The Elementalist: Sky City (Book One)

Chapter Nine: A Night's Journey

In a journey with such mysteries and unknown outcomes ahead, the trio find themselves surprised to find little in the way of adventure in the days that follow their entry into Sky Kingdom. Ben, Wade, and Fred happily enjoy the quiet, eventless nights they spend traveling from village to village as they find themselves rising further and further into the mountains in their trek west. They eat food from the land when they can, but as the mountains grow in height, and the snow falls deeper, they begin to rely more and more on trading with local villagers to get their food. They began with some money between the three, but soon found themselves trading away valuables such as spare clothing among odds and ends. Traders such as these always found their eyes drifting to the gold-trimmed sword attached at Ben's side, but always found a firm denial when asking about it.

Such small villages, broken by long walks of largely untraveled, winding paths through rocky hills and mountainous valleys, provided them with a grateful lack of Imperial soldiers, but it still remained wise to be cautious.

Besides the constant threat of possibly being discovered by Imperial soldiers, though, they found the Sky Kingdom to be quite a remarkable place. The people appeared very friendly to them, even to Fred whose red hair was an obvious clue to her Magma Kingdom origins, and the land itself was strikingly gorgeous despite its deadly nature. The further west they went, the more snow, the harsher the mountains, but the greater the scope. The gravel road began to turn to brick along these seemingly untraveled paths, placed down centuries before, and they knew Sky City would come soon as a result.

Days and days keep passing and eventually Fred gives in to the pleas of the others to sell one of her daggers for plenty of rations. The day was breaking as the market of a small village closed, but a lone friendly merchant happened to stay open late into the night ws more than happy to barter. The dagger presented was a lapis blue, with a delicate engraving along the handle, fetching quite a decent price, and Fred was confident that with only one remaining dagger she could still fight well.

With the transaction made, the merchant inquired, as was the norm, about Ben's sword, glittering at his hip, even in the fading sunlight.

"I'd give you just shy of a fortune for it," the merchant said, with diamonds in his eyes as he gazed down at it.

"Sorry," Ben replied.

"It's simply too fine a blade," Fred chimed in as she pulled the sword from Ben's sheath and held the finely molded, gold and white trim handle in her hands for the tenth time that day.

The money they received from the expensive dagger was plenty to buy all the fowl, rabbits, and fruit they could possibly eat for the remainder of their journey. Ben and Wade had not accounted to feed three when they originally left their homes, but were more than glad for the company.

Every daybreak, the group developed a routine of finding either a cave to rest in, or wandering into the small forests that occupied the valleys of the mountains and the edge of the trail. There had been plenty of Imperial soldiers on the open road from time to time and in the village even, but traveling at night limited their exposure, and a white cloth hat bought in a village carefully hid Ben's blonde hair. With the Magma Kingdom girl and the Aqua Kingdom boy as his company, passing soldiers assumed Ben to also be a foreigner to these lands, and not the Sky Kingdom boy they were looking for. Many were skeptical that this new Elementalist existed anyway.

All remained quiet into the night.

As the sun set, Ben and Fred, camped in a patch of forest below an undergrowth of cliffs, struggled to wake Wade from his deep sleep. Prepared for their routine, nightly journey, the group exited the small patch of trees and made their way back to the snowy, brick road, which grew stronger and more prominent the further they went.