Ollivan sped ahead of them and leapt onto the dirt road, winding parallel to the sloshing river and the swath of bountiful fields drowning in the rain. Homesteads dotted the land and while Connor spotted stables where they could take shelter, Ollivan was too far ahead of them to flag down, and running through the thick, wet fields of corn and wheat with Riona in tow didn’t appeal either. Ahead, across the two-carriage bridge, was Drohoven, one of the main settlements in the southern part of the continent.

They hurried across the wide, arching bridge and found themselves among orderly houses on well-kept streets, branching off in multiple, right-angle directions. A single-carriage cobblestone road followed the river upstream, deeper into the town. Had it not been raining, Connor would have taken the time to find the landmarks he’d read about in books and heard about from travellers: the school, where he would have attended, had his parents not schooled him at home. The famed domed structures that protected important buildings and wealthy manors from fae attack during the war, some of which were still standing. He could smell the marsh further upstream by the Hovenminger River, a tributary to the river they’d been following through Stovel’s Wood, called the Neverwater...

Everything about Drohoven exhilarated Connor. It was not the strangely quiet, burnt grassy plains that made up all of Ashdown. Drohoven held opportunity. Knowledge, and a chance to learn more...

To find out what happens, listen to the rest of the episode!