Over the next few days, I kept trying to find a different spot to prepare our winter quarters. There were a few possible options but they all had something that made me a little leery about them. In one case, I considered the spot due to the powerful emanations from the Astral River, making me think that the location was host to a particularly dense intersection of streams within the Astral River, a place just below a Nexus in regards to the powers one could wield there. However, while that was a massive draw, the downside was that the place was otherwise in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but pine forests, rocks and a few creeks within a fairly large area around it. While I could keep myself busy by studying the intersection, the others lacked that stimulus, meaning if the winter got really bad, I would have to deal with a combination of bored Lia and bored Alex. Either of those would be a headache but when combined, I feared for life, limb and sanity. Mostly for sanity, but I had no doubt that their experimentation could easily become dangerous. What’s more, the power within the intersection seemed to be strongly aligned with Earth and Fire, not something I was tremendously interested in. So, the place was a possibility but I wasn’t too keen on it.
The other options suffered from similar problems, in some cases they lacked something I’d consider vital, in others they had the things I considered vital but not in large enough quantities to make the spot attractive or they had the vital things but had some large flaw, too. I made note of a few of them, simply because they were places I wanted to visit at some point, even if we didn’t spend the winter there and by spending the winter in this general area, I would have the opportunity. My cloak meant I could cover a fairly large area without too much trouble, especially once the rain and hail gave way to snow.
When we finally reached the mountains above the city, I could take a better look, just like the others could. The city was quite large, easily twice the size of my already sizeable hometown but what stood out even more to me was that I could see multiple large and empty areas, none of which looked as if they had been used as fields. Instead, they were all covered in concrete and the sheer size made it unlikely for them to be parking lots or something along those lines. Judging from the destroyed objects, at least four of these empty areas used to be airports, making me wonder why any city on Earth needed to have four of them this close together, or why there was another fairly empty area on the other side of town, too. Maybe some other weirdness stemming from the change had moved the airports here, just like some weirdness had created additional roads and buildings in the Charlands. By now, I should be able to accept any sort of oddity but somehow, my brain hadn’t become accustomed to this strange, new world of anything goes.
“Where do you think we should set up?” I asked Lia and Luna, looking down from the ridge we were standing on. Between the city and us, there was only a long, gentle slope, filled with countless pines, a slight contrast to some of the other, much steeper slopes and their occasional cliff.
“Not too central, somewhere on the outskirts, maybe with a possible escape into the mountains,” Lia argued, her eyes scanning the horizon, “If it were possible, I’d prefer a northern slope, but we don’t really have that option, do we?”
“Look at that fairly high mountain,” I pointed to one of the mountains further to the north-west of us, rising high into the sky, right at the edge of the city, “We could try and look what the northern slope looks like, depending on the details, we might get a place that is shaded most of the day,” I reasoned, knowing why she was so interested in that side of a mountain. We might get some trouble with snow if we build our shelter too deep into a valley, as such a place could easily become buried under a snowdrift but I was fairly confident that I’d be able to dig us out if something like that happened.
Luckily, we didn’t need to bother with the usual primary needs one had to address. Water was something I could conjure readily and I could easily construct a shelter, no matter where. Given that we wanted to stay for a few months in this area, I was willing to put in extra effort and go that extra mile to make sure the shelter we had was as suitable as I could make it, with all the bells and whistles. Or, in our case, with all the shrines, ritual rooms and laboratories, allowing us to perform our various services, experiments and crimes against nature and reality.
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“Would you mind if I try and see if there’s a special spot for Lady Hecate in the area? Knowing us, we’ll turn the shelter into a library and shrine anyway, so making it extra special should be good, right?” Luna asked, an impish grin on her face. Chuckling a little, I had to agree with her reasoning, we had the habit of setting up shrines for Lady Hecate but at the end of the day, we were getting paid quite well for that. Maybe not in coin or currency but in EXP, information and the occasional boon, on top of the various benefits Luna reaped as Her Chosen Child. Hel, even I was receiving a great deal of benefit from the association with Her, not only the powerful blessing I had received originally but also the connection between Luna, the Grandmother and myself.
Thinking of that connection made me realise that I should try and see if I had grown enough to contact the Grandmother beyond the few, simple attempts I had made thus far or the occasional communication in a dream that might be real or it might be just a figment of my imagination. With dreams, it was often quite difficult to tell, though the dreams connecting me to Lady Hecate were an exception to that rule. Somehow, I knew deep within myself that those had always been real.
Together, we made our way northwards. For a moment, I considered heading down the slope and through the city but given that I had seen movement down there before and I knew just how dangerous the Shattered had become, I wasn’t about to blunder into an area like that. These mountains, in comparison, were something we had been trudging through for almost a month by now, so all of us were fairly well acquainted with the dangers they could pose.
So, we stuck on the ridge, circumventing the western side of the large mountain towering above the city, even if it meant a fairly long detour and some rough terrain making our path even harder. But compared to moving through an unknown city filled with potentially lethal enemies, I was taking the longer route any day of the week, especially as there was more than enough time to explore the city if we really stayed in the area the entire winter. Months of time, just to explore the area and experiment, until travelling further north wasn’t the chore it was at the moment.
Still, chore or not, we continued onwards, knowing that we would soon be able to set up our shelter. Over the last few days, travelling had become harder and harder, thanks to the weather and the continuously worsening paths but hopefully, this would be it for the rest of the year.
As we walked around the large mountain, I noticed a strange sensation coming from below us, somewhat offset into the direction of the city. It was weird, not something I could readily recognise but there was a faint familiarity to it. Not enough to put a name to the sensation, other than the faint feelings of cautious dread it evoked, but I could sense enough to make me curious. Whatever was in that direction, possibly in the city on the other side of the mountain, possibly in the mountain itself, it was powerful and there was something about it I had encountered before. Maybe something similar to the Withered, or to the super Shattered we had encountered recently, or something else entirely. Whatever the case, it would be well worth it to explore and figure out what was going on there.
Finally, about an hour before dawn would break we managed to make our way around the mountain. We had been following a rocky creek for quite a bit of time, until we had to climb once more, moving through a saddle between the large mountain to our east and a somewhat smaller mountain to our west. Now, we were past that saddle and could see the city to our east and the flat plains behind it. Below, heading towards the city, was yet another creek and numerous large rocks, cliffs and dips, all of which could be used to provide us with a bit of shelter from the elements until we found a suitable spot to make something to last us through the winter. I’d have to think about what sort of shelter would be suitable for to house us for such a long time. A cave, as I was usually digging for a night, just wasn’t good enough to house us for months.