The following days consisted of three tasks for Emray; contemplating what her future might hold, belong with day-to-day tasks such as gathering wood and cooking meals, and learning Xeerya’s sign language in-between the other other two.

The first task took up the minority of her time, as the contemplation still caused pangs of panic, but she thought on it nonetheless. Fort Brume was a hub for the northern end of Ostella’s Enclave presence, and Oakspinner was similarly under their thumb. In her youth she’d dreamed of moving to Oakspinner, seeing the soldiers in their bright uniforms and the skyships hovering overhead on Enclave business. Now the idea of setting foot in the city sent a sort of existential dread through her body that she hadn’t ever felt before.

The soldier’s face flashed through Emray’s mind every time she slept, and most of all his too-blue eyes. Their shifting, iridescent hue stuck in her head like a corn kernel in teeth. She had to know if this was something common to the Enclave’s soldiers or hinted at some sort of specialization to his particular battalion.

The second task helped keep Emray’s waking mind off of the first. It felt good to put her body to use again, especially after Xeerya had fully healed her bullet wound. Susanna had christened her as the official wood-chopper for the rest of their travels together, such was her skill at it even compared to her brother. She’d remarked on the muscularity of Emray’s lean arms with the sort of language reserved for horse-breeders, and Susanna was particularly interested to hear about Emray’s artificery work. Emray had a suspicion that Susanna was only pretending to be interested to give Emray something to talk about, but Emray appreciated the effort as much as she could.

Talking about her artificery always brought a tear or two to Emray’s eyes. She missed having the smell of smelting metals sting her nose, the feeling of harnessing and channeling energy into oriculum, and most of all the satisfaction of a piece completed. Emray had resolved to remake her gauntlet as soon as she could get the materials and the workspace to do so. If the Enclave was working against the Towers, she was going to need whatever edge she could get.

The third task, while she was initially trepidatious about, proved to be the one she enjoyed the most. Xeerya was a very patient teacher, taking the extra time to form Emray’s hand into the proper shapes for the signs. It was a slow process, with at least fifteen minutes spent on each sign and all the meanings it can imply based on its position in the sentence and the facial and bodily language accompanying it.

Even when Emray got frustrated Xeerya showed the patience of a saint. She was firm but kind in how she guided Emray’s learning, and the way she did reminded her of Marigold’s style. Xeerya was filling the void that her life of education had left, and while they may be so different Emray couldn’t help but get attached to her.

The days of going back and forth over these three tasks cemented a few new ideas in Emray’s mind. Firstly, she realized that everyone at the Tower was right; her learning was painfully stunted in a number of ways, particularly with how the softer areas of magic were concerned. Antareon’s display of his magic, while initially terrifying to a logically minded individual like herself, had left an indelible mark on her worldview and psyche. Antareon had thus far refused to elaborate further while on the road, but his magic had Emray’s curiosity piqued.

Secondly, and more presently important, was her need to understand what exactly had caused the assault on the Tower, and to find out what had become of her Professors and fellow students. She had never held much regard for her classmates, but seeing them safe would put a bit of her mind at ease.

It was on the eighth day of travel that civilization finally started to present itself. Ostella was a mostly pastoral nation, with dense clusters of settlements and cities dotted around the landscape in-between sweeping grasslands and hills. The telltale first sign had been an increase in the air traffic the further south they traveled. Where she’d been lucky to see a skiff or two during the first few days of travel, suddenly Emray was finding ketches and frigates to be more and more common, with the occasional galleon thrown in for good measure.

“Next stop, Oakspinner and Fort Brume,” Gregor called from the driver’s seat of the wagon. Emray pokes her head out the front flap, both relieved to see the city and nervous to see the fort.

Oakspinner was a tiered city that rose high into the air, layered like a cake of stone and iron. Smoke billowed out of its middle ring from innumerable forges and factories, choking the upper ring in smog. At the bottom layer a massive wall of stone with battlements evenly spaced around its circumference was erected.

A few miles off from Oakspinner a monolithic structure pierced the sky. From the outside it looked like one massive wall, a slab of grey breaking apart the sunset behind it, but inside Emray knew there was practically a second city dedicated to housing, training, and servicing the military. Oakspinner made the technology and soldiers, and Fort Brume put them to use.

“This place gets uglier every time I come to it,” Susanna quipped, looking down to the journal she was writing song lyrics in.

“Think Zeerxa can get us a room at the Swan for the cheap?” Gregor asked his sister.

Xeerya waved her hand to get Susanna’s attention, quickly rattling a few of her signs off. Emray saw the signs for ‘maybe’, ‘me’, and ‘talk’, but the others were harder to see in the dimness of the wagon.

“Xeerya says she may have to talk to him about it,” Susanna translated, “but she’ll see what she can do,” Susanna replied.

“She’d better be damn fine with her hands then, because my back is horrifically sore from having to sleep on the ground. It’ll be nice to have a bed again.”

Emray relished the though of sleeping on a bed as well. She never quite appreciated having a full mattress and a feather pillow until it had been taken away from her. Sleep, good sleep with a roof over her head, would help clear out the feelings of unease she’d been nursing since the attack.

And if that didn’t work, then getting to work on her investigating would.