Epsilon Twilight
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15. Rest
🕑 Added 2024-09-27 11:37:55 +0000 UTCThe day started poorly when Aloe decided to stretch her legs whilst still drowsy and almost fell as she forgot that she was on top of an arch. Sure, if that were the case she would have reacted in time and switched to toughness even when sleepy, but nothing could remove the fear induced by the scare from her heart.
To calm herself, she pushed a bit of vitality into the Blossomflame and also watered it. Because she was near a city, she wasn't as frightened as before to waste water on the flower.
Following her wasteful spree, the cultivator also had a hearty breakfast as she would restock on provisions on Selen, and if possible, also get a bath.
"I thank the heavens for my dulled senses whilst donning any stance." Aloe kissed the loaf of cheese she was holding whilst looking to the skies in prayer and then ate it.
The only saving grace of her poor hygiene was that she, somehow, hadn't sweated much during the journey here. Not that she had much spare water to sweat in the first place.
Once she was done eating – she took enough time that she sneaked another flowing stance in the midst of it – Aloe gathered her things and stood up, ready to go to Selen.
As she was too lazily, and kind of frightened, to climb down the arch, Aloe stood in front of the ledge. She wasn't that high up, only around five meters.
"Uh… you know what, fuck it." And she jumped off.
In less than a blink, her body was already wielding toughness. As a matter of fact, because she had jumped rather than walked off, Aloe had switched internal infusion before even losing height.
Then she impacted with the ground.
"Huh." She groaned. "Well, that was anticlimactic. I expected more… fanfare? I don't know, maybe a dust cloud and a huge thud but… yeah, nothing. Aaaanyways~"
Disappointed with her lackluster fall which felt as if she had only jumped off from the second step of a stair, the petite woman started walking whilst shifting the vitality inside of her body to activate the haste internal infusion.
She was careful with her speed and the distance between the city and her as she didn't want to raise any alarms. Between the fact that her maximum vitality slowly grew and that it was way easier to run on solid ground, Aloe's speed might even outclass that of a dweller in the sand.
Not that she could verify that statement now.
Aloe gritted her teeth as her mind was now filled with sad thoughts and she pushed forward with a single, focused mind.
From the distance, she took in the details of Selen. The walls were made out of dull stone like the very ground of the Ridged Highlands instead of limestone and sandstone that would be used in traditional walls like those of Sadina and Asina.
They were also far more utilitarian and were deprived of any actual decorations like the bright blue walls of Asina with their colossal gates. She couldn't actually see the gates of Selen, but Aloe doubted it had one for each cardinal direction and was probably bound to be small.
Once she was close enough that she may be detected, Aloe switched haste off and instead donned acuity. Her enhanced sight was prodigious, but not even an eagle could see kilometers into the distance with precision. What she could discern was the size and the vague layout of the city. Like every good-standing fortress city, there were seemingly no edifications outside the walls, and from her advantage point, everything looked very tightly packed.
That wasn't much of a surprise.
Now that she was on a considerable elevation, she searched for the road as approaching the city from the middle of nowhere was the last thing she wanted to do. Following the same tactic from the early morning, Aloe jumped down with toughness, totally impervious to the fall.
For the rest of the journey to the road, she switched to the regeneration stance and used her time to evolve black seeds. If she ever needed water now, her best plan of action was transplanting the Blossomflame and using the soil of the pot for a Flourishing Spring and force-grow it into maturity instead of potentially having to drink her urine.
The sheer thought of guzzling the hot substance made her gag.
"Ugh, why am I picturing it so neatly?" Aloe wiped the imagined taste out of her tongue with her objectively dirtier hands.
Walking without the haste internal infusion made her unbelievably slow. Not only because she was no longer moving at sice her normal speed, but because using another infusion did diminish her base speed. Even her hack with recovery, that she had unlimited stamina with this stance, didn't really work as she was using most of her vitality for Evolution. And the less vitality she had, the more severe the attribute reductions from the stance were.
Dozens of black seeds later and with noon threatening to arrive, Aloe made it to Selen.
The walls were even more imposing up close, but she didn't let herself get intimidated. Right now would be the decisive moment. She will likely have been marked as a criminal by now, but she also was weeks away from Asina, where the news would have to travel from.
Her safety bid on the fact that the sultanzade and the sultanah thought that she had thrice the vitality of an adult instead of sice. That meant that she was twice as fast as they would believe, so no emissaries should have yet reached the furthest point of the Ydaz-Loyata border.
Hopefully.
Tensions were high with Loyata, so the guards at the gates were bound to stop her, what mattered was if they knew her face or not.
With the speed stance ready and her best efforts to control her movement-boosted body so she didn't appear unnaturally fast, Aloe walked toward the city gates.
"Halt!" One of the guards announced. Both wielded pikes, even if they had scimitars too on their belts. "Reason of entry?"
Even though the soldier was intimidating, Aloe relaxed as soon as they didn't look at her closely. It seems they aren't on alert. Yet.
"Passage and rest, if possible," Aloe explained with a hint of nervousness. Practiced nervousness. After all, a woman of her stature would be intimidated by a guard talking to her even if she had nothing to hide.
It was weird using her masquerade after this long.
"Are you a merchant?" He inquired.
The cultivator frowned as there wasn't anything in her person that screamed 'merchant'. Her backpack was big, yes, but that was expected of a traveler. Especially a solitary one.
"No, I'm not." She swayed with her head.
"You mentioned passage, what's your destination?"
"What's this an interrogation?" Aloe expressed frustration along with putting her hands on her hips.
"Yes." The guard added taciturnly. "Tensions are rising, and we must control any movement in and out of Loyata, which I suppose is your destination."
"I… yes." Her tone was to a near growl, but she let herself be subdued. A traveler wouldn't like to mess with the guards. "My sister lives a bit past the border and I'm on my way to visit her, will that be enough of a reason?"
The guard didn't comment further, not even at her outburst, and simply motioned her to pass through.
Wordlessly, Aloe obeyed.
This type of gate control was more a posse than anything else for the common traveler. Their true intention was to regulate commerce rather than avoid crimes.
The fortress city of Selen was small, and that much became even more evident once she stepped in. It had an oppressive air to it, and with guards and soldiers at every corner, it felt more like an oversized garrison than an actual city.
The sheer number of armed people made Aloe second guess herself, but it was too late to turn back now so she tightened her cayora and continued forward. She still was a bit too fresh and anxious to ask for directions, so the first thing she did was stroll around to get a feel of the place.
It was painfully obvious that Selen was located near Loyata as most buildings, instead of being made out of stone or mud, were made out of wood. Wood was hard to come by in most regions of Ydaz, so much so, that most hearths were typically fueled with coal and some dry plants, but here it was plentiful. Or that was what Aloe thought at seeing houses with more wood than just their beams.
Once she felt secure enough, Aloe switched haste for acuity to inspect the place better, and after she detected nothing out of the ordinary, she finally settled with recovery. For day-to-day life, the regeneration stance was certainly the best one, she couldn't understand why Fatima and Naila had called it a useless one besides for taking breaks.
Though at the same time, they couldn't abuse the vitality-restoration properties like her.
When the sun reached its zenith and her stomach growled, the fugitive cultivator finally gathered enough confidence to ask for directions. The conversation was simpler, only slightly difficulted by the thick accent of this backwater emirate, but she was told that there was only one inn in Selen, though it was a rather pleasant one.
And also expensive.
That didn't surprise her as this city was more of a military outpost than anything, and money wasn't much of a problem, even if she only carried a fraction of her fortune on her person. As a matter of fact, Aloe was elated to hear that, because if it was really expensive, then there was a high chance that the inn had a bath, and the heavens knew she was aching for the tight embrace of hot water.
Aloe wasn't surprised to find said inn nearly empty. From the looks of the customers with their expensive-looking silks, they were all merchants. That made even more sense as there were quite a few camels, dromedaries, and even horses on the stables adjacent to the inn. Only rich people could afford mounts.
Hmm, a drupnarea will certainly get me a horse, but it would be incredibly suspicious to drop such a valuable coin when I look like a beggar, besides leaving an obvious trail of my presence. Not many people traded with gold coins, not even merchants. And she was likely bound to be faster than a horse.
The passerby she had talked to wasn't lying when he said the inn was expensive, as a single night ended up costing her two drupnari, which was basically a fifth of the monthly income of a commoner worker.
She would have cried out of outrage if it wasn't because a meal was included in the deal plus a bath.
That was really the only thing that mattered to her.
Because she was starving, the first thing she had was the meal, which was only mutton soup, but it brought her to tears being able to have a hot meal whilst sitting down and not being in a hurry. She kind of was, the fact that she was going to stay a night was enough of a risk already, but she needed the rest badly.
She tried to ignore it to the best of her capabilities, but the wounds from the battle against the djinn still hurt especially her thumb. So a breather, even as short as one night was, was imperative.
After having the meal, Aloe went to the bath, which had already been filled with hot water as she had announced her intentions beforehand.
Never before had she stripped down so fast.
Aloe threw her clothes around freely as they were basically torn rugs by this point and submerged her whole body into the water, not even rinsing before going in.
"Oh, heavens!" The petite woman spasmed in ecstasy when she got her head out of the water. "A bath has never felt this good~"
She almost wanted to stay here forever, escape be damned. And she almost did it, if it wasn't because the water rapidly turned cold. Unlike the public baths of Sadina or the private baths at the palace, these waters weren't constantly heated, but instead a bathtub filled with buckets of hot water.
After being the only human in all of Khaffat to be sexually excited for water, Aloe was freed from her stupor and thoroughly washed her body. There was grime in places that there shouldn't be grime after having traveled through multiple biomes and days without so much of a wet towel to clean herself.
Once she was completely clean, she gagged at having to wear the same clothes because they weren't only in a poor state, but even dirtier than she had been. That cemented her resolution, and she went to whatever shop she could find new clothes, especially underwear.
Getting a new attire had been a bit complicated as she was rather small and there weren't many tailors with readied clothing of her size. Whilst she hated to admit it, she normally bought clothes meant for children, or at least she did so before they gifted all her daily life clothing at the palace, but there weren't exactly many children in this fortress. After talking with one of the tailors, she was recommended to get thicker clothing once she mentioned that Loyata was her destination.
Her proudest purchase, though, was many sets of undergarments and socks.
All in all, the clothing took a hit on her purse. This spending was no longer on the level of silver, but electrum. She faced the problem of being impossibly rich right now but being unable to spend her fortune as it was in the shape of gold.
Because she wanted to be out as early as possible tomorrow, Aloe already bought the provisions she would need for the rest of the journey. A word with one of the many people she talked to told her that the fjord ports were around a month away, which was less than a week for her, making her able to go nonstop for the promised ship.
With her purchases over, Aloe headed for the inn and peacefully rested all the remaining afternoon by evolving black seeds, which she had also restocked. By the time the sun went away, she was already lying in the comfort of a soft bed.
"Things can only go for the better now." She murmured on her way to sleep.
Comments
Zachary Patterson
No she just jinxed herself!
The3rd
Infinite cookies are here 🍪♾️
