BOOK ONE: The New World
CHAPTER 6: The First Hint
"Yes, I intend to use a lot of tree sap to glue the axis back together, and this might help a lot." Arkyn said while lifting a large rock from the ground onto his shoulder.
It was jagged and sharp on one end and flat on the other. Arkyn intended to hold it up as a spike to drill into the tree, while Jehdin would use his hammer to drive the rock into the tree. Arkyn explained the plan and they agreed on their roles.
After a few loud whacks and the shaking of the tree, many acorns fell and a bountiful amount of sap began pouring out. Arkyn carried as much as he could over to the wagon before requesting a burning stick and some ashes from the campfire.
Jehdin grabbed the stick and his younger son carried over a handfuls of cold ash from the dead parts of the fire. Arkyn stirred specks of the black soot into the sap with his finger, the mixture becoming increasingly more viscous as he slowly added more.
"Now what exactly did you need this for?" Jehdin asked while handing the burning stick over to Arkyn. He had felt rather silly holding up the little flame the whole time he watched the mage work.
"I just needed a catalyst for fire magic as I do this next part." Arkyn said while carefully getting under the cart.
He took the cylinder off the wooden axis and covered every segment of the break in the primitive glue. Once it was completely encased, Arkyn put the clay casing back on and focused on the embers in the end of the stick.
He extended his will to release mana from his fingers and surround the flame. Being so close to natural fire, the white strands of his mana were converted into a red hue, rapidly obtaining the characteristics of fire mana. It emitted a strong wave of heat that made the air hazy.
Arkyn was wary about how close he got to the hot air and channeled it against the glue.
"Rather than waste time converting my internal magic into physical heat, I can just use the natural elements of a real fire to do it for me. It cuts out a lot of time and saves me the exhausting amounts of energy." Arkyn could not help himself but explain the principles to Jehdin and Pilm.
They had a look of fascination in their eyes that Arkyn remembered vividly as he first learned the ways of magic. For once, he was not alone. He wasn't tortured by the isolation or only getting the sarcastic response of a small reptile.
He found people like himself.
Arkyn was careful not to get his hands too close to the heat he was generating, and cranked up the output of mana until steam started emanating from the wood.
"Now, if mana were poured directly into the flame, it would ignite and simply make the fire much greater." Arkyn warned.
The sap-glue bubbled and dried quick enough for everyone to watch it visibly change. The substance turned from the dirty, reddish-gray to a black tar, tightening around the reinforcement until Arkyn stopped pumping mana into it.
'Not bad for an improvised repair in the middle of the woods.' Arkyn thought while blowing out the stick and slowly getting up.
Arkyn had very little experience directly manipulating wood with magic, it was a tricky blend of water and earth magic. So he stuck to what he was best at, using earth and fire instead. The earth-based casing around the pole of wood, and the fire solidifying it was the best option for his abilities.
Arkyn stood up and admired the final result. While soaking it in, Jehdin clapped a hand on his shoulder, chuckling to himself.
"You really aren't a mage sent to kill us. None of them could manage that much inventive magic and still be standing. Thank you, this helps us more than you may ever know." The man had a genuine smile that Arkyn had not expected.
'They must have been struggling for a while if this makes him so happy.' Arkyn thought while seeing how thin and pale the hand on his shoulder was. 'A trek through the forests nowadays must not be easy for them.'
Everything on the cart seemed to hold well in place, and after a few test bounces from a jumping Pilm, everyone found the work to be very sufficient.
"Sorry there, but with a build like yours and clothing that ragged, you look like every other fallen and desperate sorcerer we've seen working for the Baron." Jehdin said as they walked back to the fire.
Arkyn looked down and his clothes could not refute Jehdin's assumption. His clothes were tattered and incredibly old, making look more like a resurrected corpse than a wanderer traveling between cities.
It's also true that his face and body looked a lot more sunken in, but appearing so frail was a factor of two things.
His clothes were fitted for when he first started working at the forge, a time when he had both muscle and body fat. The lack of food only left him a muscular but still very thin physique.
The other was his complexion. There was a lack of sunlight in his workshop beneath the castle. He was actually much paler than any of them. He could only imagine how sunken in his white face was when he touched his own cheek.
The more Arkyn thought about it, the more he realized that he needed a solid cover story for himself when encountering more people. His lack of travel equipment, money, and odd physical features would certainly gain unnecessary attention.
'Thankfully these people are just filling in the blanks for me. There is much to be learned from them.' Arkyn sat by his bag and Jehdin handed him back his hammer.
It was a clear sign of trust and he accepted it, slinging the hammer into his belt.
The older son had spent all that time preparing vegetables from a burlap sack, roasting them on cleanly-shaved sticks above the fire. He handed them out quietly while Pilm chatted excitedly about what Arkyn did.
The older seemed disinterested and began eating after divvying up food between himself and his family.
"Kuge, do not be rude. He is a guest and he saved us a lot of trouble with the wagon." Jehdin said while tossing a roasted, vegetable plant towards Arkyn.
"Least I can give you after doing all that work for us."
It was oval in shape, still steaming from being roasted. Yellow and orange bumps decorating the surface like neatly aligned scales. Arkyn saw Pilm eating the same kind of corn-plant with a hand on both ends, munching on the rows in a rapid but organized manner.
Arkyn thanked Jehdin and took on the same style of eating, but stopped after four small bites. Suddenly his stomach felt off in a strange way.
It was more than just a stomachache, there was a strange compression and heat coming from the center of his abdomen.
'Oof, decades without eating might've shrunken my stomach down to nothing.' Arkyn correctly assumed.
A lot of time had passed and his body may not have aged, but it still accumulated all those years spent confined to a sunless, foodless, blast-furnace of a living space. He thanked them again for the offering and gave the remainder to the youngest, who happily devoured it before anyone could say otherwise.
They all ate quickly and did not seem to slow down. Not even when the last crumbs disappeared, clearly they were all still hungry and the silence of the problem made Arkyn feel a little sad.
'They are just trying to survive out here, a shame even the nicest of people still have to suffer.' Arkyn thought to himself.
"Again, I apologize about before," Jehdin said once they had all finished. "but no one from the farmlands in this region would typically trust a mage or sorcerer because the only magic users they ever met were on the Baron's payroll. All the sickly or despicable types that would sell their children for a few extra coins. "
"I see . . . does that mean you were all farmers?" Arkyn asked. He didn't want them to wonder too much about his history as a mage, the details of becoming a Blackguard were not something he wanted to share just yet.
"Aye, we are Jehdin, Pilm, and Kuge Stennick; all belonging to the Stennick Farm. We were awarded that name three generations back thanks to all the hard work my grandfather and his brothers put into cultivating the farmland."
Jehdin smiled in pride for that fact, his dedication towards his family name was clearly important to him.
"The old Baron that gave us a name was better than this one." Pilm interjected after burping. "The new one just hurts everyone and says the dying land is our fault."
"Even when we managed to give him everything we own and more, he just says the Emergence has gotten worse and we were supposed to be grateful to just be alive." Kuge remarked. He spoke for the first time and he began poking at the fire with his knife.
"No more talk about that, there is no need to mention such topics. It'll just make the journey feel worse." Jehdin shut him down, frustrating Arkyn.
'Damn it, I am really curious as to what this 'Emergence' thing is, sounds interesting.'