He liked the rhythm of a slow moving wagon.
He was sitting in the back of a wagon carrying grains, his feet swinging in the air, as the wagon moved on the dusty road. To the merchant guiding the horses, Aleric was a proper visitor who had given a few coppers to ride in the wagon and was spending the entire time gazing at the clouds. To Aleric, the ride was a big data set.
In the past few weeks, he had wandered through a dozen anonymous villages. In one of them, he took three days to learn the precise tension required to weave a fishing net. In another, he sat with a village blacksmith to learn how the impurities of village coal altered the temper of iron. He was Jack of All Trades, but his most useful skill was to notice things.
"You're a peculiar traveler," the merchant shouted, casting a look behind him. "Most folks on their way to the Empire's Capital are fixated on getting rich or getting famous. You're trundling along as if the dust is a pleasant highlight."
"The dust tells me about the soil," Aleric replied, his voice calm and melodic. "And the road tells me how many people have passed this way. It's quite a busy artery for such a poorly maintained province."
The conversation died as they approached a stone bridge crossing a dry ravine. A heavy wooden gate had been dropped across the path, guarded by six men wearing the mismatched plate armor of a local lord's private militia.
"Toll road!" the lead guard shouted. "Ten silver pieces for the wagon. Five for the passenger."
The merchant gasped. "Ten silver? Since when is the crossing so high?"
"Since the Lord decided his wine cellar was too empty," the guard sneered, drawing a short sword to emphasize his point.
Aleric hopped down from the grain sacks. He landed softly, his dark coat settling around his boots without a sound. He walked to the front of the wagon, his expression one of mild curiosity.
"The enchantment on your sword hilt is cracked," Aleric said, pointing at the guard's weapon. "The mana is pooling in the crossguard. If you try to swing it, the feedback will likely break your wrist."
The guard's face reddened. "I've had enough of your mouth, boy. I'll show you feedback!"
He raised the sword to strike. Aleric didn't move his hands. He didn't even flinch. He simply focused his gaze on the steel blade.
There was no flash of light, no shout of a spell name. There was only a sudden, violent distortion in the air—a ripple like heat haze that moved faster than the human eye could track.
CRACK.
An invisible blade of pressurized mana, launched directly from Aleric's vision, slammed into the guard's sword. The steel snapped like a dry twig, the top half of the blade spinning into the dirt. The guard stared at his empty hilt, his arm vibrating from a force he hadn't even seen.
"You. what did you do?" stuttered the guard, stepping backward. To the other guards, it seemed as if the air itself had bitten the sword in half.
"I removed the error," Aleric said simply.
The other guards had drawn their spears, but before they could move, the mood shifted.
The sun did not vanish, but the light felt off—sterile and icy. A shadow began to seep from Aleric's feet, rising behind him like a mountain of ink. It manifested in the shape of a giant, irregular creature, four stories high, with horns that reached for the heavens.
And then, in the clouds above, two massive Red Eyes opened.
They didn't radiate fire; they radiated a terrifying and calculating intelligence. The Gaze didn't shatter the bridge; instead, it made every man there feel like his soul was being balanced on a scale. That's the pressure that was so intense that the guards' knees buckled to the stones before they even considered running.
"Move the gate," Aleric whispered.
The guards scrambled, their hands shaking as they pushed away the timber. They didn't request silver. They didn't dare look him in the face.
The shadow retreated. The Red Eyes in the sky closed. Aleric swung up onto the grain wagon and nodded at the merchant. "The road is clear."
"The merchant didn't speak a word. He simply lashed the reins and got the wagon across the bridge as fast as the horses could gallop."
Aleric produced a piece of dried fruit from his pocket and bit into it, his gaze drifting off out into the horizon. The towering, white towers of the Empire's Capital had finally come into sight.
"He was Aleric. A traveler. And he definitely looked forward to seeing how the Empire handled its libraries."