useful, and there's also a related piece of speculation I have about this weapon which would be significant in determining how we fight earth types in the future.]

{Okay… go on.}

[When we first met Father Dawson with Kant, he tried to touch the sword, but then quickly retracted his hand just before he did.]

{You're right! I had forgotten about that.}

[Reexamining it now, it seems very similar to how we instinctively pulled our hand away that time we touched some remaining embers when cleaning the cooking stove in the morning. Father Dawson probably felt something similar.]

{Maybe… I had to heal my hand after touching those embers, but Father Dawson's hand seemed fine even after he pulled it back. Moreover, he didn't even touch the sword.}

[Yeah… well… I don't know how to explain that either, but I have a suspicion that it has something to do with soul auras.]

{I see… I think I know what your significant piece of speculation is now. Yeah, that'll probably be fine.}

[Just so we're clear, I suspect that we can probably slice the earth type without worrying about this sword crumbling away.]

{I mean, Father Dawson mentioned something about how the sword could cut through the soul aura of the water type, which would protect us from its power. So, it makes sense that it could also cut the soul aura of the earth type, which would negate its power of deterioration.}

[Exactly. Of course, tests are necessary to verify it, but with the adjustments I made to the control scheme, we also just might be able to move the sword fast enough such that it won't be able to avoid that initial surprise attack. Otherwise, our best choice would generally be to fight it with wind blades at close range while keeping our sword pretty far away to keep it from scaring the demon away.]

{Sounds fine, I think.}

The caravan continued its slow crawl through the forest until midday when it stopped to allow the animals some time to rest and for everyone to have lunch. Camelia descended to join the other girls with the cooking. Although she didn't know much about how to make the food, cutting up the ingredients was something she could do better and faster than any of the others. Then again, this was mainly because of the well-timed and controlled wind blades she used in addition to the actual knife.

Lunch was pottage, as usual, but merchant style this time with strips of meat jerky and dry biscuits instead of bread. Camelia thought it was both too hard and too salty for her tastes, but a little variety was nice. She still had to rely on the soup to get it all down though.

When the caravan started moving again, Camelia sought out Rebecca. Her morning talk with Neu left her with some questions about Father Dawson that she may be able to answer.

"Hey, what brings you down here?" Rebecca said cheerfully as Camelia flew down and settled into place next to the wagon, keeping pace with it.

Margaret, who was the one driving the wagon, briefly looked over, smiled and waved, before turning back to steer the horse away from a collision path with a tree.

Before Camelia could say anything, the wagon tilted, one of the wheels jumping over a tree root, and Rebecca was jolted out of her seat only to fall back into it.

"Ouch… I really am going to be covered with bruises at this rate..."

"Sorry, but this is how it goes when there isn't really a road," Margaret said, struggling to keep the wagon going straight with all the shaking.

"So when exactly do we get to a road?"

"When we get out of the forest."

"And how long until that?"

The image of the forest stretching until the horizon flashed through Camelia's mind.

"It's probably better if you didn't know..." Camelia commented, causing Margaret to laugh.

"If you say so," Rebecca conceded, defeated.

"Anyway, Rebecca, I have something to ask you about Father Dawson."

"Sure."

"Um… well, what do you know about how Father Dawson fights demons?"

The mention of demons caused a brief moment of silence in which both Rebecca and Margaret recovered from their shock.

"Well," Rebecca cleared her throat, "he's great at hunting them down… I mean, I'm not sure about the how part, I've never personally seen him do it..."

This wasn't working. As Rebecca struggled with her response, Camelia thought about how to best approach the issue.

"What about his daggers? You know, the ones he used for surgeries at that time with the survivors. Is there anything special about them?"

"Special…? Well, maybe… He's really attached to those things. He even goes to sleep with those things by his side. I think the only time he got mad at me was when I tried to take them off him when he was asleep next to the operating table-"

Another jolt of the wagon sent Rebecca bouncing in her seat again.

"Sorry," Margaret said a moment later.

"That's dangerous," Rebecca said, holding a hand over her mouth, "I almost bit my tongue... anyway, that's how it is. I don't know what you mean by special, but I guess they're special to him? Why do you ask anyway?"

"Well..."

Camelia explained how Father Dawson used the daggers to kill the demons which attacked the merchants.

"That's probably his vestment," Margaret butted in.

"What?" Camelia and Rebecca both exclaimed simultaneously.

"Well, members of the church have long had unique weapons that outperformed their normal counterparts, like blades that cut better or bows that shoot further, things like that. The church keeps the manufacturing process for these weapons secret, and they always have a few mysterious characteristics. Those weapons are only strong in the hands of their owner. Give it to anyone else, and it becomes even more useless than its normal counterpart. Also, the owner of the weapon will always be super attached to it, to the point that they will wear it on their person at all times. So, over time, we started calling these weapons their vestments."

"I see…" Camelia nodded, "I guess that explains it..."

"That's so weird..." Rebecca mumbled, shaking her head.

"You think so?" Margaret laughed, "I would say that it's fascinating."

Another tree root gave the wagon a jolt.

"And, I would say watch the road," Rebecca cried out, massaging her bruised bottom.

"I'm watching," Margaret replied, "and I'm not seeing a road."

All three of them laughed at that.