On the Crossroads of Fate

[Here it is, guys. Finally, the second chapter is finished. Please enjoy. If you enjoy it enough, please leave a comment. I'd love to hear some feedback.]


Rin was tired and hungry.

It was evening now, and the sun was settling low into the west, casting a deep gloom under the forest canopy. Small creatures had begun to wake, crawling from their dens as their nocturnal hunts began. The moon was a single thin crescent of silvery light hanging on the edge of a darkened sky. Rin caught its shape in short glimpses as the odd trio trudged on through the shadowy night. The sound of Rin’s enormous sword dragging across the ground kept several small creatures a cautious distance away from the group.

“I’m bored!” Rin whined, and grunted softly as she hefted the sword up off of the ground, taking a moment to stop walking so she could rest the flat of it over one shoulder with both hands gripping it tightly. “Hey! Shouldn’t we set up camp or something? It’s getting dark.”

Aden stopped irritably and turned about slowly, his red eyes fixing on Rin. Crossing his arms over his chest, he glared down at her and grumbled loudly. “We are trying to get as far from that town as possible as quickly as possible,” he said, pointing back in the direction they had been coming away from.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to take the road?” Rin huffed, taking several steps past him, “We already got away from the guards anyway, so they probably aren’t even looking now. We can just get on the road and head out from there, right?”

“One..!” Aden shouted, raising a hand up near his face so that Rin could clearly see his extended finger. “I already said we’re trying get further from that town, just in case they sent out patrols. Two..!” he growled, adding emphasis to the last word by raising his middle finger to join the first, “We’ve been running through these accursed trees for so long that we’ve no idea where the road is exactly! And thr-...!”

Rin cut Aden off before he could continue, glaring at him with a mixed look of annoyance and disappointment. “If we wanted to get further away, it might have been a better plan to not run aimlessly through thick forest!” she said, fingers tapping impatiently on the hilt of the greatsword. “We’ve passed that funny-lookin’ rock three times, already! And if you really don’t know where the road is, you must be pretty blind for a drow, because I can see it from here!” Rin let the weight of the blade drop over her back, making the metal stick into the ground behind her. She then released the hilt with one hand to point off to her left where the trees thinned considerably about thirty feet away.

Aden followed the extended finger out toward the road and lifted a hand to rub at the back of his neck for a moment. Gantz lifted a hand, as he started to turn around again to wave it about dismissively. “Ey, don’ lookit me. I can ‘ardly see above these damn shrubs as it is.”

“Fine, fine,” Aden grumbled, walking out toward the road and picking around through the bushes. “But I’ll be damned if I’m going to sleep on this ill smelling ground one more night. We must find a place of better lodging for the night, agreed?”

“My family does trading all over Undrigael and most of Liantu,” Rin said, stopping as they got up onto the road and looked up and down the path. “So, I’m pretty sure there’s a clearing down that way with a farm.” she said, pointing northward. “If we follow this road, maybe we can talk to the farmer there about using his house.”

It wasn’t that long of a walk to the farm house and Rin was pleasantly surprised that even her stunt-legged companion, Gantz the halfling, was able to easily keep up with her and Aden without changing his pace. They arrived on the property roughly a half an hour later. To say that the farm actually had a house was a bit of a stretch, being that it was an elven settlement. The house proper of the land was actually built into the hollow of a great tree; its roots twisting open into a door frame that led inside of a large trunk, hemmed here and there with narrow windows. There was a wide clearing where the field of the farmer’s crops were. Only half-way through Spring, the stretch of well tended soil was filled with sprouting plants that Rin and the others could scarcely yet identify. Far over beyond the field, there was one actual structure in the form of a barn. Small and low, it was likely just where the farmer kept his cart, as this single barn was attached to a corral where a trio of horses trotted lazily about in the deepening night.

With no one out to be seen, Aden soon grew impatient. Before Rin even had a chance to move in the direction of the farm house, the drow cupped his hands up to his mouth and shouted. “Hey! Come out here! We’re looking for a place to stay tonight!”

“Gah! Criminy, Aden!” Gantz grumbled, looking about with concern. “Ya tryin’ to wake the ‘ole damn wood?”

Rin groaned under her breath at Aden’s brash approach to the situation and lifted a hand to cover her face. Turning a wary eye toward the drow, she seemed about to speak when the door on the tree swung open.

A leery-looking elf came out of the home slowly, leaning over on a shepherd’s cane. He was thin and a little on the short side, as elves usually were, with a crown of fine, straight brown hair. His graying eyes peered suspiciously at the trio, who stood in the middle of a plot of grass just off the road looking shocked that anyone had come out at all.

“What’s all this then?” he grumbled aloud, starting to walk forward a few paces with his cane up. In the dim light, it took him a moment to look over the group before he spotted Aden, affixing him with a cautious gaze.. “Ah-ha! What devilry! What do you want here, dark elf? You’ll get no good raiding here! Be off with you!”

Aden was about to protest, his teeth gnashing together, when Rin stepped forward, speaking up. “Please, sir. We’re just looking for a place to stay for the night. We don’t need food or anything, just a place to lay our rolls and sleep. We’ll be out in the morning, before you know it.”

Aden swiped a hand toward the girl and stepped forward. “Silence, suckling brat! The grown-ups are talking now.”

“Hey!” Rin whined, lifting up one of her hands a little bit before Aden stomped toward the other elf, his colorful robe flapping behind him. “I, uh… Wait, Aden, just listen!”

The farmer lifted his cane and stumbled back a bit. “H-hey! Stay back! I’m warning you!”

“No!” Aden snarled, “I’m warning ~you~! Cease your prattling and give us a place to stay for the night, or you yourself won’t see this night through! Do you understand me, old man?!”

“Aden, calm down, we can jus’…” Gantz began before Aden spun about sharply and glared at him.

“Remember the fire, Gantz!” the dark elf snapped, before turning his gaze back to the farmer. “Now then, are you going to do as I say or do I have to stop being civil?”

The farmer elf staggered back away from Aden as the two watched them both enter the house-tree, Aden, closing the door after them.

Gantz put a reassuring hand on Rin’s shoulder, as she started forward, a horrified look on her face. “I’m sure Aden’s go’ a-andle on this ‘un, Poppet. ‘eh can be right convincing in ‘is own way.”

Rin started to protest, casting a dubious glance toward the house, remembering some comment about a fire, but was pulled away from worry with a heartening nudge from the Halfling. “’Ow’s a-bout you ‘n’ I find a place to set’l down, while’s Uncle Aden ‘as a chat wi’ th’ nice man, eh?”

Gantz’s thick Aslowan accent was still barely discernible to Rin, but his meaning was clear, and she found herself feeling quite sleepy after all their travel. So, the both of them left to explore the larger barn, settling down eventually in a bank of hay beside a old wooden wagon with a canopy made of thick canvas. She heard the faint sound of buckles as she assumed her Halfling companion was removing his leather armor, and wondered briefly how she’d look in armor herself as she drifted off to sleep.

Morning came early, ushered by the incessant complaints of a lithe, black man in elaborate robes, who was waving his hands about tempestuously at a stunted man who was tinkering with the iron buckles of his boots, and arguing back. What a strange place to wake up, thought Rin, as she wiped the sleep from her eyes. Then she remembered: she’d left her caravan. She’d decided to set off on an adventure with a pretentious Drow with jazzy robes and a fixation for fire and an amenable Halfling who was clearly the more reasonable of the two. As she stood, brushing the straw refuse from her dress, she wondered what exciting adventures awaited her today. Perhaps, she thought, she’d find a buried treasure.

Rin’s excitement grew as she pelted from the barn to begin her search. The acrimonious argument of her travel companions faded into the distance, as she made her way to what appeared to be a water well. Almost instantly, she noticed that the soil directly in front of the stone lip of the well seemed to have been hastily disturbed. Running over with a smug grin, she knelt beside the loose soil and dug with her fingers, quickly finding under them a hard object. She unearthed the smallish mass to find a box of wood. Confidently, she opened the box and looked inside. Rin was instantly assaulted by the stench of decay, as she saw that inside the box was a smallish bird of kaleidoscopic plumage. It lay in the makeshift coffin, dead as Rin’s pride at this moment.

Promptly, she re-entombed the feathered corpse, and began to lift herself to her feet, when she noticed another peculiarity just beside her, half-covered by a burlap bag of some indistinguishable root. Another box, this one decorated with bronze corners and a keyhole. Trying her luck, Rin made an attempt at opening the box, which to her delightful astonishment, she found was not locked. What was inside caused her roseate eyes to sparkle in wide-eyed awe, as she gazed upon the most dazzling assortment of polished gemstones she’d ever beheld. She recognized all the stones by name: emerald, rose quartz, ruby, opal, fire opal, sapphire, jasper, amber, and turquoise. Quickly and quietly, she stuffed the contents of the box into her pocketed sleeve and returned to the barn, quite satisfied with her little treasure hunt.

When she returned, Aden was still barking orders at Gantz, who was horsing the wagon with discontented grumbles. Aden soon left Gantz’s side, moving back toward the tree house for reasons unknown.

With a sharp grunt, Gantz looked over from the horses he was leading to Rin. “’Ey, poppet,” he called to her. “Ya wanna ‘and me tha’ bridle ova der? S’right bit o’ trouble gettin’ the ‘orses ‘itched up when they’s so tall, ya know?” The halfling grinned over to Rin for a moment while she puzzled out his words.

After a blink, she walked over to the place where Gantz had pointed and moved to assist him in getting the horses hitched to the wagon. At first she thought it strange that he knew how to do such a thing, but then Rin remembered that in Aslow, there were large dogs that they used as beasts of burden. The bridling for them likely wasn’t too different from that of horses, she thought.

“So, where are we going?” Rin asked as she finished setting the harnesses on the horses to tether them to the cart.

Aden was no where to be seen, so Gantz was a bit less inclined to keep his mouth shut. Clearing his throat a bit, he hopped up and grabbed onto the edge of the driver’s seat. Pulling his own weight easily up into the seat, he picked up the reins and looked to Rin. “Well, ah was tellin’ Aden we ought jus’ be on ahr way ou’ these elf woods, but ‘e wouldn’ ‘ear it,” the curly haired halfling grumbled loudly, shooting a glance to the tree house when he heard the door of it shutting. “So, now tha’ Aden has an idea wheh we at, we’s takin’ this ‘ere road up a li’l ways noth to get to Lakeshore Glade. From der, ‘parently we’ll be ferryin’ ou’selfs ova across th’ lake to take a look at Feathertree Dale… or some such poncy elf-name ci’y.”

“Gantz!” Aden’s voice shrilled from across the way. Straining under a heavy burlap sack, he wheezed his way over to the wagon and threw his load into the back. “Are these smelly… Equine beasts ready to bring us to our next destination yet?”

Rin grimaced lightly and pulled herself up into the wagon, grunting a bit under the weight of the sword she hauled up behind herself. While helping Gantz with the wagon, she’d found some horse blankets and a few clean linens in the barn, all of which she now had spread out in the wagon to give the interior a soft, cushioned lining.

“Uh, yeah, Aden,” Gantz called, taking a look behind to see the drow pull himself up the back ledge of the wagon and close the latch there behind himself. “Th’ ‘orses is all ready t’go.”

“Excellent!” Aden smirked proudly, as if he himself had readied the wagon, and set himself down in a corner inside, dragging over a bulk of horse blankets to sit on. “Now, Away, then! I can’t withstand the smell of this slovenly squalid cesspool of unseemly shoddy s—“

Gantz interrupted with an irritated bark, “Ah’roight! We git’ it! ‘old yer damn ‘orses, while ah move these ‘uns, will ya? Gasha fon tura!” He mumbled, as he cracked the leather reins inspiring the horses to pull them out from the barn and off toward the road.

[There it was folks. Hope you enjoyed this addition to 'On the Crossroads of Fate.' Stay tuned for the next chapter. "A sight to Behold."

~Pink]