Awkwardly, I stumbled out of the portal, which collapsed behind my back only moments later. The ghostly blue light emanating from it also disappeared. But even as my eyes adjusted to the dark surroundings, I noticed from the stench that everything had worked out and we were in the wolf’s den.
Qu Ji must have found the animal smell unsettling, not knowing that the wolf was far away. With one of his spears in his hands, he just crept towards the cave exit. I let him go, a little caution never hurt anyone. I, on the other hand, relaxed a bit, due to my previous experiences with portals, I expected something to go wrong until the very end.
Unfortunately, there was no trace of Orthok in the cave. Even when I stepped outside after Qu Ji, the hunter was not to be seen. Apparently, he had already gone on his way. That was really a pity. Not only did I miss the only familiar face far and wide, but I also lost a reliable and knowledgeable companion. The journey through the Devastation would be longer and more dangerous without Orthok.
Only the day before yesterday we had had breakfast here together. On the day I had left for Annabel’s estate, he had wanted to stay in the cave. When I didn’t return, he had two options: to go on a search or to wait for me here. He probably still lacked the strength for the search; he must have been waiting for me the day before, so we only missed each other by a few hours. These thoughts gave me new hope. Maybe we could still catch up with him.
I quickly checked the cave again, but apart from the four magic stones, there was nothing useful there. I applied my knowledge spell to the stones, learning their magical potential, then selected two of them and absorbed the magic from them. My mana supply increased from 99 to 147. I took the remaining two stones with me in the storage ring.
Now nothing held me in this place. We still had a few hours of daylight, and I didn’t want to waste the time. I called Qu Ji and we set off for the river.
It was already dawn when we arrived at the grove next to the ford where I had fought the monster fish. I went to the spot where the ashes from my fire at the time still lay and unpacked some supplies and the cooking pot with accessories from the storage ring. “Hey,” I said to Qu Ji, pointing to the stuff, “can you take care of dinner? I have something to do.” He couldn’t understand me, but the hint was unmistakable.
After one of his usual bows, he took the cooking pot and headed for the river with it. Without wasting time, I conjured up strength and speed and ran. If I remembered correctly, the place I was going to wasn’t that far away.
With the buffs, it only took me about half an hour to reach the lightning field. In the fading daylight, it was very easy to see in Magic Sight. I approached to within two paces of the orange glowing ground domes and then cast the powerful knowledge spell on it.
The knowledge that the enchanted piece of ground stored energy and that movement near it caused lightning discharges was not new to me. But I got the knowledge I had hoped for anyway, though not completely: the spell revealed four unknown magical symbols, but their meaning was not revealed to me. I looked closely: similar to the riddle at the gate of the mansion, the first two symbols seemed to have several layers, as if there were other signs hiding behind them. This was not the case with the other two.
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I looked in my symbol library, the four characters were stored but remained grayed out. I made the first character appear in the air some distance in front of me and shouted, “Lightning!” but nothing happened. The second sign also turned ineffective, only with the third there was a small discharge and it smelled like ozone.
Well, that was easy. I colored the symbol in the library orange and headed back to Qu Ji. It was already quite dark, so I created a ball of light over my right shoulder, which did a good job of lighting my way. However, the light was only enough for the immediate area, so I was a bit off course, but then I could make out the bonfire in the distance and headed for it.
On the way, I thought about the other symbols on the lightning field. One or more of them had to be responsible for collecting and storing energy. The others had to be responsible for the “motion detection,” which made them interesting to me. I just had no idea what the layers behind them were for and how to decipher them.
Then I was so close to the fire I could smell the food and that banished all other thoughts from my mind. The timing was good, Qu Ji had apparently finished cooking and we ate together. After the meal, I collected the dishes and went to the river to clean them. I felt that Qu Ji reacted with surprise to this, but to me this was the normal course of things: when one did the cooking, the other did the dishes. That’s how things worked in a communal living arrangement.
As I scrubbed the cooking pot with grass and sand and saw the campfire shining through the bushes, the thought occurred to me that Orthok was probably sitting by the fire right now in the same way. Probably not even very far away. Of course, the hunter was experienced and cautious, he would probably hide his fire rather than be discovered. On the other hand, maybe he wanted to give me a chance to find him. It was worth a try.
I returned the clean dishes to the fire and conjured up another flare to climb a tree near the riverbank. Once at the top, I turned the light off again, got out the telescope and looked for a campfire in the distance.
It wasn’t easy scanning a large black area, but I persisted, scanning one area after another until my efforts were rewarded with a small golden spark. The distance could not be estimated under these conditions, but I was determined to reduce it in any case. I looked for conspicuous stars in the appropriate direction and then climbed back down. It would be a short night.
Once on the ground, I packed our belongings back into the ring, cast Strength and Speed spells on Qu Ji and renewed the spells on me. Then I summoned the ball of light over my shoulder again and we took off running.
It was a wild night run through the Devastation, I kept checking the path ahead of us for magical hazards and Qu Ji was hopefully paying attention to other threats, because I wasn’t in a position to take that on as well. Sometimes we heard sounds of battle from afar, there was victory and death in the darkness, but no one had ventured into the circle of light that moved through the night along with us.
Orthok (I wanted to believe it was him) seemed to keep his campfire going all night with purpose. Three times we stopped and I climbed a tree to check and correct our course. Each time the fire was there and a little closer, guiding us through the darkness like a lighthouse guides a ship through a stormy sea.
And so it happened that with the first rays of the rising sun we reached the camp, which was located at the edge of a group of trees. But there was no one at the fire, we found only a abandoned resting place of grass and branches. While I was looking around, there was a rustling in the bushes and a grinning Orthok came out: "Morning, Jason! I was hoping you'd show up, but you traveling in the company of an Irichian slave warrior is a bit unexpected."