Chapter 8: A Flask filled with Nonsense

The windows of the pathwalker guild stared down at Sylph like hundreds of eyes. Every singular one judged her for walking past without heading inside. Dalian waited for her, but he would have to wait a little while longer.

She turned her gaze away, towards the small scavengers perched on rooftops and windowsills, that prepared to pick up the scraps from the morning supply ships. The tiny wyvern could fit in her pfod, but their gazes were sharper than a Metia’s and their teeth sharp enough to hurt your digits and ears. They always went for the ears, the little bastards. They even sat on the horns of elder dragons, puffing up their colorful feathers and evading every attempt to be swept away. Sylph did not envy the working elders. Cleaning the back of your neck was a hassle. As much as the city tried, they could not get rid of them. And when the morning supply run ended, they all vanished back to their part of town.

She boarded the only passenger airship headed towards Halfhill this early, on the very far side of the harbor. The familiar sensation of the smooth, rundown wood below her and the buzz of the idle engines had her stop midway. She lost count of how many times she took this exact route. Somehow, today felt different. She could turn back and take the easy lie that her parents died and not head north. The thought tempted her, to bar all that happened from her mind and fall back into normality. Sylph muttered a curse under her breath and her claw-tips dug into the treated wood below. People messing with the truth got her into this situation. She had decided to find the truth, even if she had to remind herself, that she did.

Once inside, she settled down near a window and watched the distant pathwalker guild. Depending on Veria’s tenacity, Dalian would get involved. Sylph was not competent enough on the path of souls to hide from him. But even if he found her, Dalian could not force her to reveal her location. Technically, he could force her, but he would never use that path to harm or interrogate her.

Somebody with a little more ambition and his abilities could bring down a small kingdom if they wanted. But Dalian’s goals were quite different. He wanted to understand what lay beyond the border of death and to help guide those that got lost on the way. Sylph had seen past the border several times with his help. It had not changed her worldview as much as he predicted, possibly because she spent several weeks in Void’s castle. The dead had been pretty lively back then, not to mention Arastra being part of her life for all these years.

The airship jerked upwards and sent the glass coins in her bag jangling. She had been too lost in her thoughts to notice the ramp closing. Her heartbeat quickened. She had embarked on her very own journey.

A familiar voice behind her prompted her ears to turn and perk up in surprise. Sylph turned her head to investigate. Most of the passengers were human, a few Sol and Metia stood out like splotches of color on white scales. Her ears pinpointed a male Metia with a copper sheen as the source of the familiar voice. She exhaled in relief. On second thought, his voice was higher and clearer, her ears overeager and jumpy, and Veria would not board an airship unless she really had to.

Her pfod snapped to the bag on her side, once again checking if she thought of everything. She fumbled with the leather bag’s strip and looked down. The paints, the coins, she even brought a waterskin, but something was amiss. She forgot the book Dalian gave her. She sighed, it didn’t matter; she did not need her pathwalkerness to look for clues. And she controlled her abilities good enough for now. The storm inside was but a tingle now.

She turned her pfod and eyed the sharp edges of her claws re-emerging from the tip of her soft digits. She preferred her prominent right pfod to be soft with no claws and the left fully clawed but neatly trimmed. In the commotion this morning, she had forgotten to use the filing rack, which had the book lying in front of it too. Some dragons didn’t file their claws at all, so she could manage without her soft digits for a few days. Brandon could rummage through important clues or papers she wouldn’t want to damage.

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The flight was uneventful, and the airship set down in Halfhill’s harbor a few hours later. Another one of Embers famous statues greeted her as she made her way down the cobbled plaza. It was not as hard to look at, mainly because it did not show anybody she knew and all of them were human, but nothing had stopped his passion from showing the world what it didn’t want to see. The statue displayed the annals of Halvnbarg’s history, from the founding, to its new name, and the events of the war.

Looking at the things displayed, Embers got one very important word very wrong. And yet, this insane mess fit perfectly into the picture of the city. Stone, brick, wood, it didn’t matter, Halfhill thrived in chaos. A traditional Metia cottage weaved from winding logs and branches on top of a neat brick building was no uncommon sight. Other roofs carried gardens only accessible by flight, lest a human dare to disturb a Sol’s precious herb garden. Aer preferred to live higher up, but their housing was pretty unremarkable and more often than not just a second level to the building beneath. Only one thing about their homes stood out. A few cared for their strange gardens of sand and rock.

As much as everybody had their preferred way of living, the modern world took over. Copper pipes ran up into the wooden cottages and lightglobes hung above tended gardens.

Sylph made her way through the housing district to avoid the cluttered main street and this way she would miss all the storytellers. If she had to see that spindly stick of blonde hair again, she’d tell him to take his fist and shove it so far up that his magic light could squeeze out through his teeth. The faint embers in her chest ignited at the image of this slash-able face. He had filled her head to the brim with questions, and to make it worse, he had somehow been right. She muttered uncountable curses at everyone vaguely involved in hiding her past as she weaved through the thin crowd without as much as brushing against someone.

Navigating the old part of town was done by gut feeling alone. The streets were not named, near indistinguishable and wound themselves through the district like a root through rocks. She turned around another corner and found herself at a large crossroads. The familiar wooden sign on the building across read “Poisoned Drinks” and she knew she headed the right way. The shady tavern took great pride in being the oldest building in town and was a great landmark sitting right in the very middle. Brandon told her that every road in Halfhill led to poisoned drinks. She was not sure if that was a warning or a joke.

Shouts and the sharp clinks of glass hitting glass penetrated the old wood and flimsy windows. It was early morning, but for some of the human and dragon patrons, it was presumably very late. She was not here to drink. Although it would make convincing Brandon easier, or harder, you never knew. Sylph turned right and continued through the winding streets.

No one wants to be Sylph. The words echoed inside once more as she glimpsed the busy marketplace down the other road. The next time she would step into that marketplace she would not be Sylph.

She followed the slanting cobbles away from the tavern until even she could smell the familiar stench of rotten eggs and sharp metal; It made her nose itch. There was a reason no Sol pursued a career around here, alchemy was a human passion. They spat no fire or poison, neither did they electrocute prey to death, so they mixed metals and powders to make fire and poison themselves. The ingenuity intrigued her, the paint on her wings proofed of that. Dragons should not produce light, but Brandon made that happen.

At the corner of the road stood a quaint little shop. It had a simple wooden front and small rectangular windows. The sign was aptly and creatively named: “Alchemy shop”. Shops like these were the ones you visited as a last resort because others disappointed you and you might as well try the small one at the end.

“Brandon!” She pressed herself through the door, and the familiar bright tinkle of the bell up above bounced through her head. The door frame grew closer to her hips with every passing month. While it was great to keep track that she still grew at a normal pace, someday she’d have problems entering. Once inside, Sylph gave the door a small smack with the fins on her tail and took a quick look around the shop. She could not find Brandon, instead she faced the wide back of his father. He stocked up bottles filled with some indiscernible silver liquid.

“You again.” His usual rough voice sounded even coarser this morning, as though he had personally chewed the minerals into powders. The old man towered more than a head above any other human she knew, and his bushy, gray-streaked beard could strangle a wyvern. He turned all the way around and Sylph found herself face to bulging belly. Various colorful splotches stained his tunic, not even an hour after opening. Getting the stains just right seemed to be an alchemist secret. “Paint didn’t work?” He wiped his monstrous right hand on the tunic, adding a powdery black into the colorful mix.

They had never exchanged more than a few sentences. Brandon’s father was not a man of many words unless he talked customers into buying something. Sylph shook her head and opened her wings. His gaze slimmed and followed her wingtips as they closed in on the shelves and she stopped a fraction of an inch away. The paint sparkled in the thin streaks of light streaming in through the windows. Even a night spent underwater didn’t wash it off. If she hadn’t witnessed the mixture Brandon used to safely dissolve it, she would be worried about cleaning it off. “It worked nearly too perfectly.” Her joints ached, and she closed her wings. “It was bright, like two suns exploding next to me.”

The old men nodded in calculating thought. “Yes, he could not stop worrying about it. But-” His eyes focused on her back, his voice grew stern and his arms crossed with parental authority in front of his chest. “You should stop before you hurt him. A weapon is not a plaything. Your kind is dangerous enough as is.”

Sylph retracted her head for a second as his gaze slimmed down further to meet her with an intensity that could match Veria’s. Any longer and he’d start lecturing her about the importance of keeping her weapon in check, too. She did not know how easily others controlled theirs, if Sol sneezed fire on accident or Metia sometimes drooled acid. Electrocuting someone or something was a decision she had to make consciously. There were no accidents. “Not that Brandon would touch me in the first place.”

“Thankfully so.” With those words, he finished the conversation and hoisted up the next wooden palette to continue his work. But his eyes never truly left her.

Without Brandon around, it felt a tad awkward, as if she was on display and judged for every step she took. But seeing how his father was the only one around, she might as well ask him first. “Can I borrow your son for a few days?”

“What?” he coughed up in surprise. A jar of orange mineral dust dropped from his hand and he caught it with the other just before it hit the floor. His gaze froze on her as if she had asked to eat him. He loudly cleared his throat to regain his composure. “What for?” he repeated in a somewhat more collected manner.

She cursed herself under her breath. Brandon should have been the one to convince his father, he would not leave without his permission. But she had anticipated this, a convenient little lie should come in handy, one she had plenty of time to come up with on the way. “I’m taking care of an errand for the pathwalker guild. For Dalian, specifically. It will take me way up north and Brandon always talks about something he can only buy up there, so I decided he could tag along.” Sylph focused on keeping her tail steady lest it betrayed her.

Brandon’s father’s expression flicked through conflicting emotions. His shoulders dropped as though he considered the offer for a tense moment until his arms crossed harder in front of his chest. “What business does the pathwalker guild have up there? And why do they send a dragon like you?” His brow furrowed.

Sylph sighed audibly and dramatically. The best way to lie was to admit that you were. “Dalian needs a messenger that some cranky, old human in retirement doesn’t know. He believes that me delivering the letter to Onven will convince him to return.” She turned to look at the door. Now would be a good time for Brandon to arrive.

Brandon’s father shook his head. “Onven. Not an awful place to retire. Very quiet. Why is the guild bothering retired pathwalkers? A man has earned his peace.”

Sylph shrugged with her wings to get a second more to think. “He was a master of plant manipulation and they need his knowledge to teach a young girl with a similar ability. I don’t know much more, I am just the errand girl.” She flashed a toothy smile. “A well-paid errand girl.”

Brandon’s father nodded. “So he’s not a dangerous, fire slinging maniac.” If only he knew who she based her lie on. You could do a lot with vines and rapidly growing moonshade, many disastrously salacious, painful, and intrusive things. She shook the images of the particular book out of her head. “But letting Brandon go is out of the question.” He turned back to the shelves.

“It’s only a few days?” Sylph asked and looked upwards with what was hopefully a pleading look. She begged Brandon would walk in so she could stop this embarrassing charade. Her tail flicked against a cupboard and his father flinched at the hollow thump.

“I need his help in the shop,” he answered.

“Buying ingredients is also work.” Sylph turned to look at the door once again.

His father’s tone got stern. “What do you know about work? You are the one keeping him from it.”

Her muscles tensed. She was not exactly employed. But she had picked up a few things helping in Oasis’ shop. She smirked. “You can get around the shipment costs and don’t risk getting the second grade goods because you are not buying locally.” She had no clue what she just said. Oasis mentioned this a few times, so it seemed relevant to running a business.

Her answer got him thinking until he shook his head and waved her away like an annoying fly. “Let me talk to him. He should be back in a few minutes.” He picked up another box. “Don’t break anything in the meantime.”

“Don’t think I ever have.” The little bell tinkled once more and Sylph’s head spun around towards the door. A customer entered the shop and Brandon’s father jumped at the opportunity to greet them.

Sylph turned away and took a bored look around. She kept her wings and tail still at all times. There was no room to stretch or lose track of them in the shop. Shelves and drawers full of rocks, barks, and powders surrounded her. Brandon could name every one of them, and she wondered how. She passed a neat arrangement on eye-level; “Rucibicium, Farfelex, Terestium, Laydy- she stopped, squinted, and took a second glance at the smeared label of a vial with a clear liquid. “Laydycum”, she snorted. The vial was marked with several warnings about its acidic and deadly properties.

The bell tinkled happily once more and Brandon staggered through the door, carrying a big bag filled to the brim with various foodstuffs. Her tail flicked to the side, and she barely stopped it from hitting a shelf. Brandon’s wild, fluffy brown hair and already stained apron would give him away in a crowd of hundreds. He was smaller than most humans his age. Sylph’s snout reached his throat without stretching when she stood on all four. She had never met his mother, but when compared to his father, Brandon clearly took after her.

Before he could say anything, Sylph caught his attention by raising her wings. A pale blue dragon was very hard to miss. He smiled, and she smiled back. “Sylph? You are very early. Did it not work?” He studied her expression and his gaze switched to her wings. “I think if we found the channels we can apply a thicker layer and–”

“It worked perfectly,” she interrupted before he gained conversational momentum. “But I need you for something else. We are going north. I’ve already talked to your father about it.”

His mouth opened and closed several times before he set the bag of foodstuffs down. Smears of purple and pink stained his apron and the uncovered parts of his tunic. “Honestly, you went to buy food. How did you get those stains?” Sylph pointed at the points of orange she only noticed now.

“We are going north? Should I be concerned?” Brandon scratched his head.

“Yes, and no.” Her gaze went back to his father and the customer, and she lowered her voice. “I’ll give you all the details later, not right here.”

Brandon stared intensely at a lettuce poking out of the bag. “That is quite, ominous.” He gestured her to follow through the shop and back into his room.

“Hold up for a second,” his father said, peeled away from the customer and placed himself in their way like a castle wall.

“You know the way,” Brandon said to Sylph. She felt his father’s gaze linger on her as she headed for the door in the back of the shop.

The living space comprised two bedrooms, the bathroom, and a common room that doubled as a small kitchen. None of it was built with anything bigger and wider than a human in mind. Sylph stepped past the coat rack and nudged the door to Brandon’s room open. The air smelt stale and used up. Clothes lay piled on a chair to make space for vials and weird, bulbous glass containers in his open wardrobe. Alchemy books lay scattered on his bed and, judging by the crumpled paper, he had slept on a few of them. Sylph carefully closed the flimsy door behind her.

The walls were thin and in the silence it took only a short time for her ears to open and pick up Brandon’s conversation without wanting to.

“You know what I think about that dragon in my shop.” His father sounded stern, agitated without reason. Apparently, he really hated her idea.

“Sylph, her name is Sylph.” Brandon sounded annoyed, bored even, as though this exchange was a common occurrence. To be fair, she didn’t know his father’s name either.

“I am asking you to stay out of trouble. Trouble being her.” Sylph snorted and turned towards the window to stop herself from laughing out. She could care less about his father’s opinion of her if Brandon didn’t need his permission to leave. She scoured her memories for times she got them into trouble. The window didn’t count, neither did that brawl on the market. And the spoiled food at the stall. She shook the memory out of her head. They had vowed to forget that. Those were some tiny incidents in the past, but nothing to earn Brandon that stern talk. They had been friends for a long while, she trusted him and he trusted her.

“It had nothing to do with her being,” he hesitated, “herself.” They went quiet for a few seconds and she wondered if Brandon knew she could hear them.

“She is not a human. She could hurt you if she wanted to,” his father reminded him. He sounded worried about nothing, as he did before with her weapon.

“So could our neighbor if he keeps playing with that broken crossbow of his? You know she would never hurt me. She’s my friend,” Brandon said. His words warmed her chest. A long silence filled the shop until his father exhaled louder than a running engine: “You do not stray from the major connections. Deliver the letter to Onven. Buy what we need. Return. And be careful.”

The door opened a few seconds later and Sylph sat on the floor, pretending she hadn’t heard everything. Brandon held up a piece of paper filled with handwriting she could not decipher. “My father won’t appreciate if I don’t come back with these.”

He drew out a backpack from a pile under his wardrobe. “I am sure you aren’t tasked with being a messenger and we are not just going to buy ingredients, right?” Nevertheless, he started packing his things. Packing, in his case, meant throwing it all into a backpack and pushing it down when he ran out of space.

Sylph peered out of the single window into the backstreet. “I am sure that I’ll find the truth about my parents up in the north. My mothers don’t trust me with the information. They lied to me. My own mothers lied to me.” Her chest grew hot. She turned back to face him, and he flinched under her gaze. “Not only that, but these bastard storytellers removed me from the story.” She stopped for a slow breath and relieved the tension from her muscles. “I am going to Linz to find out myself. We are going to Linz to find out.”

“Why do you need me for that?” Brandon asked, but continued to stuff clothes into his bag. Sylph gave him a sideways glance. Maybe he knew she didn’t want to go alone. She hoped he didn’t. “Aren’t you the one always talking about ingredients from up north? I thought I’d be nice and take you along if I go, anyway.” She watched her tail tip flick over her pfods as she talked.

Brandon smiled and nodded, and she knew he saw right through her. He looked smug about it, too. “Sure, why not. You even went through the trouble to lie to my father. And I don’t even want to talk about the book that inspired the idea of vine based magic.” He turned back and stuffed another tunic into the bag. “But how do you know they lied about it? From what you have told me, they never struck me as liars.”

“I eavesdropped on them.” Sylph leaned forward.

“Eavesdropping? Really?” Brandon shook his head.

“It could’ve been an accident because they forgot about my ears again.” Sylph cocked her head to reveal her slightly closed ears. Brandon said nothing, but his focused gaze said enough. “Ok, ok, eavesdropping is wrong. I get it. But they acted so weird when I brought it up, I had to know. Does that make it better?”

“Of course not!” He shook his head. “Please never eavesdrop on me.”

She shook her head as an answer. She could not control her ears. Sometimes they just did that, and she really did not intend to eavesdrop. “You are not hiding life changing truths from me and making up lies. They know who my mother is, a mysterious her with-.” Sylph stopped dead in mid-sentence and stared straight ahead. “I am a moron!” she called out and reached for the pouch at her side.

Brandon jumped up. “What did I do?”

Sylph cackled into a snorting laugh. “I forgot my earplugs. I’m not very prepared for this whole adventuring, am I?”

A few seconds of silence passed as she stared at Brandon’s overfilled backpack. He joined her. “What if they have a good reason to keep it a secret?”

Sylph exhaled sharply. “You sound like Veria. Of course they have a reason, otherwise they wouldn’t lie.” She raised her head to face Brandon. “They are afraid for me and I hate it. I’m not a whelp. They don’t need to protect me from my past. They think I can’t deal with what I might find.”

“I’m not keen on visiting Linz, either. It is-,” Brandon struggled to say the words, “the story, you know.” Sylph scratched the hidden scar, scraping away some paint in the progress. Brandon knew about her past, but it had never come up in conversation before. “What if it is dangerous to go back there?” Brandon stopped packing.

“I am dangerous,” Sylph interjected, “My mother is one of the best duelist in the kingdom and I am not terrible either.” She smiled, raised her head proudly, but questioned what she said as soon as she finished the sentence. She was not Veria. She had never attacked anyone with the intention to hurt them. A duel was not a fight. So if it came down to it, could she protect Brandon and herself? “And anyway, everyone in Linz is dead and souls can’t hurt you.” It was possible that someone new had taken residence in the distant village, but who would want to?

Brandon studied her face and raised a single eyebrow as he did when she started talking about souls or pathwalkers. Alchemists did not believe in things they could not see, smell, or lick. It was part of the reason she wouldn’t reveal her abilities to him just yet. She wouldn’t be able to answer the flood of questions. He stopped packing once more to look at her, the bag, the door, and her again.

“Now don’t even start with bandits, or wyvern, or tax collectors. The only thing to worry about is pick pockets.” She raised her pfod to protect the coin pouch instinctively.

“I was hinting for you to leave so I can change?” He pulled at his stained tunic and Sylph stepped out into the tight corridor.

“Clothes are overrated,” she yelled at the door. It was no obstacle to her sensitive hearing, but for Brandon, she knew she had to raise her voice.

“Let’s see who will complain once we reach the north. It is freezing. You should take a blanket with you.” She then heard a bunch of clothes drop to the floor.

“I’m not hundred-twenty, I don’t need a blanket,” Sylph scoffed. She grew up in a damn stable. A bit of cold could not stop her now. Brandon opened the door, wearing a fresh, dark-green tunic. “Wait.” He pulled out an old brown blanket from under his bed. With it came a bunch of empty vials and containers.

“Normal people stash questionable romance novels under their nest and not chemicals,” Sylph snorted. Although humans seemed to care very little about what they stored under their beds. He threw the blanket, and it landed on her snout. It smelled of many things and none of them were cloth.

“Who stashes books under the bed?” He asked. “Put them on a shelf.” Sylph merely pointed at the books laying on his.

“I studied with those.”

Sylph pulled the rough blanket from her face. “I do not need a blanket. And I wouldn’t put those books out in the open for Oasis to find.”

Brandon picked the blanket back up and stuffed it in his filled backpack. It was a pointless endeavor. He shoved down one side and stuff plopped out the other. “Then I don’t want to know what’s in those books. Probably the one with the vine wizard.” He slung the backpack over his back, blanket halfway outside.

Sylph gave up. “Just give me the damn blanket,” she said and snatched it with her teeth from the backpack, pulled and it took half of the contents with it. She sighed as the clothes scattered over the floor.