>>6266300>38The hare bolts between shades cast by the trees. It circles you, trying to get behind you, out of your sight, retreating when you attempt to close the distance.
Understanding you can't catch up to it, you deliberately make a feint, turning your back to it. You hear the sounds of shuffling grass behind yourself, closer, closer...
A couple seconds before it hits you, you jump forward and turn around mid-air. The shadow hare has jumped where you stood just a second ago. It makes another lunge, but you're already casting Firebolt. The spell blazes through the air from your hands, and the spirit dies with no sound but the crackling of flame and whisper of dark being dispelled.
You collect its essence as evidence of your work and return to the city.
With enough money to last you about a month now, you continue working to maintain the reserve and studying. As three weeks of intense study pass, you find yourself well-versed in Common, using it freely. Reading street signs, books and contracts on the bulletin boards is now not a dream, but reality. Writing is harder with you moist skin, but you buy some cloth gloves in order to not stain the paper.
Julia keeps sewing, growing accustomed to a commoner's life, but disappointed in her situation nevertheless. Sometimes you share stories from your pasts in the evenings before going to sleep. You tell her of how you met a paladin that taught you the spoken tongue of dry-skins, of getting saved by a swamp beast that your tribesmen killed, of your exile for blasphemy against frogmen' gods. Julia, in turn, reminisces about life in the family manor, about happy moments from her childhood, fairy tales the maids told her, of her studies and learning about both economics and arts.
With your language study done, you purchase a light crossbow for your companion. It ends up as quite an expensive investment, but Julia thanks you for it, promising to learn its use.
After this purchase, you depart south once more.
...
As you travel, your companion practices with the crossbow. It goes slowly without a teacher, but the towns you stop by have some masters in this war craft that help out for a few denarii.
A few months pass like this, the leaves on the trees growing red and the winds growing cold. At last, several contracts and towns, crossing the border to the Wildlands and evading hostile people later, you arrive at the city of Circea.
Entering it at night, you are greeted by lit magic lamps and tough stone buildings. You stop in a tavern, as you always do, and ask about the temple of Lux. The keep tells you it is operational still, and in fact the main temple of the city.
You sleep easily this night, and navigate the streets early in the next morning in search of it.
(cont.)
