"Can it do anything useful at all?"
Jiang Fei looked at Arran with a look of frustration. She had spent much of the morning testing out her new Shadow Realm, but so far, the only thing she had accomplished was sending out a large blast of Shadow that merely disappeared the moment it touched the tree she had targeted.
"Nothing I've been able to accomplish," Arran answered honestly. "But Master Fireheart could use it to make himself disappear."
He still called Master Zhao 'Fireheart' when speaking to Jiang Fei, although by now he was starting to doubt whether either identity was actually real.
"Disappear?" Jiang Fei knitted her brows. "So it's not completely useless, then…"
They practiced as they walked, occasionally sending blasts of Shadow at the roadside, or trying to manipulate it into moving. Whatever they tried, however, none of it was useful in the least, and Arran found it growing increasingly hard to stay focused on his practice.
Before Master Zhao had left, he had paid little attention to their surroundings, instead practicing Fire and Wind while occasionally trying to wrangle knowledge from his master.
Now, for the first time since they had left the monastery, Arran found himself looking at the landscape around them.
In the distance, he could still make out the vague outlines of the mountains, which by now looked like shadows on the horizon.
The terrain that surrounded them had changed, he saw. Where the hills at the foot of the mountains had mostly been filled with grass, with barely a tree to be seen, the road now meandered along copses and thickets.
While the more varied landscape did little to ease their journey, at least it provided Arran with some small distractions from the boredom of travel.
"Do you know where it is?" Arran asked not long after midday. "The Shadowflame Society, I mean."
"On the western border," Jiang Fei said. "Don't you know that?"
Arran shook his head. "But where is that?" Turning slightly red, he added, "I know it's to the west, of course — but how far is it?"
The truth was that he knew little of the Empire's geography. Growing up in Riverbend, all he had known was the region around it, which was mostly filled with woods and hills and farmlands, with some small villages scattered in between.
Traveling merchants had told stories of cities further out, like Fulai City, but even those places had been far from any borders the Empire had.
Traveling with Master Zhao had not given him any great insights, either. They had avoided most cities and towns, and all Arran had learned about the Empire was that it was frustratingly large — far larger than he had ever imagined.
"You don't know where the border is?" Jiang Fei looked more puzzled than anything, as if Arran had just told her he had never drunk water before in his life.
"I grew up in a small town," Arran said with a shrug.
Somewhat to his surprise, Jiang Fei did not mock him. Instead, she abruptly stopped walking, sat down, then produced a large scroll.
As she unrolled the scroll, Arran could see that it was a map.
"Sit down and come have a look," she said. "This is a map of the Empire. Have you ever seen one?"
Arran shook his head as he sat down next to her. He had seen maps of the regions around Riverbend and Fulai City, but he had never seen a map of the entire Empire.
"Where is Riverbend?" he asked.
"I'm not sure," she answered. "I've never heard of it, and the map only shows major cities."
"What about Fulai City?" If Riverbend wasn't on the map, Arran thought, surely Fulai City would be.
"I've heard of it, although it's still too small to be on the map. But it should be about…" Her finger hovered above the map for a moment, then touched a spot about halfway between the center of the map and the eastern border. "Here."
"And where are we now?" Arran asked, trying to figure out the path he had traveled with Master Zhao.
Jiang Fei found their current location in an instant, pointing toward a spot southwest of the map's central region, just north of some triangles that Arran took to be mountains.
"This is where we are now," she said.
Arran's eyes went wide with surprise as he saw that in the months he had spent traveling with Master Zhao, they had only covered less than a third of the way to the western border.
"Just how long will it take us to reach the Shadowflame Society?" As he asked the question, he realized the answer would be an unwelcome one.
"It should take us about a year," she said. "Assuming we don't meet any major delays along the way."
"A year?!" Arran was astonished. It was even worse than he had expected.
"The Empire is large," Jiang Fei said in a calm voice. "And travel takes time."
"So we're stuck with each other for the next year?" Arran regretted the words as soon as he spoke them.
Jiang Fei scowled. "It's not like I'm happy to be here with you," she said with a huff.
"I'm sorry," Arran said. "I didn't mean it like that. It's just… I hadn't expected we'd have to travel so far. I thought we'd reach the Shadowflame Society in a few months, at most."
"I'm not happy about it either," she replied with a sigh.
"Then why did you join me?" Arran asked. "You could have left when Master Fireheart did. "
"Master Fireheart gave me a promise," she said.
"What was it?" Arran asked, wondering what Master Zhao could possibly have promised that would convince her to not only join the Shadowflame Society, but spend a year's travel to get there.
"That's my business." The look on Jiang Fei's face told Arran that the conversation was over.
They set off again not long after.
Jiang Fei was mostly quiet as they walked, and Arran silently cursed himself for what he said. If he was going to spend the next year traveling with her, the last thing he wanted to do was offend her right at the start.
On the way, they occasionally encountered other travelers, mostly merchants and local farmers. Arran was puzzled at the strange looks the others on the road gave them. At first, he thought it was because he looked like an Easterner, with the blond hair that was rare in this part of the Empire.
When he finally figured out the real reason, he had to bite down a curse.
Immediately, he examined the contents of the void bag, only to be disappointed at the clothes Master Zhao had packed — there was a great variety of robes, ranging from fine to very fine, but little else.
"Are there any towns or cities nearby?" he asked Jiang Fei.
"There's a town less than a week's travel from here," she answered. "It isn't much, though, just a few thousand people. Why?"
"We'll need to go there," Arran said. "And quickly."
"Why?" Jiang Fei asked. "We have enough supplies to last for months, and the town is out of the way — it'll cost us several days, at the least."
"Have you noticed the looks we've been getting?" Arran asked.
Jiang Fei gave him a nonplussed look. "What?"
"We're both in robes," Arran said. "Dressed like a pair of scholars, or nobles. When we were with Master Fireheart, people would have thought he was a traveling scholar with some apprentices in tow. But now…"
"You think nobles would be dressed like… this?" Jiang Fei asked, but her expression turned thoughtful. "You think we'll draw the Academy's attention?"
"The Academy?" Arran shook his head. "It's bandits we need to worry about. Dressed like this, we'll look like a pair of easy targets, ripe for the picking."
"Why would we worry about bandits? If we meet any, we can just…" She stopped speaking as understanding set in.
"That's right," Arran said with a nod. "Without magic, we're all but defenseless."
"But we have swords," Jiang Fei said, still not convinced. "Even if we are attacked, can't we defend ourselves from a few bandits?"
Arran shook his head. "If they're smart, they'll just put a few arrows in us, then take our belongings from our corpses. And even if they aren't… if there are more than a few, we'll be in trouble."
Jiang Fei paled a little at those words, but she still hesitated before speaking. "We can make it in three days if we hurry," she finally said.
Arran nodded. "We'll do that, then."
When they continued, their pace was a little faster than before, and traces of unease could be seen on their faces.