Chapter 14: Reunions in Aric

The wagon came to a rolling stop as sounds from the surrounding buildings overtook any possible conversation within. Nic’s hands shook slightly as he listened to the distant conversations.

They had passed through the walls encircling the city of Aric and had stopped in the center of the City-state. The last time Nic had been in the center of Aric had been during his first confrontation with Jack Cariatel. That day had been the moment that the truth about Nic’s family had been shown to the entire city. It had been the day that Nic first absorbed a large amount of Irradiation.

And it had been the day that Nic’s father died.

Nic hadn’t been fast enough.

Not fast enough to save Aria’s mother.

And in the end, Nic didn’t stop Jack in time, resulting in his father’s death.

The one at fault for both of their deaths was Nic himself.

Nic’s hands continued to shake relentlessly. He didn’t want to step out of the vehicle. He didn’t want the other residents of the village to see him. Nic didn’t want to see their faces. How they looked at him.

His mother’s face was sure to be the one that was filled the most with hatred. Aria’s father would be the same way.

There was no way Nic could look either of them in the face.

He couldn’t even visit his own father’s grave.

A familiar, warm hand reached out and gripped Nic’s shaking hands. The owner of the warm hand leaned her head against Nic’s shoulders as she moved closer to him. The warmth of her body was able to calm the nerves he was feeling.

“It’ll be fine, Nic.” Aria’s voice was angelic as she whispered close to his ear.

Like Nic, Aria had witnessed her mother’s death. Being by his side, day after day following the events that happened in the town square, Nic believed her to feel similarly to him.

Yet here she was, acting as the rock that he could lean on. She was fine coming back to Aric, in fact, she had even suggested it in the beginning. It made Nic wonder just how similarly she thought to him.

“SARMAN! It’s good to see you!” A familiar male voice shouted from outside the wagon, causing Nic to jerk up. It was only once he did that he realized that Aria and him were the only people still in the carriage.

When he looked over at her, Nic found Aria’s face nervously close to his. The worry in her eyes was palpable as she cupped half of Nic’s face with her free hand.

Her eyes closed as she brought her forehead into contact with Nic’s. She had gotten so close that Nic could smell the sweetness of every breath she took.

“It’ll be alright, Nic.”

“Huh?”

“It’ll be alright. I’ll be by your side the entire time.”

“What’re-?” Nic tried to ask her what she meant but was cut off when his mouth was suddenly covered by a soft feeling. Aria had kissed him again.

The sweet taste of her lips seemed to last a lifetime. When she pulled back finally, Nic found himself following her. He didn’t want to stop tasting that sweetness.

“So let’s go meet Papa… and your mama…” Aria finally stood up, pulling Nic with the hand she still had on his.

As he let her pull him up, Nic finally realized the truth.

Aria had never felt the same as him about the death of their parents. She had accepted her mother’s death long ago. And now she wanted Nic to accept his father’s death.

She wouldn’t leave him to face it alone, however.

Aria was his pillar.

She was always his pillar.

And so Nic found himself being pulled out of the carriage by Aria.

The setting sun had already begun to paint the small City-State a deep orange. Shadows loomed large as well, covering the ground. Despite this, Nic could instantly tell that the once dirt roads had been covered with a delicate stone pattern reminiscent of the streets in Sanum. The people he had been worried about facing walked by the wagon without pause. None of them were interested in the man that had just walked out of it, despite what he had done in that very same spot nearly a year earlier.

Only one man was at all interested.

“Aria… Nic…” Aria’s father was standing by the wagon, waiting for the two of them to exit. Sarman, Kiara, and Sarah were all already gone, leaving just the three of them by the wagon. Even Tim, the driver of the wagon, had disappeared.

Aria nudged Nic slightly ahead of her. He knew what she wanted. She wanted him to raise his head.

The face full of anger, hatred, and every other negative emotion that Nic had been expecting wasn’t there. In its place was the face of a father simply glad to see his daughter and the person she cared the most about in the world.

Nic found himself unable to move. His mouth refused to work and his body felt like lead.

“We’re home, Papa.” As Aria announced their return, Kayde Towsend wrapped his arms around the two newfound adults. Not just Aria, but Nic as well.

“Welcome back, you two.” It was a whisper, but Kayde welcomed both of them back lovingly. His grip on them tightened as Aria put one of her own arms around her father's back in response. “Before anything else, I just wanna say ‘Thank you’. After what he did to Wendy and Samuel… I wanted to kill Jack myself. I heard from Sarman that you two were the ones who eventually put that bastard in the ground. Thank you.”

The words that Kayde was saying passed straight through Nic’s ears. He was having trouble understanding why Kayde wasn’t mad at him. Not even the man’s own words were enough to explain it to Nic.

Even after the hugging stopped, Nic continued to stare into the abyss as his brain tried to catch up to what was happening. This was nothing like how he thought things would have gone.

Aria and Kayde continued their conversation as daughter and father until the rest of their group finally reappeared.

“Yo! We’re back.” Sarah was the one who shouted out to the group as they walked up to the town center from the western road that the wagon had come in on. Getting a nonreaction from Nic, she waved her hand in front of his face in order to get his attention.

“He’s having a bit of a night.” Aria stopped talking with her father and put a hand on Nic’s shoulder. That was the only thing that got his attention, which caused Sarah’s face to sour slightly. “Don’t worry about it Sarah. He’ll hopefully be back to normal by the morning.”

‘Hmpf. Fine. I’ll hold you to that, Aria. I wanna spar with him at least once before you guys leave.” Sarah revealed her true intentions as she responded to Aria.

Kiara snickered behind her before putting a hand on Sarah’s back and leading her to the side. The two started whispering as Aria looked back over to her father.

“Papa, do you know where Kayla is? It’d probably be good for Nic to see her again.?”

Kayde folded his arms while thinking.

“Given the time of day, she should just be finishing her daily visit to Samuel in a bit.”

“Perfect! We can just meet her there then and kill two birds with one stone.” Aria reacted to what her father said with a certain enthusiasm. Yet the person next to her shrank back.

“Who’re they?” Sarman finally spoke again for the first time since the group arrived back at the wagon. The entire time that Nic and Aria had spent in Sanum, Nic had refused to talk about his parents. Not even going so far as to say their names when others were around.

“Kayla is Nic’s mama and Samuel is his papa.”

“Oh?! I want to meet the people who raised my fellow disciple of the master!” Sarah forgot her whispering with Kiara and barged her way into the conversation. Her words caused Aria’s father to raise an eyebrow at Nic.

“It’s… fine… we can wait till Ma gets back… We don’t need to visit Father.” Nic struggled to talk, even in a quiet voice. If Aria was there, he could find the courage to face his mother. But not his father. He couldn’t find that courage no matter what. He couldn’t face the remnant tombstone of the man he was too slow to save.

“No. Nic, I agree with Aria. You have to go visit Samuel before you leave, so you might as well get it over with now. Besides, this will give me a chance to take you somewhere specific.” Kayde refuted Nic, agreeing with his daughter.

“You want to show me something?”

Kayde nodded. Nic hung his head and looked down. He couldn’t find the courage to say no, yet if he said yes he wouldn’t be able to move. He was stuck with no way out.

He heard Kayde tell everyone to follow him. Nic heard him. But his feet stayed still.

Once again, Nic was stuck. He could feel his stomach quivering in fear.

His arm was pulled by the girl who had become the pillar he relied upon. His head jerked up only to find her smiling back at him. She pulled him along. Even if it was against his will, she wouldn’t care. Aria knew that Nic needed to travel this path. So she would be the pillar that supported him or the one to guide him.

The place that Kayde wanted to show Nic ended up not being that far away. Not even halfway down the southern street, the group stopped in front of a large house.

Standing on the porch of the house was an older woman. Her greying hair was topped with two floppy canine ears and a bushy tail was wagging behind the dark blue dress she was wearing. She was humming quietly as her hands moved around a series of floral arrangements on the porch. Each one was a different flower, and yet all of them looked beautiful in their own right.

Nic recognized the woman. He had talked to her many times while living in the town while it was still a Rad-Town. His gaze wandered up to the sign above the porch as he heard Kayde cough to get the woman’s attention.

“Carnie Flowers and Trade Hub”

The second part of the name had been tacked on later and looked ready to fall at any moment. His attention was drawn by a loud gasp and as he looked back at the floor level, the woman had already rushed down the stairs and was awkwardly running to Nic.

The moment he was at arm’s distance, Mrs. Carnie wrapped her arms around Nic in a tight hug. It was something he never thought he would ever be the recipient of. Unsure of what to do, Nic wrapped his own arms around the older woman.

Mrs. Carnie was easily a head shorter than Nic, so when she finally pushed her body away from Nic’s she had to look up in order to talk to him.

“You’ve gotten even bigger this past year.” It was a completely normal sentence. Nic wasn’t sure what he had been expecting after what Kayde had said earlier, but a normal sentence wasn’t it.

“I guess?”

His response was rewarded with a small smile from Mrs. Carnie.

“Have you been eating well in the big city? And I see you’re still wearing the same clothes I made for you before you left, have you been buying yourself some nice clothes there?” She started rapidly firing questions at Nic, concerned for his well-being.

“I’ve been doing fine, Mrs. Carnie.”

She looked back down as she grew quiet. Her next words were an almost unintelligible whisper.

“No, you’re not.”

“Huh?”

“I said you’re not doing fine. I can hear it in your voice. The trepidation you have in speaking to me. I also know that you refused to send your mom any letters while you were in Sanum. Do you know how worried she has been since we heard about the attack last month? You don’t do you?” She was pounding on his chest with every question. Her voice steadily got louder and louder until the entire group was staring at the two of them. Even some of the passersby were starting to stare.

Nic couldn’t do anything but allow her to continue. He had no way of stopping her. After all, everything she was saying was correct. He hadn’t sent a single letter to his mother. He was scared. He didn’t know how she felt about him after he caused the death of his father.

“But you know…” Mrs. Carnie got quiet again as she earnestly stared up at Nic’s downtrodden face. “No one blames you for what happened that day. No one except yourself it seems. So, if you have to blame yourself for what happened, then remember this. You also saved countless lives that day. Don’t blame yourself for just the bad, but blame yourself for the good as well.”

“The good…? Like what?”

“You wanna know something? If you hadn’t absorbed all of the Irradiation in the town on that day, Dave would’ve died only a few hours after from his sickness.”

Nic’s breath caught in his throat. He had been too late on that day. If only he had been earlier, he might've said his father and Aria’s mother. That was what he believed. And yet Mrs. Carnie had just revealed to Nic that he hadn’t been too late to save everyone.

Nic had made it in time to save Dave Carnie, Mrs. Carnie’s husband.

Her insinuation was clear to everyone there.

No matter what he thought, in the end, he had been there in time to save everyone else. Would that outweigh the feeling of being too late to save people precious to him? Only Nic could make that decision.

That was what Mrs. Carnie left Nic with as she turned back to Aria’s father and asked him where their eventual destination was that night.

“Kayla should still be visiting Samuel correct? That’s where we’re heading.”

“In that case, take these. It’s on me.” Mrs. Carnie rushed back up the stairs to her porch and started grabbing a number of flowers. She walked back down to the group and handed two flowers to each person. “You’ll need these.”

When she got to Nic and Aria she gave them four each instead of two.

“Remember Nic… You saved a lot of people on that day. Don’t forget that.”

That was the final thing that Mrs. Carnie said to Nic before the group began their trek to the final destination. They cut behind Mrs. Carnie’s house and began moving through unpathed areas between houses until they came upon a wooden fence.

This was the only section of the original wooden wall that remained. The rest had been turned to stone and expanded outwards. Yet this section alone remained.

“Is this… a graveyard…?” Kiara looked inside the small entrance as she whispered. Within the wooden fence was a series of gravestones dotting the area.

Kayde stopped the majority of the group, holding them back from going into the graveyard until Nic and Aria went themselves. Similarly, once they walked past the entrance, Aria herself stopped. Having been pulled along by her, Nic stopped himself. He was fearful of the conversation he had to have inside.

He could already see her. His mother was kneeling before one of two graves in the middle of the area. She was the only other person there. Her black clothes covered most of her body, while her brown hair, the same shade as Nic’s, covered her head and neck.

“You go first.” With a whisper into his ear, Aria pushed Nic, forcing him forward into the graveyard. A quick glance back told Nic that she wasn’t going to let him leave until he went over to the grave of his father.

He wasn’t going to be able to win against her. So he begrudgingly began shuffling his feet over to where his mother was. As he got closer, he could hear what she was quietly saying.

“-ack on Sanum a little bit ago. I heard Nic is fine though. Apparently, the attack involved Irradiation so I was a bit scared.”

He should have known from the conversation with Mrs. Carnie that his mother already knew about the attack, yet hearing it from her own mouth caused the knot in his stomach to be replaced with a separate knot connected to a separate fear, one that even Nic was unsure of.

His mother had been constantly bringing flowers as was evidenced by the large amount near the tombstone itself. Some were in their dying stages, but a lot were still healthy. Nic placed his own two next to the healthy ones before kneeling down next to his mother.

Her eyes had been closed this entire time, so when she heard someone next to her, she said Kayde’s name, assuming that he was the one who had come. She hadn’t been expecting her own son to appear here.

“I’m back… Father.” Nic spoke slowly, still trying to figure out exactly what he wanted to say to the tombstone. Unlike his mother, he kept his eyes open so he saw as she flinched upon hearing his voice. His arrival had been a complete surprise. When she looked over at Nic, he could see that her eyes were red already.

“I don’t know what to say. I was too late on that day to save you. I took too long to absorb the Irradiation, and because of that, you had to die. I’m… I’m sorry, Father. If I had just been a bit faster, you would still be here now. Maybe even Aria’s mother as well.”

Nic continued to speak slowly and softly. It was the first time he had said any words to his father’s grave since his death. He knew his mother was listening to him. Nic was expecting pushback.

Slap!

The full force of his mother’s palm was sent across Nic’s face, sending him onto the ground. Nic looked up at his mother’s tearful face as she grabbed the collar of the blue shirt he was wearing.

“You don’t get to say that!”

“Huh?”

“Nic, you don’t get to disrespect your father’s decision like that!”

Her words sparked something in Nic. He grabbed the thin hand gripping his collar and pushed it away.

“Decision?! He died because I was too slow!”

Their voices rang out in the quiet air. Neither cared who overheard them, in fact, neither of them was even aware of the rest of the world at that moment.

“You’re wrong! So wrong! Samuel sacrificed himself so that you could live! You wouldn’t have had the time you needed if he hadn’t put himself in the way of the Hunter!” His mother banged her hands on Nic’s chest while she yelled at him.

“Why?! I didn’t want him to do that! I never asked him to do that! So why did he have to die?”

His mother stopped moving her arms as her tearful eyes stared into Nic’s. His own eyes had grown so blurry that he could barely make out that it was his mother still in front of him.

“Because Samuel was the only one there that could see the truth right in front of everyone.”

“What does that even mean?”

The two voices had quieted down. Tears still readily flowed from both of their eyes as Nic’s mother grabbed one of his hands. She held it in hers before gently rolling it into a fist and covering it with her own hand.

“No one else saw what your father did that day. Not me. Not Ordwell. Not one person. Except for your father. He saw in you the chance that this world needs to move forward. Your father and I were stuck in the past. We didn’t believe that the world could move forward for another two centuries. But you… You challenged that belief and the result is here,” His mother poked his chest, right above his heart, once with a single finger. “You can help this world. That’s what your father saw. But if you had died there, then nothing would be able to take your place. So…”

“So I had to live?” Nic could connect the dots himself. He understood the reasoning his mother was spelling out for him.

How simple it would be to accept it. To let go of the pain he had held onto for so long.

But he couldn’t.

Doing so would just mean that he was only useful because of his ability.

Was there really no other reason for him to be around? If someone else could do what he could, was there any reason for his father to have sacrificed himself?

“I… I can’t accept that.”

“Huh?” His mother froze, confused at Nic’s statement.

“If I accept that, then what reason is there in me living? If that’s the only reason that father sacrificed himself, then I could’ve been anyone. Is there any reason for me to do anything beyond freeing this world?”

The answer he got didn’t come from the mother in front of him. Instead, it came from a familiar girl who had walked up to the tombstone next to his father’s tombstone.

“I guess I never thought about the fact that you didn’t get to hear your papa’s final words like I heard Mama’s.” Aria placed two flowers down on the top of her mother’s gravestone. “You wanna know what the last thing she said to me was? ‘No matter what choices I make in my life, she will always accept them as long as they make me happy.’” She turned to look at the parent and child who had been arguing with each other. “I think… if he had the chance, your papa would have said the same to you.”

“Aria… Even so, what would that change about Father’s sacrifice? He-”

“He didn’t save you only because of your magic, Nic. He did it because you’re his son! Kayla, Papa… isn’t that what they call Parental Love?!” The two parents in the area nodded as Aria addressed them individually. “Nic, you may not understand it now, but one day we will. And when that day comes, you will finally be able to understand why your papa sacrificed himself. It was to make sure you would have a future.”

“Besides,” A male’s voice cut into the conversation. Sarman had appeared by Nic at some point. “If your father really only saved you for your ability, and not simply because you were his son, he would have to be a pretty shitty father. And if that were the case, I doubt these two would be going to bat for him so much. So,” Sarman reached his hand out, offering Nic help in getting up. “I think you should be able to stand on your own two feet and give your old man the proper sendoff he deserves.”

Nic looked at the hand, His mother was helped up by Aria already and the two were hugging each other.

He gently lifted his own hand and grabbed Sarman’s. As he was pulled up, Nic was assaulted by a hug from behind.

Sniffle.

“I hadn’t realized that your father died! It’s so sad! And you too Aria! Why didn’t either of you tell meeeee?!” Sarah was clinging to Nic’s back as she cried.

“Oh c’mon, Sarah. It’s not like we’re entitled to know everything about them!” Kiara attempted to pull Sarah off of Nic, only to cause her to tighten the grip she had on him. The scene caused Aria and Nic’s mom to giggle as they watched. Nic felt his face getting hot and unsuccessfully tried to pry her hands off of him as well.

Slowly the group introduced themselves to each other. Nic’s mother seemed to get along extremely well with Sarah and Kiara. She ended up asking the two of them and Sarman a lot of questions about Nic’s time in Sanum.

The topic of the recent attack by Jack didn’t cross their conversation once.

Eventually, once everyone had paid their respects to the departed, the group as a whole got ready to head back to their lodgings for the night. As they were getting split into groups a surprising topic came up.

Aria’s father had noted that he would have Sarman, Sarah and Kiara stay at the Towsend household while Aria and Nic would stay in the recently renovated Healstry Household nearby.

“Huh? Why am I not staying at our place, Papa?” Nic was also confused by this. Even if the home he had lived in his entire life had been renovated, he doubted it had gotten much bigger. Which meant that there would only be two rooms- his Mother’s and his.

“Well, I figured, you know, that you would… uh… want to stay near Nic.” Aria’s father fidgeted while answering her. He was trying very hard to not look directly at Aria or Nic.

“Uh-” Aria seemed to realize the intentions behind his words and started to grow red in the face.

“KYYYYYAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! GET AWAY FROM MEEEE!!!!!”

The sound of a woman shrieking ground their conversation to a halt. It hadn’t been a member of their group but had come from the nearby southern road.

“What was that?” Nic’s mother was the first one to ask a question, to which everyone else except for Nic murmured their own variations of the question.

“Nic? What is it?”

Aria was the first to notice the horrified look on Nic’s face as he looked at the sky near them. No one else could see it but him.

There was a black stack of smoke billowing up where there shouldn’t be.

“Irradiation.”

A mere whisper was all that escaped his lips. But everyone heard it.

The City-state of Aric was brand new in the grand scheme of things. An outbreak of Irradiation now would spell doom for its future.

Nic’s whisper caused the group to begin moving immediately. None of them had physical weapons on them, only magic abilities. Reading the situation in an instant, Aria reached out one of her hands towards the town center.

As they raced back to the main street, two swords came flying down from above. Nic grabbed the one with the dark crystal in its hilt while Aria grabbed the other, which she immediately passed to Sarah.

“In case you need it. I’ll be fine without it for now.” Aria was still learning how to fight with the sword and was far worse at it than Sarah. Her decision to hand the blade over was the obvious choice.

The group reached the road extremely fast in the end. In front of them a woman, presumably the one that had cried out, was on the ground. She was trying to back away from a man that was limping towards her. The man had a number of cuts, with each one spewing Irradiation into the air.

He had been attacked by a monster. It might’ve only been one or multiple. Either way, they were most likely not far behind the man if still alive.

Sarman and Sarah seemed to recognize this as well as they ran past the man and stood on edge while facing the nearby gate to the town.

“Get everyone else away!” Nic shouted to the rest of the group to start moving the bystanders on either side of the street.

“I’ll get her, you take care of him, Nic.” Aria ran up to the girl on the ground and helped her up while Nic got in front of the injured man. He held up his hands, trying to get the man to stop.

“-elp me…” The man groaned. It was barely audible to Nic, despite him standing so close to the man already.

“Help you? I will. But I need you to stop. Can you do that?” Nic gently took another step toward the man.

Even after everything he had said at his father’s grave, Nic’s first instinct in a situation like this was to get rid of the Irradiation. He felt compelled to use his magic. Compelled to make it the most important part of his identity.

“You… please…” The man dropped to his knees as he looked to Nic for salvation.

The amount of Irradiation exuding out of the man’s wounds meant that the man was already in an acute Irradiation Sickness state. The amount of pain he was feeling was more than any sane person could take for extended periods of time.

Nic reached out. He felt that sickly feeling that he always felt with Irradiation. It was trying to enter his body. It always sought out other humans to infect.

The only reason that Nic was different was that he allowed it to enter his body. In fact, he began pulling on the feeling with his mind.

The black miasma Nic was seeing rise into the air turned direction and poured itself into Nic’s body instead. As it did, the sickly feeling was coated by Nic’s magic until it disappeared. In order to absorb everything, Nic had to keep his hand on the man’s body.

They stayed like this for a few minutes until Nic finally determined the man to be free of Irradiation. All that was left were the bleeding wounds he had suffered.

“He needs attention! Someone get a medic!”

“I’m right here!” A woman pushed her way through the forming crowd and ran up to Nic. She had a bag that she set next to the man. When she opened it, Nic saw that it was full of different medical tools and bandages. “You can leave him with me. Thank you for purifying him first.”

Nic nodded and ran over to Sarman and Sarah, who had been joined by Aria and Kiara. They could all hear the sounds of monsters nearby. It wouldn’t be long before they showed up at the city's gate. Even the two guards that were normally posted outside the gate had retreated within and were standing near the group, ready to coordinate their attack.

Two Gigant Bears and a handful of Thornback Spiders rushed the southern gate of Aric. Sarman prepared a flaming spear and was about to throw it at the monsters when a stone wall suddenly appeared and stopped the monsters in their track.

Nic felt he had seen something similar happen before.

Aria audibly gasped like she knew what exactly they had just seen.

Three more walls appeared, encasing the monsters within. It didn’t take long for the death screams of all the monsters split the air. Once the final one went quiet, the walls disappeared back into the ground. Where the monsters had been was a pile of sliced monsters.

“Alright, now that those are taken care of, just gotta deal with the runner…?” A familiar face walked around the pile of monsters. He was the shortest one on the street but was far stronger than most would gather. His rustic orange hair stood out as an unusual color. It was quite the ironic hair color, given the man’s name.

“Rust!” Both Nic and Aria called the man’s name at the same time, causing a bit of confusion among their own group.

“Well, look who’s back ‘n town.” Sarman released his hold on the flaming spear, letting it disappear back into the ether while Sarah lowered the sword in her hands. “I’m guessing you took care of the runner then?”

Nic motioned to the man being taken care of by the medical professional behind him.

“Him? He’ll be fine in a bit. He’s receiving medical attention now.”

“That’s good. I was worried ‘e might infect the entirety of Aric. Good thing you were here, Nic.” Rust reached out and tried to pat Nic on his shoulder, but due to the height difference, he ended up just hitting Nic’s chest instead. “I see you brought some friends as well.”

“Umm, Nic, Aria… Who is this?” Kiara was the one who spoke up.

“Ah, this is Rust. He’s the old keeper of the Verilo homestead out in the forest… Well, he was. Not sure what he’s doing in Aric though.” Nic introduced the dwarf in front of him to the rest of the group before doing the same in reverse. “These two are Sarah and Kiara. They will be staying in Aric for a bit to help with the… monster problem.” Nic whispered the last part. He wasn’t sure if it was public knowledge to the people of the Aric. “And this here is Sarman. He, Aria, and I are simply passing through on a bigger journey.”

Rust sized Sarman up and down before grinning.

“You even made friends with another Progenitor Contractor, huh? Well, good to meet you, Salamander.”

Sarman eyed the man suspiciously while a flaming salamander appeared coiled around his neck.

“Oooohhhh I know you!” An older man’s voice came out of the lizard. “You’re the Deep Dwarf! I thought you were simply a legend! I’m indeed the one and only Salamander, glad to make your acquaintance.”

“Sigh. If Salamander here speaks so highly of you, there is no reason for me to be apprehensive about this. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Rust. I’m Sarman Chapman, current contractor of the Fire Spirit King.” Sarman bowed before Rust as he offered his greeting. Rust simply waved him off in response.

“Chapman, huh? So you’re the son of the Phoenix?”

Sarman eyed Nic, asking for clarification but all Nic could do was shake his head. He had never heard Ordwell called that name either.

“I am…?”

“The son of the Phoenix is the current contractor of Salamander? That is indeed an interesting arrangement there.” Rust made his way past the group and dropped a set of small crystals in the palm of Aria’s father. “Here you go, Kayde. They’re getting more and more active as time goes on. We should make a trip to the heart of the forest tomorrow. Otherwise, we may face a horde far larger than anything humanity has seen before.”

Kayde’s face was contorted in pain as he looked at the crystals in his hand. “That bad, huh? Alright.”

The crowd that had gathered around them initially had dispersed, leaving only the group of travelers, Kayde and Kayla in the area with Rust.

“I hate to be the one to say this, but everyone should get to sleep as soon as you can. Tomorrow seems like it’s gonna be a busy day, especially for you two.” Kayde motioned to Sarah and Kiara who nodded.

The two groups quickly split up after that, with Aria and Nic following Nic’s mother back to their home. When they got there, Nic saw that the place truly had been renovated, quite well in fact. It was much nicer than when he had been living there just the year prior.

Nic’s mother quickly put together some food as they stepped into the house. It wasn’t a big meal, just some bread, meat, and water. For Nic and Aria, who hadn’t eaten in a while, it was a wonderful meal.

Once she was finished eating, Kayle quickly got up and started heading towards her own room on one side of the house.

“Uh… Mother?”

“Yes, Nic?”

“Where is Aria gonna sleep?”

“Hmmm? Isn’t she going to sleep with you?”

Nic spit out the water he had just tipped into his mouth. Aria’s face was bright red as she stared at the empty plate in front of her.

“Why is that your answer?!”

His mother looked back at him with a quizzical expression.

“Aren’t you two dating at this point? What is wrong with sleeping together? Anyways, good night!” Kayla opened the door to her own room and took a step inside. As she was closing it, she peeked her head back out to say one last thing. “Oh, before I forget. The new walls are pretty thick, so don’t be afraid if you happen to make some noise tonight.”

Leaving her red-faced son and Aria at the table, Kayla closed her own door for the night. The two left behind stole glances at each other, each time meeting the other’s eyes for just a second before shifting away in embarrassment.

“I’ll… I’ll find somewhere else to sleep. You can take the bed.” Nic immediately offered the more comfortable spot to Aria and was getting up to go find another place to sleep when Aria grabbed his sleeve.

“It’s fine…” Her face had somehow grown even redder as she whispered.

“Huh?” Nic felt the heart inside of him start beating faster and faster. It pounded against his ribcage as he stared at the girl in front of him, mouth agape.