"Twas the night 'fore Lua's zenith, Dri'El's final thread had gone slack, He was a cowed behemoth, Waiting his turn to attack." Isaac took a breath to think before he began the next few lines. "Their eternal war's cycle, Hate fueled ancient rivals, Fate's entwined their survival, Spurring on their disciples."

"Some of those words were spoken like they rhyme but they definitely did not." Lenna told him honestly. "I like it though, so continue."

Isaac frowned. "You threw me off, I don't know if I can pick it up again just like that." He grumbled. After a long moment of silence he began again anyway: "To subjugate and oppress," He started and then took another moment to piece together the next line in his head. "To sing, dance, survive and thrive," He spoke with satisfaction at having gotten back into the swing of his ode. "One orders under duress, The other would ne'er deprive."

Lenna let her husband rhyme away the night as they hiked through hilly grasslands. They had left Port Vespera in the late afternoon of the twenty fifth, it was now almost midnight on the twenty eighth. They had plenty of rations in her Bottomless Backpack so they didn't have to worry about how long their trip took, which was why they were hiking and not running, but they did want to get to the next town around dawn. As it stood, they would arrive an hour early, unless Isaac decided to stop for a break, again.

Isaac's most recent break hadn't been to mess around, necessarily, but had been to hunt and slay a Land Shark. The monster in question had 'naturally forming' runes under its skin that allowed it to swim through the ground with ease. It was technically more related to a basilisk than to a shark. It shared the same stony skin, thick bone structure, and yellow eyes of the basilisk. Unlike the basilisk, the Land Shark had six fins instead of legs that helped its magic propel it through the ground as if it were water. It even had a dorsal fin that it had slight control over to help it change directions as quickly as possible. The fight hadn't been that interesting.

Lenna could only use magic up to the second level and her aura couldn't be used at all, at least not for a few weeks, but she was still more than strong enough to nearly bisect the creature with one quick sidestep and a long horizontal swing. Her mana enhanced strength, even to a lesser degree than usual, combined with her adamantine sword, nearly separated the top from the bottom half of the monster. Without the petrifying gaze of its cousin, the Land Shark was only an electrum level bounty at best. In fact, it was sometimes used to test silver rank adventurers, as long as there was someone much stronger present, to see if they were ready to be moved up a rank. Adventurers could be permitted to take higher level bounties than their level would suggest but it was generally seen as suicide unless the group had been tested in such a way.

In the end, the Darkness and Hellfire duo were making decent but not great time towards their eventual destinations. The reason that they were heading the way that they were, was because they really needed to meet with the king and queen before the royals started to think that the duo were avoiding them. As soon as they were done in the capital, the duo would head back down to the bottom of the mountain range that it was located on, then follow the inside of the mountain range north, then north by northwest, and then finally northwest before it finally ended.

From there, they would go due north to the next mountain range where they would meet their third duke of Altia. That ducal family, the Heidenburgs, often butted heads with the Arbencrofts and Sasstons but were not likely to cause any problems for the duo. The Heidenburgs guarded the northern pass to the high elven territories in the northeast. There was also the possibility that they just took the teleportation circle from Altesia to Nualt and skipped the majority of the trip. If they did that, they might even circumvent the Heidenburgs entirely unless the nobles could somehow help them get to their destination.

The pass was one that traders often frequented from the high elven territories. The elves had learned long ago that humans would pay five times their market value for elvish goods. When an elf made a tool, it was always enchanted in a way that would ensure its usability for at least seven hundred years. To do any less would be to force a craftsman to switch tools partway through his career and that would be an incredible slight. Of course, there were always elves who preferred to learn a bunch of different disciplines but those usually just bought used tools. For human craftsmen, a set of elvish tools were tools that they could pass down to their apprentice and their apprentice's apprentice and so on. They were truly legendary tools filled with legacy by the time they reached the end of their lives.

Isaac and Lenna were not going there in search of tools that would last a millennium, no, they were in search of a man that had lived that long instead. The man that they were searching for was known as The Fatebreaker. He was the last known living person who could grant wishes. Some of those wishes had even seemingly gone against Fate itself. Lenna had already given up decades of her lifespan to bring back her husband once, and she was more than willing to make the rest of their time on Primatia shared in the truest sense. If their strands of fate could truly be fused or tied together, like in the story that Lenna had heard when she was a child, then they would be basically adding their natural lifespans together and then dividing the total by two for each of them. There was also the chance/risk of unforeseen boons or negative consequences forming from such a union, but Lenna was willing to take the gamble if it meant that her mate would live another two and a half centuries with her, instead of six decades.

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The duo's third party member was resting in Isaac's shadow. Shamesh had hung around long enough to get used to his new suits and chainmail, as well as fix Lenna's lenses with magic, and then had been sent to rest in his master's shadow. Isaac would've liked to keep Shamesh out and about with them as they traveled, but Shamesh was like holding an open wound out on a windy day. His presence was raw and Isaac's core felt exposed, especially at the beginning when Shamesh had tried to speak to him using their connection. The line that bound them to each other was more or less made of the thing that was injured in Isaac. His soul needed more time to rest and mend itself, as did Lenna's, which was why she was temporarily banned from using her aura in any conscious way. She could release it, but not press it outwards, and she could hold it in, but that was it.

"Alexander said that Jala hadn't been in Safeharbor for an unknown amount of time, where do you think she went?" Isaac wondered.

"I would say that she was fetching something, but the timing is a bit odd." Lenna shared their mutual feeling of something not being quite right with her aunt and the time that she was away.

"You don't think…" Isaac began and looked at his wife with a raised eyebrow.

"I would cry." Lenna replied honestly. She knew that he was asking if she thought that Jala had tried to track down the duo that had left the trap that had killed Isaac, and brought about all of their Soul Integrity Degradation as a consequence. The thought alone of Jala going out of her way to search for someone that had hurt her, had almost brought a tear to Lenna's eye.

Isaac chuckled. "Yeah. I know that the odds aren't high, but the timing lines up suspiciously well. There are only three reasons why I can see that she would've been gone right after she learned of what had happened." Isaac began.

"She was just finishing whatever she had been working on." Lenna picked up where he had left off.

"She started working on something related to what had happened, probably an item or alchemical creation. Maybe even one that reveals non-magical traps or helps with Soul Integrity Degradation." Isaac continued.

"Or she was following the trace that their teleportation circle left behind." Lenna finished. "I think we listed them in order of most to least probable."

Isaac nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah, you are probably right." He agreed. "I know I wouldn't want Jala hunting me down, she did come back pretty quickly though. I feel like if Jala L'Vore was hunting for someone, it would take weeks, not two or three days."

"Agreed." Lenna said with a nod. "She is definitely the type to predict where you will be and then turn the entire area into an invisible wizard tower that is set to only activate for you specifically."

Isaac shivered. "Your aunt is kinda scary. Even if she can't cast most spells like everyone else." He confessed. Even for him, someone who more or less made a living by being the scariest person in the room, the ancient not-a-witch was terrifying.

"She could learn to cast more of them if she really wanted to." Lenna explained. "The thing is, there is only so much information that a person can remember. She spends all of her time progressing towards her goal of having a child without having to actually have a child."

In the end, that was what her work amounted to, it was just the first time anyone had said it aloud. Isaac could only listen and nod along.

"So she just never really had the time to learn useless attack spells. I am sure that she knows how to enchant spells like Fireball into defensive wards, but that is only because she has gotten paid to do so." Lenna went on. It was pretty obvious that from there, the money was then spent on her research so it was still working towards her goal in the end.

"Do you think she'll ever get there?" Isaac asked his wife honestly. Jala's goal was one that plenty of others had attempted but none had accomplished, as far as they were aware.

Lenna shrugged. "That stuff is beyond me." She confessed. "If it happens, I will congratulate her. If it doesn't, and she dies of old age first, I'll save her research materials for someone else so they can carry on her legacy."

"Even if it's probably stepping on the toes of a few gods?" Isaac wondered.

Lenna shrugged again. "I won't be the one doing the research." She told him. "If the gods have a problem with it, they can ask one of their followers to burn it. Until then, it is just piles of magic theory as far as I am concerned."

"Fair enough." Isaac replied. "Did you ever notice that the northern star isn't quite due north?"

"Isaac." Lenna said.

"Yes?" He asked.

"Should we pick up the pace?" She questioned with a tone that was leaden with other meanings.

"Why?" Isaac wondered with a suspicious look towards his wife.

"Because I think you are somehow going stir crazy while wayfaring." Lenna told her husband honestly.

"Why do you say that?" Isaac questioned.

"Because that is the fourth time you have mentioned that star." Lenna sighed.

Isaac blinked at her. "Oh." Was his only reply. Maybe she was right. Walking was really boring. Maybe they would have to catch a ride to the capital in the next town.

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