Chapter 4: Kilbury.

"What do you mean that the problem is humans?" I asked.

I couldn't understand how humans could represent a problem at the time, the people in the Wild Lands were very different from people anywhere else, the enclosed space in which we lived forced us to create a community where everyone had to at least try to understand other people no matter what kind of life you lead.

"Humans there are different there, we are united, otherwise we would have already starved to death or wiped out by a random beast tide, together we are far more powerful than we could ever be separated.

In the outside world, beasts aren't a concern, so there was nothing to unite the people which lead to them fighting amongst themselves.

Kingdom against kingdom, bringing only death in exchange for an empty victory, this is also a major reason of why I left to come back here, the idea of humans fighting among each other for meaningless reasons made me feel sick."

That really did sound awful.

How could those people take other people's lives when acting together brings much better results?

Here, I had to risk my own life every time I wanted to taste the freedom of the lands outside the walls that trapped us within and protected us from the outside's beasts.

Do they take their own freedom for granted? When there are people like us who can't take a step outside without the fear of becoming a mangled corpse in a deformed beast's stomach?

Seeing my expression taking a turn for the worse he changed the topic, "But who knows, maybe things changed in the years, they might have learnt how to live together peacefully, who knows"

"I sure hope so" I muttered.

But one thing was sure, I wanted to leave the Wild Lands to see the world father saw with my own eyes, after that who knows, I might might even decide to stay there.

A couple of days passe and I was bored out of my min, we were now halfway through our journey, but finally, for the first time in a few hours I sensed something coming in our direction with my scanner magic.

"Something is coming, pretty big, going at our same speed, around two hundred meters coming from Kilbury's direction." I explained in a hushed voice to not attract unwanted attention.

"It was about time," he replied, leaving me to scratch my head in confusion at his nonchalance, "you see, while we go to Kilbury, someone from there comes to Icerock, this one in front of us might be one of their merchants."

It made sense, I guessed, so I relaxed my nerves, but just a little.

After a few minutes, the thing that I sensed appeared in front of us from behind some trees.

"Hey lad! You're coming from Icerock? I don't think I've ever seen you before," asked the man on the magical carriage similar to ours, "shouldn't it be Arnold's turn this one?"

"Yes, it should have been, but I asked him to change, you come from Kilbury, right?" replied my father.

"Is it true that people from outside the Wild Lands are currently in Kilbury?" I cut in the conversation, causing the other man to grimace slightly.

"Yes, that is true, but what is a small child like you doing here, lass? you do know that it's dangerous out here, right?" He directed the latter part of his sentence at my father more than to me.

"I'm a mage, I can handle myself without being a burden."

But the man didn't seem to budge, he wanted an answer from my guardian.

"As she said, she's a mage and I can't just leave my child home alone while I'm outside for days, we've been doing this for years and she knows how to handle herself, there have never been any problems." at his words I puff my chest in pride, I was fantastic.

Even the old man on the other carriage seemed incredulous, I took it as a compliment to my awesomeness.

"Well, if you say so, I'm sorry for being meddlesome, a few years ago a couple of children somehow managed to find a way to leave our walls lead by a child with magic without being seen, apparently he thought he could protect his little friends, they never came back, children outside the walls are bit of a touchy subject to me."

That sounded really awful, but I suddenly found this old man much cuter than before, there he was, scratching his head in embarrassment from putting his nose where it doesn't belong.

"Yeah, no need to worry, I can understand, if anything happened to my Avys here, I wouldn't know what I'd do." replied my father after patting my head.

"Oh well, it's time I go, have a good trip and stay safe, we'll probably see each other on the way back, oh, my name is Mortimer, by the way."

"See you later then, I'm Laurence, and this is my daughter, Avys."

"Until next time, Mortimer!" I said while waving at the cute old man as we went our own way.

Once we were far enough I said, "He seemed like a kind old man."

"Yeah, he sure was, but hey, now we know that the rumor was true."

Indeed, I wondered how the outsiders were going to look like, did they look just like us or were they different in some way?

———————————————————————————————————

Five more days passed and I didn't make any new discoveries in my magical research, I didn't even know what I actually wanted to research at the moment.

But I had seen different and new types of vegetation I had never seen before, like different types of weeds and fungi and took some samples.

Knowing plants was very important for a merchant, because by knowing the vegetation we could know which plants were safe to eat or to draw water from, but the latte was important only until I understood how to create water with magic without having it disappear.

But now, we were finally in front of the walls of Kilbury and inside of their insulation barrier.

This city was much bigger than either of the two cities I had ever been to, being two times as big as Icerock and twice the population thanks to the fact that far fewer beasts were around this area of the Wild Lands, meaning that they could expand with less difficulty.

"Hello! I am Laurence Winterridge and this at my side is Avys Winterridge, we're merchants from Icerock and request entrance into Kilbury." shouted my father.

While we could be less formal when going to Rockkeep or when we returned to Icerock, the guards here didn't know us so we had to remain polite while introducing ourselves, those were the merchant's rules.

"Hello!" Answered a guard from atop the wall, "Shouldn't it be Arnold's turn this time?"

"Yes, but I asked him to take his place this time, I wanted to meet someone here."

The guard seemed to think for a second, "I'm coming down below, wait a second."

A minute later, the city gate opened and the guard from before stepped through, "Nice to meet you, my name is Richard, would you tell me why it is that you came here instead of Arnold?"

"We wanted to meet the people from outside the Wild Lands, we met Mortimer on the way and he confirmed us that they were here."

"They sure are, but before that, why did you bring a child with you all the way from Icerock?"

"She's my daughter Avys, she is an extremely talented mage, I couldn't leave her at home while I'm away, so I've been bringing her with me on my travels for the last 5 years."

The guard checked our ID and saw that everything was alright, "Alright, everything is perfect, sorry for the questions, but with the outsiders coming from out of nowhere we need to be careful around new faces, I hope you can understand."

"Oh yes, there is no problem, we understand."

"Well, you can go in, have a good day."

We replied and entered the city, it was much bigger than Icerock, but the architecture was more or less the same, brick houses of similar dimensions separated by small streets.

"So, what now?" I asked father.

"Now we reach the market, I promised Arnold that I would take his usual stuff and he already gave me the goods to exchange, once we get there we'll ask around."

"Sure."

The market in Kilbury was just like ours, the only difference being that, once again, it was bigger.

We went to the place Arnold told father to go and bought what we needed without a problem, apparently Kilbury was were we got grains and bread from.

The man was suspicious of us, but thankfully Arnold wrote his friend here a letter to confirm our story.

After loading our purchases in the magical carriage, father asked to Arnold's friend wether he knew were the outsiders stayed at.

"Yeah, they stay at the city hall and meet with our mayor pretty often, makes one wonder what they talk about."

We thanked him and left him to his devices, going in the direction of the city hall.

"Dad, what is a mayor?"

"Oh yeah, we don't have one in Icerock and neither does Rockkeep, so you can't know, the mayor is an elected mage usually, either an engineer or a merchant, that decides the policies of the city, Icerock is small enough and it doesn't need one, but the population here is double, so double the trouble too."

"I see." So he was the boss around here?

Got it.

Once we reached the city hall, the place were the city's management happened, we entered and asked to meet with the outsiders as representatives of Icerock.

Apparently dad had asked the city assembly to be our spokesperson and they accepted, it goes to show just how much they trusted father.

The staff in the city hall asked us to sit and wait for a bit until the outsiders could meet us, they seemed to be having a conversation with the mayor of Kilbury.

Ten minutes later, much earlier than father expected, two individuals came to greet us.

But as soon as one of them saw father, something very strange happened.

The man erupted in a fit od laugher and hugged dad, leaving both me and the other male outsider filled with confusion.

"Laurence, is it really you?" asked the man.