With the transaction completed, the Black Iron Freight Corps offered Mariela a ride to the Labyrinth City.
They recommended she sit in the coach box, but the inside of the nearly windowless iron carriage was terrifying, and she wanted to see how the outside world had changed after the Stampede. She’d reasoned that it wouldn’t be long until they got to town, so they seated her in the back of the carriage on the ramp used for boarding and disembarking. She removed her grass skirt and hung it on the carriage so she wouldn’t sit on it and crush it.
“Then I’ll sit with ya,” said Lynx as he settled beside her. Though the ramp was wide, two people were a tight fit.
Not that she didn’t feel trapped, but the nonchalant way in which Lynx sidled up to her somehow didn’t make her uncomfortable. Maybe because his body heat warmed her just a little after she’d been chilled to the bone on the stone cellar floor. At last, the reality sank in: She’d survived the Stampede.
✦ ✦ ✦
The ironclad carriage continued along the main road. It wasn’t moving very fast, and yet, it clattered and shook quite a bit. This was Mariela’s first time in a carriage, and her backside had started to hurt from the long ride.
“Carriages really shake, huh? If it’s this bad when we’re going slowly, any faster and I’d get dizzy and fall right off the ramp.”
“For sure. If we went full speed, your ass would break into four pieces.”
“Liar.”
“No lie. I’m tellin’ you, it’d tear your belly into six pieces.”
“! Carriages are nuts.”
“Uh, I was just kiddin’.”
This was the sort of conversation the two of them had. They were unlikely to encounter monsters this close to town, and the sun was still high in the sky. Lynx laughed as he told her she’d be fine, since they were continuing at this leisurely pace. Forest wolves didn’t show up in this area at all—in fact, they even seemed to have run off deeper into the woods, so they weren’t going to follow anyone into town.
“Anyway, where do you live, Mariela?”
“Well, I was living in the forest, but I guess I can’t really do that anymore…”
Lynx seemed to be probing into her personal history, and she dodged the question with a flustered answer as she surveyed their surroundings.
The Citadel City should be very close. She wondered what on earth it was like now.
As they got closer, Mariela began to noticeably fidget, so Lynx spoke up.
“I toldja—we’ll be fine. It’s still daytime, and you won’t see any zombies or wraiths in these parts. Heh, I never get used to it no matter how many times I come here, though. I mean, it’s not exactly the kinda place that’ll give you the warm fuzzies.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Right as Lynx said “warm fuzzies,” the iron carriage entered the area where the Citadel City used to be.
✦ ✦ ✦
She thought it might be like this. After all, Captain Dick had called it the “Labyrinth City.”
But to Mariela, the Stampede felt as if it had happened just the day before, as if the Magic Circle of Suspended Animation had been activated mere hours ago.
✦ ✦ ✦
Mariela remembered it all: the crowded buildings that stood in the Citadel City, the shops overflowing with goods and the mouthwatering aromas of street food wafting from the carts, the hustle and bustle of cheerful adventurers weaving through the crowds. She even remembered people’s conversations and the expressions on their faces.
And yet.
There were no traces of the rows of buildings that leaned up against one another after being rebuilt and expanded time and again, and only a little stonework remained of the large stores that had once peddled every kind of item imaginable.
The irresistible smell of sweets and foreign cuisine from the street stalls had been replaced by the scent of trees, and she could hear no feverish hubbub.
✦ ✦ ✦
“It’s crazy how a city more prosperous than the imperial capital vanished in one night. Hey, you okay? You’re white as a sheet.”
The Corps men may have been lacking in social skills, but they still had some kind people in their ranks.
“I wonder if there were any survivors… If they were able to escape…”
Mariela knew her speech was strained, but she couldn’t help it.
“Eh? They’re livin’ in the Labyrinth City, aren’t they? Not the survivors per se but their offspring.”
Thank goodness. I’m glad some of them made it.
Mariela almost breathed a sigh of relief, but she swallowed it instead.
“I mean, this is two hundred years ago we’re talkin’ about. It’s practically like a fairy tale nowadays.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Two hundred years.
She’d been asleep for that long?
Mariela remained in stunned silence for an extraordinarily long time.
Lynx continued to talk, but Mariela didn’t hear a word he said.
✦ ✦ ✦
She remembered that day.
Although winter had finally passed, clouds still blanketed the sky all day long, and her room was very dark early that morning. The cottage her master had left behind was quite small and had only two rooms: one for sleeping and one for not sleeping. The former, of course, was the bedroom. The incredibly cramped little space had two beds and a small dresser between them.
After she was taken in at the age of eight, Mariela slept in the same bed as her master until she reached ten years old. She stopped only because she had complained that it was too hot that summer and was subsequently given her own bed. Her master took the opportunity to separate the two beds in the already-small room with a dresser, declaring with a laugh, “Now we’ve got private rooms. You need to be independent, too!” The top of the short dresser was constantly overflowing with all sorts of items belonging to her master: clothes tossed to the side, various cups or books that had been brought into bed. Or rather, they were overflowing onto Mariela’s side of the room. Every day, she cleaned and wished her master would recognize the hypocrisy and be more self-sufficient, too.
Mariela had left the bedroom furniture as it was even after she had suddenly found herself alone. She had seen enough by then to know she should expect her master’s return at any time. Mariela felt that way even after three years on her own there, despite enjoying how easy the cleaning had become. The top of the dresser was always tidy now.
The “not sleeping room” had a table and chairs, a washing basin on a kitchen range, and a shelf stacked with sundries. Any activity that wasn’t sleeping happened here, from cooking and eating to potion-making, from reading and writing arithmetic to alchemy and even lessons.
Her master was disastrously bad at housework—cooking, cleaning, laundry—but extremely knowledgeable. In exchange for studying and doing chores, Mariela learned a great many things, some she might find useful, others perfectly pointless. For this reason, the room was always so lively that when she first started living there, she worried the monsters from the Fell Forest might notice them and attack.
Now it was entirely silent and dim. Without even turning on the light, Mariela had washed down yesterday’s stale bread with some unappetizing soup made from mushrooms and herbs gathered in the forest.
A variety of herbs grew in the garden surrounding the house, and she picked the ones she needed, dried them, and tied them in a bundle. As always, she was going to the Citadel City to sell potions.
Among the fifty she’d prepared the day before, she placed twenty in a basket, hid the other thirty in the bundle of dried herbs, and packed them into her wooden rack, which she then hoisted onto her shoulders. With her meager strength, carrying fifty was the most she could manage, but such a small number didn’t earn her a lot of money.