Item : Ethereal Steed Whistle

Type : Magic Item

Durability : 850/850

Grade : D Grade

Weight : 12st.

Description : A silver whistle that has been connected to a magical steed in the plane of aether. Once used, the steed is summoned to the plane of the whistle and remains there until dismissed or slain at which time it returns to its own plane unharmed.

As soon as he recovered from the initial awe, he brought the whistle to his lips and blew hard.

A brown female horse gradually materialized in front of him. Her saddle was black with silver detailing. Kai was ecstatic with his mount, and even when I summoned my white steed with the flute, he paid no attention to it. He seemed to enjoy having a magical steed even more than having a chest that served as a house.

***

We rode hard for more than an hour, had a very brief pause and then rode even harder for another hour.

It was evident by the stone-paved road and intricately carved drinking fountains along the way that this part of the route had been traveled a lot more frequently in the past than the paths I had been on so far. It was also evident from the plants and grass growing between the stones and in the fountains that this part of the road had also been left unattended for decades.

The weather was perfect for traveling, overcast and warm—but not too much—though it did look like it would rain later that day. Our second break found us aching all over our bodies, especially our thighs, since neither of us were used to riding horses at all, much less for long periods of time.

“You know you can just go down into the chest and relax while I go on riding,” I told Kai, as we sat and ate apples by the side of the road.

“I know, but that would mean leaving you alone,” he replied, “and I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to be alone either. And anyway, the weather is great today.”

I smiled and took another bite of my apple. Even though I had grown up reading about magic items and their abilities, it still baffled me how tasty but also how different from one another the apples were.

“Do you have a plan, Myriam?” Kai started asking. “Where are we going? I know we’re traveling southwest, but what’s our destination?”

I still hadn’t really thought about that part. I had been so focused on getting away that I didn’t really have time to think about where we actually wanted to go. I guess it was one of those things that I kept postponing, hoping I would only have to deal with it once I reached a crossroad of sorts.

My planning when fleeing Nara with provisions had been meticulously thought out and executed, but that only took care of moving away to safety. With each minute of riding, I achieved greater safety but got no closer to any idea what my goal was.

“To be honest Kai, I don’t know yet. Do you want to help me find a suitable place for us to stay for some time?” I asked, and took a leather parchment roll that illustrated the map of our land.

“That sounds fun,” he answered, and placed two big rocks on the corners of the map that was now spread open on the ground. “Alright. We should be away from big cities but not too far away in case we need to find supplies or gather information from other people.”

I smiled at him. Even after all that he had been through, his intellect and calmness did not waver. It didn’t actually really matter to me where we went, as long as we went somewhere far away from Nara.

“Then I guess these woods to the south would be a pretty good choice, right?” He pointed to a big forested area near the south edge of the map. “They’re relatively secluded, with not a lot of villages around but still within a day’s riding distance of the port at Leskia if we need supplies.”

“My, my Kai,” I said, grinning at him. “You are as clever as ever!”

For the moment, we noted a general route that would get us there and made sure that we were traveling the right direction. Despite our aches, we decided to continue riding for a little more than an hour before our first big break of the day.

When we stopped again, we recalled both of our horses and found a series of thick bushes, some minutes away from the old road. We set up a protective perimeter with the barrier stones and used the chest’s staircase to go down to our residence.

We prepared a mundane lunch—which nonetheless tasted delicious, probably because of our exhaustion—and ate in our common room. Having our bellies full seemed to take some of the muscle pain away and the idea of riding again later that day no longer seemed as appalling as it did before we stopped.

After we ate, I set a different, larger map open on the big wooden table and we set to work calculating the exact distances and time that we would need to travel in order to reach the forest that Kai had selected.

“It seems that we can reach Leskia in five or six days,” Kai said. “It’s an awful lot more than if we went directly south, but I think you were right to choose this route.”

“This way is definitely less populated than the direct road. Even if we reached the vicinity of the city unnoticed on the main road, it would be extremely difficult to pass through its outskirts and travel west toward the forest without anybody seeing us,” I replied. “At least this way, we can avoid Leskia all together.”

According to the map, we were supposed to travel west for the rest of the day and then the old road would turn southward. From what we could understand it was a fairly straight line going south to southeast, which should make it easy to follow assuming that the road didn’t get swallowed by the forest further down. At some point, the road would reach the coastline of the Endless Sea and make a turn once more, to the east this time.

Growing up in Nara, I never had the chance to go this far south. The Endless Sea was something I had only heard about in stories from traveling merchants. I felt a strange tickle of curiosity at the idea of seeing water as far as the eye could see, and perhaps swim in it as well. That would make for a good break before reaching our destination.

Eventually, the road would lead to the port of Leskia, a city well-known for its trade links with our manaless neighbors across the sea, both in terms of exporting our magic items and importing resources from them. But we would hopefully have no need to travel there since we would turn west again once we saw the coastline and move through the wilderness.

Settling in the forest would mean even less of a chance of stumbling upon people but we would have access to the sea, should we ever need or want to abandon the country for good.

Having a clear goal in our minds made a huge and immediate difference to our morale, which couldn’t be dampened even by the heavy rain that began in the afternoon and piled on top of our still-aching bodies. Once again, I tried to convince Kai to retreat back into our chest while I did the riding, but he refused to let me ride alone. Or, maybe it was that he refused to stay alone. In any case, we rode for close to two hours with the rain whipping our faces.