COMPASS OF TRUE LOVE - CHAPTER 25

Chapter 25: We stumbled into a hidden woodland realm and somehow became tourists of an ancient elven society.

-Sephie-

I felt our bodies being pulled through the earth, there was a faint resistance, a little bit of drag, as if we literally travelling through the roots. Which, of course, was not how it worked. The spell shifted our bodies to a different plane, where we were being pulled towards the location I had set. Which, in this case, was simply: away.

The downside of this spell, as I already hinted at before, was that the locations you could emerge from were only trees and the spell picked the fastest route available, which almost always meant travelling through the world roots, through the Wolfland Forest. And the spell didn’t simply spit you out where you wanted to end up at. You had to consciously decide when you’ve travelled enough and “step out” of the plane.

Seeing as you could only step out of trees, and the vast majority of your travel time will be spent inside the Wolfland Forest, it was nearly unavoidable for untrained people to end up popping out in the middle of the continent’s danger-zone™.

That said, we were already in the Wolfland Forest, so what’s the worst that could happen?

I let our group float along the magical highway of this fantastical plane. There was no ground, only endless cloud-spotted sky, above and below. The warm sun shone on us and illuminated, what I presumed to be, the eastern sky in a beautiful orange mist.

Our clothes fluttered in the wind, but not uncomfortably so. Feeling, as a whole, was dull and numb compared to Arda, our home-plane. Actually, not all feeling was numb. One particular feeling was even more sensitive than ever before. Magical sense. I felt the magic around me in much more detail than imaginable, feeling even the tiniest particles. I didn’t even know that’s what magic was. Particles floating in the air.

As we floated along, that feeling slowly intensified. More and more particles gathered around us to a crescendo and I was starting to get overwhelmed. Where would we end up if we simply never left? I asked myself. Given that I’d never read anything about that, I wasn’t keen to find out, so as the magic nearly filled every space around us, with all my strength, I strained against the pull and dragged us out of the highway.

For a singular moment, we were in freefall. The blue-orange sky turned a blackish purple. Stars spotted across the darkness and a large moon, close enough it felt you could touch it, stood before us.

Then we crashed through the invisible barrier again.

*****

We shot out of a tree trunk large enough to envelop Tumblewood whole, onto moss spotted stones.

Above us, far, far above us, a hundred metres at the least, was a canopy large enough to hold entire civilizations. Normally, there wasn’t much open space above us inside this forest, but now it felt like we were in an open glade, lush, green sky between us and the high canopy.

And we were lying on stone. Not natural stone, but a cobblestone plaza. I sat up warily and took in our surroundings.

Civilization. We were undoubtedly still in the Wolfland, but there were buildings. Everywhere, set into the trees, sitting on top of branches, clinging to tree trunks. A massive woodland city, cast into the hazy orange light of dusk, illuminated by magically blue glowing lanterns that were hung on long chains from the branches far above.

The soft pattering of water dragged my eyes back to the plaza we found ourselves on. In it’s centre stood a carefully carved stone fountain. The centrepiece depicted elves, dryads, beastkin and creatures I’d never known existed before frolicking in the water.

A handful of market stalls, covered in colourful cloth, stood around the plaza, most of them towards the massive tree trunk we’d just been shot out of.

A few elven faces stared at us, deeply confused.

One of them, a tall, muscular, dark skinned elven man in leather armour and a large glaive in hand slowly approached us.

“Root-travellers. What business do you have in the Deepwood?” he asked brusquely.

To my surprise, I could understand him. My modern elvish was terrible, but I was pretty decent with ancient elvish, since that was the language of magic, at least the magic we were taught in Argonne. This man spoke some form of ancient elvish. Some of the words were hard to understand and there was a pretty hard accent, but it was undoubtedly a form of ancient elvish.

Nydia propped herself up in front of the man. “We have recently escaped from a group of deadly intruders. We seek hospitality and rest, then we wish to continue our journey,” she answered in pristine ancient elvish. She sounded like one of my old magic textbooks, if it could talk to me. I didn’t know she could speak other languages, but much of her past was a mystery to me. First and foremost her origin.

The elf scratched the light stubble on his chin. “Tell us of the intruders, then you will have hospitality and rest.”

We all let out a relieved sigh. We weren’t in any trouble apparently and rest did sound amazing. Ashe was still unconscious…

Nydia went on to describe our two demon attackers and I, albeit brokenly, described the old man as best I could. Seemingly satisfied, the elf led us to an inn and we were given a room for the night.

The inn was a set of rings that were wrapped around one of the larger, but not yet massive trees. The inside was cosy. The walls were covered with artworks and the ground was covered in furs. Potted plants adorned every empty corner, window or wall.

Our room was much larger than the one we got back at Three-Point Fort and it had two neatly carved bunk beds filled with furs. There was no hearth, but something told me that fire in general was something not used much in this city, for obvious reasons.

We laid Ashe down in one of the lower bunks and then got comfortable ourselves. I stripped off most of my clothes, only leaving my panties on and a loose shirt I pulled out of my bag. I took the other bottom bunk; Nydia took the one above me and Cassie the one above Ashe.

As darkness creeped into my vision, the weight of this day finally plummeted into me. We managed to survive an encounter with the old man, whose sheer power sent me into unconsciousness the first time I saw him. I somehow managed to create that massive barrier and then transport us safely through the forest into a city!

Civilization! In the Wolfland. It was unheard of. And elves? They preferred coastal climates, being excellent sea farers and such. Wolfland Forest was completely landlocked. There were a couple of rivers that emerged from it, the Argon River, which gave my home country its name, was one of them.

But they were here. An entire city of elves, dryads, beastkin and others. It was almost unbelievable if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.

We had lots to explore.

*****

When we woke up it was almost midday again. The sun was softly flitting through small gaps in the canopy, the rays somehow finding their way into our rooms window.

Grumbling, I rolled out of my bed and started to pull on some clothes. Ashe was the only other one awake. She was sitting at the edge of her bed, dangling her legs and eyed me curiously.

“Mornin’ Sephie!” she beamed.

I couldn’t help but smile, seeing the cute ratgirl happy for the first time since we left the last inn. “Morning Ashe. You’re in a good mood,” I replied amusedly.

“Well no shit! We’re in a house! Civilization! People!” she fell back into the bed and spread her arms. “You can’t imagine how much I missed this, Sephie!”

A small sigh left her tiny body. “You know. That was the first time in my life I was in nature. Like properly, outside, away from people. It was horrible! There is no shiny stuff to steal anywhere, you have to look real close-like to find proper food and weather… EXISTS!” she waved around her hands expressively at the last statement.

I smirked again and patted her on the head. “Well, Good news for you: I think we’ll stay and recover here for a while.” Her red glowing eyes sparkled. Literally. “Now, how about we grab ourselves some breakfast? I’m seriously hungry!” I proposed. She nodded furiously.

Breakfast, naturally, was already long since over, but there was a lunch menu at the inn and they were fine with the coins we had, which surprised me a little bit.

We were quickly attended by a cheerful satyr girl who lead us to one of the tables with a view over the city and handed us a menu, which I had to fully translate for Ashe, since she didn’t speak a word of ancient elvish. Or literally any other language except her mother tongue, which I simply called ratling, and jarrainian.

After we ordered, she bounced away and shortly after came back with our ‘breakfast’. Scrambled eggs with roast potatoes for me, a large venison steak with mashed potatoes for Ashe. She was only half my size but could easily eat thrice as much, I noticed. We also shared a carafe of apple juice between us.

The view of the city by day was… spectacular. The inn sat a solid twenty metres off the ground, up in the tree. We could see the plaza and marketplace hugging the massive central tree we arrived at, just down the street below. Wooden bridges connected the inn with a row of buildings set into the giant tree on roughly the same height.

Behind the tree, in a little distance, a large lake opened up towards the east. Mountains hugged the lake on the north and south, but further east it emptied into a river and slithered further into the forest. A cosy looking lakeside district sat at the shore, for once, mostly on the ground.

I was really excited to go sightseeing. And I wasn’t even that much of a touristy person. This was simply… different. This was an unknown civilization.

We were about halfway finished with our ‘breakfast’ when Cassie and Nydia came down the stairs. Cassie looked terrible, though I expected I looked similar. Nydia still looked pristine, because of course she did. I’ll have to get her messy in other ways~ Wait- no. Uhhh. Ignore that.

“Mmmm,” Cassie greeted us flawlessly and slumped down in a chair next to me. “My legs feel like… no,” she added shortly after, spoken like a true philosopher.

“Morning sweethearts,” Nydia beamed with her signature sharp smile. Gosh now that I noticed her cute fangs I couldn’t unsee them every time she smiled. So adorable.

She sat down between Cassie and Ashe and grabbed the menu.

A few pointless elvish lessons to Cassie later and the satyr girl brought the two of them their own ‘breakfast’ and filled up our carafe. Cassie got fried fish sticks with rice and a salad. Nydia got mushroom filled noodles with a creamy cheese sauce.

We slowly savoured our first proper meal in pretty much forever. This was obviously not your typical inn food, this was on par with the kind of stuff you got at restaurants and me made sure to worship every single bite. I even got to taste some of Nydia’s noodles and one of Cassie’s fish sticks. They were divine. I had to admit I slightly regretted picking something sure and simple like eggs and potatoes.

After ‘breakfast’ was over, Cassie looked a lot more alive and Ashe’s energy continued to spike. Our first point on today’s schedule was quickly decided on: sightseeing. All of us were really excited to explore this new city and we definitely needed the break. I hoped I could catch Marion in one of dreams soon, to let her know what’s going on. And for… other reasons too…

At first, we checked out the marketplace we arrived at originally. There were a bunch of food stalls, clothing vendors, jewellery makers and lots of woodworkers.

Cassie ended up buying a new pair of boots and Nydia found a pair of glass earrings, depicting a star-constellation. They apparently glowed in the moonlight.

I found a new blouse and a lighter coat in woodland colours that really spoke to me. Ashe also got some jewellery, but I was pretty sure she didn’t pay for it. Nydia would obviously have paid for it, if she asked. She paid for me and Cassie after all, but maybe Ashe was just… like that.

After our market delve, we walked down the long street that led down towards the lake. The lakeside district was filled with restaurants, bars, taverns, grills and all other sorts of food and drink places. Since we had just eaten, we didn’t pay too much attention, except for Nydia, who seemed to be looking for something, but she didn’t say what.

At some point we stumbled into a part of the district that served a very different type of thirst than other side and we quickly squirmed our way out of there, red faced. Except for Nydia, who was just smiling angelically.

How she could walk past ‘displays’ like that without being affected in the slightest was a mystery to me. The toys were one thing and had me genuinely curious as to how some of them worked, but the people displaying themselves were a different thing entirely. Especially after one of them tried to chat me up.

By late afternoon we finally headed back to our inn. Nydia mentioned having plans and Cassie wanted to go to bed early to catch up on sleep.

While walking to our room I noticed the bathhouse right next to the tavern and immediately had a new evening plan. I quickly grabbed a change of clothes and was just about to leave again, when Nydia stopped me.

“Sephie,” she began. “Do you have plans tonight?”

“Uhh… I wanted to visit the bathhouse, but that’s it really. Why?”

She smirked again and I was reminded of our first date. A light fluster settled on my face.

“And after that?” she took a step closer to me. “I found a great place at the harbour. I’d like to invite you… if you want.” She said the last part with a lot more shyness that I expected from her. It was so cute I could just push her down into the bed and- no stop Sephie! You’re impossible!

Wait. “Are you inviting me on a date?”

Nydia flashed her fangs at me. “Yea. A date. What do you say cutie?”

My mind did a backflip. ‘Cutie’. Help. I nodded. “A- a date sounds nice,” I managed to say once my brain started working again.

“It’s a date then.”

With that, I slid past her and made my way to the bathhouse.