If I’m somehow not dead, and this isn’t paradise, then I seem to have accidentally accomplished my mission, he had thought pensively to himself.
Everything about the circumstances and her demeanor practically screamed that she was a goddess.
And this was one of the reasons he had decided that there was an eighty percent chance that he was no longer on the earth but had skipped into a divine realm where a flighty but good-natured goddess was playing at being a farmer.
But then there were other things, small tells that indicated that the world might not be as perfect as it might have seemed to be at first glance, and the most jarring instance of this was the state of the chestnut dryad Tata.
She was dying. She was dying slowly and painfully as her trees succumbed one at a time to a terrible disease.
Death is here too, it seems, he had thought grimly to himself.
But the perfectly ordinary farm girl had not been discouraged. She had immediately decided to supply the sick dryad with advanced potions round-the-clock, as if promising such a thing wasn’t a preposterous thing to do, outside the bounds of common sense. Only a member of the royal family might have been able to access such treatment. It was extremely expensive and very few people could produce such an advanced potion with the specific and relevant effects necessary to make it effective.
Each and every thing she did was ridiculous. She was always throwing vegetables and flowers into the serene pool whenever she thought he wasn’t looking. Miraculously, these items always disappeared without a trace. She gained twenty-three levels in Fluid Alchemy in a single week. Twenty-three in a single week. She did not seem to have even the most rudimentary idea of how magic worked, despite being otherwise cultured and well educated. When she sang to worms, they immediately popped out of the earth, ready to be put into her bucket. When she sang to worms, they answered.
(She worked too hard. She did not always seem to like herself. She was sometimes overwhelmed with anxiety and distress.)
She knew his true name.
When he had cautioned her about using it, she had politely changed to calling him Alt, but he knew that she knew what his real name actually was.
And ever since he had woken after having been miraculously cured of his parasitation, a curious new tag had been applied to his status page.
Handsome Old Man.
He had no comment on that, and she was obviously so desperate to ignore it that he felt bad questioning her about it.
Everything was so ridiculous, he had stopped even reacting to it much over time. It was like, “Oh, another bizarre thing happened? Well, that figures.” He was so swept away by the unusual rhythm of the place that he very nearly forgot the way he had arrived, forgot that she had somehow saved his life, restored a missing limb and multiple missing fingers. He forgot to be wary of the invader who was still in pursuit of him, forgot his overarching mission. He simply existed in the inexplicable country house on the absurdly beautiful farm as if he always had and always would.
But then something happened to shake the sense out of his world again.
The beaver foreman had been visiting. He was a regular visitor at the farmhouse and he and Demeter most often discussed the progress of a large public works project that the beavers were engaged with somewhere vaguely nearby. Aelfric had not been to this site because she had not gone, and he always stayed in close proximity to her.
(There were times when she behaved as if she had spent her entire life in a little pen.)
During the visit with the beaver foreman, Demeter had been excitedly describing the possibilities of waste management when the foreman had casually dropped a bombshell.
He had mentioned the town of Cradle.
He had mentioned the town where Aelfric had set up his medical practice under the assumed name of Alt Irondale, where Fanni and Yuriy were even now waiting for his return, collecting information on the supposedly imminent descent of the goddess.
He had mentioned it as if it were nearby.
Aelfric had been so agitated by this revelation that he had broken into their conversation to verify the information.
Demeter had simply tilted her head to the side curiously and confirmed that Cradle was nearby.
This fantastic paradise of verdant woods, rich soil, crystal clear streams, and raining rose petals was somehow in close proximity to the greatest blightwood in Prystir’s unorganized territories. He felt like tearing his hair out.
He managed to collect himself, but the peaceful, easy comfort of the place had been shattered. There was no way he could simply continue whiling away his time here, even if he had found the goddess he had been dispatched to find. He had no idea how he had arrived in this place, how he had traveled almost two thousand miles in an instant, not when all of the divinities he had pacts with were still in deep torpor. But if he had done it, then it was possible that the abomination had also done it.
It was very possible that the invader that had marked him was still after him, even after his miraculous recovery. That was a very real danger to the people of the area, including his own comrades, and represented an incursion of a high-level threat deep into the lands protected by the barrier.
It could not be allowed to settle itself in this blightwood. That would mean the fall of Prystir, sooner or later. Even if it killed him, he would have to hunt it.
They were running out of options.
It had likely been gathering strength in the time he had been lazing around, enjoying a vacation in paradise. He could wait no longer. He had to go now.
So she had cheerfully agreed to take him to the road. He had been anxious about not exposing her to danger but had ultimately resolved that she could retreat into the safe territory of the farm. He was the one the invader had marked, and whatever peculiar circumstances were protecting the idyllic little farm, they had so far sufficed to keep the invader out.
They had gone together to the road.
And it had been waiting for him.