Chapter 280 - The Adventurer (1/2)
Two days of travelling saw the Vukanovi travel past the Triforge mountains. Unfortunately, past the great range of three mountains that once housed the might of an entire civilization, there was nothing but further decay. In fact, the lack of life on the triforge mountains paled in comparison to the wastes beyond it.
At the least, the Triforge mountains had signs of civilization upon them. Some life returning to them now that Li had lifted the undead haze and sowed the seeds of life with his presence. But here, down the mountain, there truly was nothing.
Complete and utter barren stretches of cracked earth smothered over by a tar black burnt layer. Atop it, a layer of ash had built up, and each step of the Vukanovi's vine legs puffed out little clouds of ash that floated high in the air before ever so slowly falling down, as if gravity itself had cloyed into a choking heaviness in the area.
Visibility was nearly entirely shot, with thick ash fog clouding everything, and atop the burnt earth, nothing grew and nothing tread. Even if Li focused his life senses to their maximum limit, he could sense no life nearby, with the nearest beating hearts belonging to underground dwelling creatures far, far below the broken surface.
And that was to be expected. For the better part of a day, Li had ordered everyone to stay inside the Vukanovi after Mason and Mercer almost died inhaling the ashen fog. The ash was toxic, imbued with an accursed magic that scorched the brothers' throats as if a raging blaze had been lit in their innards.
Thankfully, Li had managed to cure them, and now they sat around the center of the Vukanovi, still warily holding their throats as they looked pensively at a crackling fire that emitted images of the outside world.
”I have never seen anything like this,” said Li as he sat beside Old Thane. Tia snored in his l.a.p lightly, but he could tell from the slight twitches of her tail as it curled around his knee that soon she would wake. ”This kind of environment. This kind of fog. It does not correspond to any status effect that I am familiar with.”
Zagan opened a red eye beside Li, but the demon did not do more than that, instead simply looking at the fire with a surprising amount of interest, images of the desolate landscape reflecting upon his beady crimson eye.
Everyone else looked towards Asala, knowing her as the resident scholar and know-it-all when Li was stumped.
However, Asala could only shake her head as she scribbled in her tablet. ”Tis all new to me as well. The nature of this fog confounds me, and the parched earth doth appear razed by flame, and yet, no blaze do I know of that may blacken earth for two cycles.”
”You can at least tell when the earth was torched?” said Li, nothing that two cycles meant two centuries.
Asala nodded. ”In the brief glimpse I have had of the earth, mine familiarity with earthen magics allowed me to glean when it was warped under fire.”
”I see.” Li nodded to himself. ”Then I doubt we are in an immediate threat. Unless whatever caused his fire two hundred years ago is still alive.”
”I've an idea, lad,” said Old Thane as he looked down, keeping his ears open and alert to the flow of the conversation.
Li perked up. He knew that in matters of history, he was not well versed. He knew only the history of the world in so far as what he could read from official Soleilan texts, and he knew they were heavily biased, not to mention that past a hundred years ago, whatever they recorded seemed more like heavily romanticized myth than anything resembling reality. ”Oh?”
Old Thane probably knew a lot more genuine history than Li by having lived through it and meeting others who had done the same.
”Oh?” said Li. Asala also c.o.c.ked her head, her ear twitching eagerly.
”The Third Darkening saw the end of the Triforge, that is known well, aye,” said Old Thane. ”And I must say that it was well before mine time, so I know little of it. But adventurers as old as I know well of those that have tried their luck to traverse past the forbidding Triforge.