When they finally greeted us at the door, the children ran to their grandparents and immediately started a renewed round of piteous sobbing while I was left to struggle through explaining the situation to their aunt. Soon, everybody was inside and crying behind closed doors. The aunt, however, was keeping it together fairly well in order to continue discussing with me.
After I explained away my discovering the bandit camp and then freeing everybody, I formally introduced and identified myself using the pilgrimage document Old man gave me. After that, I briefly described the magic lessons and spells I had given the children and then gave their aunt the staffs.
Then I went on to give their aunt two wires of ten gold coins for their future training expenses in alchemy and enchanting and informed everyone I would be coming back in a year to check on their progress. Their aunt offered me one of their rooms for the night and I politely accepted. Before retiring for the evening, I asked if the kids had anywhere they could train and was taken to the roof.
On the roof I cast several layers of runes and wards to make it safer for practicing magic here and then made the children tire themselves out with body strengthening before bed. Early the next morning the aunt and grandparents were all awake in the dining room of the small and otherwise empty three bedroom house. Since we were alone, I took the time to talk to them not only about their grief at the news of their lost loved ones but also the kids' grief.
Because they were young and adaptable they would recover fairly quickly but only if they were kept busy with things that were actually productive. One of the top outlets they can use magic for is education and making the kids want to spend their time expanding their horizons. One of the top benefits was the comfort and security that learning magic would bring them.
I also explained a bit about magic and familiars and because one of the things relatives had a habit of doing for children in these situations was simply giving them gifts. If they were pointless material things, the void would never fill, but if they were things the kids could use like alchemy or enchanting materials then at least their time will be filled. The aunt owned a pawn shop that dealt in magical goods so the kids could make use of her resources.
After declining to stay for dinner and say good bye to the kids, I wrote both of them a short note about being happy I met them and how excited I was to see their growth next year before simply leaving. Once outside the house, I let out my wisps and promptly flew out of the city to save time. I was honestly a little sad to leave this way, but there was not much more I could teach the kids at their level and taking them out to do things would just be pointless material distraction.
My flight outside the city continued until late in the evening when my wisps finally started running low on energy. By now I had already covered two days worth of travel on horse and, after landing to check my map, I was almost caught up with where I felt I should be. Even after taking my time with the kids I had made up for quite a bit.
As much as I tried not to, I honestly could not help but wonder sometimes what would have happened if I had just left the caves before the Guild officials showed up when I wanted to.
Shaking my head to clear these thoughts, I spawn a grass golem bear and stretch out on its back while my wisps recovered in my chest. I simply stared up at the sky and tried hard to just keep my mind empty and clear for the entire night. It was far from easy, especially while riding a giant bear, but for the most part I just stared blankly up.
By the time morning rolled around the golem had galloped within sight of a decent sized village, the first settlement I had come to since leaving the city. This part of the road was actually one of the furthest points in the highway from the mountain and in a few days it would start angling back toward the mountain toward another city whose main industry was various forms of mining.
After just a day or two up the mountains behind this city was the next shrine site for my pilgrimage. I spent my time on the road alone simply tinkering with project ideas in my head or worrying about what I might come across. At the rate things were going, I was likely to find a town actually being raided by bandits at this point.
Or dragons. Dragons were always a possibility in this world and the older they were the more powerful they became. I did not want to try to fight anything but small dragons at this point in my life.
I rode the golem at a casual but brisk trot straight through the village, disregarding what it looked like and how people looked at me. There did not seem to be any signs of trouble in or around the village after sending out both wisps outside the village to increase my detection ranges by several hundred yards.
There were not even magical beasts for miles after giving the wisps ten minutes to scout once outside the village.
I did, however, finally decide to pick up the habit of praying and blessing the settlements I passed through like I should have been doing all along. Hopefully their harvests and hunts would be bountiful in the future and they would be vigilant for warning signs of intrusive beings. If not that then the very least that would happen was improved health and recoveries for everybody who lived in these places.
Reassured as to the general health and safety of the otherwise quiet and curious settlement after my wisps' reports, I quickly rode the golem at this body' full speed and stretched gait of fifty miles per hour until it finally died a few hours later. In sight of a small lumber and farming town nestled inside the broad fork of a river.
This was actually what I imagined a proper fantasy town to look like.
There were a few residential areas of a couple dozen houses apiece centered around a few shopping plazas and, all of their yards were different sizes to the point that some were stretched around others in a ridiculous fashion. Along the inner shores of the forks were several granaries and water mills for the town's processing. The outer shores of the forks were lined with two large-scale mill buildings and yards to either side of the main waterway's curvature.
Each building had at least six different watermills for moving gears and saws stretched out into the swiftly flowing river.
The highway itself crossed the river a few hundred yards downstream of the town with two broad stone bridges, but the land in between was filled with mounds and rows of flourishing herbs and rare poisonous plants on either side of a broad road leading in and out of the town.
Most of their trade and travel was done by river unless it was coming into the mountains from outside. They even had their own wooden drawbridges fording the river to the outer mills. Overall, there were as many as five hundred residents including the old and the young with maybe fifty or more mixed mercenary and merchant travelers during trading season most days of the week.
The store buildings were all large hardwood structures while their homes were various cottages and houses of light woods.
Masonry was only used on a few of the larger and official buildings, three of them notably being the Guild with a stone slab walled wooden building, the local mayor or baron with a small but three-story granite block house, and a large round two-story house of clay bricks.
The granite castle or manor probably belonged to the local leader, the slabbed wooden building that was the second largest as a two-story rectangle was likely the Guild, and the big brick house was probably some eccentric. Or the Guild and the eccentric were switched. I honestly could not tell with my limited outside experience.
However, I still stopped to smell the roses by walking into town down their well trodden and dry hardened clay road. The air was rich and fragrant with a variety of plants from berry vines to short flowering trees with the ground covered in everything in between. The sheer quantity of pollen, vapors, and even mana in the air from these plants were enough to refresh my body as if I had just woken up after a deep breath through my nose.
When the wind was right, these people must have wonderful lives that might even be extended by a decade or two by proximity.
After praying for the entire stroll into town, I found the road to be ever so slightly smoother and shinier despite the occasional ruts from bad weather. The wind had even shifted into a soft breeze a minute or two ago, blowing the air of the herb acres into town ahead of me. I actually thanked whatever gods might be watching for the small boon.
While there was no traffic yet on the road there were still wagons and even a few carriages traveling through the town. Most were led by horses and carries crates or sacks and barrels of goods, but a few carried just people and were drawn by different beasts. It almost looked like a taxi service of sorts for laborers.
The closest marketplace was something like a flea market where farmers and traders hawked their wares from small pavilions. There were also smaller stalls and areas where traders or townspeople provided services for each other. Around this area were a few bunkhouses and storage buildings and this market had the most people overall.
The next market was a large fountain square surrounded by an assortment of businesses such as two large taverns on opposite sides. To either side of the taverns were a tailor shop, a small leather working garage-like building, and stables to either side of the taverns. The other two sides of the square were dominated by a large forge building to the left and to the right a big single-story warehouse building for carpenters.
*