Worlds' Strongest by Simon Archer

Author:Simon Archer [Archer, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Published: 2021-02-21T00:00:00+00:00

12

After a few more hours of what felt like endless wandering, we finally arrived at the town of Grave. It was late, and the whole village looked as though it was asleep; we’d lost a lot of time due to the backtracking and fighting off rabid wolves and hunters.

Unlike the houses in Eon, these all seemed to be entirely wooden. It made sense since this town was only a mile from the forest we’d traveled through, not to mention there was another forest just to the east of the village. Grave was also significantly larger than Eon.

As Elle explained it, a major difference between the two towns was their general focus. In Eon, people’s concern was their own advancement. They wanted to expand their family’s name and influence with little concern for how their lives affected their neighbors. The center of the town hosted a few market stalls and a place for the head of the town to conduct business, and the rest of the village was land and houses.

Grave, on the other hand, focused more on its community. Higher class citizens had nice houses, but none of them were as extravagant as the ones in Eon. The center of the town hosted stores and shops, taverns, inns, even restaurants.

“We used to come here all the time,” Elle grinned as we reached the edge of the town, “to visit, to shop, to eat. We’d stay with August and spend a few days seeing everything. When I was little, I always wanted to move here.”

I blinked, smiling to myself at how simple that all was. It was sweet.

“Why did you guys stop coming?” I asked.

“We just never came back after mom died,” she muttered. She took a deep breath as we walked past a building with large windows, smiling widely. I looked in the windows and realized it was one of the restaurants. It was closed for the night, but the smells still lingered in the air. Rich, unique, salty smells met us as we walked by. I almost had to stop and smell it myself. It reminded me of food my mom made when I was little.

“Is August going to be awake this late?” I asked, glancing around. Despite it being night, the village wasn’t as calm as it initially looked. Almost all the lights in the inn were on, a group of young teenage girls giggled on a porch down the road, and there was a myriad of noises coming from several buildings.

“Ren, it’s not that late,” she laughed.

“What do you mean? It’s night?”

“The sun is set for almost fourteen hours a day. Do you always sleep that long?”

“I- Well, no, I guess not.” It was still hard to tell what time it was without a watch or anything, but she had a point. Among my friends, I was known for working well into the night.

“There’s a lot to do after the sun goes down,” Elle chuckled, looking at me from the corner of her eye.

“Well, when you put it like that…” I laughed and nodded, raising my eyebrows.

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