On the day of departure, Fondval woke up in a strange silence.
Not the heavy silence of the night of the attack, nor the tense one of that first meeting on the square. A different kind of silence, calmer, broken only by the usual sounds of a village getting ready to start its day. The residents already knew what was about to happen. Emrys had explained to them the day before that he didn't just intend to take them somewhere else: he would move all of Fondval, houses, fields, stables, and animals included.
They had listened to his words and agreed to trust him.
But that didn't mean everyone truly believed he was capable of it.
After all, even knowing his powers, the idea remained hard to wrap their heads around. Moving a person was one thing. Teleporting a handful of people was another. But making an entire village vanish, only to reappear somewhere else, went beyond anything most of the residents could really picture.
So they hadn't packed a thing.
They simply waited.
Emrys, meanwhile, had already been up for a while. He'd spent a good part of the night sitting against the wall of the inn, eyes closed, mentally running through the plan he was about to follow. He wasn't especially worried about his power itself, but the sheer scale of what he was about to accomplish demanded a certain amount of caution. A mistake involving one person could be corrected. A mistake involving an entire village would be a whole different story.
He eventually got up, stretched briefly, and left the inn.
His first task was to precisely mark out the area that would be transported.
*
Torvald, the man with the pitchfork, saw him pass by his house as he finished tying up his most stubborn goats to a stake. One of them yanked hard on its lead, forcing him to hold it back before it could go join the others.
"Where are you off to?" he asked.
"Walking the village perimeter."
Torvald frowned.
"Walking the perimeter. What for?"
"It's necessary for what I'm about to do."
The man studied him for a few seconds, then shrugged. He'd already figured out Emrys wouldn't give him any more explanation than that.
"Another one of your mysterious little things..."
Emrys didn't answer and kept walking.
He crossed past the last of the houses, then reached the fields to the east. He kept going a while longer, until he'd passed the halfway point of the wild meadow where residents sometimes let their livestock graze. There, he stopped and surveyed the surroundings.
He needed to start far enough out that all of Fondval would be included within the boundary.
"Trace On."
A blade appeared in front of him.
It had no particular name, no exceptional property. Emrys grabbed it and drove it into the ground up to the hilt, leaving only part of the blade exposed.
He then stepped back a few paces, checked his position, and resumed walking.
About fifty paces further, he stopped.
"Trace On."
A second sword appeared.
It joined the first.
Emrys kept going this way, methodically making his way around the village. At regular intervals, a new blade would appear before being planted into the ground. He wasn't trying to form a geometrically perfect circle; his main concern was making sure the boundary properly encompassed every part of Fondval.
The fields were included.
Then the pastures, passing by the stables before heading toward the farthest houses, not forgetting the low forest to the north.
Even some of the paths leading out of the village ended up within the perimeter.
Several times, residents caught sight of Emrys planting his swords. Some paused for a moment, but no one actually came to interrupt him. They already knew his goal and figured these preparations were surely connected to it.
One group, however, didn't just watch from their houses.
"What's that?" Rou asked, pushing a wheelchair with Iklia in it, accompanied by another, younger child.
Emrys kept walking.
"A sword."
Rou stayed quiet for a moment.
"Yeah, we can see that."
Iklia gave a faint smile.
"Why are you planting them all around the village?"
"You'll see soon enough."
Rou sighed.
"Don't you get tired of always giving the same answer?"
"Not in the slightest."
The three children exchanged a glance before continuing on behind him. The youngest had already started to fall behind, but Rou stopped pushing Iklia's wheelchair and waited for him.
Emrys didn't ask them to leave. He felt a lot more at ease around the children's curiosity than the gloomy atmosphere currently hanging over the adults.
Though this one isn't exactly free of negative feelings either, Emrys thought, glancing at the aura radiating off Rou.
I should deal with that sooner or later.
In the meantime, Emrys simply carried on with his work.
*
The circle gradually spread out around Fondval.
Emrys regularly checked the distance between the blades and adjusted their position whenever needed. If the swords were even 5 centimeters off, it could cause a real disaster.
Good thing I've become a pro at judging distances. Got a built-in compass in my eye, as they say.
One sword after another, the perimeter closed in.
Rou and his two companions had stopped asking questions. They'd gotten used to receiving the same answers and now simply watched the successive appearances of the blades.
When Emrys passed near the pastures most residents used for their animals, several of them stepped out of his way before calmly going back to what they'd been doing.
Eventually, Emrys reached the north side of the village.
He planted a new blade between two trees, then continued around the low forest. One last stretch remained.
A few minutes later, he found himself about fifty meters from the very first sword he'd planted.
The circle was nearly closed.
He planted the last blade near the well where Aldric had once spotted a creature coming to fetch water, then stepped back a few paces.
This time, he didn't move again.
He closed his eyes and checked the position of every blade, the distance separating them, and the different zones they marked out. His attention moved in turn over the houses, the fields, the pastures, and the more distant buildings.
Everything was included.
He opened his eyes again.
"That's it."
The youngest boy, who had just finally caught up, lifted his head.
"What's it?"
Emrys turned back to the three children.
"Let's go."
Rou rolled his eyes.
"Of course."
They set off back toward the center of the village.
*
The rest of the morning passed quickly.
The residents finished up the few tasks they still had left, not really to prepare for departure, since they had nothing to pack, but simply to set their affairs in order before the process began.
Lira stayed in her shop for a moment. She stepped behind her counter one last time, tidied an item that didn't actually need tidying, then walked out and closed the door.
Bern did the same with his forge.
He put out the fire, made sure the embers wouldn't catch again, and stood in front of his workshop for a few seconds before leaving. The forge would be traveling with them, but the gesture still carried something different that day.
Joran also stopped by his house before heading to the square. Rou came to get him when it was time to leave, and the two of them made their way to the center together.
Iklia's grandfather, for his part, knew his granddaughter was with Rou, and he trusted him completely with her safety. With his mind at ease, he stepped out of his house.
By around noon, all the residents had finally gathered.
No one said it out loud, but nearly everyone carried the same fear. That Emrys hadn't told them the whole truth, and that they'd end up forced to abandon their homes after all.
They made an effort to hold on to hope, and they knew their worry didn't really make sense. Emrys had nothing to gain by lying to them about this. But they also couldn't quite wrap their minds around the idea of moving an entire village, and everything that made it up, all at once.
Emrys arrived a few minutes later.
His mask was already in place. His armor materialized around his body in a burst of dark light, gradually covering his torso and limbs before settling into place.
He scanned the square.
"Is everyone here?"
Joran quickly checked around him.
"Looks like it."
Emrys nodded.
"The preparations are complete."
This time, more heads turned toward him.
Several residents looked around, seriously wondering what was actually about to happen and how Emrys was going to pull off what he'd said he would.
Torvald finally spoke up.
"And us?"
"Just stay where you are."
No one moved.
Emrys then took a deep breath.
He had nothing left to prepare.
Everything was in place.
He closed his eyes.
His magical energy began to flow.
At first, nothing changed.
Then a light appeared in the distance.
The first sword lit up.
A second answered it.
Then a third.
Within seconds, the blades scattered around Fondval all began to glow.
The residents caught the first glimmers between the houses.
Others appeared behind the trees.
Then beyond the fields.
The phenomenon spread out in every direction.
Emrys began his incantation.
"I am the bone of my sword."
His voice carried all the way to the edges of the square.
The swords began glowing even more intensely.
"Steel is my body, and fire is my blood."
A fresh wave of energy swept across the ground.
"I have created over a thousand blades."
The lights spread from one blade to the next.
Around Fondval, the various points of the circle began to be connected by glowing lines.
Emrys continued.
"Unaware of this place, nor aware of this age."
Outside the square, the trees were now lit by the glow coming off the swords. The fields bathed in this unfamiliar light, and residents closest to their windows could see the phenomenon continuing on behind their houses.
Emrys kept reciting.
"I summoned countless swords to regain my home."
The circle closed in.
"Yet the world is increasingly obstructing my path and I cannot avoid these obstacles."
The glowing lines thickened and gradually rose into the air.
The energy no longer just followed the ground; it now formed a massive envelope around the village.
The final words of the incantation rang out.
"Thus my refuge and my consolation..."
Emrys opened his eyes again.
"...are Unlimited Blade Works."
The energy burst outward around Fondval.
Not in the form of an explosion.
The light simply surged from the swords and rose in every direction, forming an immense dome that enveloped the houses, the fields, the stables, the low forest, and every resident standing within the perimeter.
The circle was complete.
Nothing was missing.
For a few seconds, the entire village was wrapped in that light.
Then the world disappeared.
Everything stopped.
The wind, the sounds, the voices.
Even the animals seemed to vanish in that brief instant when Fondval left its place.
And yet there was no sensation of falling.
The residents stayed exactly where they stood.
Then, almost at once, everything came back.
The sounds returned.
The air moved again.
Feet found the stability of solid ground once more.
No one spoke right away.
A child looked down at his hands, then at the ground.
A woman slowly turned her head toward the houses, and they were still there.
So was the forge.
The stables.
The fields.
The well.
Nothing had disappeared, and nothing had been destroyed.
Even the animals were still exactly where they'd been.
The transfer had worked perfectly.
But one thing was different.
The sky.
Several residents looked up, and more than one felt their knees buckle at the shock of what they saw.
What they were looking at bore no resemblance to the sky they knew.
The environment itself had changed.
The air was charged with a particular kind of energy, perceptible even to those who couldn't sense magic with any real precision. It seemed to seep into everything around them.
Rou stayed silent.
Iklia was looking in the same direction as him.
Bern had stepped forward slightly, studying his surroundings as if trying to figure out how an entire village could have been moved without a single house being damaged.
Joran finally turned to Emrys.
"Where are we?"
Emrys didn't answer right away.
He looked around, checking one last time that the transfer had indeed carried everything he'd intended. His haki confirmed what he already knew.
All of Fondval was there, in its entirety.
He had succeeded.
Emrys then turned to face the residents.
His red cloak lifted slightly behind him.
He spread his arms.
"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to ..."
Every eye turned to him.
He let a brief pause hang in the air.
"Unlimited Blade Works."