In a journey with such mysteries and unknown outcomes ahead, the trio find themselves surprised to find little in the way of adventure in the days that follow their entry into Sky Kingdom. Ben, Wade, and Fred happily enjoy the quiet, eventless nights they spend traveling from village to village as they find themselves rising further and further into the mountains in their trek west. They eat food from the land when they can, but as the mountains grow in height, and the snow falls deeper, they begin to rely more and more on trading with local villagers to get their food. They began with some money between the three, but soon found themselves trading away valuables such as spare clothing among odds and ends. Traders such as these always found their eyes drifting to the gold-trimmed sword attached at Ben's side, but always found a firm denial when asking about it.
Such small villages, broken by long walks of largely untraveled, winding paths through rocky hills and mountainous valleys, provided them with a grateful lack of Imperial soldiers, but it still remained wise to be cautious.
Besides the constant threat of possibly being discovered by Imperial soldiers, though, they found the Sky Kingdom to be quite a remarkable place. The people appeared very friendly to them, even to Fred whose red hair was an obvious clue to her Magma Kingdom origins, and the land itself was strikingly gorgeous despite its deadly nature. The further west they went, the more snow, the harsher the mountains, but the greater the scope. The gravel road began to turn to brick along these seemingly untraveled paths, placed down centuries before, and they knew Sky City would come soon as a result.
Days and days keep passing and eventually Fred gives in to the pleas of the others to sell one of her daggers for plenty of rations. The day was breaking as the market of a small village closed, but a lone friendly merchant happened to stay open late into the night ws more than happy to barter. The dagger presented was a lapis blue, with a delicate engraving along the handle, fetching quite a decent price, and Fred was confident that with only one remaining dagger she could still fight well.
With the transaction made, the merchant inquired, as was the norm, about Ben's sword, glittering at his hip, even in the fading sunlight.
"I'd give you just shy of a fortune for it," the merchant said, with diamonds in his eyes as he gazed down at it.
"Sorry," Ben replied.
"It's simply too fine a blade," Fred chimed in as she pulled the sword from Ben's sheath and held the finely molded, gold and white trim handle in her hands for the tenth time that day.
The money they received from the expensive dagger was plenty to buy all the fowl, rabbits, and fruit they could possibly eat for the remainder of their journey. Ben and Wade had not accounted to feed three when they originally left their homes, but were more than glad for the company.
Every daybreak, the group developed a routine of finding either a cave to rest in, or wandering into the small forests that occupied the valleys of the mountains and the edge of the trail. There had been plenty of Imperial soldiers on the open road from time to time and in the village even, but traveling at night limited their exposure, and a white cloth hat bought in a village carefully hid Ben's blonde hair. With the Magma Kingdom girl and the Aqua Kingdom boy as his company, passing soldiers assumed Ben to also be a foreigner to these lands, and not the Sky Kingdom boy they were looking for. Many were skeptical that this new Elementalist existed anyway.
All remained quiet into the night.
As the sun set, Ben and Fred, camped in a patch of forest below an undergrowth of cliffs, struggled to wake Wade from his deep sleep. Prepared for their routine, nightly journey, the group exited the small patch of trees and made their way back to the snowy, brick road, which grew stronger and more prominent the further they went.
"This sucks..." Wade yawned, marching with the other two in a dreamy daze.
He was moments away from sleepwalking, which both Ben and Fred had seen him successfully do before many a night.
"Weren't you a fisherman?" Fred finally remarked as they continued down the wide, eerily empty road that slowly grew darker with the looming light fading to night.
"Yeah, what of it?"
"Well, don't good fishermen have to get up early? Isn't that when it's best to go fishing?"
"I never said I was a good fisherman," Wade remarked with a tired smile.
With each step, he dragged his heavy feet less and began to wake up. Ben reached into the cloth sack on his back that they'd recently purchased in a Sky Kingdom town. It was white like his new hat, made from the wool of the common mountain sheep that roam the Sky Kingdom, and despite being itchy to the touch, was quite warm in the chilling mountain air. After rummaging around a moment, he tossed Wade a red apple.
"Breakfast," Ben told him.
"Thanks." Wade took a bite and instantly felt rejuvenated.
"And by the way, Fred," he said matter-of-factly. "I was a good fisherman, and my dad taught me that everyone goes early in the morning, thus the fish would be nice and scared off. You see... fish are smarter than people think. So, you need to go when the sun goes down, when no one is fishing, not when it comes up."
"Of course," Fred said without looking back, obviously not very interested in how to be a good fisher.
After a few minutes, a curious look escaped Fred's darkened face. She fell back from walking in her usual spot at the front of the group, to walk at Ben's side. Ben quickly handed her an apple as well, and she took it, cutting slices off with her remaining dagger. It was the sharpest dagger you might ever find, and Ben thought that the slightest nick could cause a gaping cut. But Fred, an expert, cuts with fast precision and ease, not once coming close to cutting herself.
"So," she said to Ben. "I know where Mr. Chuckles here worked, but what about you? Who were you before you were the Elementalist? You've never said."
Taking the third and final apple from his pack, Ben took a big, crunchy bite. It was surprisingly fresh and sweet. Wade could be heard behind them doing the same, and Fred did as well, if only to fit in the best she could. Apples weren't much to her taste, as she preferred anything cooked over an open flame, but managed with what she had.
"I was a blacksmith's son," he finally said once he'd swallowed.
"Really?"
"Yeah, why's that so surprising?"
"It's just... I figured someone like the Elementalist would be someone of higher esteem, you know? Like a kid from a rich family."
"That's not always true," Wade chimed in, walking faster to catch up. "Sometimes the Elementalist is nobody like Ben here."
He winked at Ben and elbowed him playfully.
"Though we still have no idea how there are two Elementalists. That's not supposed to happen. Hundreds of years of history and story, all crazy and unique, but never with two Elementalists."
It was true that most Elementalists in the past tended to be of higher class, as kids of this generation were often told, but it wasn't always the case. Viktor Krane himself was a lowly stable boy from the Magma Kingdom before he was called. The fact was, that no one throughout all of history could truly know who, or what, controlled and decided on who would be the next Elementalist. The Elementalist was a role always shrouded in mystery and uncertainty, and even more so now that there were inexplicably two of them.
"I think it's nature," Fred chimed in as they all considered why there were two Elementalists. "Think about it, Viktor Krane has been a menace to the Elemental Kingdoms forever, and now, nature is fighting back. They sent Ben to be their warrior."
Fred liked the idea of nature calling a warrior to defend the world.
"Maybe..." Ben muttered. "But I don't think I'm meant to be a warrior. Dad said that the Elementalist is supposed to be the one who unites the Elemental Kingdoms. I would think that would make him a keeper of peace, not so much a warrior."
"Or perhaps both," Wade offered.
The idea of a warrior sounded much more appealing to Fred, but she knew they were probably right, peace being just as difficult as war at times.
Fred resumed her usual, quiet demeanor for a while after, not surprising the other two in the least. They'd learned that Fred could be fickle when it came to talking, to say the least, preferring silence. Give her a topic she was passionate about such as fighting then she'd talk your ear off, but otherwise quietness reigned. Ben and Wade did notice recently, however, that she'd tried to engage more with them, and it seemed obvious that her attempts to connect and fit in were heartfelt behind a firm exterior.
Fred's questions about their lives before quickly made Ben curious. He'd been curious before, but then he was finally curious enough to speak his mind. After a few days on the road, he felt they'd all become comfortable with each other.
"How about you, Fred?" he asked.
"Me?"
"Yeah, what did you do before this?"
A cool, night breeze swept the three of them, almost as though the question were haunted. Ben glanced at Fred's gray eyes in the darkness, and they seemed firmer than usual. It was that same look he'd seen her adopted before a fight.
"My story," she began to say, a touch of nervousness in her voice. "It's short."
Realizing from her seriousness that it was a touchy topic, neither Ben nor Wade pushed her to continue. Eventually, given a few seconds, Fred walked even straighter and managed to tell the rest.
"I never really knew my parents," she finally declared. "Or at least I was too young to remember mostly. I was told when I was older that a woman—maybe my mother, maybe not—dropped me off at the MKYA. That's the Magma Kingdom's Young Army. It's a place where they took in orphans and trained them to be soldiers."
"That sounds... horrible," Ben replied softly.
"It wasn't so bad."
That was a lie. The MKYA was bad. Children there were taught to fight and put through tests, some of which were beyond dangerous, and not everyone survived. It was the MKYA's way of getting rid of the weak and keeping only the strong, and Fred had luckily been one of the strong ones. She couldn't say the same for some of her friends that she had grown to have while there, unfortunately. Many nights in the arena and she'd grown from a little girl into a fierce warrior much too fast. She grew strong, but the price she paid was the loss of innocence.
"So, you lived there?" Wade chimed in, unusually serious in that moment out of respect.
"For most of my youth," Fred said. "At least until I was old enough to escape and live on my own. It's mostly all a blur to me. It took a lot of pain and hurt before I realized that I needed to be fierce, that I needed to be stronger than anyone else, but that I still needed to keep my humanity. I knew that I needed to treat honor above anything else and give as much, if not more than I received."
Fred's voice drifted a little before she continued.
"After I escaped the MKYA, I became a mercenary-for-hire for a while. Though, I never took any jobs I didn't think were right. I never stole–at least not from those who needed it–and I never killed."
It confounded Ben and Wade, just as it had Fred herself, as to how a child could live in a place that encouraged heartlessness and yet still grow up to live by these morals regardless. It would've been easy for Fred to turn out so very different, and that is what impressed them most.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
As the moon shone bright as ever, they finally reached the town marked on Wade's map with a bright, red X. The town of Ariel was by far the largest town in the Sky Kingdom that wasn't a flying city, and they knew by the road and the night traffic that they'd reached it long before they saw the sign that stood on the town's boundary. There was only perhaps an hour before the sun would rise, and they felt it was perfect timing if they wanted to avoid daytime travel.
Like all towns and villages they'd passed, the nighttime traffic picked up a little the closer they got, with merchants coming into town earlier than they'd prefer. Most wanted to arrive before the sun to get the best spots to park their carts of merchandise and others merely did it out of old habit, enjoying the sunrise.
This kind of traffic they did not mind. What they did mind though, was the caravan of Imperial soldiers that now passed by on its way into the town. It was a large, metallic carriage, pulled by two, strong horses and carrying at least a dozen soldiers down the paved road. As they passed, Ben pulled his white hat down further on his head and looked the other direction. Fred and Wade casually strolled to come between the caravan's view of Ben, and they were sure to mix in as best they could with some nearby travelers who were also on foot. The driver of the Imperial carriage gave them one quick, menacing glance before pulling the reins harder and commanding the horses to go faster. The horses reluctantly obeyed, and the carriage sped off into the town.
Once the lit caravan was gone, only the dim light of a few wandering merchant carts lit the road.
"Better not stick around here too long," Ben said to Wade and Fred as they huddled together and walked in a tight formation around him to hide Ben's features from any curious glances.
They had planned to perhaps stay and avoid the day-travel, but that seemed out.
"I agree," Fred said. "And the sun will be up soon."
"Do we have enough food to just pass through?" Wade asked. "Or do we have to stop somewhere?"
"We're good," Ben replied as he reached behind to feel the weight of his pack. "At least to get to the next village. No need to stop."
Again, out of the corner of Ben's eye he could see more soldiers, this time stationed at a building on the outskirts of town.
"There are far too many Imperial soldiers here."
"There shouldn't be this many," Wade commented, also noticing some soldiers in the distance. "Even for a town this big. Something is going on here..."
Sniffing the air, Fred tilted her head and stopped in place. Ben and Wade quickly stopped as well, turning back to her. Her nose scrunched as she squinted her eyes, a curious look on her face.
"What is it?" Ben and Wade ask.
"I—I don't know."
"Is it all the soldiers?"
"No, it's not that..."
The hairs stood on Fred's arms and her body tensed. She felt an electricity, a heat in the air. Normally such a thing would leave her on high alert, but it was different this time. It wasn't the threat of soldiers she felt, but rather something else familiar.
"I have this strange feeling, like I'm home all of a sudden."
She hadn't felt this in weeks. The Sky Kingdom had a clean, freshness in the air that was so strange to her. It was cooler, peaceful, and completely foreign.
"I don't know what it is..." she then exclaimed. "It's something about the air, the smell."
Ben and Wade both took a deep breath themselves. It wasn't obvious to them at first, but they could feel it as well, a smell that seemed crisp, as if to burn at their nostrils. As a breeze floated down, carrying large, brown oak leaves with it, they could feel the heat and potency of this hot air coming from the town of Arial as they began to enter its town limits.
"Look," Ben said, pointing at the sky above the buildings.
Floating, hidden by the dark yellow glow of a sun about to crest the horizon, was a cloud much darker than the average. The small bits of orange that would normally break through the distance to signify the coming of the new day were darkened as the thick smoke rose high into the stratosphere. Even Fred, who'd seen many smoke clouds drift from the dormant volcanoes back in the Magma Kingdom, had never seen a cloud of smoke so large or foreboding. And its texture... There was something wrong about it, more choking than the fires she'd grown used to. It seemed unnatural, as natural as smoke could be.
"What is it?" Wade asked.
"A fire perhaps?" Ben replied.
"No," Fred firmly stated. "That's unlike any smoke cloud I've seen. It's drifting... against the wind. Smoke usually goes with the wind, not against it. Look at it. I have no idea what it is, but it's very strange."
Wade was most disturbed and shivered at the thought. As if fire and the Magma Kingdom weren't horrible enough for him, but now this. Some unnatural smoke coming straight from the town they had to pass through. And all he had for company is what can best be described as a gleeful pyromaniac and his best friend, who was turning out to be no better after their visit to the Magma Kingdom. Wade could feel the heat on him, the sweat falling down his face, and quickly snatched a water jug from Ben's pack to take a long, satisfying gulp.
But despite what Wade might assume, Fred was less than happy at the sight of the fire, and extremely curious as to its origins. Fire was a sacred thing, unlike whatever this seemed to be.
Meanwhile, Ben found himself caught somewhere between Fred and Wade's emotions. He was intimidated as he was curious.
There was a smooth crunching noise as a merchant pulled up and stopped next to them, following their gaze. Ben, Wade, and Fred noticed him quickly, and Ben huddled behind his friends and scrunched his head down to hide his face the best he could.
"You're new here ain't you?" the man asked as he noticed Fred's red hair and Wade's brown, neither the blonde of Sky Kingdom.
The three could tell by his demeanor that this elderly man was nice and let their guard down a little. He wore a straw hat and blue, tattered cloth from pants and a jacket, but his face seemed the kind that would typically sport a large, infectious smile under most circumstances. His pushcart, like him, was old but had character. As he leaned against it, the wood let out a moan.
"Y-Yeah," Wade finally replied with a stutter. "We're new. Nothing special. Just ordinary travelers." An awkward chuckle left him.
Rolling her eyes at Wade, Fred ignored him to ask the man a pressing question.
"Do you know what that smoke is? No one seems worried about it." She glanced around at the handful of carts being pushed toward the town by folk, most of whom being as frail and old as the man before her.
"Aye, I do... But trust me, people are worrying about it. There just isn't much they can do. You know how it is with Emperor Krane. He doesn't care what hurts any of us as long as it's for his murky sense of the greater-good. Even if it's a metal monster."
Ben wanted to chime in, but he thought it wise to remain huddled behind Fred and Wade and let them do the talking. THe man seemed nice, but you could never truly tell...
"A metal monster? Is that what you said?" Fred began to ask.
"You'll see soon enough. If I were you, I wouldn't stay too long. Things haven't been good in Sky Kingdom for a while, especially since those rumors of the boy who can fly."
He picked his cart up by the handle and pushed it away, his voice trailing as he went. His cart moaned in the process as he struggled to get its wheels to turn on the snow-covered road. "I tell you, one little rumor like that, and all kinds of trouble can start on up."
Watching him go, not daring to move towards him, the three stood still. Images of some metal monster flew through their minds, each one being scarier than the last.
"Obviously it isn't good," Fred said aloud, more to herself than anyone. "But at least it's no immediate danger. If it was, people wouldn't still be entering the town.
"Wade?" Ben asked.
"Yeah?"
"You sure there's no way around this town?"
Wade pulled the map out again, but already knew the answer. Pointing to the sharp mountains right of the town, and then the bumpy, unwalkable terrain to the left, he remained silent as he shook his head.
"Let's make this quick then," Fred said.
Nodding in agreement, they walked toward the buildings, toward the ominous smoke, with more than a little quickness in each step. The air continued to choke them little by little, making each breathe just a little more of a strain. And soon, as they reached a quaint tavern just on the inner edges of the town, they began to notice that the snow on the rooftops and ground was darker too. It was grayish-white and seemed more powder than fluff. It covered the road as well, darker, thinner, and evaporated in a cloud as their feet pressed down on it.
"It's..." Ben said, wiping the ground with his hand.
"It's ash," Fredfinished for him.