The Innkeeper's Spell - Part 4

The day was beautiful. The sunlight gleamed off the white peaks of the surrounding mountains, and the ocean lapped relaxingly at the docks. It was enchanting scenery.At least, that’s what I tried to remind myself as I stood amid the still-smoldering wreckage of the city, listening to the inane bickering around me.“No, my lot started here. I remember this crack in the road!” a store owner shouted at the other.“That’s the wrong damned crack. Your shop starts over here.” He walked over and gestured to a point in the ground that was like any other.This was ridiculous. The city had just been destroyed.I was standing around, helping to rebuild the block, and they were arguing over where one shop began and the other ended. Frankly, their shops were about to look like giant noses if they kept this up. “Emlyn, if you just knock them both out for now, we could let them continue this argument when I’m done?”Whether I was a magicless village boy or a four-sphere mage, I never did well with tedious wastes of time like this. I shifted on my feet, anxious to keep moving and lift some stone from the ground.The city of Faylin had seen better days, but in the city’s defense, it had just survived a colossal wyrm rampaging through its streets after its stolen egg as pirates tried to loot it. And then mage-forged had somehow gotten this deep in kingdom territory to attack mages as well. Yesterday was a bleak streak of events.I rubbed my forehead before reminding myself that the mage-forged was a problem for future Ard. Present Ard needed to build storefronts and houses.The battle was quite literally in the past, and war was in my future.