As Maura sat and listened to the camp slowly begin to fall asleep her thoughts and emotions stopped spiraling and she managed to calm down.

Running her mantra allowed her mind to calm faster and also began to pressure her to get closer. To not let fear rule her. To take the first step.

Haste is the Enemy.

Sound is the Enemy.

Fear is the Enemy.

I am the Enemy.

To conquer the Enemy,

Conquer Myself.

She had created her mantra out of experiences she had endured as she learned what she needed to do to stay alive. Knowing what she had to do to stay safe in the wilderness with its unending populations of monsters and myriad other threats had been taught to her through pain and desperation. Now she used it as a focusing tool and it helped keep her sane during her long march.

She had been listening to what conversations she could pick up and getting better at understanding the words and accents. The thick leather tents muffled sounds somewhat, but she could still hear a lot. The caravan was led by Baron Stephen Carter. He had his wife Amelia and three children with him, and held the noble license to be able to trade. It was a little disappointing to hear that there was a nobility in these lands but she decided not to worry about it for now.

The leader of the soldiers was Captain Logan. Maura has no idea if that’s his first, last, or only name. He’s from a city called Torrine which has its first outpost about two days away at their current rate of travel. The city itself was more than a week away and was the caravan’s destination.

The reason the soldiers were called out was because the caravan’s mage messed up and got himself either killed or wounded, she wasn’t sure which, by monsters known as soul wisps which ensnare the mind before attacking or leading people away from the group. They had lost seven people to the wisps before the soldiers had arrived. She inferred from soldiers grumbling about the speed of travel that they could move at a significant speed while not tied to the caravan, which explained how they arrived at the caravan so quickly after they had sent up the call for help.

It took a lot of different conversations, most of which were repetitions of what other people were saying, to put that much information together.

Oh, and the giant shaggy bison-things were called elop. That’s where a lot of the strong scent from their camp came from.

Maura decided that she needed to get closer to the camp to learn anything more. She also wanted to check on the wounded if she could manage it. Whether or not that happened before she could force herself to try to make herself known to the group is future Maura’s problem.

She did manage to finally realize her backpack made her look like an evil crone, so she had taken it off and hidden it under some debris near a tree. She had also taken some time to work on her hair and tie it back from her face with a braided strip of leather. Then she realized it wouldn’t necessarily matter because she is going to keep her headdress on. But then she realized it should matter because she should stop being a weirdo and just meet people without hiding her face. She straightened up and fixed all of her clothing to where it should be. And then she had taken two of the prettier new ghostly feathers from her pack and tied them to her spear near the primary leather grip to make it look nicer, and put another one in her hair as well.

It had taken an embarrassingly long time for her to realize she was super nervous and procrastinating. She had never felt this way before though, so it was totally understandable!

She began to psyche herself up to move out towards the caravan. With her new cloak and the large expanse of snow it would be easy enough to make her way to the group without being noticed.

There was one thing that could be said about this group of people, though; they were loud.

Even with two thirds of them sleeping or at least inside tents, the noises of the animals and people moving around and campfires and even the muffled conversations in the tents were like explosions in her ears.

She was frankly astounded that they weren’t being constantly attacked.

Though now that she thought about it, even she was feeling nervous and on edge about all of the noise and light, so animals and monsters probably would as well and keep away.

Which of course meant that they might attract one of the big dumb ones eventually.

Rookie mistake. She hadn’t done that in… wow two years? That seemed like a long time, now that she was thinking about it.

And another thing, the accents that they used when talking were barely understandable! It’s like they were somehow mumbling and yelling and barfing out words too fast all at the same time!

I’m procrastinating again. Damnit.

Steeling her resolve and rolling her mantra through her mind she left her spear behind in the snow near her pack and began to slowly make her way out into the open towards the camp. They had sentries on top of the line of giant sleds that they seemed to be using as an impromptu wall, so she silently moved through the shadows to make her way closer while using pulses of intent to keep the snow firm and leave no tracks which was an automatic ingrained habit.

Maura made it all the way to a sled without making a sound or drawing any attention. She stood near one of the runners and slowly took off a glove. With trembling fingers, her hand reached out to touch the sled.

It was real.

It was magnificent.

She swept her fingers slowly along the hand carved reinforced wooden planks which were expertly placed against one another so as not to leave a gap. There was a layer of waterproof varnish she could feel covering the wood and making it smoother. The runners had been beautifully carved from some strong wood with wide metal bands fused to the bottom. She could see expertly crafted leather and metalworks on the harnesses for the elop and even some paint here and there in the dim light.

Every individual piece of the construction required work to create the base materials. It was an homage to civilization, for clearly multiple skilled crafters had worked on the individual parts that had then been brought together to create the finished product.

She knew she was crying, because she could see a golden light reflected in that beautiful varnish, but she just couldn’t care. It had been a long and lonely journey searching for something she was afraid might no longer exist, but here it was under her hand proving it was real.

Irrefutable proof.

There was civilization left in the world.

She snapped out of her moment when she heard the first change of the watch happening. She lowered the hood of her cloak further over her face and wiped her eyes for a little bit, then decided to keep exploring the camp.

Like some sort of creepy stalker person.

It was fine. Small steps.

She would make an awesome assassin… not that she wanted to, but it was an option. A wilderness assassin? Those are just called bandits, tho… hmm, we’re back to that, Maura?

She slowly climbed up one the side of one of the sleds to take a peek. The sentry fifteen feet away from her didn’t even twitch in her direction. The sled was full of stuff! Almost all of it was in boxes, but that meant even more civilization!

Traders!

Maybe wanderers!

Or bandits.

Or slavers.

Let’s stay positive, Maura.

After dropping back down she began to stalk around and peek out from under the sleds. She studied the people she could see outside of the tents. After they had stopped, she had gotten a better look at everyone, especially as they took off scarves and helmets and such. The majority were humans, both male and female, but she saw some Manza with their fun skin colors and cute little horns, and two Guri with a feathery crest, large expressive eyes and lighter armor. Not one Ovoure or Challu, sadly.

Well Challu wouldn’t be found dead this far north in winter. They hated cold weather. But no Ovoure? That was sad.

I mean, they might be here and sleeping, but I didn’t see any earlier, either. Though it might be a blessing in disguise. Perhaps people wont think I look like a child if they don’t know what Ovoure are supposed to actually look like?

No way she would get that lucky.

She silently moved between the different sleds keeping her ears and nose open trying to find the wounded soldiers while also listening to more conversations. Most people were asleep, but they all seemed physically incapable of keeping quiet. Which makes sense for soldiers from a town, she supposed, but the merchants should have better discipline.

From what Maura could make out, they were talking about getting back to the city soon and what they would do. The soldiers talked about wanting to be back inside the patrolled interior, whatever that meant, where drinks and entertainment awaited them. Some of them talked about the wounded and they sounded a little worried. The merchant guards mostly talked about needing to find a decent replacement mage which sounded like it would be a challenge, and also about being somewhere warm and safe where they too could drink and be merry.

She didn’t get a lot of new information, but it was nice to hear people talking about anything at all, really. The only conversation she had had for a long time was by whispering to herself, so this was a definite upgrade.

She peeked at the contents strapped to the ends of each sled as she passed. Almost everything was boxed up, but she could see some food and other things that were in bags with painted pictures. The words painted here and there had familiar letters for the most part, and she could understand a few of them, but the same changes that she had noticed with the spoken language seemed reflected in the writing.

Her dreams of a library took a pretty hefty hit, but this just meant that maybe she could go to school to learn to read and write? She wasn’t sure how applicable most of her knowledge would be anymore, as she had already found that using the old spellforms was difficult due to the differences in ambient mana.

Maybe she could trade stories and music for lessons? She was grasping at straws to keep her fantasies alive, but reality wasn’t looking to be very accommodating.

She decided to distract her plunging thoughts by studying the elop. They were funny, mostly placid beasts. They rooted through the snow in a large area and dug up all sorts of grass and roots to chomp on. It took a few moments for the caravan people to wrangle them back when one would start to wander a bit too far. It was as if it took the big shaggy things a little while to realize that something was talking to them, which made Maura smile a little.

The sky was cloudy and the moon wasn’t full anymore, so it was too dark to make out many details, but Maura felt a warmth building in her chest. She had to skitter away from a patrolling soldier a few times which cooled her new joy because she was angry at herself for hiding, but she just couldn’t help it.

The soldiers definitely seemed more skilled at the whole being on guard and protection stuff. Probably why they were soldiers still instead of guarding caravans… or maybe these particular soldiers were somewhat elite as they responded to calls for help? That made more sense.

Either way, she almost felt like they were wary of something (her) moving about camp. Maura had no idea how they could even know she was there, but it didn’t change the fact that one particular soldier got pretty close to her a few times.

Eventually she had wandered enough that she heard a few grunts like someone in pain before smelling the coppery blood. Second sled from the end on the right. One of the wounded was obviously awake, probably because of pain, so Maura was hesitant to check on them. There was one person walking around in the tent, as well.

They would probably be fine. Just a leg and arm wound. Their armor caught most of the damage.

Besides, what would they think if they saw some ghoulish ice witch looking stranger hovering over their wounded without as much as a hello first?

Why am I constantly painting myself as some evil ne’er-do-well?

As she stayed hidden while studying the camp her brain kept moving in circles. She was starting to get a little tired when one of the non-combatants left the tent and she noticed that the only sounds coming from the wounded were slow and even breathing.

All of the wounded were finally asleep, and the coast was clear.

It was now or never. Time to take the first real step.

Conquer Myself