[Stella]
Stella recalled taking the long trek across Bundo Pass seven years ago. It was a different experience back then, filled with stops of both willing and coerced nature.
Two great mountains separated the Kingdom’s South from its other parts, and the Pass acted as the only connection in between. Its placement made it a target of bandits and retreat owners alike, crowding the narrow path along the caravans coming to and from its ends.
It was one of those caravans Stella accompanied, and it was the South’s isolation that had her picking it as a destination.
Bundo Pass appeared desolate to her eyes at the present time, stretching long and tedious in the cooling afternoon. No retreats manned by silver-tongued owners to beckon them close, and no sharp-eyed bandits stalking at their wheels in waiting for the right moment to strike.
Her companions added more to the monotonous air than detract from it, falling into a long bout of silence, each to their own thoughts and activity.
William drove the wagon with a slow pace, minding the rough quality of the road under its wheels and the hooves of the horse—Rolo, as Jehona resolutely named. Jehona engrossed herself in reading the journal that charlatan by Cora Town swindled her into purchasing. And Yonten seemed to be hanging on the edge between slumber and wakefulness.
The wagon swayed to the side then, and Jehona shot upwards. Stella reached out to steady her on instinct, only to realize that it wasn’t the wagon’s change of movement that overtook Jehona’s balance. Jehona stood up by her own will, the movement so abrupt it had her toppling off the wagon a moment after, crashing into the ground on her side.
William pulled the wagon to a stop, hopping off to help her back on her feet, but Jehona was already upright before he got the chance to. Her shoulder and hip must be aching from the impact, but Jehona didn't tend to them. She didn’t even dust herself off. Instead her hands clutched at the journal, her wide-eyed gaze fixed on its pages.
Yonten leaned over the wagon’s edge to say, “You’re lucky you didn’t land flat on your face. What a waste that would’ve been.”
Jehona didn’t retort. Didn’t even deign giving him a glare.
“Did she hit her head?” Stella murmured, concerned.
Jehona tore her sights away from the journal at that, declaring, “I know where the Wind Crystal is.”
Stunned silence stretched for a moment between them, before Yonten concluded: “She did hit her head.”
“The journal had two owners, and it’s the second owner that managed to figure it out…”
They circled Jehona and waited for her to elaborate on her absurd declaration. Jehona didn’t disappoint, launching briefly into the journal’s history before arriving to the point of interest.
“He was a former Keeper of the Royal Library. He detailed in this journal his theory of the Wind Crystal’s location, relating it to Ashmore’s history.”
“You mean Ashmore being part of Ignis?” History was an obligatory subject during Stella’s studies, was actually one of her worst in performance, but she wasn’t so hopeless that she couldn’t recall some of the lectures regarding this particular piece.
Ashmore along with Drakon used to be one nation called Ignis, Abode of Fire. But despite Ashmore being the place the Fire Crystal landed, the Kingdom didn’t care to hold onto that past, an approach that drastically differed from Drakon’s.
Jehona nodded. “When Vice-Captain Greco told us that we needed to find the Wind Crystal, it didn’t come to me as a surprise.”
“You knew about it before?” William asked, surprise clear in his voice.
“My paternal grandmother hails from the Fallen Sun Alliance. What it used to be, to be more specific.”
Sol Empire.
“Do you speak Solaric?” Stella had to ask.
“Yes.”
Stella winced. “You’d be hunted in the Alliance.”
There was nothing the Alliance’s Ray Kingdoms loathed more than the remnants of the Empire it used to be. Stella found that detail about them to be odd, because while they abolished and criminalized the fallen Empire’s language, they fashioned themselves on its motifs. They referenced it in their names, all while dividing themselves on each Kingdom’s order of rebellion against the ruling dynasty of that time.
Jehona shrugged, continuing, “There’s a story going back to the time of the last Emperor of Sol. It’s because of him that rumors of the Wind Crystal being in Ashmore came into existence. He claimed discovering a scroll in one of the Imperial Palace’s hidden rooms dating back to the Elemental Prime era, centered solely on Ashmore.”
Stella didn’t recall anything about that story in her studies, but it wouldn’t surprise her if it were true. The last Emperor of Sol was a piece of work, and most of his decisions were of dubious outcomes and rationality. It was no surprise that his people rebelled against him. “So the rumors persisted despite the Empire’s fall.”
“Yes, and it put a target on Ashmore ever since. The Kingdom denied it for ages, up until recently.”
“When Aldric showed up,” Yonten added, then scoffed. “The King got greedy.”
“And Aldric betrayed him,” William completed.
Nothing made Kings’ knees weaker than the promise of absolute power at their hands. With Aldric’s talents, Stella could understand the King’s plunge into acknowledging the presence of the Wind Crystal in his land. Of course that same decision did plunge Ashmore into its current crisis, so while understandable, it was also utterly idiotic. “I’m guessing that’s why no neighboring Kingdom is lending Ashmore a hand in its struggles. They’re all waiting for Aldric to find the Wind Crystal to begin waging war on him.”
“Most probably.”
Wonderful. A disastrous situation made even worse.
Stella never liked Politics, too, but only for its own sake. “So where’s the Crystal?” she asked, more out of need for a distraction from grim possibilities than nagging curiosity.
“If the Wind Crystal is rumored to be in Ashmore, what better place to hide it than in the Fire Crystal’s former residence?” Jehona pointed to the clumsy map drawn at the end of an ink-laden page. “He marked the location here.”
Something about the mark’s location on the map didn’t sit well with Stella. It nagged at her as she retreated to bring her map, spreading it on the ground before taking the journal from Jehona’s hands to match and compare.
The Central Plains on its west and south, Orion Town on its north, and Luce City on its east… there!
“Oh,” William let out, seeing where Stella’s finger settled.
Oh, indeed.
“The Dim Wastelands?” Stella said, blank of thought and tone.
“If the Crystal’s there…” Jehona returned.
The Dim Wastelands, the lands that drove men mad on its borders, and drove them to their doom on a further march. Ashmore built itself around its margins to avoid traversing through it.
Of course. What else did she expect? “What’s the journal writer’s account about it?”
Jehona flipped to the last few pages and read aloud, “One moment I was walking on the stony paths of ancient ruins under the rising sunlight, the next all I saw was a pitch black. I thought I went blind before something resembling a lightning bolt flickered in the distance. It was that flicker that rooted me to where I stood, had me abandoning my hopes of getting closer. What I saw couldn’t be explained. The sky was replaced by sinking sand, the earth by tides high as a mountain, red as iron under a blacksmith’s hands. It rained something dark, and it took away the colors of everything rained upon. Behind it all was a colossal shadow, slithering towards me. I took a step back, and the world turned back to the way I knew.”
Well, then…
It took a few, long moments before any of them spoke up after that surreal account, and it was Yonten, intrigued instead of something normal. “Now I’m absolutely certain the Crystal is there. The more dangerous a place is, the more likely it holds a treasure.”
Stella stared at him.
Yonten looked back at her, oblivious to his outlandish logic. “What?”
It was these sort of moments Stella felt a sense of kinship with William, because he was also staring. They exchanged a look, and then silently chose not to question Yonten further. A battle they gladly opted out of.
They set camp by sunfall, biting away at the rations supplied by Aslan’s townspeople over the map. Stella outlined a rough estimate of their journey up to Nova Town before beginning, “We’ll be taking the east fork of the road once we reach the Central Plains. The closest settlement afterwards is Sahdi Village, so we’ll be spending a few nights there. We’d need to stock up on our supplies well there, because we won’t stop until Nova Lake stands before us. Any objections?” Yonten raised a hand, and Stella urged him, “What is it?”
“I want us to make a stop here before Sahdi.”
The ‘Here’ he put his finger on was a small area of the Central Plains called the Scorched Field.
The same Scorched Field that acted as an open grave for a Bestowed Beast. The same Scorched Field that had a reputation for things spontaneously catching fire the deeper it went—sometimes wood, sometimes clothes.
Stella sighed. “Why?”
“It’s necessary for my plans.”
“I don’t want Rolo to catch fire,” Jehona argued, and it was a good argument, though it made Stella question why Rolo came into concern before them.
“We’ll leave it where it’s safer,” Yonten returned, also not raising any issue about the risk they would take. “I still don’t like that name, by the way. Why can’t we name it Spotty? It fits.”
Jehona cast him a look of disgust. “Stella’s Night was a much better suggestion. Even William’s Dancer is better.”
“What’s wrong with Dancer?” William asked, a little disheartened.
It wasn’t Night, for one.
Stella believed her suggestion was the best among the bunch, but Jehona looked so eager to name the horse that Stella didn’t have the heart to argue otherwise.
This wasn’t the moment to assert her superior tastes, though, so she pushed back her arguments to ask Yonten, “What are those plans, then?”
Yonten smiled. “You’ll see when I start.”
