Sand and rock grinding on wood, the boat pulled up onto the beach below the town, and with hushed orders the Seacrows piled out to take position and be ready for anything. All of them had known this place, seen the liveliness of the afternoon markets, known the colourful citizens, slept under its roofs, so to see it so abandoned was an unsettling thing.
All of the buildings were damaged in some way or another by the assault half a year hence, some of them burned out skeletons since softened by the weather. Aina’s eyes were immediately drawn to the ruins of the Njall’s Head inn, a favoured watering hole of Seacrow the ship’s former Scavenger cohort, and a place where she had spent many a night drinking and drunk, or sleeping it off.
Or spending nights with Alvard... she grimaced. The past was the past, but memories had an odd way of sneaking up on you.
She awkwardly clambered out of the boat and trailed after the Seacrows at a slower pace as they spread out in pairs, checking doorways, clearing buildings, methodically and thoroughly searching for any sign of any threat. It was unlikely, but the new Forsara had already found this place once. It paid well to be careful.
She passed up the harbour street, the empty eyes of buildings staring down at her as she went, dead and soulless without the inhabitants to give them life, bereft of that spark that made a town more than just a collection of structures and a web of roads. Birds were roosting in many, desecrating their memory in that ignorant way they did.
Into the square now and she couldn’t even bring herself to look at the shattered, rotting timbers and faded colours of the market stalls, passing them by with barely a glance, fists clenched, jaw set, and her eyes firmly ahead.
Up she went, through the centre of town, and out past the scattered farmsteads on the other side, their fields ruined and their pastures bereft of animals – she tried to pick out the one that had been Jenta’s family home, but she couldn’t even remember which it was. There was no one around to wave greetings as she passed, no townsfolk to nod politely, nothing but empty streets and haunting memories. Further along the road became rougher, the cobbles giving way to a dirt track that wound its way up the slope of the great mountain, deep-rutted from a thousand carts and studded with ancient rocks.
Half-way to her target, Aina paused, breathing heavily, then sat down for a rest. One hand pressed to her aching wound, she stared down over the town with its shelled and burned-out buildings and across the bay, water glittering in the late morning light, The Kiss of Dawn sat at rest a safe distance from the broken spar of Otter’s grave marker. Beyond was the ocean, the barrier that had once set them apart from a world of death and pain, a barrier that had since been torn down in a most terrible way.
What could one do when that world came to visit?
Aina knew the answer, she had lived through it, and yet nothing had been solved. Havnoy was still in ruins, its people scattered, and Forsara was still as big a threat to their way of life as ever, if not more so. Many of them had died trying to solve this problem, including her – twice! – and yet... what good had it done? Where were the raucous markets, the friendly people, the soft sounds of a peaceful life?
There could be no fixing that, no going back to the way things were, and the realisation cut her like a knife.
She growled and stood back up, impotently kicking a rock down the hill, before continuing upwards toward the Aldaz ruins on the upper slope, passing Agata’s cottage as she went, noting the structure seemed mostly intact. Would the witch return there now, to live with her husband and their herb garden? Doubtful, considering a witch was nothing without a community to serve.
As she reached those broken walls of white stone that were the remains of the Aldaz ruin, Aina was once again struck by their enigmatic nature, their unknown purpose on this far-flung rock. It was still too early for dragons to have migrated from the mainland in anticipation of a bountiful summer, so she entered them unchallenged, running a hand over the rough blocks and wondering what secrets they held, what things they had seen thousands of years ago, and who had stood where she had, looking over miles of ocean.
These thoughts were coloured now with recent revelations from on high. The ruins near Glemslott had something to do with another End, and perhaps they had something to do with the first, if not directly. Had The End of All Things nearly four years ago really been the first of such apocalypses? Had the Aldaz civilisation fallen because they brought destruction upon themselves?
Her academic side revelled in such questions, despite the current state of uncertainty, and it was curiosity that drove her onwards, as much as her forced servitude to the gods or a desire to prevent the extinction of her species.
Aina’s eyes were drawn upwards by a flap and rustle of wings as something alighted on a nearby column, staring down at her with beady black eyes. It was a bird with black and white plumage, as if it were wearing a cape, and a wedge-shaped beak with colourful banding. She could only stare back at the creature in a sort of melancholic surprise.
It was a puffin.
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