The Way Ahead - Book 2 by Kaleb England

Author:Kaleb England
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Podium Publishing
Published: 2022-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Level Up!

Firestarting 63→64

CHAPTER 24

City Troubles

“It’s grown so much!”

“Wait, you’ve been here before?” Edwin furrowed his brow in thought. “I thought you hadn’t?”

“What would make you think that?”

“Just … actually, huh. I’m not sure. I guess I didn’t think it was old enough?”

“Your mistake!”

“So, ah … What was it like before?”

“Well …”

The two of them were closing in on Vinstead, with some of the outlying homesteads and traffic picking up slowly in density. The city itself had just appeared over the horizon, with its clouds of avior circling and rising and falling.

“It was a lot smaller, right on the border of the Verdant, and there weren’t so many birds.”

“Those are avior, not … wait, on the border of the Verdant?” Edwin asked incredulously.

“Ya!”

“Holy …” Edwin tried to imagine how big the forest must have been. “Why is it so much smaller now?” he wondered aloud.

“Less mana in the air.”

“Huh?”

“Weren’t you asking?” she asked with a knowing grin. “But ya. There’s a pretty strong drop of magic between here and in the Verdant proper. The plants won’t grow nearly as fast as back there, or for some of the more magical ones, not at all.”

That was … interesting. “So avior aren’t native to the area?”

She shook her head. “Nah. Well. We had a few. But humans were dominant up here. That of course meant halflings, and the Verdant was popular among elves and creal.”

“The—” Edwin paused as a courier blazed past them, whipping up the air in the wake of their passage and leaving a roar of wind. “The what?”

“Creal? Big, woodlike, fans of nature?”

“Distinct from fey, I take it?”

“Oh yeah. They’re more like … sentient plants? You might know them as …. Talor? Leshys? Treants?”

“Wait, you have those?”

“I’ll take that as a no, then.”

“I haven’t even heard of them. Well, not in the context of being real, anyway. Elves I’ve heard rumors of living nearby, but treants? Like, living trees and stuff? Nope.”

“Strange. They weren’t rare back when. I wonder what happened to them? But anyway! Vinstead is old. It’s been here longer than I have and gone by lots of names. Vinstead. Vinstead. Vinstead. They all basically mean the same thing, though.”

“Let me guess, ‘the wine place’?”

“More or less, ya. How did—ah, Polyglot? It translated?”

“More or less, yeah,” he tossed back.

The hustle and bustle of their surroundings only increased as the density of homes slowly increased. While the aesthetic was distinctly medieval, the overall layout of the city’s sprawl seemed more distinctly modern. Then again, Edwin didn’t really know what city layouts back in the early-mid thousands were really like. Maybe it was true to that as well.

In some regards, Edwin could understand why technologically, Joriah might have been somewhat behind Earth. When Skill-powered humanoids and animals were more than capable of outputting more energy than a basic steam engine, why would one ever be developed beyond the state of being a novelty?

Naturally, from Edwin’s perspective, that was utter nonsense. Industrialization offered opportunities and capabilities to the masses rather than just specialists, and it opened avenues unimaginable to preindustrial civilizations.

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