Nym floated about fifty feet off the ground and scried deep into the earth. He’d spent the day tracing connections in his target area, going deeper and deeper towards the center, which was apparently far, far underground. That was annoying, if he was being honest. He was sick of having to go underground to resolve problems. It would be nice if just once, some ancient, evil, cursed thing could exist in plain sight.
He wasn’t surprised though. It spread primarily through the underground channels that either naturally existed or that the scarabs themselves created, like pipes pumped full of arcana. The difference was that instead of trying to kill him and raise him as an undead, the scarabs just spread a contagion that made anything nearby sicken and die.
Admittedly, that wasn’t much of a difference as far as the living people were concerned, but it did make it easier to reduce casualties. The scarabs weren’t running anyone down trying to kill them. Though in all fairness, there weren’t really any people there, and they would attack someone if they happened to find a person who was uncorrupted.
Nym was sure he’d found the talisman finally. Of course, he’d been sure the last time too, and the time before that. Every time he thought he’d found the center, there’d been another link to the chain. Now though, everything had circled around this one spot.
He just needed to find the talisman, which was something of a problem since it was apparently really, really deep underground. He’d gone down a few hundred feet already and hadn’t found the source yet. If he didn’t hit it soon, he was going to bump up against the range limit of his scry anchor, which was a problem since nothing else he had could see through solid objects.
Then the worst-case scenario came true: he found the bottom, and the talisman wasn’t there. It was just a spot where the paths intersected and tangled up with each other. There was nothing for him to do but kill the scarabs down there and keep looking. He even flew down to stand on the frozen dirt to make sure there was nothing lower, as deep down as he could go.
“It’s got to be here,” he muttered. “Where else could it be?”
The infestation certainly looked like it had started there, but when he thought about it, that didn’t make sense. The talisman would have to have been hundreds of feet underground, and there were no caves or tunnels that he’d found. It could have been buried, but he couldn’t think of any reason to bury it so deep, and even if it had been, who’d dug it back up?
Maybe it was just a coincidental intersection that happened to be near the center of the area he’d mapped out. Or maybe he’d mapped it out wrong. Either way, short of actually excavating a quarter mile deep mine shaft, he’d checked it as thoroughly as possible. There had to be something he was missing.
Nym flew back up and sat down on a cushion of air surrounded by a thick bubble to block the wind. He pulled out the map he’d been scribbling over to note locations. He knew it wasn’t entirely accurate, neither the map itself or his notations. Whoever had drawn it had made some generous assumptions about the landscape and no part of it was to scale. Nym had done his best to compensate for those errors, but he was tempted to draw his own map instead.
Being able to stand three miles up in the sky and see fine details on the ground would probably make for a more accurate map than what he had. Adding long-range scrying to that would make it even better. It didn’t need to be pretty or finely detailed for his purposes either. It just needed to have everything spaced out properly. The downside of that was that he’d probably have to redo all his work from yesterday.
He pulled out a fresh sheet of paper and started marking it down as best he could while comparing it against the notes he’d put on the old map. It was going to be a long, tedious day.
* * *
Three days later, Nym found he had new respect for cartographers. Maps were time-consuming to make, even if he wasn’t worried about them being pretty. He’d finally finished recreating the northlands, then spent a few hours copying that over a second time just in case. Only then did he start marking known infestation sites and the paths that connected them together.
Once he saw it all on a map that was accurately sized and scaled, it was obvious what the problem was. He’d been completely off on a center point because the old map had gotten the coast wrong by more than a hundred miles. Nym’s surveying painted a picture that pointed towards the water, or more specifically, towards an old ship locked in the ice just off the coast.
Nym flew over the frozen landscape until he reached the ship, then sent a short range scrying spell down into it. It was half-rotted and half-frozen, with vast empty holds and a number of corpses entombed in the ice. They had bronzed skin and thick black hair in a way that reminded him of the Byramese, but it wasn’t quite the same. He also didn’t recognize the ship type from his time on their docks, but he didn’t trust his knowledge of ships enough to be able to say if that meant anything.
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Wherever they were from, it looked like the ship had been stuck there for years. Ice had grown up over the sides and the weather had destroyed the sails. A number of holes had formed in the hull, and the only thing that kept it above the water was the fact that it was literally anchored in the ice. He didn’t think he could physically get into the interior without resorting to magic to break through all the ice clogging up the place.
Fortunately, he didn’t need to in order to scout it out. Unfortunately, there was no talisman in there. He hadn’t expected there to be, since there were no scarabs either, but he’d been hoping that his days of mapping things out had pointed him in the right direction. It seemed like he’d missed the mark again, unless…
Nym constructed his long-range communication spell and linked it to Archmage Veran. [Do you have a minute?]
Nothing came back for about thirty seconds, then he heard the archmage’s voice in his head. [I can spare a few. What do you need?]
Nym sent an image of the map and the ship through the link and said, [I traced the center point using a new map that’s more accurate. This ship should be it, but there’s nothing here. I wanted to get a second opinion on the origin of the corruption, and also, if I’m right here, what are the odds that the talisman is still moving around?]
[One moment.]
While Archmage Veran studied the information he’d sent over, Nym started examining the area around the ship. He sent his scry anchor as deep into the water as he could, just to confirm the talisman hadn’t fallen through one of the many, many holes in the ship before they’d all iced over. The ice was a hundred feet thick at least under the ship, a fact which further confirmed to Nym that it had been there for a very long time.
Below that was nothing but darkness, like an endless void stretching out forever, its secrets hidden from even his magic. Nym sent the scry anchor around in an ever-widening circle, trying to find anything besides ice in the water, and when he finally did, it was something so massive that he couldn’t even begin to guess what it was. It had skin and muscles. It was alive. That was all he could tell, and probably all he needed to know.
[If the bearer of the talisman was still alive, the curse would not have spread like it has. You would be able to trace a line of their movements with smaller offshoots left in their wake. We can safely assume the talisman is not moving. That being said, I agree with your assessment that it should be somewhere in or nearby this ship.]
[It’s not, or at least if it is, it’s not something my scrying is picking up. There’s nothing out here but ice and snow, and water that’s at least a thousand feet deep, probably much more. I don’t even see any arcana here leading to the ship. It’s nowhere nearby.]
[It’s possible that the curse bearer was still alive when the ship got stuck here and set out on foot. You may find the talisman somewhere within a few miles of your current location, possibly buried under the ice and snow.]
That was going to be a hard search. He’d only covered as much ground as he had by following the corruption pathways, by tracing them back to the center. Supposedly, the scarabs would alter the landscape and kill off anything living there. The problem was that there was nothing living around here to kill! They were just spreading out, taking up more and more land mass and accomplishing nothing.
[Wherever the talisman is, I should be able to find it by following the corrupted arcana trails leading away, right?]
[That is correct.]
[Then this ship is a dead end. There’s no sign of corrupted arcana or any scarabs here, let alone the source talisman. Maybe it came to the northlands on this ship and whoever was carrying it disembarked years ago and died elsewhere. But either way, I should still be able to track it back to the source, and I’m not seeing it. Is it possible that something is hiding it? What if at one point in time it was spreading freely, and something else already contained it?]
[In that case, you could clean up the infestation and nothing else would grow to take its place, but the scarabs themselves would have already died off without the talisman to replenish their numbers unless it was removed just recently. If that were the case, you might never find the talisman. It might not even be there anymore.]
Nym thought that over for a minute. It was going to be the work of years to clean everything up, and there were so many already. But if the source had been cut off, they couldn’t keep spreading. There wouldn’t be any new scarabs to infest new places, and he knew that wasn’t correct. He’d seen the proof at the Garden of Winter, where the corruption had continued to push outwards from the center.
[I haven’t read anything about an infestation like this being able to spread without the source creating more and more scarabs. If the source is sealed up, it couldn’t spread, but it still is. So it can’t be sealed. It’s just… hidden, somehow, perhaps some sort of anti-scrying ward?]
Archmage Veran didn’t answer him for about thirty seconds, then his voice came back. [I’m sorry, but I’m out of time. It sounds like you’ve got a few good leads to explore. I trust you’ll be able to follow them to a successful conclusion. Have some confidence in yourself to resolve this.]
And then the connection broke. Nym sat there in the air, somewhat annoyed at how unhelpful his mentor had been. Then again, this was Nym’s problem to solve and it had nothing to do with the archmage. He’d already provided a lot of guidance in the form of new spells, reference material, and even some enchanted tools.
Nym was going to figure it out, but he would be doing the leg work on his own. The situation might not have been what they’d originally expected, but he wasn’t going to let that stop him. Now, he just needed to figure out which way to go next.