? 10 – The Hero ?
MARCHLANDS. WùD?O VILLAGE.
June’s arrival had woken Kyra from already fading dreams, nightmares of shadowed things backing her into a corner from which there would soon be no escape. Now, awake and dressed, she’s taken the crimson flannel shirt she had tied around her waist and put it on, meagre protection against the morning chill as they wait for June to meet them at Wùd?o’s gate.
“Thank God I had a flannie,” “It’s not nearly this brisk back home.”
Ewan nods, but his head is tilted up to examine the elaborate carving atop the dark wooden gate. It seems to depict a serpentine dragon, similar to the one in Meilin’s mother’s shrine.
“Do you think dragons are real here?” “I’d ask, but I dunno if that’s like asking if someone’s God is real back on Earth.”
Kyra shrugs, but she’s pretty sure Ewan is mostly talking to himself. Instead, she watches as Meilin descends the village path in a huff, the tightness in her face betraying an anger at something—or someone. Given they hadn’t seen her since she went to speak with her mother, Kyra guesses it’s the latter.
Kyra asks as she reaches them.
“My Mother’s sending me to Earth with you,”
“Oh.”
Kyra and Ewan exchange a concerned look, unsure of what to say.
“You can’t tell her to fuck off?”
Meilin obviously hasn’t heard that slang before, but Kyra can tell she gets the gist.
she replies, sighing.
Kyra ventures, a little unsure.
“You probably shouldn’t, but I appreciate the gesture.”
In the lull that follows, Kyra checks the packed lunches the village had volunteered for their trip in the handmade satchel she now wears around her shoulder. She’s not sure if the rest of the Marchlands is this generous, but she can’t help but be touched by the gesture.
“So, how long should it take us to reach…?”
“Wù-Pailou?”“No more than a day’s walk, thankfully. We should get there by late afternoon if all goes well.”
“No horses, then?”
“It’s cute you think we can afford horses,” “Raptors, maybe, but we’d have had to purchase them in Wù-Pailou first.”
Ewan’s eyes alight.
June calls out with a mischievous quirk to her lips, descending the path to join them at the gate.
Meilin raises an eyebrow but acquiesces. Ewan looks heartbroken.
“Anyway.”“I’m sorry, Meilin. I spoke with your mother, but—”
“It’s okay,” . “I don’t think I want to be here with her right now anyway.”
“Let’s get going then.”
Kyra takes one last look back up at Wùd?o, memorising the sight as they start their descent back down into the moors.
A village in another world. That’s something you don’t see every day.
“Hey! Meilin!”
The party stops, and Kyra spots Meilin’s brother hurrying to the gate. Their guide walks back up the path to meet him, and he pushes a sheathed sword into her hands. She seems surprised, and the two hug, words whispered so that they don’t reach Kyra’s ears.
When Meilin returns, she’s actually smiling a little, Lei waving her off from the gate as they continue their descent.
June asks, glancing at the sword.
“An ancestral dao,” “Not my family’s, Lei’s. His father gave it to him. Means he expects it back, one day.”
Kyra peers over towards the sword; it’s long, but not so much as to require two hands. She notes that the blade curves a little, while the cord-wrapped hilt cants in the opposite direction. The sword itself seems entirely functional, in comparison to the more elaborate runic writing on the black-and-gold sheath.
“Should Ewan and I have a weapon?” “In case we get jumped by some sort of monster?”
“Have you ever trained to fight with a knife before, or a sword?”
“No, but—”
“No buts,” “You’d be just as much a danger to yourselves and those around you as you would be to an attacker. If we wind up in that sort of danger, you two just run, or at least get behind me.”
Meilin asks, tilting her head.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
June replies, causing the Marchlander to quirk her lips in appreciation.
Kyra folds her arms, making her thoughts on the matter clear with a grumpy pout, though she doesn’t push the issue. Soon after they’ve descended low enough to stand at the base of the plateau.
June asks, glancing at Meilin.
“We’re almost as far west as you can go,” “So we’ll need to head south-east to reach Wù-Pailou. The old Jade Road is mostly intact, though we’ll have to do a little cross-country.”
“Could be worse. We won’t pass too close to the Great Cliffs, will we?”
“I wish. I’ve never seen them myself.”
“Never been out of the highlands?”
“It’s a long way to travel without good reason.” “I would love to see a Marchland city one day. Seems I’ll be seeing even an Earth one before that.”
June lifts her shoulders.
Ewan pokes his head between them and into the conversation.
“Of course,”“I hope you didn’t think the entire Marchlands was like this?”
“Honestly, I wasn’t sure.”
“Well, if you think of the Marchlands as like Great Britain—and that’d be fair, the size’s are vaguely comparable—we’re up in north Scotland,”
“Significantly fewer kilts so far though,”
#
The Jade Road, much to Kyra’s disappointment, turns out to be a more fanciful name for an ancient path cutting through the undergrowth—on some level, she’d kind of hoped it was going to be something like the yellow brick road.
Meilin leads them away from Wùd?o and the mountain ranges out west, travelling south-east with dirt and stone crunching underfoot. More than once the path suddenly peters out, thick grass obscuring any sight of it. It’s an easier trek than the one to Wùd?o, however, as the moors become less wetland and more grassland. Not having to worry about falling suddenly into a peat bog helps, though the mist too has mostly cleared.
Within eyesight a river flows along, water travelling in the same direction their party is. Birds flit about in the sky, competing for insects with small winged lizards. Their sounds, coupled with that of running water and rustling grass, are all Kyra can hear in every direction, an absence of civilisation she’s never truly felt before. She’d been camping with her dad when she was young, but a car, a phone, safety, was always nearby. This was different.
She and her three companions could be the only people left in the whole world.
Ewan says, puncturing the silence.
Kyra almost jumps in surprise, head down as it was, trying to watch where she steps in the absence of a proper path.
“You don’t need to raise your hand,” “You can just ask.”
“Is all of the Marchlands similar to our Asia?”“I only ask because those knight-guys we ran into yesterday didn’t look or dress like they were Chinese.”
“I’m sorry, Chai-nese? Like the tea?”
June laughs, and Ewan goes bright red. Even Kyra stifles her own laugh, raising an eyebrow to June behind Ewan’s back.
“Never mind,”
“China’s a country on Earth,” “It’s probably where people will think you’re from.”
She shrugs slightly at that; put so abstractly, it clearly doesn’t mean much to her.
The four crest a small hill and pause, catching their breath. A splash of gold wildflowers dots the other side, a warm glow in the pale light. In the distance too, they can see the path begin to reemerge out of the undergrowth.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have laughed,”“Quick history lesson: Back in the day, the Marchlands was settled by two mighty empires—the Medraut and the Tiānlóng—that found out the hard way that world-spanning imperialism isn’t sustainable. They collapsed, but their people and their traditions—and the traditions of those they conquered and brought with them—survived to blend together into something new. It’s part of what makes the Marchlands so unique; a melting pot of cultures that could never have interacted in the way they did otherwise.”
“Melting pot’s a good word for it,” “We’re all Marchlanders now. For better or worse.”
Ewan bobs his head in acknowledgment, but his face betrays that he’s still embarrassed.
“Hey. I didn’t say all that to try and make you look foolish.” “Kyra’s going to need a mind like yours to make it as the Hero. Just try not to think of this as Earth, okay? It’s far more complicated than we’ll ever know, though I’ll do my best to teach you as much about it as I can.”
“Teach me?” “About the Marchlands?”
“Obviously.” “You didn’t think I was just Kyra’s Guide, did you?”
#
Hours later, as the sun descends from its peak in the sky, the four take a break in the shelter of a stone ruin. Whatever it was has long since been scoured away by time, leaving behind a few broken walls in silent pilgrimage among the wildflowers.
June says, tossing a flask to Ewan.
He catches it, barely.
A few feet away Kyra groans quietly as she sits down on a large boulder and stretches out, certain now that she’s going to have the worst blisters of her life by the time they’re done.
“I assume there’s a good reason—” “But why couldn’t we just go back via the lamppost?”
In-between sips, Ewan glances up from the flask with a perplexed expression.
“The lampposts are kind of like an emergency system,” “They can get you across in a hurry, but they’re not exactly safe or accurate. I felt kind of okay taking two of us into the open moors, but going back into a city is a different story. One unlucky trip and you end up somewhere like the Premier’s bathroom.”
Kyra notes, and June grins cryptically.
“Wù-Pailou has a stable gateway,” “Apparently it always takes you to the same spot on either side. The town grew up around it, I believe?”
“You won’t find many unguarded gateways in the Marchlands. New Albion is a different story, if only because we didn’t exactly take magic into account during city planning.”
“Why New Albion anyway?” “No offence to us, but surely there are better places.”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” “A cynic would say the British wanted to dump their magic trouble in Australia along with their convicts. Maybe the people of Londinium were just sick of it, found some way to chuck the problem our way. Lot of generations since King Arthur agreed to take on that noble burden.”
“This King Arthur thing is still throwing me.”
“Don’t get too in the weeds about it,” “Who knows how much of that is true anyway.”
Ewan throws out, getting a grumpy look in return from the older woman.
“Well, if we’ve reached that stage of the conversation—” “Time to keep going then.”
She rolls her eyes at the cries of protest.
“How about this? We’re only an hour away at most. If we make it back before sundown, I’ll buy everyone dinner.”
Kyra’s stomach growls at the thought, even having only had lunch. Ignoring the pain in her legs, she puts her shoes back on and drags herself to her feet.
she says, stretching out her arms as she wanders out of the ruins and onto the road.
She stops mid-sentence, eyes squinting at the horizon.
June calls out.
Kyra asks, gesturing towards the dark shadows gathering in the direction of their destination.
Meilin has joined her, scanning the distance with a spyglass held up to one eye.
~***~