Kel's journey progressed easily. While the houses were few and far between in these parts, that they were usually meant that they were well stocked. If they didn't have a lovely lady that could be convinced into coming along, they had food. If they didn't have food, they had sturdy wagons that they didn't need the way their good friend Kel did.
If they didn't have much food or anything that could help on the journey, they often had a bit of jewelry or other heirlooms of value that they were willing to part with. He couldn't even think of an immediate need for them as he shopped those homes but looking for baubles was something he was used to doing and they might have a purpose down the road. He could move from home to home and avoid being seen by the few and far between specks of civilization.
He wrapped his hand firmly around the most important find of his life, comforted by the warmth of it that felt as if a part of him. Indeed, if he concentrated, that warmth would flow through his body enough to ward off the slight chill of the day. There wasn't a luckier man in the world than he, he knew. He went from getting by and being content in that to someone for whom the possibilities now seemed limitless. Kel was unsure of what he even had around his neck. Proof of the Goddess? A piece of magic from the fairy tales of the old world and the whispers in this one? Some piece of technology that he didn't understand that went wrong for the old man?
Kel was only thinking about it now to pass the time. He couldn't remember the last time he thought about it in any depth because what did it really matter? What else matters when you can have anything? What else matters when you have that kind of power? People would give him the shirts off their backs, the last coin in their pockets, and beautiful women would lift their skirts, and all he had to do is talk them into it.
It wasn't so wrong, he told himself, that voice being the only voice he heard these days. Each time, the using got easier, and not just for the power itself. Those scolds of right and wrong and those pangs of conscience early on that he once almost had to beat down lost their effect on him, whittled away a bit at a time in the heady rush of power, the joy of gratification, and the complete lack of consequence. If someone asked too many questions or tried to make a fuss, he knew he would just simply talk his way free of it until, by the end of the chat, they would be apologizing profusely for disrupting his day in such a manner.
And he would let the matter be...if he wanted to.
That was another of the intoxicating aspects of the position in which he found himself. He thrilled when he asked himself the question,
How far can I take it?
because right now the answer seemed to be, 'As far as I want to.' The question then became, how far did he want to.
These women...these lovely, lovely women that he thought of before looking behind him to see them in the wagon kissing and fondling one another. It wasn't frenzied. It was slow, gentle, and almost sweet dance of roaming fingers and exploring tongues while a couple of the other girls watched while two others just seemed to be content to smile up at the clouds as their heads bobbed a bit with the bumps in the road, which didn't seem to bother them at all.
He hadn't intended to take any of them, but he had to get some practice in when it came to using this gift and the first house he happened by had a lovely copper-haired woman living in it. She was beautiful and very agreeable after a little prodding and he had urges, all kinds of urges these days. Ever since he found the trinket it was like the power within would build. At first it was just a warm feeling and not an unpleasant one, like there was a fire and you were standing just a little too close.
But if Kel left it be that warmth would build and spread outward from the core of his being until his skin felt like it was one big itch that he couldn't reach to scratch. Scratching the itch felt good, the results were fun, and the possibilities it afforded were limitless, so it was something that he could easily live with. The lovely woman with the copper hair led to the others and they were all his now, and happy with it. He was sure that whatever he decided to do with them they wouldn't object to, but he soon realized two things:
First, that while the taking and using was fun, he knew they'd be in the way when it came time for him to chart his course for the future. The women were good practice for him and fun to have around right now, but he didn't need to take them with him. There was much he didn't know about his power and he could explore that with them up to a point, so they still had a use.
The man he fought with over the leavings of a corpse wasn't likely to say anything, so he didn't matter. If he knew he could leave the women wherever and they would be their happy, empty selves that wouldn't care what he did to start with it'd be wonderful, but he couldn't count on it. In that event, they needed to be somewhere it wouldn't matter.
Second, if his journey thus far had taught him anything it was that there were always other girls.
Fortunately, having traveled all over these parts, he knew the places to go, even if those places were were ones he never would have gone near before. But now he needed a place to be rid of the girls where no one would make a fuss about who they were and where they came from. They would buy him a warm hearth, good meals, a soft bed, and time to decide what he could do, where he wanted to go and who he wanted to be. It was off every beaten path, and a place most people avoided unless they were the kind that had business there and those people were people that most people avoided, too.
So the wagon jostled down the path that really wasn't a path that he knew. One spent time hearing about these places in a dozen bars, taverns, and just places where people brought their own goods and traded whatever they had, telling wild tales as they did so. Several spoke of having 'special traders' on the routes they traversed, saying that they dealt with everything you could think of. Those words hung in the air on their own before they would swear up and down that they had nothing to do with
that
side of things, so it didn't take a genius to figure out what occupied the silence.
He cobbled the pieces in his mind, off this road here, down that path there, west at this pile of rocks that looked like a fallen statue and head north at the pond. He stayed on the path that he remembered from them and, despite a few necessary backtracks and a couple of stops just to keep his bearings he felt he was making progress. He contemplated the very real possibility that, if the place existed once, perhaps it didn't now, as those types of people usually didn't stay in one place indefinitely. Even if it didn't, he expected that at least it would make a good camping area while he came up with a new plan.
The road droned on, the bare trees passed by, the wagon wheels squeaked in a dependable rhythm, and the miles passed by. The afternoon was drawing to a close and he contemplated the possibility that there was no camp to be found, through its existence being a tall tale, that it had moved on, or that he'd gotten himself and them thoroughly lost.
Then, just as contemplated stopping to reassess his position if not his goal, he saw behind some trees what first appeared to be more trees but revealed themselves to be standing tall and tightly pressed together to form a wall. He followed the hints of that wall that wall to a small clearing just before a gate and two guards standing watch.
His anxiety notched upward for a moment before realizing that the guards were decidedly unkempt and busy talking to each other until they heard his wagon coming upon them. They obviously weren't military and didn't seem particularly good at standing guard, though, to be fair, the place was remote enough that probably very little that was unexpected happened. Judging by how things looked, Kel guessed that this was an old trade post that had been reclaimed and built up after the woodlands spent more than a few seasons encroaching upon it.
