Merrick finally wandered over to the gathering spot he’d been shown after being given his ticket weeks ago, just as the archways started thrumming. Any torrent of pure magic overflowing from the nexus point due to the apogee would finish charging the archways and portals would open to the pre-set coordinates.

  After a certain amount of time or expenditure of mana, whichever comes first, the portal would shut down and have an automatic swap to the next preset coordinates. All fifteen of the massive portal archways would continue the hectic teleportation schedule for the entire day, something made only possible by the banks of mana batteries buried below the plaza, extremely high throughput of mana on that specific day, and the thinner dimensional boundaries caused by the apogee allowing for easier teleportation.

  Merrick’s caravan would be one of the first that day and the portal would only linger on their not-so precise coordinates for a short amount of time, a cost saving measure apparently, so he made sure to hustle over to the growing group of people.

  “Are you sure you don’t want the tickets? They’re absolutely free of charge. You could get in on the ground floor of this expedition, think of the possibilities!”

  “Yeah, no thank you. We’d rather keep meeting in secret behind our parents’ backs than sign up for a one way trip to certain death. Lets go, honey.”

  The shouting couple from earlier wandered away from the, admittedly sleezy looking, man who had given Merrick his ticket for cheap weeks prior.

  The couple passed Merrick as they walked away, which apparently drew the man’s eyes over to him because he came bustling over right away.

  “Ah! The alchemist, I hope? Unless that contraption is the weirdest chamber pot I’ve ever seen. We’ve been waiting for you. I won’t lie, I thought you’d ripped up your ticket and bailed on the expedition like so many other cowards had. It is great to see you’ve still got a sense of adventure about you!”

  “Uh, apprentice alchemist.” Merrick ignored the jab at his purple chair and cauldron combination and corrected the man, only to be waved off, “As for my ticket, I’ve got it right here. Safe and… sound…”

  Merrick pulled the tatters of what was once his ticket out of his pants pocket and tried to pass it over. He realized in that moment that he hadn’t once checked on it to make sure it hadn’t fallen victim to inertia the way his clothes had. Which, apparently, it had.

  A moment of silence passed before the man spoke up again with a strained smile on his face.

  “Well, obviously that is torn and not ripped. Huge difference, a world of difference really. Not to worry, though. We’ve got extras. The people of the Steelhearth Stronghold are too comfortable and secure in their meager existence here to risk venturing out for a new settlement, so we never managed to fill the quota we paid for.”

  Merrick thought that was a shame, really. The human race had been pushed so hard by various other forces that they barely sustained themselves within their numerous strongholds. Even after officially breaking peace with the other sapient races of the continent, finally bringing an end to a several-century-spanning war, the people seemed content to hide behind their stone walls.

  It probably didn’t help that rumors of entire settlements going missing in the dead of the night frequently circulated through taverns. That was all they were, though. Rumors.

  The land the humans had been granted to settle during the peace treaty was wild and unruly, but mostly uncontested as far as Merrick knew. There wasn’t any reason for elves to sneak in and disappear children from their cradles or for xiaoli’s to creep out of the rivers and snatch up villagers.

  “It didn’t help when they heard that the stronghold was to be independent of the Duke’s Alliance. Ignoring the fact that we’d still fall under the umbrella of the human emperor, the common folk seem to have no faith in the settlement’s ability to protect itself without paying those exorbitant protection fees.”

  Ah, yes. The reason that Merrick had decided to follow this man over any of the other escape routes he might have managed to take.

  The human empire was a bit of a misnomer, really. There wasn’t an empire so much as a collection of human strongholds and their combined armies. The human emperor, so to speak, was just the strongest human currently alive. The one that had forced the encouraging armies to sue for peace almost forty years prior.

  All of the land ceded to the humans was actually ceded to that man, who then declared that he only wanted to be ‘king of my cabin in the woods, so fuck off and figure out the logistics on your own’.

  Naturally, that left a vacuum of power that was filled by the filthy rich and politically powerful. It was only because the human emperor and showed up and killed the first fool who tried to proclaim himself king of humanity that the Duke’s Alliance had been formed by Duke Crowley, who happened to be the owner of the Cartographers Guild. He banded together most of the powerful and rich humans that had ruled or run the existing strongholds and got them to agree to a ‘Code of Conduct for the dissemination of human reparations’.

  Their hustle went as follows; they weren’t the owner of any of the human land, nobody was. You could, however, pay the Duke’s Alliance to acknowledge your claim of any plot of land within the boundaries of the wilds ceded to humanity as a whole. Not paying the Duke’s Alliance wouldn’t lead to any repercussions, lest they invoke the wrath of the human emperor, but you also wouldn’t get any of the benefits.

  The benefits were mostly limited to shared army responses and preferential trade routes, but the cost was being forced to agree to extradition treaties, paying a large tax to the Duke’s Alliance for overhead costs, being forced to implement certain laws, and an enormous amount of non-compete agreements with senior alliance members.

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “These sheep act like we’re unable to govern ourselves, or set up our own wards, walls, and wells. They’ll regret it, though, once they see the flourishing economic capital the settlement becomes when it’s not weighed down by all the governmental bloat and corruption.”

  It was at this point that the sleezy looking recruiter realized that Merrick wasn’t responding to him and just waved his hand to dismiss him, eyes set on another group of desperate looking individuals to recruit as manpower.

  It occurred to Merrick that perhaps he hadn’t gotten as good a deal as he thought. Previously, he’d been of the opinion that he’d gotten one over on the man by securing free passage through the Nexus Portal system, something that was usually vastly more expensive than a commoner could afford to do on his own. At this rate though, perhaps he should have charged for his participation.

  Merrick set his chair down near the gathering of other people for his caravan, mentally noting that there weren’t as many people as he’d hoped. More importantly, though, was that there weren’t as many carts or carriages. Those that existed were filled with crates, livestock, and other goods like processed metal goods.

  There were a couple sealed carriages, but he didn’t think he’d be able to convince anyone with enough money to purchase such a luxurious ride to let him strap his chair to their roof.

  Merrick realized there was a good chance he was going to have to bargain for spare-wheels and try to construct his own miniature cart for his chair and cauldron, unless he wanted to carry it through however many miles separated their portal exit point and their eventual settlement.

  There was, of course, always the hope that one of the other groups they’d be meeting up with would have free space.

  That was something else he’d confirmed with the sleezy man, shortly after discreetly asking of any debts or crimes followed settlers to their sovereign settlement. They didn’t, he’d double checked.

  The Steelhearth Stronghold wasn’t the only stronghold that had a recruiter for the expedition, apparently there was one or two of them in most major stronghold and at least half of the medium sized ones. Each one recruiting a group of their own artisans and laborers to be portaled out on the apogee.

  The portals themselves could only send the humans so far past their farthest relay point, something that they said they were hiring specialists to construct more of as they traveled, so the several groups would be meeting up as they traveled west toward the staked claim. The information was explained to him when he asked about potential competition in alchemical goods when pressed about what the sleezy man meant when he kept saying ‘no alchemists from this stronghold have been recruited apart from you’.

  Merrick wondered what the odds were that he might run into one his siblings or cousins before deciding they were low. They’d left alongside his mother years ago to another nearby stronghold because they were spoiled little shits who couldn’t survive on their own. As far as Merrick was concerned, that meant there shouldn’t be anybody at the new settlement who would know his identity.

  A quick review of the other people waiting for the archway to finish charging confirmed that he didn’t recognize any of them either and he’d never provided his full name to the sleezy recruiter, who had also conveniently never asked for it.

  His eyes did stall, however, over a group of rugged looking men bearing markings that resembled shackle scars and prison tattoos.

  He didn’t judge them though, they were looking for the same thing Merrick was.

  A fresh slate in life.

  Luckily, or maybe unluckily, Merrick wasn’t given too much time to debate the merits of throwing his lot in with what looked like prisoners whose only sentence outside of death was banishment because the torrential mana throughput of the apogee chose that moment to finish charging the archways and fifteen portals snapped into existence around the market square.

  “Get moving, if you’re open get moving now. Check your tickets at the portal, make sure you take your stuff with you because nobody is tossing it through behind you.”

  One of the few patrolman guards present in the market square began shouting as he waved two glowing red wands in patterns directing foot traffic.

  Merrick ignored his increasingly protesting arm muscles and lifted his purple throne in front of him before shuffling into line to go through the portal.

  Either out of happenstance or because he was moving slow due to his muscle fatigue and sleep deprivation, Merrick ended up at the end of the line for his portal. It certainly wasn’t because that group of nice gentlemen he’d just been observing were the first to go through the archway, ushered by another guard with a sharp-looking pike who didn’t follow them.

  No, that couldn’t be why, Merrick wasn’t one to judge someone by their past.

  Though, if he were going to be worried about their behavior on the other side of the teleportation, waiting until the end of the line to go in after the rear-guard of hired mercenaries would certainly be a clever decision.

  Annoyingly, about half way through the line they were made to wait as the several carts and carriages started rolling through the portal, all pulled by beasts of burden. The Nexus Portal Archway system had a nasty habit of breaking all but the most expensive self-driving enchantments, apparently.

  “Not to mention, the horses make for food meat in-case of a food shortage.” One of the mercenaries had said to another, explaining the merits of horse drawn carriages as his co-worker was complaining about having to avoid droppings during the march.

  Merrick wondered if he should have bought a few live chickens to take with him before remembering he had a stowaway in his hood.

  One that looked like it would certainly eat the chickens before he ever got the chance.

  Still, livestock was one of the known ways to transport food through the archway system as it only seemed to taint food from already deceased sources as well as fruits and vegetables, for some reason. Living creatures were able to fend off whatever the corrupting force between portal entrances was.

  Finally, the line started moving again and it was almost Merrick’s turn to go through. A quick glance over his shoulder before he finally stumbled through the portal revealed what was possible one of the most annoying things he’d noticed that day.

  The sleezy recruiter who’d been going on and on about the human duty to tame the wilds, about how people who were too afraid to venture out and settle were sheep and cowards, and who had personally promised he’d get Merrick a competitive plot for his new home slash workshop slash alchemy shop, wasn’t there.

  The greasy looking man had wandered off to ‘continue to recruit stragglers’ and just never returned.

  The deal he’d brokered for the free passage west was looking worse and worse and in that moment he almost decided to stay and try his luck paying off his debt in Steelhearth or finding somewhere else to flee to.

  “Is there a Merrick here? The church is searching for a Merrick, age early twenties and a known alchemist. Please take these posters and pass copies around, it is of the utmost importance that we locate him.”

  A quick glance toward the young-looking alchemist's stand showed her looking just as stressed as Merrick as she packed away her stand to leave. Even not knowing who Merrick was, she knew she was in possession of contraband and, with a matching occupation, was likely to end up on the church's interview list if she didn't make herself scarce.

  The missing guards came flooding into the square en masse, yelling Merrick’s name. As he backed into the portal archway, he thought he might have seen a head of disheveled blonde hair in the group of guards.

  ‘Well, at least I know she survived.’