Chương 39: Book 2 Chapter 20: The End of An Era

Jim paid extra for a padded carriage so as to preserve his bottom. Thankfully, commissioning a private one meant he didn't pay additionally for any extra passengers since Katniss likely wouldn't have been able to afford it and he'd have been forced to leave her behind. The coach enthusiastically whipped his horses and the unlikely duo was soon speeding away from Tolon towards Jim's family mansion. The road was paved, providing a smooth surface for the wheels to glide on.

A much more pleasant experience than walking on the roads in Mitelos, which in Jim's experience, were either overly muddy or overly dusty. Those people really didn't know how to build anything, not even a road. It was almost sad, really. Katniss held her face pressed against the carriage window for almost the entirety of the ride, acting like a country bumpkin who'd never even seen a functional house. Jim himself appreciated the scenery.

Quaint little farming villages passed by, people frollicking about in the fields, doing their daily tasks. Large green trees, the occasional river or stream.

"It always shocks me how, different it is…" Katniss muttered after the night had fallen and they'd arrived at the travel inn in front of the port town which would serve as their departure point towards the estate tomorrow.

"The land is the same, the people are different," Jim said dismissively as he stepped out of the carriage and stretched his arms above his head.

"Nothing much seems to grow anymore close to the mountains," Katniss muttered.

"Black iron, black earth. We import most of our food, only closer to the capital there are some villages that still produce their own." Jim had no answer for that, choosing instead to open the door to the roadside establishment to reveal a warm dining room made of stone and wood. The words Seaside View Tavern hung proudly over the bar and the smell of the horses from the outside stables was replaced by the smell of freshly baked bread and aged wine.

"One single room and a dinner," Jim told the middle-aged woman in a flour-covered apron standing behind the bar counter, occasionally throwing a look at a boiling pot of stew in a coal-lit fireplace.

"For two?" the innkeeper asked kindly with a smile.

"The stables are fine if you have a bale of hay, but I'll also take dinner," Katniss said, pulling out a mangy and empty-looking leather purse. Jim pulled a face for a moment.

"No maid of mine will sleep with some random animals!" he suddenly declared loudly to the other patrons of the tavern.

"Give her a space in the servant's quarters!" Katniss froze in her payment and blushed, looking down. The innkeeper shrugged, but frowned, likely at how ill-attired the so-called maid was. Nevertheless, she named her price, which Jim quickly paid.

"Where are you coming from?" the woman then asked curiously as she ladled their stew into two bowls and pulled out two fresh looking, steaming loaves of bread from a covered basket.

"Sredina, through Tolon," Jim answered simply, receiving the food before also asking for some water.

"Ah, my son is working in the capital right now, the best restaurant in the city, the Golden Duck," the innkeeper said with a smile.

"He said he was going to come back and turn this place into a gastronomical destination once he'd learned everything there." Katniss promptly grabbed her food and turned around, finding an empty table to sit. Jim rolled his eyes at the lack of manners.

"May the gods bless his endeavour, although, going by the smell of the stew, there won't be much to improve," he said impishly and received a sweet roll from the smiling woman free of charge, as according to plan. Jim grabbed his gains and joined Katniss on the table for lack of another free one to sit at. He sat down and saw the girl not eating, but simply staring down at her meaty stew.

"Not enough mud for you?" Jim asked, "There's some outside if you want to add it yourself, although I would try to not let anyone see that."

"Fuck you, Savant," the girl eventually muttered, before starting to slowly eat, a few drops of clear liquid landing on the table in intermittent bursts, darkening the wood wherever they fell.

"Rude," Jim muttered, before shrugging.

"I won't let you get to me," he warned the girl.

"I don't get mad at rude people anymore. It takes away from my peace, thank you very much." Katniss didn't respond after that and they both finished their meal in silence before going to sleep in their respective quarters. That night, unbothered by the fire sigils in the sky for the first time in what felt like, and was, a year, Jim slept deeply and peacefully. -/- This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The next morning started with the crow of a rooster and a fall from an unfamiliar bed.

"Fuck!" Jim shouted as the first word of the day, before painfully getting up and starting with his morning rituals, before eventually exiting the room into the already bustling ground floor part of the inn.

"Your servant's already in the back, scaring the chickens with her magic," an older man behind the counter told Jim in a somewhat rude manner. Jim sighed, went out of the back and found the brown-haired girl trying, and failing, to make an arrow and a hexagon of mana move in separate directions in front of a chicken coop.

"How did you do it?" Katniss asked bitterly as he went to stand beside her.

"How did you reach the third circle? Only Evergreen and Chemirk were faster than you." Jim rolled his eyes.

"It's called talent, look it up," he said brusquely.

"I don't believe it. The library, there are so many texts missing, texts which should exist by all accounts. But they don't. The academy promises to teach, but they only provide the bare bones of the basics," Katniss said bitterly. Jim sighed, looked up at the clear blue sky, flinched as the rooster crowed again, flapping his wings at Katniss who was still trying, still failing.

"I'll only show you this once," Jim said in a warning tone and turned towards the girl. Katniss looked up with her brown eyes. Jim brought up one hand to his head, one to his stomach. The hand on his head started tapping, while the hand on his stomach started circling. He blushed and quickly ended the demonstration.

"I hope you were paying attention," he said. Then he turned around and went to the front of the inn to search for a carriage that would take them that last stretch of road towards his family's estate. It was finally time to finish this wretched journey, for the prodigious son to return victorious, having conquered the city and its people. Katniss watched him go with a tilted head and a curious expression on her face.

"Is he actually fucking stupid?" she muttered to herself curiously. -/- It wasn't long before Jim found a driver willing to take them along the not so long road towards where he lived. The man still wanted to find some more potential passengers going in the same direction so the third circle mage went and ordered a heavy breakfast, finally not having to starve himself anymore for a lack of decent food. Katniss joined him later, but simply ate his leftovers in lieu of ordering her own meal.

It was a good tradeoff for her, Jim guessed. He could have the pleasure of ordering a large breakfast and eating only his favourite parts, the sausage, the eggs and the crust of the fresh baked bread. Katniss meanwhile could save some money and eat the leftovers primarily composed of vegetables, sauce and the fluffy inner part of the loaf that always made Jim's tummy hurt.

"How long until your house?" Katniss asked as the carriage driver finally signalled them that it was time to leave, having found two more passengers heading the same way.

"Mansion," Jim idly corrected her, before replying.

"Half an hour or so." After having boarded the carriage Katniss continued working on her shaping exercises, forcing Jim to reluctantly join her so as to not look unmotivated in comparison. The other two passengers looked on curiously, but didn't seem interested enough to talk beyond a cursory confirmation that they were students at the academy and not adventurers.

"I thought the graduation exam was today," the older man said.

"My daughter wrote me a letter about it recently. She's also a first year student."

"Family emergency," Jim said simply, cycling his three hexagons.

"You know how it is, you leave for a half a year and suddenly the world's on fire." The old man chuckled.

"Pillar of the family, aren't you?" he asked jokingly.

"Obviously," Jim replied while rolling his eyes, Katniss simply going quiet again, the anti-social blob. -/- Jim and Katniss exited the coach at a crossing, a large estate with a ring of trees surrounding it already visible down a paved road spreading from the main one like a tree-branch.

"Home sweet home," Jim muttered as he promptly started walking along the slightly inclined road towards the mansion on the hill. Katniss followed behind him silently.

"It's like a fairy tale," she eventually said as they came close enough to make out individual windows. It was a large mansion with not many neighbours and just a few pastures and wheatfields for the servants to have something to do. Classic romanesque style with pillars and filigreed windows on all sides.

"Our neighbours have one more floor than us," Jim grumbled in return.

"But it's alright I guess." Then, as they continued getting closer. He suddenly stopped, and frowned. Katniss walked a few more steps than him before also stopping. She turned around.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"By now the servants should have come to greet me with a chilled glass of lemonade," Jim said, before continuing to walk and getting increasingly unsettled as he saw that all the windows were closed and that there were no forms hushing to and fro behind them.

"Why does it look so empty?" he asked himself, his pace increasing more and more as he got closer and saw more and more signs of abandon. Uncut grass, no shoes at the doorway, no horses in the large stables, no carriages either. Nobody working the fields.

"Why are you running!" Katniss shouted after him as Jim suddenly accelerated fully into a sprint, before also starting to run.

"My parents, they should be drinking tea right now on the other side with the seaside view!" Jim shouted desperately, boots furrowing through the ground as he hit a hard swerve around the mansion and ran to the empty field behind it, which revealed the full glory of the coastline. Just that… there was no coastline to see. The entire horizon, from east to west was covered entirely by a cloud-like, golden fire sprawling its way towards them like an unstoppable dust storm.

It rolled over the villages between the mansion and the coast, covered them, travelling faster than a galloping horse and almost as high as a bird could fly.

"No," a voice suddenly whispered from behind Jim.

"They wouldn't. How dare they?!" The fire was close enough that Jim could hear it now. A great burning crackle that filled the air and numbed his ears. Katniss fell on her knees beside him.

"Those bastards. Those bastards!" she screamed in a shrill voice that broke into sobs halfway. Jim simply stared, arms hanging limply at his sides. He looked at the oncoming death, saw it creep ever closer, accelerating as the distance between it and them shortened.

"They really- they really want to kill me," he realised.

"This world. This rotten world. It stands against me? All of it?" The sound drowned out his words, drowned out Katniss' cries.

"I refuse," Jim whispered to himself, looking down at his hands, a magical formula forming. The memory spell.

"I refuse!" he screamed as he formed the most complex mana pattern of his life and jumped at the girl crying next to him right before the fire reached them.

"Trust me!" he screamed desperately with one last shout, this time directed at Katniss, his hand with the spellformula on her sunken head. Everything became fire. END OF BOOK 2