A Visit to Millington
“I’m in need of an alchemist,” the man asked.
One of the soldiers scrutinized him. He was a rather plain-looking man, in his late teens or early twenties. His face lacked stubble of any kind, so much so that the soldier’s eyes were instinctively drawn to the man’s ears. He might pass for someone of elvish blood with so clean a complexion.
But those ears were round, not pointed. Were there any doubt about his human-hood, the brown eyes would dispel it. Elf-eyes came in many colors, but brown was not among them.
Brown was, in fact, the color the soldiers saw in him primarily. Other than his eyes, his brows, hair, cloak, pack, and boots were all a similar shade of it. His pack looked heavy and he was sweating in the summer sun.
He looked suited to travel but out of his element.
“Is alchemy your business in Millington?” asked the soldier suspiciously. The guard’s posture suggested that the question was official in nature and not small-talk. He was short, and very wide, yet not obese but massively built: a dwarf. His long beard was braided tightly before his chest, likely his only concession to the fierce summer heat so notorious here in the Plains of the T’yers. That, and the fact that he was standing in the shade.
The other soldiers, of whom there were several, were also taking advantage of the shade. It was a typically hot afternoon. Here, on the West side of the river, the walls—or remnants of walls—were tall and the shadows correspondingly long. Shelter from the sun was abundant. However, the traveler wasn’t close enough to avail himself of it.
The traveler considered the dwarf’s question, but his hesitation caused his companion to speak up, drawing the soldier’s attention. She was about the height of a human child, but proportioned as a lithe and attractive woman. Her well-tanned face was round, yet dominated by the massive and unmistakable nose of a gnome. From her head flowed plentiful wavy hair the color of wheat. It cascaded down her shoulders to the prominently-worn medallion resting at her breast.
The medallion was large upon her, and expensive-looking. It was shiny, likely silver, and shaped like a rampant unicorn. The dwarf’s eyes wrinkled in recognition: the symbol of Ehlonna, goddess of the forest.
When the gnome’s lips parted, her voice was soft and melodic. “No,” she said. “But knowledge is.” She smiled mischievously. Her blue eyes sparkled from behind her nose with lighthearted wisdom.
“We’re after information that your local alchemist likely has,” the brown-clad man added quickly.
The dwarf scowled, but seemed satisfied. “Well enough.” He waved the two travelers on, though he bowed his head slightly to the gnome. “You are new to this city, yes?”
The gnome nodded. Her companion said nothing.
“In that case, be advised that wizardly magic is forbidden in Millington, by order of the Council.” He paused before adding, “If Alchemy be your craft, practice it carefully.” This last word he enunciated slowly and with great effort, so the intent could not be mistaken.
As he drew breath to deliver additional proclamations, another voice cut him off. “I’ll take them to the apothecary,” it said plainly.
The dwarf wrinkled his nose slightly. “Good. You do that,” he said.
---
Their escort, as it happened, was a woman. She seemed to make the brown-clad traveler uncomfortable, though he tried his best not to show it. His discomfort might have been caused by her being the tallest woman he had ever seen in his life.
She was easily six feet tall, probably a hand past it even. As such, she towered over him. She was intimidating in more than just her sheer height. Although impossibly lean, she looked ferociously strong. And upon her back was an enormous, fanged axe, whose head alone must have been four feet across and weighed fifty or sixty pounds.
Her shoulders were bedecked in chain, supplemented with wide shields to make her smallish shoulders seem broad. As large as a man’s would be, of her size, the traveler thought. The chain ended at her waist, broadening out in a heavy-looking leather skirt. Atop her head was long, thick, blondish hair that stuck out over her shoulders like old straw.
The traveler did his best not to stare as the warrior led him over the cobbled bridge and toward a gap in the city’s massive walls.
The gnome, on the other hand, made no such pretense. She gaped at the woman openly. Her thoughts could be no more obvious were they inscribed upon her very nose. But her attention was drawn to other things for the moment as they crested the bridge’s center.
Beneath them flowed the T’yers; the mighty river for which the Plains was named. It churned and lapped, ebbing in the summer drought. But what drew the gnome’s attention was what lay upon the river’s back.
The river bore logs. Hundreds of logs floated, trapped, just to the right, downstream of the stone bridge. They were caught up in a series of poles that protruded from the water’s shallows, and they were beached upon its banks. They congregated close to the city before the T’yers ran on without them, about a mile away and around a bend.
The gnome looked, then rushed to the left side of the bridge to peer over the low wall. The logjam continued upriver as well, until her eyes lost them around the river’s northern meander. Her eyes blinked away the reflected sunlight painfully.
“They mill them here,” the traveler said simply, though with a slight wrinkling of his nostrils at the word they.
“Don’t like dwarves?” asked the gnome. “That doesn’t seem you at all.”
“It’s the attitude,” he replied derisively. “Especially here. Dwarves distrust the arcane, always have… but here it’s so magnified.”
The massive axe-woman looked down at him. “Like it or not, best you not anger any dwarves while you’re here. Everyone’s touchy, what with the Mill trouble and all.”
The man’s brow wrinkled, though not so much as the gnome’s. “I’m sorry?” he asked.
“One of the mills is haunted. It’s been causing no end of trouble.”
The man seemed almost satisfied by this answer, but not so the gnome. “Haunted?” she asked.
The large woman stopped and looked unassumingly at her. She said nothing.
“I’m sorry,” the gnome added, “we haven’t been introduced. I’m Wikellawyn, of the Waste.” She jerked her head over her left shoulder, northward toward the distant mountains. “But you can call me Wik.”
“And I’m Dorin,” added the man without hesitation.
“I’m Jo,” replied the woman with the axe. “Just… Jo.”
