Matabar

A small rock struck a barely-visible shimmer, which looked like something akin to a soap bubble, bounced aside, and fell to the ground.

Ardi, whose foot had just set off a flicker of a magical seal, nearly followed it, collapsing onto the dewy morning grass.

"Damn it, boy!" Yelled Yonatan, flipping a ten-kso coin to Katerina. "I’m starting to think that you win on purpose every time I bet against you!"

Ardan only offered a faint smile in return. He set his staff aside, sat down on a nearby log, and began to breathe steadily. Cassara, who was juggling stones nearby, tossed them over her shoulder and handed him a flask of water.

"Thanks," the young man muttered, taking several deep, greedy gulps.

Relief settled over him.

The sun above was no longer scorching, but the winds had turned from mere bites to sharp teeth, making everyone, including Ardan, huddle into their cloaks.

He didn’t need as much warm clothing as the others, who had donned thick shirts and jackets in a desperate bid to fend off the wind that whipped across the flat plains. But he still felt the chill just the same.

The farther they moved from the Alcade, the weaker Ergar’s gifts seemed to become, as did the part of him that was half Matabar.

Admittedly, his night vision was still sharper than most (though not as sharp as it had been in Evergale), his sense of smell was quite keen (but he could no longer track a person by scent), and, sure, he was probably a bit stronger than the average man. But even so, among the settlers — not to mention the Cloaks — there were now those who could lift more than Ardi, and he had tested this theory by staging a little competition.

"You’re too hard on yourself, little one," Cassara whispered so softly he barely caught it. "What happened wasn’t your fault. They would’ve attacked us anyway. With you there, without you there… It didn’t matter. They wanted the spoils from the Wanderer."

Ardi knew that, somewhere deep down. But it had been ten days now, and he still couldn’t shake the feeling that he could have done more. Should have done more.

And maybe then...

He glanced toward the settlers. Of the nearly sixty that had been there before, fewer than forty remained alive, most of them women and children.

The children spent their time in the wagons, where the surviving families — albeit begrudgingly — had let them ride. But the women…

For one thing, they all had to walk now, and that said a lot about Yonatan.

It was strange how Ardi’s views on the man had changed. Just half a month ago, he had seen Yonatan, the head of the Cloaks, as harsh, even cruel. He’d also seen Mart as nothing more than a chatterbox with a big heart and strange morals. But now... Now everything had flipped upside down.

Mart wouldn’t let anyone near his wagon and stubbornly refused to share his supplies, trailing at the very rear of the caravan and keeping a respectful distance, but he was never out of sight.

Yonatan, on the other hand, could’ve easily left the settlers to fend for themselves, but instead, he’d taken on the role of the marshals, none of whom had survived that night. The Cloaks could’ve reached Presny much faster without the burden of the settlers, but Yonatan never gave that order.

The problems didn’t end with the need for most to walk, though. That was only the beginning.

Life in the small towns, villages, and farms of the north was hard, leading to a very real division of labor between men and women. And now, after the northern women had lost those who had once mended their wagons, stoked the fires, and defended their lives and property... It wasn’t hard to imagine how much they were struggling.

And so were the husbands whose wives had fallen to stray bullets. Their children called for their mothers, not understanding where they’d gone. Someone had to watch over them, feed them, and talk to them.

And as much as the survivors wanted to help, they knew that in such dangerous circumstances, helping others meant putting themselves and their own loved ones at risk. And so, the once joyful caravan, full of hope for a new, brighter future — though not without its own share of problems and conflicts — had become a gray, dreary shadow of its former self.

"You’re improving," Cassara nodded toward the stone he had deflected.

"Maybe," Ardi shrugged. "I don’t have much to compare it to."

Ever since he had been unable to help during the siege of the camp, Ardan, as had happened twice before in his life, had thrown himself into learning.

He wasn’t a particularly accurate shot, and the strength of the mountain hunters faded more the farther away he got from home. So, the only thing he had been able to come up with to avoid being a burden — either to himself or to others, now or in the future — was to start studying magic. And not in the way he had done it before, for his own pleasure and curiosity, but with the intent of actually using it.

Unfortunately, as Mart had correctly pointed out, Ardan had no grasp of fundamental theory. And so, for the past ten days, as he’d tried day after day to deflect one of Cassara’s stones using the Universal Shield spell, it had truly been a pitiful sight to behold.

If one were to follow the tenets of his second-favorite subject, the science of numbers, it could all be boiled down to a simple formula.

There was a problem: a stone was flying toward your gut. It did so at a random time, at a random speed, from an unexpected direction. And there was a solution: the Universal Shield Spell. It seemed easy, simple, and clear.

"You can cast the shield now without preparation," the vampire insisted.

Yes, at first, they had started with the basics. Ardan would take out a book, open the seal in advance, and, as Yonatan had put it, "the show would begin."

Standing twenty paces away, Cassara would hurl a stone at him without warning, and Ardi’s task was to cast the shield before the makeshift projectile was upon him.

Cassara hadn’t held back, and each mistake had left a painful reminder behind in the form of a brightly-colored bruise on the young man’s body.

At the beginning, nothing had worked at all. Ardi’s body had instinctively tried to dodge or, at worst, block the stone with his staff.

Then, once he had learned to control those reflexes, he’d run into the issue of simply not being fast enough. The stone would hit him before he could even form half the seal. Fortunately, Atta’nha and Skusty’s lessons had taught him enough discipline and concentration that he could avoid losing the Ley energy he was using to create the seal. Whenever the magical construct fell apart, Ardi was usually able to pull back most of the energy before it dissipated into the air.

The term "most of it" applied here because, for every ten failed attempts, he lost about one ray of his Star.

And with only seven rays in total, the math quickly turned against him.

By the third day of their training sessions — which took place constantly, since they were mostly traveling on foot now — Ardan had finally deflected his first stone. But true triumph was still a long way off.

The real problem was that Ardi always knew the stone was coming. This meant that he could prepare in advance: open his grimoire, find the seal, focus on it, and so on.

It was like having a brawl in a tavern where everyone gets a chance to warm up before throwing punches.

And so they’d moved on to the next stage, where Cassara would attack him without warning, at completely random times.

And that’s where the trouble had begun in earnest, because Ardi could barely manage the spell without preparation. He simply couldn’t manifest the formula from his mind into reality, even though he’d memorized it so well that he could draw it even in a delirious state.

Recalling the words of the unknown author of his magic textbook, the mysterious Aean’Hane, Ardan had even been tempted to carve the Shield seal into his staff. But he’d always dismissed that idea with the same argument — his staff wasn’t infinite. And if he kept trying to solve problems by taking the easiest path, it wouldn’t end well for him in the long run.

It was just like hunting.

If you always relied on stalking the watering hole for your food, sure, you’d be well-fed for a few weeks, but eventually, the animals would stop coming.

No, he needed a different solution.

But the answer lay in a realm to which Ardan had no access. At least not yet. And this was where the comparison to the science of numbers came into play.

Whenever Ardan faced a problem he didn’t know how to solve, he followed a fairly simple algorithm. If he had the right formula — or even several of them — he would figure out how to apply or modify them to solve the issue. If he didn’t have a formula, he spent time deriving his own. But in order to do that, he needed to not just memorize formulas, as most students did, but understand how they worked. He needed to grasp the very principles behind their interactions.

That way, there would be no need to memorize anything. The knowledge would settle naturally into his mind, becoming second nature.

That was what Atta’nha had taught him. Knowing that moss grows on the north side of a tree might help you find your way home, but understanding why it grows there would open up a whole new world of questions and answers.

That was the root of all his problems.

Ardan didn’t understand why the seals worked the way they did. He had some guesses about the purpose of certain runes, but… Why were they inscribed where they were? What was the difference between one seal and another?

The Stranger’s — as Ardi had taken to calling the unknown author of the Star Magic book — writing hadn’t explained any of this. Maybe the author himself hadn’t known, given how long ago he had lived. Or maybe he’d considered such knowledge unnecessary for the use of Star Magic.

Yes, Ardan could still just memorize a seal. Which he had, in fact, done. And even without understanding its workings, he had managed to make its execution automatic.

All it took was a thought, and the Universal Shield Seal would form beneath his feet. From there, all he’d need to do was to slam his staff against the ground to connect his own Ley energy with the energy flowing through the Ley Lines.

At first, the seal had taken a few seconds to form — which usually resulted in a meeting with a stone — then it had appeared faster and faster, until it could manifest almost instantly, as Gleb had mentioned it should.

"You can still ask Mart for help."

Cassara nodded toward the mage sitting a little ways off. Every time Ardan and Cassara began their lessons, the man would put aside whatever he was doing and watch them intently, occasionally jotting something down in his travel journal.

"I don’t trust him," Ardi muttered, and noticed the thin smile on the vampire’s face.

"When you tried to slit his throat, it was a different situation," he added.

"Perhaps," her smile grew a little bigger.

Ardi wanted to reply, but Yonatan approached and laid his bandaged hand on the young man’s shoulder. The head of the Cloaks wasn’t human, not in the usual sense of the word.

It had been less than two weeks since his leg and arm had been broken, and yet he was already walking with only a slight limp. Every morning, he bragged about his revolver skills as part of his recovery.

And, by the Sleeping Spirits, Ardi had to admit once again that even the slickest cowboy on Polskih’s farm couldn’t hold a candle to Yonatan Kornosskiy. Like a circus performer, Yonatan could draw his iron from his holster faster than the eye could follow, and on a dare, he could even hit a tossed coin at least four times in mid-air.

He even claimed it was easy to do — one just needed to find the moment when the coin was hanging in the air and shoot slightly ahead of it.

Ardi had tried.

He’d nearly shot Katerina.

Since then, whenever Ardan practiced shooting, the others made sure to stay behind him.

"Honestly, kid, if you think about it, you’re the weird and untrustworthy one, not that city mage," Yonatan snorted, blowing his nose and flipping an obscene gesture at the scowling Katerina.

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"Why’s that?" Ardan asked, bewildered.

"Because, youngster," Yonatan smirked and clapped him on the back, "tell me this: what kind of normal person — I’m not even talking about a mage — risks their neck for people they’ve never met before in their life? And most likely will never meet again?"

"But my oath…"

"Oath, schmoath," Yonatan coughed after catching Cassara’s disapproving glance. "Forget your village. You’re not in Evergale anymore. And if you keep sticking your neck out for every sad sack you meet, one day, you’re going to hang yourself with your own noose."

Maybe Yonatan was right. Even the law of the hunt said that an old and sick hunter had to leave the pack so as not to weaken it. After all, during times of Hunger, even the young and strong could barely feed themselves.

But... Ardi had never liked that lesson, nor Ergar’s insistence on it. Something in him resisted that truth, though he wasn’t sure what it was, exactly.

"Then why do you serve in the Second Chancery?" He asked the Cloak.

"Let me think," Yonatan made an exaggerated show of pondering this question. "When you’ve done three years of a twenty-year sentence, and some slick-looking man with clean hands offers you a little deal... Does that answer your question?"

Ardi glanced from Yonatan to Cassara. If the man really had been serving time in a labor camp, where the Second Chancery had found him and taken him away for their mutant experiments, how did Cassara know his father?

"Ivan was the man," Yonatan smirked crookedly. "And while I would love to tell you a tearjerker about an abandoned son… Damn the Face of Light, nope. It’s not like that. I was just a dumb kid. Small brain, big dick..."

"You’re flattering yourself," Katerina winked. "Your brain’s way bigger than what’s in your pants."

The Cloaks burst out laughing, and Yonatan, tipping his hat like a stage performer, gave a theatrical bow. Ardi had seen such performers before — they sometimes came to Evergale during the festivals.

"Well, what about you, Katerina?" Ardi asked, turning to the sharpshooter.

"My story’s nothing special, Ardi," the woman replied with a chuckle. "My parents drank themselves to death and sold me to an underground profit house."

"And what’s that?"

"Profit houses are these… I don’t know how to explain it… Buildings in the Metropolis," Katerina interrupted her own indecisiveness, her tone soft but controlled, though Ardi noticed the slight tremor in her jaw and the brief dimming of her gaze. It hurt her to speak of this. "They’re huge houses, with several grand staircases, maybe five floors in total, all owned by one person or a company. And then the rooms and spaces are rented out."

"Sounds like a dream to me," drawled one of the other Cloaks, a man in his thirties with a high forehead and a long scar across his neck. "You build one of those and that’s it — just sit there and count the exes."

"And why’s the house underground? How?" Ardi couldn’t help but ask.

"That’s just what they call them," Katerina explained. "It means ’illegal.’ Like, illegal things happen there. The first couple of floors might really even be apartments, but the higher you go... There’s brothels, dens for addicts, contraband shops, or even small factories. In my house, they produced Angel Dust."

"And what’s-"

"A drug," Katerina answered before he could finish asking. "It’s like the narcotic tobacco from Kargaam, but synthetic. That’s why it’s cheaper, but way more harmful. A year of use can turn someone into a crazed, walking skeleton covered in sores."

Ardan couldn’t fathom why anyone would poison themselves with such a thing, but he decided not to ask further.

"They sold me to work in one of those labs," Katerina continued. "During the day, we’d sew bags, and at night, we’d cook up the brew that eventually became Angel Dust."

"Nasty places," muttered another Cloak, one who so rarely spoke that Ardi couldn’t even remember his voice.

"To put it mildly," Katerina nodded somberly. "Most of the kids didn’t last longer than a year. We got almost no sleep, and only scraps for food — on holidays, we maybe got something cheap and obviously rotten. And at night, the fumes from the brew... but I got lucky. The Second Chancery raided the house, and one of the officers took me in. He was a good man. Drank a lot, though. And he had a dog. A red one. Its name was Katerina."

Ardi raised an eyebrow.

"My parents couldn’t be bothered to give me a name," the sharpshooter shrugged. "And at the underground house, they called me ’hey, you,’ like they did with everyone else."

"Doesn’t that make you a bit-"

Yonatan didn’t even get to finish his taunt before Katerina’s hand went to her rifle. The man raised his hands in mock surrender.

"Where I come from, they say that the Metropolis is almost a magical city," Ardi shivered.

"Magically awful," spat the Cloak with the neck scar.

"Not anymore," Yonatan waved him off, pulling out a knife and picking at his teeth with it. "Things have gotten better in recent years. When the old Emperor grew weak and the Heir took over with all his legislative initiatives that he managed to push through the Central Chamber, life improved a bit."

Yonatan, noticing the wide-eyed looks from everyone around him, just shrugged and grinned slyly.

"I shared a labor cell with a former lawyer."

"And how did a lawyer end up in a labor camp?"

"He’d been laundering money for the Orcish Jackets."

There was a collective whistle from the group, and Ardan made a mental note to one day ask who or what the "Orcish Jackets" were.

"Take Katerina’s underground houses, for example," Yonatan tossed his knife into the air and caught it deftly by the blade. "There used to be plenty of them twenty years ago. Now? You can hardly find one."

"They all just moved to the working districts," Katerina countered. "After the industrial boom, not only are there so many factories that the sky is black with smog, but there are also gangs and other scum."

Yonatan shrugged.

Ardi, meanwhile, was trying to recall his lessons on the structure of society. The nation was governed by the three chambers of Parliament (not counting the Emperor, of course).

The Lower Chamber, the largest of them, was formed through elected mandates. It had 123 deputies who came from all the districts of the country, each serving a twelve-year term, after which they could not be re-elected.

Ardi remembered seeing political columns in the "Imperial Herald" (a newspaper Neviy had often used to wrap his baked goods). There were sometimes discussions about how this practice had been created by the aristocracy and nobility in order to prevent the common folk from gaining a foothold in power. But pro-government journalists had always refuted that claim, arguing that it reduced corruption.

To be honest, Ardi had never cared about any of that. The provincial centres, like Delpas, had seemed far too distant to him, let alone the capital itself, which had seemed like a fairy tale.

Anyway, if he remembered his lessons correctly, the Lower Chamber’s role was to draft and discuss laws. Once drafted, these laws would go to the Central Chamber.

The Central Chamber was entirely dependent on the Emperor and his apparatus. It had 41 seats, all appointed by the Emperor for sixteen-year terms, and every single one of them could be re-appointed as many times as the Emperor saw fit.

The Central Chamber would review the laws coming from the Lower Chamber, either rejecting them for revision or approving them and passing them on to the Upper Chamber.

It was the Upper Chamber that always sparked the most public debate, at least if the "Imperial Herald" was to be believed. Not only was there a "bloodline requirement" for membership, but the seats in this chamber were hereditary, tied to the aristocratic families of the nations Gales had conquered when it had first formed the Empire. There were a total of 23 seats in the Upper Chamber, and once the laws were approved by the Central Chamber, it was the Upper Chamber’s job to seal them and send them to the Emperor for his signature.

And yes, the Emperor did have veto power and could reject any decree, law, reform, or initiative, but that hadn’t happened in a long time.

It was a convoluted and cumbersome system (especially with the addition of regional councils, governors, ministries, and other bureaucratic institutions), but the authors of Ardi’s civics textbook had insisted that this was the best way to manage one sixth of the entire world’s landmass and one fifth of its population.

Twenty-two million square kilometers and nearly four hundred million people. The Empire of the New Monarchy was truly vast.

"I was given a choice between the penal battalion or this," the usually silent Cloak said unexpectedly. "I figured this was better. The food in the penal battalion was worse, the uniforms less stylish, and they didn’t pay."

"As if we’re swimming in money," Katerina laughed. "My friend works at the post office in Metropolis. With all her bonuses and overtime, she earns more than I do. And she’s just a senior typesetter."

"How much does she make?" Asked the quiet Cloak.

"Thinking of quitting your job?"

"Don’t dodge the question, Katerina. How much does she make at the post office?"

The sharpshooter thought about it for a moment.

"About twenty-one, maybe twenty-two exes a month, if you count her annual bonus."

The Cloaks, Yonatan included, whistled in unison.

"Damn," the mutant muttered. "With all my bonuses and years of service, I only get twenty-three."

Cassara, who had been mostly silent during their conversation, seemed to be listening, but Ardan suspected she was in some form of trance, disconnected from the world around her. It was probably the only way she could preserve her sanity over the span of centuries.

"I always wanted to serve the Emperor," the scarred Cloak suddenly said quietly. "My father served. And his father before him. There’s no greater honor than being on the side of the royal family."

"Royalty," Yonatan scoffed. "Why don’t you give us a history lesson on Gales, Artemiy? Honor, dignity, warbands... That’s all in the past. A very distant past… They better raise our fucking wages. I don’t even have winter boots. And I bet Katerina’s only seen dresses on store mannequins."

"I don’t wear dresses," the sharpshooter retorted, indignant.

"That’s only because you’re broke. But if you had money, what would you do with it?"

Katerina fell silent for a moment, then spoke with unexpected seriousness.

"I’d quit the service, move to the Dancing Peninsula, somewhere near the border with Olikzasia, and open an orphanage."

The group was so stunned that they didn’t know how to respond.

"Cassara here would be my head teacher. We’d take the kids out to play by the sea, grow grapes, maybe even build a proper school."

Yonatan shook his head and cleared his throat.

"Alright, folks, this conversation’s starting to make me uncomfortable. I say we draw lots, and whoever loses has to run twenty laps around the-"

"TOWN!" A shout came from the front of the caravan. "I SEE THE TOWN!"

Ardan hadn’t witnessed such joy in a long time. Bright and almost alive, it rippled through the group like waves, reflected in the smiles on the settlers’ faces, ringing in the air with children’s laughter, and booming with the coarse, unchecked shouts of men, which were often mixed with curses.

People embraced each other, as if afraid their emotions would tear them apart in the storm of feelings crashing over them. Like ships in a storm, they sought the safety of each other’s shoulders.

Ardi couldn’t help but smile himself, glancing from the jubilant Yonatan over to Mart.

The two men were similar in some ways — not in appearance, of course, but in their manner of speech, certainly. They even cursed in similar ways at times. Yet their similarity lay deeper, like with two paths branching off in opposite directions at a crossroads. Both paths were nearly the same, but they led to diametrically opposite destinations. At least, that’s how it seemed to Ardan, though Skusty would’ve probably said that he was simply seeing the other side of the tree.

Once, the mischievous squirrel had spent an entire day teasing Ardi by asking him if he could see both sides of a tree at the same time.

"We’re almost on schedule," Yonatan sighed after catching his breath. "We’ll reach Presny by nightfall, and the train leaves in the morning."

At these words, the young man turned and looked back toward the endless plains. Far to the north, near the horizon, if he squinted, he could just make out the thin, white line of the icy peaks of the Alcade.

"Move it, you wretches!" Yonatan shouted, spurring the others on. "Tonight, I’m sleeping in a bed, not on the ground!"

The caravan even picked up its pace a little, and Ardi, still walking, pulled out his letter to Anna. Only now, for some reason, had he realized what he needed to write in it.

"Hello, Anna.

I’m writing to you from just outside Presny. It’s been over two months since we last saw each other, and the weight of that time feels unbearable.

I keep going back to those days when you came looking for a way up the mountain. Could I have met you then? Probably not. But I could have tried. And yet, I didn’t even do that…

I don’t know what that means or what it says about me... but so much has happened, Anna. It’s hard to describe and even harder to explain.

I wish more than anything that I could see you now, talk to you the way we used to. Do you remember how we’d stay up late, talking about trivial things that seemed so important and complicated to us, chatting away until your mother reminded me it was time to go home?

No one reminds me of that anymore.

I’m sorry, Anna.

Maybe this sounds pathetic, and maybe I am pathetic, but... I don’t know. That evening by the stream, when I walked home, I was thinking about our future together, about marriage and family. But now I realize I never even asked what you wanted.

Were we just friends, caught in a fleeting moment of passion? Or were those feelings real?

Maybe this isn’t the letter you wanted to read. But someone told me I have to be honest.

I don’t know what I feel for you. And I don’t know if that’s because the mountains of the Alcade and you are both growing more distant from me by the day, or if what happened by the stream was just our bodies, not our hearts.

I’m sending this letter now, from Presny. I could wait another ten days and send it from the Metropolis with a return address, but I’ve waited so long to talk to you, even just through a letter, that I can’t bear to wait any longer.

I’ll check the main post office in the Metropolis every two weeks. If you want to write back to me, send your letter there.

If I don’t hear from you, I’ll know that it was only the bodies...

I’d like to end this letter with "Until we meet again, Anna," but my heart tells me…"

Ardi glanced back at Mart, who was riding behind him, biting his tongue in concentration as he scribbled something in his journal.

Then he looked at Yonatan. Gruff, always watching the plains like a hawk, but... real. He was exactly as he appeared to be.

Just like Katerina, the Silent One, Long Neck (that was the one with the scar)… and Tevona Elliny and Andrew Kal’dron.

Ardan had long ago stopped asking himself whether he was a human or a Matabar. But he knew exactly who he wasn’t and who he didn’t want to become.

And so he finished his letter the way it had to be finished.

"Farewell, Anna, my first friend."

Now certain that there was nothing left to say, Ardi folded the piece of paper and tucked it into an inner pocket along with the letters he planned to send to his mother.

The rest of the evening, he kept silent, mostly listening to the Cloaks talk. They discussed ordinary things: relationships, pay, travel allowances, and the fact that they’d have to visit the families of the fallen and deliver the unpleasant news.

They agreed to draw lots before each visit, and whoever lost would play the role of the grim messenger.

"Don’t get too comfortable," Yonatan muttered. "There’s still ten days on the train ahead of us."

With those words, the conversations petered out, and the remaining part of their journey passed in silence.

The closer they got to Presny, the faster the sun seemed to slip beneath the horizon, painting the roofs of the town’s buildings in shades of pink.

It was such a strange sight that Ardi paused for a moment, until Cassara nudged him forward.

From the endless plains, where the horizon stretched out into eternity and the ground lay unbroken for countless kilometers, the town seemed to rise up like a mirage. It was as if someone had taken a seed of civilization and planted it right here in the middle of the flatlands. And as the caravan neared the town, the mirage transformed into reality.

The city, small and compact, was an anomaly. Rows of tightly-packed wooden houses stood so close together that it was hard to tell where one ended and another began.

Their sun-worn facades had been weathering the relentless steppe winds for what felt like centuries. And yet, some of them had verandas, where people sat in rocking chairs, exchanging nods and brief words with their neighbors. The quiet hum of conversations buzzed in the air, punctuated by occasional bursts of laughter and shouting.

The locals, upon seeing their caravan entering the town, barely spared the newcomers a glance. It seemed like Presny, which served as a central hub for the surrounding areas, had long ago grown used to such visitors and their ragged appearance.

Ardi, for his part, took in the scene with wide-eyed wonder, absorbing the new and unfamiliar sights that stood in stark contrast to the warm, familiar embrace of Evergale.

The main street was the beating heart of this cowboy town, and even though the sun had almost dipped beneath the horizon, life here still bustled.

Men on horseback clattered by, their spurs jingling, while townsfolk strolled leisurely, casting wary glances to either side.

Saloons, their wooden doors swinging open regularly, beckoned both travelers and locals alike, offering mugs of beer and lively tunes from old pianos.

Branching off the main street were smaller roads, each telling its own story of everyday life. People sat on porches, talking, dogs barked in the distance, laundry fluttered as it hung from lines set up in the direct path of the wind, making sounds like the flapping of wings.

Oddly enough, the church and the town hall stood side by side with the saloon and the local brothel. This juxtaposition was almost poetic — or perhaps mocking. And looming between these contrasting establishments was the jailhouse and the sheriff’s office, its wooden facade a shade darker than the rest, grimly overseeing the happenings below.

From this vantage point, Ardi could even see beyond the town’s buildings.

Outside the town, the plains resumed their reign. But even there, human presence was evident. Seemingly infinite railroads stretched from one horizon to the other, faintly glinting in the evening light of the station’s lanterns. Next to the modest structure stood a simple platform, cobbled together from aged planks.

It was from that platform that the train bound for the Metropolis would depart tomorrow at dawn.

"Fuck this!" Yonatan cursed as his boot sunk into yet another pile of horse manure, which had been left on the already mud-slicked ground. "Next time I get a posting on the plains, I’m asking for some spare boots!"

"That’s a sound idea, Mr. Kornosskiy," came the voice of Ertas Govlov, who had noticeably aged and withered along the way. "I don’t know how to thank you for-"

"Enough talking," Yonatan interrupted, extending his hand. Ertas hesitated, then uncertainly shook it. "Farewell, northerner."

With that, the Cloak turned back to his group (what remained of it) and Ardi.

"We’re staying in the saloon. We’ll get two rooms. One for us, and one for Cassara and the kid."

"And why exactly-" Began Long Neck, but Yonatan cut him off.

"You want to bunk with the vampire?"

And so they made their way toward the saloon, leaving a slightly bewildered Ertas behind. Ardi noticed the northerner clenching a roll of money tied together with string in his left hand. But Yonatan hadn’t taken any. He hadn’t even considered it.

And for some reason, Ardan was certain that Mart would’ve done the exact opposite.

"Don’t worry about them, Ardi," Cassara whispered softly in the Fae tongue. "We did all we could for them, and more. Their fate is their own now."

Thus, after nearly a month of traveling together, without any long goodbyes or formalities, they parted ways with the caravan.

And how did Ardi feel about this?

To his surprise, he didn’t feel all that much. He felt sorry for those who had been left behind in the plains, but at the same time, he rejoiced for those who had made it this far.

Yonatan, feeling perfectly at home, threw open the doors and, ignoring the stares from the saloon’s patrons, headed for the bar.

Ardi, following behind him, removed his hat as his mother had always taught him to do. He’d been in saloons before, but never in one this big. The first floor was filled with about fifty men, scattered across a dozen round tables. Most wore ammunition belts and revolvers. Some were playing cards, others were drinking and talking, while a few simply ate in the relatively quiet and peaceful atmosphere.

At the far end of the room, an old man in a worn tuxedo lazily played the piano. Above his head hung the skull of a young Wanderer, and surrounding it were black-and-white photographs of various people.

There were no women present, except for two waitresses, which wasn’t surprising. The presence of women in such establishments — especially young and beautiful ones — usually led to someone spending the night behind bars (so they could "clear their head," as Shaia’s husband would say), or, even worse, shootouts.

Ardi cast a wary glance at Cassara, only to find that she was no longer beside him. Only the faintest sense of her presence told him that someone, something undead, was still nearby.

"There’s no need to provoke the mortals unnecessarily," came a barely audible whisper.

Katerina, on the other hand, didn’t bat an eye at the stares from the patrons. She simply tipped her black hat and adjusted her ammunition belt.

The crowd muttered something about Cloaks and went back to their business.

But with Cassara, such a trick might not have worked…

Yonatan approached the long, cracked bar counter and wordlessly laid down a few iron coins.

"Two rooms," he said curtly.

The bartender, who had been wiping down some perpetually-cloudy glasses, scrutinized the coins, checked something, then pocketed them and handed over two keys.

"No hot water," the man said, his tone as dull as the rest of him. "Dinner and breakfast aren’t included. Each room’s got two beds. No extra linens."

Yonatan stared at the bartender, but the man, who was clearly used to such situations, didn’t react in the slightest.

Yonatan then reached over the bar, pulling out a half-empty bottle labeled in what Ardi guessed was the Grainian language.

"Then this whiskey will cover what we should’ve gotten for the fifty kso we paid. For that much, we could’ve stayed in a decent hotel in Delpas for three nights."

"This isn’t Delpas," the bartender replied flatly, showing no concern for the missing bottle.

With that, the deal was done, and the group followed their leader upstairs, soon dispersing into their rooms. Once the door closed behind them, Cassara shimmered like heat rising from a fire and reappeared.

Without removing her boots, she lay down on the rickety, wooden bed and pulled her hat over her face.

"I thought vampires didn’t sleep," Ardi said, puzzled.

"Little one, there are a few things you don’t mention in the presence of a lady," she replied evenly. "Her age, her social standing, and what she does at night."

"Uhm…"

"You’ll understand one day."

The way she’d said that made it clear to Ardan that the conversation was over.

He sat down on the other bed, looking around. There wasn’t much here besides a table chewed up by some kind of bugs, and a wardrobe whose door creaked with every gust of wind that came in through the loosely-closed window.

This must’ve been similar to the conditions Shaia and Erti had lived in when...

Ardi shook his head, trying to chase away those heavy thoughts. He pulled out the Stranger’s textbook and opened it up at the theoretical chapter where the author discussed the nature of the Ley Lines’ influence on all living things on the planet, but he couldn’t focus. He would read and read, only to realize that he’d been lost in his own thoughts for a while and had to go back to the start of the page.

After the third attempt, Ardi gave up, closed the book, and put it away.

For a moment, he stared at Cassara, but she was either in her strange trance again or doing a convincing impression of someone who was asleep.

Opening his wallet, Ardan counted his remaining funds. There were three bills with the seal of the Azure Sea Province on them, each worth five exes. And in the coin section, a few iron coins rattled about.

He didn’t want to break the large bills because, as his mother had taught him — small money was easier to spend.

His stomach growled.

After counting out six kso in coins, Ardan stood up and glanced at his staff and book. There was probably no safer place for them in all of Presny than right here, next to Cassara.

Knowing that the vampire wasn’t really asleep, but still trying not to make too much noise, Ardi carefully closed the door behind him and stepped out into the hallway. The smell of food hit him immediately, followed by the noise made by the thumping of a bed against a wall and the muffled moans coming from a distant room. The door to that room made Ardi want to look away.

Adjusting his belt, Ardi made his way downstairs, where even more patrons had filled the room since he’d last been there.

Pushing his way to the bar, he placed a few coins on the counter. The bartender swept them into the till faster than the eye could follow.

"What’s your poison?" The man asked.

Ardi blinked a few times.

"What are you drinking?" The bartender clarified, pulling on a wooden lever and pouring frothy ale into four mugs at once, which he sent sliding down the bar toward some rugged workers.

"Do you have... cocoa?" Ardan asked hopefully.

The bartender choked. They locked eyes, and the man realized that the tall, young man standing before him, a man who was taller than even the burliest of cowboys, was not joking.

"Anna!" The bartender shouted, making Ardi jump. "Do we still have that Lintelarian powder?"

"The cocoa, you mean?" Came a young woman’s voice from somewhere in the depths of the saloon.

"Yeah!"

"I think so!"

"Make a quarter liter of it!"

There were no menus, of course, and the chalkboard with prices was hopelessly hidden behind the backs of the cowboys. And so Ardi, with even more hope in his voice, asked:

"Do you also have a sandwich? Even a cold one?"

The bartender sighed and nodded.

"From a Shaggier."

"Perfect!" Ardan grinned broadly.

The Shaggier, which was a nickname belonging to a wild breed of cow, had earned this moniker thanks to the long, thick woolen tufts that sometimes trailed behind it like a cape. From a distance, these animals looked like walking balls of fluff.

The meat was tough, with a distinctive taste and smell, but it was cheap.

"And stack some meat on a piece of bread!"

"Already on it!"

The waitress vanished behind the door leading to the kitchen.

Within minutes, a mug filled to the brim with thick, sweet cocoa was placed next to Ardi, along with a wooden plate holding a rather unappealing-looking piece of bread and a chunk of clearly overcooked, grayish meat.

But that didn’t bother Ardan in the slightest. He tore into the dry, gum-scratching sandwich with the ferocity of a starving wolf.

"Whoa!" The waitress standing next to him was so short that even while Ardi was sitting, she barely reached his shoulder. And that was with the bar stools being surprisingly low. "Did your mom bed an orc or something? You’re huge!"

Ardan raised an eyebrow, giving the brunette, who looked to be about twenty-five, a puzzled look. She had a cute face, with dimples in her cheeks, just like the bartender… They also shared the same high forehead, though their noses were different.

The other waitress, also a brunette, but without the dimples, had a lower forehead and the same button nose as her father, the bartender. One had clearly taken after their father, and the other after their mother.

Little details like this were often easier for Ardi to read than even books written in the Galessian — or as it was more commonly known, Imperial — language.

"Sorry, sir investigator," the waitress suddenly paled and disappeared into the crowd of patrons.

After she spoke, the cowboys who had been leaning their elbows on Ardi’s shoulders immediately backed off, creating a small bubble of space around him.

He didn’t mind.

But why had the waitress come to such a conclusion? Ardan frowned, then saw his reflection in the bar’s grimy mirror.

Oh, right...

He had a gaunt face, a week’s worth of stubble, and, on top of that, a black shirt paired with black pants, and an ammunition belt with a buckle bearing the Imperial crest. It was all standard issue clothing that the Cloaks had given him at the start of their journey.

"What news from the plains, lawman?" An odd-looking... young man asked as he squeezed in next to him. He was Ardi’s age, maybe a couple of months older than him at most.

He was stocky and solidly built, one of those types that people often called "as sturdy as a stump." But he also had a curious, bright look in his gray eyes and a massive, square jaw that could probably hammer nails into horseshoes.

"By the Eternal Angels!" The newcomer clapped him on the shoulder. "We’re the same age!"

"Maybe…"

"You look like crap, mate!" The young man sniffed his dubious bread and meat. "And you’re eating garbage…"

Ardi’s level of sympathy for this strange person began to drop rapidly.

"That’s no good," the newcomer clapped him on the shoulder again. "Come sit with us! We’ve been here for three days, waiting for the train to Metropolis! And we’ve already traded all our stories, even the dull ones! So, I’ll trade you a proper dinner — though it might be a bit cold — for your tales of the plains!"

And without another word, he dragged Ardi through the crowd. The young man barely managed to grab his mug and plate, deciding not to resist. After all, he had nothing better to do, and maybe he’d learn something new.

As they weaved through the patrons, Ardan noticed that despite the newcomer’s cheap pants and shirt, his boots were made from high-quality leather, and the handle of his revolver, cleverly disguised to look like painted wood, was actually carved from bone.

Even if you ignored the weapon, those boots alone could fetch you enough to buy a good winter wardrobe.

At the table in the farthest corner of the room sat three more people. Two of them were young men, and the third was a girl who was doing her best to pass for a boy, though she had overlooked the fact that she lacked that one odd protrusion in her throat that men had but women didn’t. Still, with her hair hidden under a bandana and her baggy clothes disguising her figure, she’d done more than enough to ensure that the locals were likely to mistake her for a slender, attractive lad.

But what truly surprised Ardan, and even made him a bit wary, were the four staves leaning against the wall next to the table and the stack of grimoires lying casually on the table itself, as if they were nothing more than ordinary books (though even those were worth a whole lot, especially in such a backwater town).

They were a group of mages. And given their age, lack of regalia, and the mention of the train to Metropolis, it was highly likely that they were heading to the university to enroll.

Ardi crunched into his sandwich and smiled inwardly.

Maybe, for once, luck had decided to be on his side.