"Getting past the border wasn't that hard after all. What do you think Macario?" A golden-haired man looked at the imposing walls of Kriemreich's western borders. The gray mix of steel and stone peeked from the cover of aged pines.

"You are progressing well with your abilities, Master Kirk." Something materialized as a film of black and red; its consistency took the form of a pale-faced man clad in a flaming suit of armor. "I doubt if those mortals could detect your presence while in shadow form."

"Yeah, I guess." Kirk went atop a hillock overlooking the garrison from the right. He laid a stick beside him and sat on the grass watching the needle-peaked foliage sway in the wind. His hand was holding to his stomach when he remarked: "Do you have an idea where to buy something to eat here? Rabbits and berries are good but I'd like the taste of things cooked by someone else for a change."

"It has been three centuries since I traveled past these lands. I am as lost as you are."

"Can't blame you for that... it looks like we'll have to be on foot again." Kirk stared at the revenant that followed behind him. "That doesn't sound right. You can float around and I'm here getting tired and all."

"We will come across a village or a town in a matter of hours..." The specter paused and tilted his head at the view. "...or days."

"Thank you for stating the obvious Macario." Kirk stopped in the middle of the road, prodded his stick to the ground before looking at the blurred beyond. "This is going to be quite a journey. Now I'm paying the price for not remembering the names of these lands."

"By that, you mean Kriemreich, Master?"

"Yeah, but it's an empire, so they go by smaller domains." Kirk took a few meters forward and again, stopped in the middle of a road filled with damp earth and rotting vegetation. "All I can remember is that it's a dukedom in the southern reaches. Could be Agharta, or Albertland, or something like that."

"In my time, that was referred to as 'The Serpent's Domain'." Black flames that radiated off Macario's form flickered against the forest backdrop. "But then, four lifetimes surely changed in this world, one way or another. Your home at Iberonde was not spared from the whims of time."

"Iberonde..." Again, Kirk's feet stalled from moving forward; he looked at the calm waters of the river to his left. "Mother and Father would have scolded me for running away. I would like to return there and, settle things with those who took everything from the family."

"Your current command of your powers puts you in no condition to fight them. Even if you do, your name will strike terror in the hearts and minds of the people there." Macario's voice quivered in the wind. "I recall that you ran away from those lands for the people to know peace. Are you planning to return and assert your place as, how do mortals say this... a monster?"

"Hah ..." Kirk's chest deflated; his head shook thrice before he lifted his eyes off the riverbank. "You're right. It's hard to live a new life after watching everything you have known to love to burn down. Anyway, how do you think I will be greeted once I arrive there?"

"If those people are as good as your memories preserved them to be, you should have the least problems on how they'll receive you."

"I shouldn't be worrying about that for now. I'm itching to get to a town somewhere. No one told me that Kriemreich would be this big."

This was no easy feat for the traveler. Stretches of trees and the last rays of the sun stared back at him; none of them gave him a welcoming look. Kriemreich was nothing like Iberonde; the men that came to his estate years before should have given him a hint that they lived in a place of great expanse. He would have no way of knowing how to get to places, and all he hoped, for now, was to get to a community where he could buy a decent map to tell him where he needed to be to reach places.

Kirk went off the road and used the forest cover in his venture. He lost his sense of time as he passed by the trees that allowed the last lights of the sun to come through. The scent of damp moss was all around him; he could taste the herbal air given off by the foliage around him.

The sun was disappearing behind a purplish haze in the sky when he reached a part of the place where the trees were thinner and the old stone road was replaced by a well-paved path. The lights up ahead made him eager to leave the cover of the trees. He moved in large pacing steps towards the source; windows and rooftops were revealed before his eyes as he drew closer to the vicinity.

A lazy atmosphere loomed when Kirk entered the town. People wore simple garments in drab colors, but the traveler would have not noticed any of the brighter hues as the night began embracing the world. There was a mix of lights; some houses burned oil and candles, and those that were better-built relied on crystalline fixtures that provided a soft white glow.

His boots made the last two hollow squeaks when Kirk stopped in front of a restaurant. The scent of goat and fowl roasted on a spit squeezed out of a half-open window. Only a few people lined up the crude tables and chairs in the place; some gave him baffled looks behind wrinkled foreheads as the traveler entered.

"It would be best to prepare their currency to pay for the meals, Master Kirk."

He stared at the revenant and smiled, which in turn elicited surprised looks from the waitresses who were about to begin their shifts. Kirk was the only person around who could see his ghostly companion after all – he would have done worse had he spoken to him. He approached the barman whose long, beaked nose seemed to size him up from bottom to top.

"I'd like one of your roasted geese, a salad, and a jug of milk." Kirk took his coins and stacked them before pushing them to the attendant.

He found a good table for two with a good window view of the outside (although there was nothing much to see aside from the occasional wagon and a few passing people on the streets). The waitress, a young woman in a brown and maroon dress, handed him a bowl of greens followed by the milk jug. Kirk grabbed the small bottle of oil and poured some onto the vegetables. He brought a mouthful of the greens and began working on them.

Meat and milk followed soon enough, and all that was left were empty vessels and utensils around the table. Kirk would have ordered more, but the Marks he had were not enough. Perhaps the restaurateurs would take some of his rubies as substitutes, but then he didn't know what the value of the stones was in this country.

"It's good that you still remember how they speak here." The revenant's voice rang inside Kirk's head.

"I had a great teacher of course." Kirk took out his purse again while jingled heavily as it was cradled on his palm. "I think I'll stay at an inn, get a bath and buy things for the road. This will be a far walk down south if this place is the only border village around."

"Agreed, Master Kirk." Macario hovered ahead of him.

"Now, to finally get to sleep on a decent bed for once." The traveler stretched his arms and arched his back. He found the door sign of an inn nearby.