“Strength manifests in many ways.” - Old folk saying.

“It did, Milady, though excuse me for saying that I would have preferred to be forewarned next time,” said their guide even as he sighed in relief. “That sort of tension isn’t good for my heart, I swear, and I’m not even thirty yet!”

“Is this your first time taking this route?” asked Kino with some curiosity to change to topic to a less tense one.

“Oh, no, no. I have traversed this route three times with my honored Uncle in the past, but this is the first time I’m actually in charge of leading people through here,” clarified the man with a shake of his head. “It’s definitely a different kind of tension on the mind, though, to have to be in charge of the whole thing instead of just going along for the ride. Though I guess that’s the exact lesson Uncle wants me to learn from this.”

“Yeah, you’re as safe as you can be with the three of us here,” noted Aideen with a nod. Sudaksina had informed her that this nephew of his was in the know and would likely be his successor as his own children were so far either not of the right sort to be part of the agents’ network or were still too young to tell one way or another, and did ask them to keep him safe. That said Sudaksina had apparently not told his nephew of the identities of the people he was guiding either. “So, through this shortcut, we’re cutting the travel time by a good week and a half, right?”

“Around that, yes. Usually it’d take a couple of weeks to travel from Baur-Fah to the Caliphate, since we had to either skirt around the groves towards the north and cross through Jarah territory, or we would have to take a long detour to the canyons that marks our border with the Caliphate to the south-west,” replied the man, his nervousness mostly gone by now. “With this shortcut we would enter Caliphate territory by the fourth or fifth day.”

“Good enough. Let us sup and rest for the night, then, so we can continue early tomorrow.”

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The remainder of the group’s journey through the elven grove went uneventfully, and sure enough, in the afternoon two days after their encounter with the local elves, the group emerged from the grove through its western side and entered the territory of the Hassid Caliphate, the de facto hegemon of northern Ur-Teros in all but name.

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Surprisingly enough, a village was situated close enough to the grove that the group managed to reach it before the sun had set. That was in rather stark contrast to the east side of the grove, where no sign of habitation could be found within a day’s journey of the elven grove. Clearly those in the east still remembered the days when the grove’s inhabitants were savage raiders who would infrequently come for their livestock, grains, and lives, and thus stayed as far away from them as they could.

The villagers on the Caliphate side clearly had no such worries, though.

To be fair, there were other striking differences between the Caliphate and the Empire. While the Empire had a rich central region – namely where the original nation of Vusila was before their conquest and expansion – the Caliphate was built by immigrants from far away, and thus they had far less incentive to favor one region over the rest.

Where in the more far-flung reaches of the Empire towns and villages would only be guarded by local militia and guardsmen who were equipped with pretty much whatever they could get their hands on, with poor discipline and skill, the Caliphate’s own armed forces was present even the small village the group first visited, despite its great distance from the center of power in Al-Hassid.

Another key difference was that unlike most of the other nations in the northern region, which were predominantly human – though a few people from other races and elven descent could be seen here and there – was that the Caliphate was predominantly dwarven. That alone ensured that every able-bodied adult in a village would likely be able to break the average human in half with just their bare hands, which arguably reduced the need of a village militia by quite a bit.

A pair of armed soldiers clad in heavy scale armor that would probably be unusable by a human, wielding spears twice as long as they were tall – or broad – and shields the size of doors stood guard by the main entrance of the village, which was on the southern side, connected to a dirt road. The guards queried them for identification but relaxed and waved them in once the group’s merchant-guide showed that he was a merchant from abroad.

The land around the village itself wasn’t the best suited for cultivating some of the more popular staple foods like wheat and rice, as the soil was rather sandy and had poor water retention. Instead, the locals heavily grew all sorts of tubers – from potatoes to yams, which Aideen identified from the leaves that grew above ground – as well as what seemed to be a local variety of soybeans, one that thrived even in the poor soil.

Further away from the village, massive horned lizards each the size of their entire wagon were left to graze on the grass and nearby bushes. They likely served as the village’s beasts of burden, although Aideen also saw a couple dwarven villagers return to the village with several large eggs in their basket, likely from the very same lizards.

Curiously, the eggs looked positively soft with flexible size despite their large size – each egg was easily as large as a human head – which might be why the dwarves carried them with such care. It was a somewhat comical sight to witness two burly, muscular, hairy dwarves walk slowly as they gently cradled the lizard eggs they carried in woven baskets, each of which held an egg.