15-19. Departure

“You alright?” Elijah asked, sitting next to Kurik at the Vicious Squirrel, which was the Hartwood Grove’s only tavern. The atmosphere was light, with the building itself and all the furniture having been grown, rather than constructed. Living bulbs glowed along the ceiling, while a pair of elves operated the bar. Most of the patrons were there to eat and socialize, but a few, like Kurik, seemed intent on serious drinking.

The dwarf had returned from the Chimeric Forge only a couple of days before, and though he hadn’t been injured, the fighting had clearly taken its toll.

“It never gets easier.”

“What?”

“The killin’. The fightin’. The constant danger,” he answered, staring at the table. He picked up the mug of ale and downed it in a few gulps. He waved toward one of the elves, requesting a refill. Then, he asked Elijah, “Want one? It ain’t bad. A bit fruity for my taste, but that’s how elves like it.”

“Sure.”

“Got a few levels, though. That’s gotta count for somethin’, right?”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Elijah asked as the elf descended upon their table with a pitcher and an extra mug. She served it quickly, then headed back to the bar to fill another order. “That can help.”

Kurik shook his head. “Not especially,” he said. “I’ll be over it in a coupla days. Just gotta take a bit to get used to all this.” He gave a harsh chuckle. “Then it’s back in.”

“What? So soon?”

Elijah had known that Kurik had been leveling furiously, but he still hadn’t expected him to turn back around and reenter a Primal Realm.

Kurik shrugged, then took another big gulp of his refreshed ale. “Somebody’s gotta do it. If I ain’t in there with our people, more’ll end up dead. That’s just how it is, whether we like it or not. I got a responsibility to protect ‘em. You understand that better’n most, I think.”

Elijah didn’t argue. He’d thrown himself into one Primal Realm after another, all because he believed that he was the only person who could combat the threat of excisement. And to an extent, he had been right. Without those efforts, Earth would have been doomed. Yet, there was always a toll.

At least until there wasn’t.

Sometimes, Elijah wondered if he’d hit that wall, where killing had just become mundane to him. He’d spent years slaughtering monsters, but that was different. They were corrupted abominations. And yet, they still felt pain. Most of the time, they ignored it, but the agony remained.

Was the seed of sapience still in there? Should he have felt guilty for how many he’d killed? Or for how flippantly he’d done it? There were times when he’d used it as stress relief.

In the moment, it felt appropriate. The monsters were all so disconnected from everything he cherished that killing them was the most natural reaction in the world. And yet, with distance came doubt. With time came the questions of whether or not the corruption was truly the antithesis of everything he held dear.

He didn’t have any answers, save to force himself to relive some of those worst moments. It wasn’t the same as being there, but with the fresh bloom of memory came a certain surety. It was impossible to feel otherwise as he remembered the sickly sweet smell, the slimy feel, and the chaotic layout of their forms.

“How is Carissa? I haven’t seen her since I got back,” Elijah said.

Kurik shrugged. “Dunno. Haven’t talked to her.”

“Shouldn’t that have been your first stop?”

Kurik drained another mug. “Wish these things were stronger. That’s what they don’t tell you ‘bout the Primal Realms. You go in, you get some levels, and you outgrow the beer back home.”

“It doesn’t do much for me,” Elijah agreed.

Then, the pair went silent. Elijah nursed his own ale, while the server returned with another refill for Kurik. Finally, after a few more minutes, Elijah asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Second time you asked that.”

Elijah shrugged. “Different subjects.”

“I know.”

“And?”

“It’s complicated,” Kurik stated.

Elijah gestured for him to go on.

Kurik let out a deep breath. “It’s cultural. Typically, a dwarven marriage requires the bride to get permission from the groom’s mother,” he explained. “There’s a big ceremony, with extended families bein’ invited. And that ain’t nothin’ compared to a dwarven wedding.”

“What’s the problem?” Elijah asked. If he was honest, he was a little surprised that Kurik and Carissa hadn’t already married. They’d been together for decades, and Elijah had half expected them to have a family when he got back from Gorveth. But then again, Kurik was a demigod and Carissa had already ascended, so they would both live long lives. They had plenty of time to go down that route, if that was what they wanted.

“My family’s in exile,” he said. “On another world. They’re nomads, meanin’ there ain’t no Branches around. No messages goin’ back and forth. And besides, ain’t no way we could afford the trip. Even if I wanted to go. Which I don’t. Not until…not until I can be sure I can protect myself.”

“From?”

Kurik shrugged. “Whoever wants us dead. There’s plenty out there, and they’ll be watchin’ the Branches. Gettin’ through that’s a death sentence.”

“I could use my World Tree discount,” Elijah offered.

Kurik shook his head. “Maybe. Not yet, though. Need to get stronger first.”

“You weren’t always worried about that.”

“Things change.”

That was certainly true, and what’s more, Kurik didn’t want to speak further on the subject. So, Elijah let the conversation drift to other subjects. However, it soon became apparent that, more than anything, Kurik just wanted to be alone. When Elijah left, the dwarf had ordered yet another ale.

Stepping out of the dim tavern came with a bit of a shock. He hadn’t kept normal hours in quite some time, so day and night cycles weren’t nearly as important as they once were. Day drinking still felt a bit odd, though.

He took a deep breath, enjoying the grove’s atmosphere, before heading through the small, ground-bound village that had cropped up on the southern side of the island. As he walked along the path, he couldn’t help but dwell on his friend’s problems. However, it wasn’t long before he came to the inevitable conclusion that he couldn’t help unless Kurik wanted to be helped.

And he very obviously didn’t.

Not yet, at least. One day, he would ask Elijah for assistance, and when that day came, he would be there.

Until then, he would just push it from his thoughts. To that end, he shifted his mind to the past weeks, which had been characterized by a whirlwind tour of Earth. This time, he didn’t engage in debauchery, and instead focused on showing Sara around. She was a font of curiosity, mostly at how humanity had chosen to address problems differently than her own culture.

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She also seemed to make friends wherever they went, which left Elijah feeling awkward and out-of-place.

However, Sara also catalogued every injustice she witnessed. Every slum. Every beggar. Every petty thief. She was intent on solving all of Earth’s problems, all at once.

Elijah also made a point to take Sara to the ruins of pre-transformation cities that hadn’t survived the World Tree’s touch. Delhi was the first, but there were dozens of others scattered across the world. Elijah only needed to pick a direction, and he’d find one.

He avoided Hawaii, though. Going back to Honolulu wasn’t something he wished to endure. Not again.

Skyscrapers being slowly torn down by vines and vegetation, grand stadiums abandoned and rotting, and beautiful landmarks being consumed by the wilderness – it all told the story of a world that had experienced a massive calamity. They had survived, but so much had been lost.

Thankfully, Sara learned the lesson he was trying to teach, and maybe that had prompted her to take her own advantages a little less for granted. After all, it was difficult to ignore the implications of a deserted city as massive as Delhi. Or Bangkok. Or Atlanta. Berlin. And dozens of others.

Elijah had also shown her the majesty of nature. Enormous waterfalls, the mist-wreathed mountains around the Circle of the Hunter, and the dangerous desolation of the Painted Wastes were just a few of the places they’d visited. Sara was less interested in those than the trappings of civilization, but she remained suitably impressed. Or in the case of the Painted Wastes, a mixture of angry and fearful.

Perhaps one day he would take her into the Broken Crown.

In any case, the weeks were packed full of memories, but as seemed to always be the case, they were on a schedule. It forced them to return to Ironshore so that Elijah could make his final preparations to departure for the Empire of Scale.

The first among those was to reunite with Kurik.

But he had a couple of other meetings before he would count himself ready to once again leave Earth behind.

Over the next few hours, he spoke with multiple people from Ironshore and in the grove. For the most part, everything of import had already been taken care of, so the majority of his conversations were more personal. Like seeing his friends. Or meeting with Ramik and asking him to tolerate Sara’s intentions to return to Earth and work on her class. But the one he most enjoyed was spending a few hours with Hope and little Eli, who’d grown quite a bit since Elijah had last seen him.

He was a serious boy, though. Obviously nature-aligned, but much more thoughtful than Elijah had ever been. Still, he seemed to enjoy roughhousing almost as much as Elijah did.

Even Miguel joined in – at least until Hope made it clear that things were getting out of hand. In retrospect, tossing a five-year-old dozens of feet into the air probably looked a lot more dangerous than it was. Even if both Elijah and Miguel had the attributes to mitigate any potential issues.

Either way, Elijah was sad to leave them behind.

That faded when he went to visit Carmen, who was predictably obsessing over something. What wasn’t expected was that she did so in front of the chalkboard in her office, where she’d written out dozens of glyphs. It was like looking at a complex equation using numbers and symbols that Elijah could only partially understand.

“If I knew there’d be so much enchanting involved in blacksmithing, I might’ve chosen a different class,” Carmen complained, her hand on her lower back as she stretched. Chalk powder covered both hands, and she had a bit smeared on one cheek.

“Don’t look at me. I only know a handful of symbols.”

“That’s a lie. I’ve seen that spear of yours.”

Elijah narrowed his eyes.

“Get your mind out of the gutter. I’m talking about Thorn, pervert.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Didn’t have to,” she said, throwing a piece of chalk at him. Elijah snatched it out of the air as she crossed the office. She collapsed onto her worn couch, kicking her feet up as she said, “I guess this means you’re about to leave again, huh?”

“Yeah. Part of me doesn’t want to. Part of me knows I have to.”

She massaged the bridge of her nose. “We both know you’d go insane if you stuck around much longer.”

“I can settle.”

His sister-in-law cut her eyes at him.

“What?” Elijah asked.

“You literally had to be trapped in the abyss to stay in one place for more than a year,” she pointed out. “And the whole time, you were trying to leave. Elijah – you’re a lot of things, but you are not the kind of guy who’s going to stick around. You’re just not. And we all know it.”

“And you love me for it?” he asked with a sigh as he collapsed onto the other chair in the office. It was an overstuffed affair with torn leather upholstery that had been scorched in a number of places.

“Sure. Tell yourself that.”

“Oh, my heart,” Elijah muttered, clutching his chest. “Betrayal by a trusted loved one.”

She threw something else at him, and once again, he plucked it out of the air. As he did so, Carmen said, “That’ll make it better.”

Elijah looked at the item, which was a ring of twisted bone. “Heavy,” he said.

“That thing was distilled from that hippo’s skull.”

“What part of it?”

“All of it.”

Elijah frowned, hefting the ring. It did feel extremely heavy for a ring, but it was difficult to gauge its exact weight. With his strength being what it was, his scale was off by multiple degrees.

“It weighs about a ton, by the way. So be careful where you put it.”

“That much?”

“A little more, actually.”

Elijah inspected the ring more carefully. It looked like someone had braided a bunch of bone together, then inscribed it with miniscule glyphs that glittered with black powder.

“It’s not cursed, is it?”

Carmen gave him a look of annoyance. “Sure. I gave you a cursed ring because I want you to go insane.”

“I heard that not all curses are like that,” Elijah said. “There’s a famous dragon story about a tail piercing making a guy impotent.”

“Tail piercing?”

Elijah shrugged. “Apparently, that was all the rage back then. There was also a brief period – maybe ten thousand years – where the height of draconic fashion was getting each scale inscribed with glyphs and runes.”

“Seems useful.”

“If they’re done right, sure. If they’re not…well, a few dragons blew up, and the practice fell out of style,” Elijah explained. “Some people still do it, but it’s generally frowned upon.”

“There’s a tattoo artist in that dwarven city…ah…what’s it called? Mendie, maybe? I can’t remember. They pretty much stay to themselves,” she said. “But he’s supposed to be able to do something like that. From what I understand, the effects are a little limited, but it’s like wearing an extra piece of gear.”

“Interesting,” Elijah said. Not that he wanted to go out and get some tattoos. He didn’t. But if the benefit was great enough, he’d definitely consider it. For now, he was more interested in the ring. So, he asked, “What’s it do?”

Carmen waved her hand, and a system notification manifested between them. It wasn’t much different from the ones Elijah might see from the Appraisers employed by Atticus.

“Damn, Carmen.”

“Yeah. I thought it turned out pretty well,” she said. “Turns out that crafting in the Forge of Creation enables better cooperation, which in turn has a chance to infer an extra trait on peak-level items. It’s still just Sophisticated-tier, but it’s just about as good as it can get without jumping to Miraculous.”

Then, she added, “It’s also great for experience. Ten crafters got at least a little progression for completing that. Even Biggle.”

“That seems broken.”

She shrugged. “Kind of. I’m sure other worlds have similar crafting hot spots,” she responded. “I’m guessing by your expression that you can use it.”

“I can,” he said. “Thank you. I don’t know how to –”

“Stop. As you go, so does Earth. We’d be pretty stupid not to give you at least some tools to survive, right? Besides, I like having you around, at least when you get around to coming back to Earth,” she responded.

Elijah slipped the ring on, and though he didn’t feel much difference, he knew that the attributes and traits would come in handy.

After that, he and Carmen spoke of more mundane things, but there really wasn’t much else to say before the time came for him to finish his preparations.

“I guess I’ll see you later, then?”

“I guess you will. Stay safe, Elijah.”

Then, they hugged.

Once he left the Forge of Creation, Elijah went to pick up the hippo meat he’d had prepared as rations, loaded a ton of soap into his Arcane Loop, and then headed to pick up Sara, who had remained in the grove.

He found her deep in conversation with Nara, which he was hesitant to interrupt. But soon enough, he had no choice.

For her part, Sara was equal parts reluctant to leave and ready to get home. After all, she’d barely ever left Esik. Except for the ill-fated trip to Earth where she’d nearly died, but that didn’t count, as much because decades had passed since then as because she had only been partially sapient at the time. Either way, for her, the most recent trip to Earth had been eye-opening.

“You ready?” he asked her. A few grove members had gathered to see them off, but Elijah had insisted that they refrain from making a big deal about it.

Sara nodded.

“Then let’s get back.”

Without further hesitation, he cast Root Nexus, opening a pathway through the void and to the Circle of Victory on Vyrin. Sara stepped through, but before Elijah followed, he turned and said to Nerthus and Nara, “See you soon.”