“Not this one,” I sighed, already exhausted after only three hours into our search. To my right, Azarus grimaced and nodded over his folded arms, while Aveline and Fade…

  Well, they were off in their own little world, literally chasing butterflies. Both of them were doing it, actually, and good on them.

  At least a few of us were enjoying this drudgery.

  I’d never actually done a house search before. In my entire life back on Earth, I’d lived in that old, faded, butter-yellow house with Mom and Dad, all the way up to my abduction here to Vereden. And after that, I’d essentially been a vagrant for the past year and change, either bumming it in slave plantations, military camps, inns, or undercover hideouts. Now that I was actually trying to settle down and pick out a home for me and my little family…

  Well, I was finding it indescribably dull.

  I’d forgotten to ask Renauld and Liora for help navigating Blutstein yesterday, before they’d set off to move into their new apartment together. I hadn’t even thought to ask them where it was, either, and so Azarus and I were left to ourselves as we set out into the city to find the properties on the list Wenzel had given me. Sena had declined to come along with us, even though she was going to be coming with Azarus when he moved in with me. I honestly think the lazy cat didn’t care a whit where we stayed, considering she’d spent the sum total of her life living in a volcanic cave.

  Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have cared either. Any building had to be better.

  No offense, Shurenga.

  I’d had to bother more than one different passerby on the streets for directions, as we hiked all across the city to find them. Luckily enough, none of the potential homes had been on the lower layer of the city, which made sense, I suppose. It’s not like the upper echelons of society, which is what most Knights were, would be caught dead slumming it with the proles.

  After all, they’d worked so hard to rise above that station.

  Bah.

  Our little group must have circumvented the entire middle layer by now, as we inspected the various towers left behind after the war. I was lucky that Aveline and Fade seemed to have bonded as closely as they had, as I’d elected to take both of them along on the hike this turned out to be. Aveline had been excited at the possibility of seeing more of the city, and my Familiar was just glad to get out of the house. Neither seemed all that interested in where we lived, so long as it was together.

  Which was nice, I suppose, but that meant the decision fell on Azarus and me. Well, more like me. Azarus seemed unwilling to gainsay me on anything I said, considering I was offering to let him stay with us at no charge.

  And I had not liked any of the three different properties we’d seen so far. All of them had felt so…so…sterile, I suppose. Pretentious and gaudy, like the previous owners had been very much compensating for something. There was no feeling of comfort to be found in any of them, and so I’d almost immediately vetoed them in favor of the next on the list.

  They hadn’t been a place where I felt like I could provide Aveline a real home. She might not care now, but I expected she would in the future.

  I sighed again and rubbed my mouth with one hand. To my further irritation, I felt my elongated ears twitch at the annoyance I already felt, only magnifying the feeling. I still hadn’t gotten used to that, even after all these months. Brushing it off, I looked down at the stack of loose-leaf parchment in my hands and shuffled them.

  Once again, I had no idea where the next one was. Looking around, I spotted what looked like a general store of some kind here on the middle layer. The door was open wide, with a variety of goods displayed in the glass windows. Above the door was a sign with no words on it, merely a mildly humorous depiction of two crossed carrots over a sheaf of lettuce. It almost looked like it was a parody of a Knightly coat of arms.

  Ugh. That just reminded me that I likely needed one of those myself.

  I brushed it off and jerked my head at it to Azarus, sending a brief thought toward Fade to keep an eye on Aveline. At his confirmation, my friend and I walked into the store, immediately besieged by the scent of fresh produce and a startlingly cold breeze. That, at least, soothed the irritation I felt at the irritatingly hot day it was outside.

  Thank God for climate enchantments. Just as good as air conditioning back on Earth.

  “Welcome to the Carrot and Crown!” A cheery young voice called from the counter. Following it to the source, I found probably the youngest Gnoll I’d ever seen manning it, a veritable kit with bright orange fur and a white crest on their head. If I had to compare her to a human child, I’d probably say she looked about thirteen. “Can I help you?”

  Behind the pre-teen, I could see a much, much older grey-furred Gnoll, snoring away the day in a rocking chair.

  I smiled at the kid. “Ah, yeah. I’m looking for directions? Do you…know where I can find this place?” I said, handing the parchment over to them.

  The kit scanned the page briefly with curious yellow eyes, before looking back up at me with a bright smile. “Nope!” She said cheerily, before promptly kicking backward with one foot. It jarred into the slat of the elder Gnoll’s chair, jostling him awake and making his eyes shoot open wide.

  “Huh, wha…” Was all he managed to get out before the kit shoved my parchment into his face.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “Grandpa, this man is asking directions!” She said brightly. “Do you know where this is?!”

  ‘Grandpa’ glowered at the kit with cloudy eyes of a similar shade to his grandchild at the rude awakening, before taking a closer look first at Azarus and me, and then the parchment. He snorted. “Aye, I know where that is.”

  When he didn’t elaborate, I raised an eyebrow at him. “And…?”

  “And I’ll tell ye,” The greyfur started smugly, smirking at me. “If’n ye buy some carr-ow ow ow!” He doubled over in sudden pain from the swift kick the kit had directed at his shins. The older Gnoll outright hissed at his apparent granddaughter, a distinctly animal-like sound. She just hissed back at him. “Little shit. Fine, fine.” He stood up creakily from his chair and approached the counter, leaning on it at frowning at me. “That there is pointing toward the old lighthouse.”

  I quirked an amused eyebrow at the old Gnoll. “Lighthouse? That doesn’t sound right. It’s supposed to be a home.”

  “And it is, ye idjit,” The old Gnoll said irritably. “See, some thirty years ago, the old King got it into his head that our old lighthouse wasn’t ‘grand’ enough for the capital. So, he decommissioned the old one, and had a much bigger tower built on the opposite side o’ the bay. Expensive, it were, all made o’ marble and everythin’. And then,” He said, speaking louder before I could interject. “The old one were abandoned and put up for sale. Some Knight, Graham or somethin’, bought it up and renovated it to be a home for his family. Fell on hard times around the start of the war, though. Last I heard it were surrendered to the crown after all his pups karked it. Ye can even see it from here. Just look up and to the right, it’s on the bluff.”

  I exchanged a glance with Azarus and approached the window the old Gnoll had pointed toward. Looking out of it, I squinted at the bluff that rose out of…Hengiskar, I believe, jutting out over the sea. Perched upon it, I thought I could see a tall, thick spire capped with a glass dome in the distance. To my surprise, I noticed that it was outside of the walls that protected Blutstein, and thus had to be outside of the wards.

  That was…odd. Who would willingly choose to live outside the protection of the famously strong wards of one of the capitals?

  Despite myself…

  I was intrigued.

  I was interrupted from my gazing by the sound of the old Gnoll clearing his throat loudly. When I looked back, he was nearly scowling at us. “Now, are ye goin’ to buy something or not?”

  I snorted, rolling my eyes a little. “Sure. Ah…” I glanced around before spotting something. “How much for a bag of apples?”

  It was a little past lunch, after all, and I’m sure Aveline was hungry.

  ……………………………..

  I’d already decided that this was going to be the last stop we did for the day, because I was frankly tired of trekking through the city. Therefore, our little group took a leisurely approach toward the apparent lighthouse Wenzel was trying to pawn off on me. Once down in the lower layer of the city, I was…surprised at how much I was enjoying it down here, compared to the much wealthier middle layer. Sure, there were more likely to be homeless people down here, but it also seemed more real in comparison. These were hard-working, salt-of-the-earth people. Traders, farmers, merchants, craftsmen, sailors, and more. The scent of the sea was much more prevalent in the lower layer as well, especially as we drew closer to the harbor.

  All and all, it was a surprisingly relaxing experience, after all of the political maneuvering I’d been doing lately.

  Because of how slow we were going, it took us maybe an hour to reach the very busy side gate to the city adjacent to the harbor. As we approached it, I scooped up Aveline to put her on my shoulders so I wouldn’t lose her in the crowd, to her delight. The guards barely glanced our way before waving us through the gigantic, wide-open doors and getting back to screaming at a merchant and the broken wheel on his wagon. Once we were through, the crowds thinned considerably once we veered away from the main path and up towards the bluff that held the lighthouse.

  However, halfway up the approach, I was a bit surprised to sense something. So much so that I stopped in the middle of the path.

  Azarus paused mid-bite through one of the apples and turned to me. “Somethin’ wrong?”

  “Ah…” I scratched my chin. “You know how we left the wards?” I asked him, to his confused, accompanying nod. It was very easy to tell when you left the nearly all-powerful wards of Blutstein. The sensation was almost like passing through an electrified screen of air it was so palpable. “Well…we just passed into another set of them.”

  “Really?” Azarus blinked at me. “I didn’t feel a thing.”

  “Yeah, it’s slight, but it’s there. And…” I furrowed my brow in confusion. “It…almost feels like the Blutstein wards. Just…weaker.”

  Azarus had no answer to that, and frankly, I had nothing more to add. Not until I saw what was causing the ward field.

  I got my answer shortly.

  From up on my shoulders, Aveline was high enough to see the lighthouse first, cresting over the hill we were hiking. I heard her gasp in delight before she began struggling to get down from my shoulders. I obliged her, and once her feet were on the ground, she took off up the hill with Fade running after her and barking. I chuckled, and Azarus and I followed.

  I have to say, though. Once I actually got a good look at the lighthouse…

  I was almost instantly sold.

  Something I hadn’t noticed from a distance was that this wasn’t just a lighthouse. There was an actual house up here, too, and not just another tower in the Blutstinien manner. This was a proper brick house attached to the lighthouse, with its own separate slate roof. It was a good size, too, bigger than the old brick house Azarus had built back in Addersfield. It certainly wasn’t a manor like Draymoor, but it was still nice and comfy, two stories tall and maybe a few thousand square feet in acreage. The span of the bluff was blocked off by a wooden fence with its own gate, wrenched open by Aveline so she could race ahead and inspect the overgrown garden in the yard. The entire blue wasn’t surrounded by fencing, though. As I stepped further inside the gate, I could see that most of it was just open air with a perfect view of the sea.

  The call of sea birds filled the air as I inspected the state of the property with Azarus to my side. Luckily for me, it didn’t seem to have fallen into disrepair, as we circled the property. The windows were intact, both on the house and in the lighthouse cap. The stone work was in good condition, too, and neither of us could see any cracks in the foundation. Frankly, it looked like this Sir Graham had taken good care of both structures and had only just stepped out for a walk. Neither of us tried to enter either the ground-floor doors to the house or the lighthouse, but I don’t think we needed to. Between Azarus and I, we were more than handy enough to fix up any interior issues that might be present.

  “Pretty good,” Azarus eventually grunted, sounding fairly satisfied. “Needs some work, though. I see a good spot I can set up a forge behind the lighthouse.”

  I nodded silently, rubbing my chin for a moment. “That, and we could just live in the house, and set up the lighthouse for workshops…maybe even a separate kitchen.” I laughed, shaking my head and drawing Azarus’s attention. “But to be honest, that’s not even why I decided this is the one.”

  “Yeah?” Azarus asked, looking at me from the corner of his eye. “Why?”

  “…it’s the color.”

  While the lighthouse itself was quarried from large slabs of sturdy grey stone, the house was another matter.

  Those bricks weren’t red.

  They were a faintly yellow color.

  “Yeah…” I breathed, smiling to myself. “I can make this a home.”