The street wasn't as she remembered. There were changes. Buildings she remembered as new were weathered and stained, some were getting maintenance done, scaffolding set up, mages flying around.
The street now had a wider footpath, yet the road didn't seem to have grown smaller. Trees she remembered as saplings along the side of the footpath now stood taller than her, the old leaves and petals littering the walkway.
A man, likely younger than Dina sweeped the sidewalk, wearing an outfit with the city's emblem on it. It wasn't the old woman from the nearby stall that doing voluntary work.
There were guards sporting the same emblem on their chest walking around with their batons, yet, the uniform wasn't the same as she remembered.
It wasn't new to Elizabeth.
A thousand years was a long time; kingdoms popped up and disappeared every decade, and change was the constant.
Aside from some stable old countries which the Gods oversaw, there was nothing that time couldn't change.
She had grown to ignore these details over the years, yet she was noticing things.
Elizabeth, her spirits taking refuge in her hat, slowly walked toward the city gate.
If she so wished, she could appear in her hometown anytime she needed.
It was a matter of a mere thought.
But there was still time before the agreed date, and Elizabeth fully intended to once again experience the dullness of mundane travel.
As the colossal city gates grew fainter in the distance, Elizabeth noticed the rattle of a carriage. However, there was no rhythmic noise of horse hoves hitting the cobblestone road.
Elizabeth turned around and noticed a cart being pulled by one spider the size of a horse, with what appeared to be moss growing on it's back.
Horse mat spider, used as a substitute for horses among the neutral nations. It was best for traversing rough terrain. Although people used it because of how cheap they were to maintain.
It had a fungal mat on its back, in which aphids were housed. The spider sucked on the mana produced by these aphids to survive, and it ate almost anything.
Elizabeth waved the carriage down, and the old man manning the carriage was kind enough to give her a ride to the next town.
This was it.
This was the kind of mundane experience she was hoping to enjoy.
The hills, trees, grass, and livestock all whizzed past slowly.
The carriage continued to crackle, and the old man continued to cough intermittently.
The sun shone brightly on her cloak, and whatever bugs were in the hay mat of the carriage crawled out, hoping to bite the traveller.
Right.
This was the mundane life she wanted to experience.
'I should've flown straight!' Elizabeth sighed, took out what seemed to be a rubber ball, and started squeezing it like a stress ball.
What seemed like squeals came from the rubber ball with every squeeze, and Elizabeth felt herself growing calmer.
Gods were the most fun to play with.
They didn't have the ability to give up on themselves. They were resilient like that.
…
…
"I thank you for the ride," Elizabeth said, dipping her head gracefully at the old man. Although the ride was bumpy and slow, it was undeniable that the man, likely younger than herself, had shown her kindness.
"Don't mention it, young lady, it was nothing," the old man said, smiling with his few teeth.
The sight made Elizabeth's stomach churn.
'Right, humans are so fragile, there's no wa–' A crisp sound of a slap echoed, making the old drivers' smile vanish. Some onlookers passing by also turned their gazes.
"Are you alright, young lady?" The old man's voice was full of worry as he looked at her with concern.
An uncomfortable reality she was trying to shove into the back crevices of her mind was now surfacing. She didn't like it.
"It's alright, I'm just having an episode!" Elizabeth replied cheerfully, waving her hand, her swollen cheek healing as a green tint surfaced on her skin.
But the old man's face stiffened, and he looked at Elizabeth with a look she didn't particularly like. The onlookers weren't concerned enough to stick around as they dispersed. There was so little time in a day. No way they were sticking around to see some crazy bastards duking it out.
Elizabeth smiled once again. Without further ado, she held out a pouch to the old man, coins jingling.
"Once again, thank you for your trouble." Elizabeth was fully ready for a back-and-forth exchange of the old man rejecting and her insisting, to experience the mundaneness of humble exchange, but the man quickly pocketed the pouch.
"Hohoho, it really was alright! You needn't trouble yourself."
The old man's smile was sooo, for a lack of a better word, bright.
Elizabeth chuckled a bit awkwardly as she rubbed the head of the Horse mat spider, feeling the tingling sense of its fur one last time as she vanished in place.
The Spider and the old man alike were startled, but feeling the weight of the pouch in his pocket, he was more than content.
…
Elizabeth flew straight toward the Brighwe pass. The terrain was as one would expect, a road settled between two forested mountains, nestled on the side of a river.
There were scarce settlements, with only official buildings sticking out of the norm. Elizabeth felt like she wouldn't be able to handle another social interaction that day, so she didn't even bother stepping into the small town. Instead, she flew over to the mountain estate where the sentries had spotted the daemon chasing the elf.
She landed in the forest. Her senses swept outward, and sure enough, there was residual daemonic energy, the pure kind.
She touched one of the trees in the vicinity.
A polite suppression with her overwhelming soul, and the tree was willing to string together the details of what had happened in the mountain over the last few months, and with it's root networks stretching over the entire mountain, every tree in the vicinity helped out.
There was a lot of data, but Elizabeth filtered through it instantly. Indeed, as she had suspected, it was the Elf who had drawn the summoning circle.
The circle drawn from pig blood and sprinkled with elven blood had indeed summoned a daemon, but the chant the Elf had uttered while running around the circle like some barbarian was something Elizabeth wasn't familiar with.
'A new chant and ritual?'
She was confused, but the fluctuations the portal gave off as it opened and the daemon that came out of it all contained the unmistakable aura of the underworld she was familiar with.
'And,'
It all seemed off.
The daemon seemed like it didn't have any intention of killing or complying with its summoner's request.
It had just chased the elf around the woods as soon as it came out, doing all it could do to supress it's overwhelming aura. It had captured and restrained her, tossing her into the portal with all the care a motion of tossing could achieve. It had even erased any traces of the summoning as it went back.
Well, it was pretty meticulous for an Ogre Daemon. Elizabeth would give it that much credit. If the daemon wasn't sighted by the guards, she would've even given full marks.
It was all suspicious. The whole thing looked like a planned abduction. And why would daemons even kidnap elves into their realms? Any elf that touched the miasma of the daemon realm would wither and die in minutes. She needed to get to the bottom of this.
"Evana," She lightly called out, and an elf woman instantly materialised to her left.
The elf had a towel wrapped around her and had another one on her head. Her mascara even looked smudged by the sudden interruption, but as soon as she materialised to the left of Elizabeth, she fell on the ground, prostrating herself.
"My Liege!!!! Please use this slave as you wish!!!" There was a plea in her voice that sounded sickening to Elizabeth.
She never liked that tone, but Evana was just like that. Even Dina had picked up on her habits, just to show her annoyance toward her.
If not for the half-elf being weirdly competent, Elizabeth would've replaced her long ago. Indeed, usefulness overruled certain character traits.
"Do you know this woman?" Elizabeth asked without acknowledging Evana's actions. She had constructed a perfect replica of the elven woman who had been abducted, down to the smallest pore on her body. She had the data from hundreds of trees to work with after all.
"No, my liege!" Evana had looked up, her eyes filled with fervour, "But I swear on my honour! I shall find her whereabouts by tomorrow! If not, I shall feed myself to cows. "
"Yep, that'll do," Elizabeth waved her off. As interesting as the case was, she had an appointment she needed to keep. And she hated nothing more than getting somewhere late.
"Are you going back to your homeland, My Leige?" Evana asked as Elizabeth was about to disappear.
Elizabeth nodded.
"I wish you the luck of the entire world, my liege!" Evana thumped her chest with her fists, her towels slightly loosening up, "Fret not, my liege, if the meeting doesn't go as planned, I will lend you both my shoulders to cry on."
"..." Elizabeth was distracted by the jiggling globes of flesh. She didn't like it, yet it was mesmerising. "Sure," she uttered as she vanished.
…
Tomorrow was the day. She had plenty of time. Yet, it didn't feel right to delay things any longer.
She flew straight to her hometown.
Before long, what seemed to be a chasm, thousands of kilometres long and hundreds of kilometres wide, appeared before her.
It was like the world had split in half, gaping the pathway to the underworld.
Elizabeth landed on the cliff, the crimson glow of the setting sun behind her, peering down into the abyss.
It was one of the greatest disasters that had assailed the continent about a thousand years ago.
She was still young back then, when the sky wailed, and earth screamed as the chasm ripped open.
Hundreds of human settlements were lost that day, and an unknown number of lives were extinguished. The continent was divided, and the two great seas connected. Seasons changed, people's lives were affected, numerous flora and fauna went extinct as a consequence.
Elizabeth could still vividly remember the day.
She hadn't gone to the library as she usually did, instead sneaking away to watch the martial tournament.
Why didn't she invite Jonah back then? She didn't… Right, he was preparing to move town with his family.
She'd been upset then.
They should've cherished their time together.
Both of them could've been saved then.
The memory was all a bit hazy.
She had understood the power of nature that day.
And that no matter how much the body tried, infront of nature they were nothing but…
The sun had set, and the faint illumination of the moon fought to overwhelm the starlight.
A sigh escaped Elizabeth's lips.
She outstretched her hands, and the staff, the most ordinary-looking staff, floated into her hands.
She slammed it on the ground. The world shifted and the stars aligned, creating a blend of starlight that illuminated half the world.
Her mind cleared to an almost supernatural clarity. She remembered her hometown clearly, the city wall, the gate, the trees the library had sponsored to be planted, the bushes, the paved roads, the buildings that grew despite the city planner's complaints, every misaligned street, every stall…
With time as her guide and memories as her anchor, she remembered every nook and cranny of her hometown.
Every piece of soil, every molecule, every atom that comprised her hometown, she remembered.
The starlight individually illuminated every one of them. Across the continent, scattered throughout the abyss, throughout the ocean.
Her hat stirred, and a brown, elongated fur ball crawled out from it.
It landed on the ground and expanded, becoming a wyrm that pulsed with the aura of earth.
It roared at the sky, and the earth shook.
It soared into the sky, and the earth calmed, only to dive back down into the earth and disappear.
Time passed.
The starlight continued illuminating the ground.
With a thud, the world shook around Elizabeth.
A giant made of rock and mud climbed the cliff from the abyss, shaking the world with every movement.
It struggled as it crawled onto the cliff face. It walked into an open space in the plateau and sat down.
A second later, it broke down, the rocks and soil it comprised making a pile.
The Earth Wyrm resurfaced from the pile, and in another moment, the soil started rearranging itself.
First, the city walls. Every detail was the same, every brick, every rock, every stroke on the mortar.
The pavements formed, the houses, the barebone trees… everything.
Elizabeth's hometown, as she once knew it, materialised.
But it lacked life.
Another puff of ball rolled out from underneath Elizabeth's hat, transforming into an ethereal beauty with antler horns as it hit the ground. She seemed to wear a dress made of moss, and life itself seemed to bloom around her.
She blew a breath, and it washed over the city.
Life bloomed, the barebark trees pulsed with life, the leaves growing, the grass peeking out of the ground, the flowers blooming, and the city wall covered in moss.
The city seemed to regain its life…or maybe not.
Elizabeth once again sighed as her staff vanished.
"Thank you," she said softly. The Wyrm and the Woman, both with satisfied smiles on their faces, transformed back into little furballs and crawled back into the hat.
Elizabeth walked through the open city gate.
It was empty.
No matter how powerful she was, undoing the causality of a thousand years was something she was unwilling to do.
But there was something else she could do.
Once again, the stars aligned. With time as her guide and her memories as her anchor, she projected her hometown from her time into the city.
In an instant, the streets turned lively.
Nightlife was bustling, and Elizabeth walked, taking in every detail.
It was…as she remembered.
She walked through the familiar path, spotting their library.
As it was nighttime, it remained closed.
However, he phased through the door and entered.
She found the table that she and Jonah used to study in.
She took a seat at the adjacent table, overlooking their place.
The Library was silent, except for the soft purring of Mr. Kregils as he slept.
She waited in silence.
Dawn broke.
The church's bell rang in symphony with the small doorbell as the library door opened, and Mr. Ivan walked in.
"Good morning, Kregils!" he greeted with the same smile Elizabeth was tired of seeing.
The cat nodded back, already grooming his fur.
Mr. Ivan popped a can of cat food into Mr. Kregil's bowl and set himself to dusting the shelves.
The hum of toneless elven music accompanied the chores.
Before long, the doorbell once again rang as thit was pushed open by two noisily chatting children.
"Good Morning Mr. Ivan, and Mr. Kregils," they both greeted.
"Welcome! My pupils! Have a seat! Did y'all have breakfast?"
Mr. Ivans exchanged pleasantries with the children, and before long, they were seated at the table as Ivans started the lecture.
It was language, one Little Elizabeth wasn't particularly interested in, but one Jonah listened to attentively.
Elizabeth felt her heartbeat quicken as she heard the lecture.
Her young self did not care. But she of now understood. With just how much care and patience her dad had taught the two of them.
For the first time in her life, Elizabeth listened to the lecture wholeheartedly.
The events replayed, just like in her memory.
Eventually, Mr. Ivan left, and Jonah bribed Mr. Kregils.
They talked about Jonah's uncle.
Elizabeth's heart pounded as her younger self pushed off the floor, onto the table, looking at Jonah.
She asked, with bashfulness Elizabeth of now could plainly see.
"Say, If we, we both remain unmarried for the next, wellllll, thousand years, how about we marry each other?"
"Alright, but only if you agree to do it frugally."
And the boy answered.
"Let's hold off on the details. Who knows, maybe people really will change with time." Elizabeth had hoped.
"Oh, trust me, Elle, I'll never change!" Now, all she wanted was for him to remain unchanged.
Elizabeth held back her tears that threatened to overflow, her neck muscles twitching, her jaws clenched, blood vessels clearly visible on her face.
Opposite her, observing the two children's banter, sat a skeleton, his hands folded, draped in jewellery and fine clothing that would put royalty to shame.