Chapter 4

Unable to sleep, Trace sat, arms bracing her head like a pillow. She was leaning on a safety rope that followed the edge of the river bridge that she was on. The moon was full, and gorgeous. Intoxicated, more on the atmosphere – an unfortunate result of her resistance to poisons was to blame there – she stared lazily, contemplating the day's course of events. It was all adding up to something that she would rather not contemplate.

Ever-frost was a perfect example of how well humans, demis and demons could get along and coexist. The city-state had, however, only six faiths. Light and law were the two missing deities from their churches. That was because Ever-frost still kept to the old faith, where light and sun are one and the same, and there was no dedicated god of law.

The whole thing sounded like a bunch of malarkey to the fox-demon, though. Despite the fact that she knew firsthand of at least one of their existences, and she was fairly certain the others were real too. There was just no reason, that she could fathom, for entities like "The Eye" to even understand what caring was, much less care about lower life forms. Trace knew full and well that she was being biased, but she did not have the energy to care about that, at the moment.

Bored. The fox-eared woman hated the feeling, so she wracked her brain for something, anything, that she could do.

Mischief? She could, but Trace was not in the mood for petty fun. Not to mention, to what end?

Oh! A fun idea came to mind. Not wanting to waste time with sniffing around every square inch of the nobles' district, she relied on divination magic. The fox had lied before, about her inability to use scrying magic, she just was not very good at following through with the whims of the rich and powerful. Petty spite, and that was all.

After biting her thumb, she let a drop of her blood, and only a drop, drip down into the flowing river. The few night fishermen that were out on their river boats freaked out when the current halted, completely, giving the thousand feet across stream of water a mirror finish. At first, it reflected the night sky in perfect clarity.

A stream of archaic sounding words left her mouth, as her golden eyes started to lightly glow. Trace looked as casual as could be, through the whole process, as her tails swayed side to side irregularly. The reflection of the moon magnified, as a moving image appeared on it, like paint on canvas. Either side of the reflected moon touched opposite shores, while the scrying image only appeared directly below her, blown up just enough for her to see it all clearly.

The two looked to be getting along well, as they were finally free from the day's obligations. It must have been a lot for them to suddenly take in.

'Your turn!'

She childishly stuck her tongue out at them, not that they would have noticed. Perked up a little now, she just watched them, with a smile, ignoring the repercussions of what she had just done to the river.

Part of her wanted to just go over to them. But whether she liked it or not, she had obligations now. If she ignored them and just idled away with the heroes, her friends from her human days, problems would just end up piling up. Stuck, Trace was caught in the middle of a political play, and she knew it. The timing was too perfect to be anything else.

Her ears drooped, as she let go of her control over the spell, returning the river to normal. With nothing to do, she could not help but let her mind race, which usually led to depressed thoughts – overthinking things, as she was prone to do. Still sitting, while lying her head down on her arms, she let out a sigh.

'I miss the old days… things were so easy back then…'

Humming out a tune while she sat there, she kicked her legs back and forth in timing with the song. She was not sure where it came from, but it was a favorite of hers. She had often hummed it during her travels, not actually knowing the words to it, if there even were any.

'I knew that a lord was going to make an appearance, but why a calling? And why do they want me there for it? They all know that I'm the closest to humans out of the lot of us.'

Still humming, she stared down the river in contemplation. Too many choices, and each of them with dire consequences. Trace felt a choice coming, and it was a choice that she did not want to make. She did not know for sure, but she had a gut feeling, and it was rarely wrong.

'Too bad you'll only tell me that something is wrong, but not what is wrong…'

Another sigh.

'Fine… just sitting here won't do anything anyway…'

Holding onto the rope with her hands, she leaned back to look straight up, and into the night sky. With practically zero light pollution, when it got dark out it was almost pitch black out. With the full moon, and cloudless sky however, it was almost as bright as day. Not that the lack of light would have affected her night vision in the first place.

With her eyes closed, she took in a deep breath, through her nose, before standing up and stretching, letting out an appreciative moan in response. With arms slung over her shoulders, and hands cupped behind her head, she started on her long walk east, towards the Capalitin mountain range, demon country.

She was just there a few months ago, on a leisure trip of sorts. It was the only place that one could find decent apples, and as simple of a reason as it was, that was all the motivation she usually needed to travel anywhere. Most transportation issues for food stuff had not been solved, as refrigeration required magic, and long-lasting enchantments like the ones needed to keep food fresh were expensive. So, she took to traveling at one point, just to taste the different delicacies of the lands.

With fresh apples now on her mind, she quickened her pace.