60: Divinmere

It didn’t take long for the man’s boss to show up. He looked flustered as he came up the stairs, but after eyeing the group and seeing Jackson, he seemed to rapidly gather himself and then bowed.

“Hello, my name is Ralph. If you don’t mind, let’s move this in-store.” He opened the door of the loot house and entered.

We all followed. After coming into the store and seeing the talons, beak, and feather on the counter, he gave them a quick inspection and nodded. “Right, so you have how many feathers?”

“Over nine hundred,” Milo responded.

Ralph just nodded. “Okay, now the real reason I was called here—the scale, or scales?” He looked up for confirmation.

“Correct. Thirty-nine scales in total.”

Ralph’s eyes widened at that, but he quickly recovered and put on an impassive mask.

“These are in fine condition. They are not overly aged, and almost seem fresh?”

Without letting Milo respond, he placed the scale on the counter. “Sixty gold for all scales.”

Milo just laughed. “Not a chance. You and I know their worth, and you offer one gold fifty silver for them? That’s insulting.”

Milo made it sound like he was incredibly offended by the offer—and maybe he was. I was believing him.

He continued, “No. For everything today—one hundred and ten gold. No less.”

I was absolutely shocked at the amount of money, and only now did it register with me. That drake had hundreds of scales, maybe even thousands, and we were already talking about enough gold to live on for the rest of my life.

Milo and Ralph went back and forth for some time. In the end, they settled for one hundred gold, and after paying, Milo stored the gold immediately. They shook hands, and we took our leave.

Once we made it back outside, it was Jackson who spoke.

“That was some fine negotiating. Merchant training?” he asked.

Milo shook his head. “No, not exactly. My parents were both merchants, and growing up I learned the tricks of the trade, so to speak.”

We walked in mostly silence until we reached the stables. I was still blown away—everywhere I looked, people were helping each other: fixing damaged walls, rebuilding collapsed roofs, and boarding up broken windows.

When we made it to the stables, Jackson said his goodbyes and decided he didn’t need to follow us to the gate, since we were heading straight out. After wishing us luck, he left to head back to the guild and help Kara with the situation there.

As I mounted Sable, part of me was excited to be back on the road. I was also wondering what life would have been like here if I had not joined the adventurer party. Would I be working at another inn? Trying to start my own stall, maybe?

Well, maybe it would be something to revisit in the future.

As we rode out of the city and approached the gates, I noticed that several of the guards tried to call out to us as we rode past, but Hari didn’t stop or look back.

Reaching the rise where I had first seen Boltron, I looked back—and from here, you could really appreciate the damage.

“Wow,” I said. Looking back, I saw an absolutely massive wall holding back what looked like a mountain’s worth of rocks. But the city itself bore a scar that would remain. The once-proud hill that had held the Temple was now a black, smouldering crater in the ground. All the buildings even close to it looked wiped out, reduced to rubble.

I also saw where some incredibly large rocks had either come before the wall was built or made it past, and behind their path was nothing but destruction. Where buildings had once stood, it was now just flattened land.

I really hoped Boltron would recover and become more prosperous than ever.

Turning the other way, away from Boltron, the scene wasn’t much better. Large rocks were scattered everywhere, and the road had been all but wiped out.

As we moved towards our destination, we had to go off the road more often than we were on it to avoid the rocks that now called it home, which slowed our travel down significantly.

It was early afternoon when we made our way down the path towards Divinmere, and even here it wasn’t untouched by the landslides. Several very large rocks had rolled most of the way to the town, stopping short by only a few hundred wagon lengths.

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Upon entering the city, I saw there was minor damage from the tremors they must have felt as well, but overall the town was functioning like normal. People were going about their day, the smithies near the gate were working hard, and the guards didn’t blink an eye as we entered.

It was Hari who spoke up first. “I think it’s best we stay here tonight. Our travel is going to get slow moving through the mountain pass.”

It wasn’t until Hari mentioned it that I remembered—the mountain pass. The village is there. Would it even still be there?

“Do you think Rockhampton will be okay?” I asked with clear worry in my voice.

“Honestly, Trev? No, I don’t think so. But they know the mountain well, and I’m hoping they all evacuated before the worst happened,” Hari said.

“Let’s find an inn. We’ll book a room, bath, and a meal, then grab supplies. We’ll head off first thing tomorrow morning, hopefully all of us fresh. I know none of us had a good night’s sleep last night,” he said as we rode further into town. I saw the market they had set up and, although it wasn’t as large as the one in Boltron, there were plenty of vendors selling food, which relieved me.

It didn’t take us long to find an inn, and getting a couple of rooms was easy enough. I’d need to use a bedroll on the floor, but that would be fine. They also had stables at the inn, so we could store our horses there.