Chapter 4: Expedition

The Gazellion drawn carriage was an awful experience. Nothing about it was pleasant in any way and the road from Incipancy to Bunpidum was supposedly one of the best in the Northern region. One of Austin’s most notable skills is his ability to fall asleep almost instantly on any mode of transportation. It was his trademark form of narcolepsy. So, for him to have spent all 12 hours of the journey awake really thew him a loop. Since the cart was made of wood with what looked like stone wheels and a light cloth as shelter, there was no suspension. Austin fully understood this and expected the ride to be bumpy and uncomfortable, but to feel every single tiny pebble under each individual wheel made him feel like it was his body that had been stretched out and used as tyre rubber for them. It made him feel queasy.

The only good thing that came of this journey was the scenery. Lush fields spread out seemingly endlessly as if the moon had disappeared and the sea had lost its waves, until an enormous mountain jutted up out of nowhere. It looked totally out of place. It was pretty much completely barren with only a few dead trees sprouting from some ledges. They never got close enough to be able to fully tell, but it even looked like the grass stopped perfectly as the mountain started. Not even one single blade grew any higher than one millimeter up it. The south side of it sloped up quite smoothly until about three of four hundred meters from the top where it seemed to level out then shoot vertically up with a large flat face, like the blunt side of a knife. About halfway up the mountain it was obvious that a river had carved a winding path down it in a desperate attempt to reach the ocean. However, this endeavor was brought to a crawl as the ground leveled out. It seemed more like the ocean had come to meet the river because even it got bored of waiting. When the cart crossed over the bridge Austin noticed some leaves on the river, they were clearly being pushed more by the gentle breeze than the current of the river itself. He knew this was probably the truth because even though he couldn’t feel the breeze they were travelling upstream towards the mountain.

Austin watched the sun as it set and drifted under the horizon and the watched as its last golden grasps were overtaken by a brilliant blue, then by a perfect purple then finally by the darkness of the night. He watched the night sky and saw how beautifully the stars shone. Each one seemed to shimmer brighter than the last and then brighter still every time he blinked. As he gazed up, he couldn’t help but notice how much better the night looked with two full moons sitting perfectly about 30 centimeters apart from his perspective. They were like the eyes of a god keeping a look out on the world as it fell into its slumber making sure nothing too terrible would happen. He couldn’t help but watch as Ellie sprawled across what little sleeping space they were offered and snored like a lion declaring its territory. And yet, after all of this, she looked somewhat peaceful, like she was dreaming. After a long, long while, Austin watched as the sun stretched out its arms out and encompassed the world in a warming glow. He watched as Ellie snored herself awake and shot up like a startled cat when you place a cucumber behind it while it’s eating. And finally, the two of them watched as the concrete walls of Bunpidum came into view and got closer and closer until they eventually passed through the gates. Compared to where they just came from Bunpidum was a much smaller, quieter town. Even with it being eight in the morning Incipancy would usually be full of people trying to get first dibs on the freshest foods in the market, but this town was pretty dead. Not a sole in sight.

“Alright!” Yelled Ellie, “Now all we need to do is find the people who were supposed to get the metal ores for Jezza!”

“Uh huh…”

She turned and looked at Austin and saw the large bags under his eyes, “What’s the matter? You not get much sleep on the trip?”

“Well… thanks to someone taking all the room and snoring all night… no… I didn’t.” This was of course a lie, but Austin was too ashamed to tell her the truth about hating every second of being in the cart in case she decided they should walk back.

Ellie stopped and a dark, ominous aura formed around her has her eyes began to glow red with anger. “If you tell anyone about that… I’ll make sure you go to sleep in the next ride… and never wake up…” In the face of death, Austin had never felt more alive and the fatigue of the all-nighter was washed away in an instant. “Anyway…” she continued as if he hadn’t said a word, “We’re looking for a place that probably has some generic ore mining company name.”

“That it?” Austin asked and pointed to a shop with a sign above the door.

THE ORE MINING COMPANY

“Probably… sounds cheap and unoriginal… so yeah, probably.”

            The two of them walked into the shop and were greeted by an awkwardly short, plump, middle aged man. At 4’8” his lack of height was not caused by any disability and other than his stomach, everything seemed to look normal about him, everything, that is, except for his right eye. Instead of having an eye in his socket, it was replaced by a wooden ball with an iris painted onto it. The only issue about this replacement for an eye was that it was quite a bit smaller than a normal eye. When Austin and Ellie first walked into the shop the man was stood on a wooden crate as he turned and looked at them over his right shoulder, then about a second later his wooden eye caught up and gave them a piercing stare. Without even a moment of hesitation Austin snorted, turned around and walked straight out of the shop. As he walked away Ellie stopped for a moment and looked down at the ground and tried to control her breathing.

“Hi, what can I do for you?” The short man asked with a high pitch, croaky voice.

Just as Ellie had taken a deep breath and regained control. As soon as the man finished speaking the two of them heard Austin burst into uncontrollable laughter outside and this time Ellie held her breath and turned bright red in a desperate attempt to not join him. After about another minute she gasped and looked back up.

“Yes. Hello. I’m here on behalf of an armourer and blacksmith in Incipancy.”

“Ah yes, you mean Mr. Jezza?” The man replied in the same tone he first started talking and once again Austin’s howls of laughter filled the air and Ellie’s straight, professional face cracked slightly.

“Yes, that’s right. He was wanting to know why he hadn’t got his delivery yet?”

“Hmmm… You see, we’ve had a real problem heading into the barren lands in the northeast due to the sudden appearance of mountain monsters around the ores we usually mine.”

Ellie thought about what to say for a second before answering, “What kind of monsters are they? We might be able to give you a helping hand by offering your men protection while on the expedition.”

“Ah! That would be amazing! They’re not big, it’s just my men aren’t fighters so if there’s anything around, we tend to just avoid the area. But there are quite a few of those pesty Zemlecus loitering around our best mining sites. And we can’t get enough ore from our other sites to be able to supply Mr. Jezza.”

“I see...” Austin seemed to appear out of nowhere and acted like he knew exactly what was going on as if he had been there the entire time and as if he knew what a Zemlecus was. “Can we deal with a Zemlecus?”

“Shut up Austin. But yes, we can easily deal with a single Zemlecus, it just depends on how many there are in the area.”

“…About a dozen of them…” The man hesitated with his reply for a second, but as he did Austin decided it would be a good idea to lean against the counter and face the other way.

“We can deal with that no problem. Just make sure your men stay behind us… I assume you’ll be paying us for this though.”

“Of course, of course. If you’re willing to help us, why wouldn’t I?”

“HAHA!!” The other two looked at Austin in confusion, “Get it. Because: wouldn’t I… Wooden eye.”

Within the exact millisecond Austin said that he felt the fist of Ellie’s hard left hook hit his solar plexus and he quickly found himself curled up on the floor gargling and gasping desperately for air.

“Then we’ll be happy to help.” Ellie replied like Austin didn’t even exist.

The man explained to Ellie that the miners should be turning up to work soon and that they should come up with a rough journey plan while they waited for the others. He pointed out the spots where the Zemlecus were reported to be roaming and they determined the quickest route would be at least a four hour hike each way. All the time while Ellie and the shop owner were discussing this Austin stayed curled up in a ball on the floor still struggling to breathe and now crying at the thought of an eight-hour hike and a fight just to get some metal for a man he’s only met once. And in the short he had met this man he ended up being molested by him. After about 30 minutes the five miners had turned up and their boss explained to them that Austin and Ellie would be escorting them to the highest density mining point while avoiding all unnecessary fights and that they would take out all the monsters before they began excavating. Before long, it was nine o’clock and the group were setting off on the expedition towards the barren land to get as much metal ore as possible before it got dark.