Chương 63: Chapter 59

The grazer was cooked silently, and the resulting meat ended up being soft. There were very few parasites or wounds on it as well, so dinner ended up being enjoyable for not only Chael, but Sobelle as well. This was enough to slightly increase Sobelle's mood. Which was something Chael did not fail to notice, seeing as the merchant was now trying her best to be as physically close to Sobelle as she could. Sobelle hadn't pushed her away, which Chael took as a good sign more than anything.

"Have you ever slept outside of your village before? Traveling shouldn't be that weird for you right? Your father is a guard isn't he?" Chael's words sounded like they had no correlation, but it probably did to her somehow.

"Which means that you've definitely slept like this before, in a camp."

"Sometimes." Sobelle chalked up Chael's words as coming from an encounter with a guard who brought his own daughter whenever he went on patrol. Sobelle felt cold, the thought of leaving her village haunted her now. She pushed the feeling down.

"I'm not a stranger to sleeping in camps, or making them."

"Yeah, I had a feeling that you were when I saw you making that camp the first time." Chael sounded wistful. And for good reason, as Sobelle herself felt that that particular day happened so long ago.

"My father and I used to do this quite often, my brother would find firewood while I'm the one responsible for pitching the tent. Meanwhile, our father held duties in keeping our goods safe and hidden."

"Hidden?" Now that was new. Sobelle asked about it immediately, that was how novel the concept of merchants hiding their own carts was to her.

"I don't understand, why would it be hidden?"

"Because... Bandits can come during the night, or maybe some desperate kid from a village follows us and is waiting for us to sleep so he can steal some things." The way Chael said it felt like she had encountered those problems frequently in the past.

"Carrying so many goods isn't easy, you know? People will always want to steal them and you will become a walking target."

"Did you have guards then?" If they were really under threat of being stolen from constantly, wouldn't it be normal to assume they hired guards? That was common sense.

"What happened to them? How come you were attacked by greenskins despite that?"

"We used to have guards." Chael worded it like the guards disappeared. The merchant let out a sigh that was so full of exhaustion, Sobelle felt the weight of it affect the air.

"But since we only had two villages left to visit we... Well, we decided that some of them needed to go. And that was how we were left vulnerable."

"Oh." Sobelle wasn't sure what to say to that. Should she comfort Chael? Was that the appropriate thing to do at this moment? She should, right? Yes.

"I'm glad you survived then, because it brought us together like this."

"Did it?"

"Yes, of course. I'm happy that we got to meet the way we did, as bad as that sounds." Sobelle kept her eyes on the ground. She's never said anything like this before, something so intimate and cheesy. It just wasn't like her to do that. And somehow, it felt wrong. Words died and the sounds of nature miraculously turned low as both of them basked in the strangely light atmosphere that preceded Sobelle's confession. Their campfire had died long ago, and only tiny embers were left of it.

Yet the night sky held itself steady. The giant glowing cloud of blue and gray swirled up above, illuminating the darkness in this dim, almost mystical blue light. In that quiet moment, Sobelle thought that if magic ever had a color, it'd be blue. And that if she were to guess how it felt, then she'd say it'd be like this; all soft and nice. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. Her eyes went to the knight sky.

There were no moons during this time of the year, and so the galaxy greeted the world in all its glory. The stars above blinked at her, their countless numbers was like an army that proudly showed their might.

"They say that Ilerex can fight off all the stars." Sobelle wondered where those words came from and found out it came from her own mouth.

"Because the night dims when he is in the sky." The God of Light was a glowing orb completely unlike moons. It was a planet according to her father, and that it was where demons came from. The bright light it emits came from hellfire, and that he wages war on the heavenly court every time he appeared.

"Ilerex helped us when the undying king was at his apex, he would have ended the world without it." Chael said something that Sobelle never knew about so she listened. The merchant spoke of a story that only existed in the southern parts of the continent, "they say that when the risen dead reached the south, the dragon priests and priestesses asked for the aid of the Great Desert Dragon and that the intelligent beast provided them with the knowledge on how to call for the aid of Ilerex."

"And... That was how the purifying pillar came to be!" Sobelle wasn't quite sure of what Chael referred to at first, but she wasn't a stranger to the myth of the Undead King's defeat. And within its spoken depths was the pillar of light that weakened the king and allowed the heroes to deliver the killing blow.

"Yes, that was how the pillar came to bless us. It was said that Ilerex did not take any lives that night, for it the king of demons viewed the one of undeath as a rival worthy of all his might."

"So was he?" Sobelle couldn't help but ask, now intrigued by the whole thing.

"The undying king died, so maybe the demon king was disappointed with how weak he was?"

"No one knows how Gods thinks." Chael shook her head.

"It is pointless to worry about it."

"Maybe." Sobelle had never once believed that she'd be able to understand the Gods even if she had their direct messages. Such beings were simply beyond the grasp of mortals.

"But the king of demons isn't a god, is he?"

"Well the gods banished him." Chael argued back with the ease of a priest who's had this exact conversation several times already.

"I don't get why the Gods would throw him out of the sky if he wasn't a God too. They'd just kill him if that was the case."

"You're right." Sobelle conceded, she had no plans to commit blasphemy tonight.

"..." Chael had nothing else to say. Maybe it was because she expected Sobelle to continue arguing, but the merchant looked both shocked and disappointed that they hadn't continued their little squabble. For a while, the two of them sat side by side. Not a single word was spoken between them. Then, Chael started to point at the distant dots.

"That cluster over there, right at the edge of the light gray cloud, that is the serpentine cluster. And sailors use it all the time." The tip of Chael's index finger faced a series of stars that looked like a coiled snake. It had a head, weirdly enough, it was wide open with one of the brightest stars in the sky acting as the tip of its fang.

"That brightly colored star is called Extar, and it serves as a great way for sailors to know which direction to go."

"Is that so?" Sobelle couldn't wrap her head around something so complicated. How could sailors use the stars themselves to know their way? Didn't these things stay in the same position no matter what? And if they did change, it was so subtle that it could barely be noticed.

"Yes, this particular cluster shows itself during the early cold seasons and stays in the sky up until the middle of autumn." Chael smiled as she explained.

"It is said that it boosts the energies of sea serpents and great wyrms, even wyrms get affected too. If to a lesser extent."

"Well, it is said that no one should hunt wyrms during this time of year." Whether or not that was true had been a mystery to Sobelle up until now.

"So they actually get stronger, then? And that's why no one tries to hunt them?"

"If the rumors were to be believed, then yes. That is the reason why no one hunts wyrms during this time of year, and the seas are quite calm, making it perfect to hunt serpents... Except they too are stronger during this season." None of what Chael said mattered to Sobelle, seeing as she knew she would never use sea faring ships to cross the ocean. She believed that it'd be great if she never got close to the sea for the rest of her life. Chael had gone silent, and Sobelle took the time to look at the stars.

There were so many of them, and to Sobelle, none of them mattered. But to some people, they represented a way to navigate the treacherous sea at night, and whatever it was that stars meant to them.

'I couldn't care less.' Sobelle got up and headed to bed.

"I'm going to sleep."

"Mhmm. I will join you in a little bit, I just need some time to think." Was Chael's reply.