Chapter Four Hundred and Ninety-Seven - Old History

Laine didn't have to lead us too far before we emerged from the forest. This was still close to the base of the mountain, though I had to really squint to make out anything of Port Royal in the distance. The only other sign that the city was there were a few big airships coming and going towards the mountain side.

The area was grassy, with a few tough bushes along the forest's edge. As we walked, I noticed that there was only a thin layer of dirt atop some porous rock, so there probably wasn't enough topsoil here for the forest to expand into this area.

"Is the cave far from here?" I asked.

"It shouldn't be," Sir Aberrforth said.

"Wait, just to be clear, you and your, uh, team had a mission to explore the same cave, right?" I asked.

"We did," he confirmed.

"How did you know about it?" I asked. "I mean, no one just sets out looking for random caves, right?"

He grinned. "You'd be surprised! However, we had some reports about this one. Two of them, in fact. The first was more recent. A group of grenoil noticed the cave and stopped at its threshold last winter. They used it for cover for a few hours, then continued on their way. One of them was a mage of some calibre and he took samples of the stones by the cave's entrance."

"Lucky fools," Laine said.

"Possibly. It was a group of soldiers from the army patrolling the outer edge of Deepmarshe's territory."

Laine grunted. "This isn't Deepmarsh's territory. The Darkwoods belong to no one."

"I think you're going to find that hard to defend," Amaryllis said. "Not with Mattergrove coming in to your west and Deepmarsh expanding to your east. There are a few outposts on the edge of the Darkwoods that won't stay as outposts forever. They'll turn into villages then towns and might one day become small cities."

Laine glared at Amaryllis, but she didn't refute the point, not for a minute. "There have been cities in these woods. Long ago. They are gone now. The grenoil were here once too. And they were pushed back as well. The Darkwoods will earn their name once more in due time."

Well, that was just plain creepifying.

"Excuse me, Sir Aberrforth, you mentioned two sources? Would you mind elucidating on the other?" Desiree asked.

"Ah, yes. The other is both older and younger. See, as the expansion into the Darkwoods continues we are indeed discovering old sites that aren't on our maps. One of these was discovered just a few months back. A team was sent to explore it and they found a surprisingly intact village."

I felt my ears perk up at that. That ... sounded a lot like Threewells. After leaving the town, way back then, hadn't I run into an exploration team searching for it?

"Dating the age of the place was beyond the team, but they did recover a few artefacts and curios and some ancient books. These were taken to the guild and eventually translated, at least partially."

"They weren't in a language anyone knows?" I asked.

Sir Aberrforth shook his head. "No, unfortunately not."

I hadn't had issues... but then again, I had an advantage there, didn't I? "So what did they say?"

"One text had a map with the location of at least two other settlements. One should be... right about where we are now. Another segment we've translated suggested that there were mines here, once."

Laine sniffed. "I told you, there was a village where my home now resides. It is long gone, however. Even magics can't prevent the passage of time."

"Even magics?" I asked. "What's that mean?"

Amaryllis picked the question up. "You know how anyone with a lick of sense could build something? A home, a tool? Whatever?" I nodded along and she continued. "People with skills do it better. A smith's tools will work better, be of greater quality, and will last much longer. A home built by a carpenter and bricks laid by a bricklayer, all done using tools made by a talented smith... it adds up."

"Like some sort of cumulative bonus?" I asked.

"Exactly. There's a reason that items made at the highest level of quality tend to be those where the work of several experts at every stage went into their creation. Talented miners bringing ore to talented metallurgists who make ingots for talented smiths who make an end product greater than the sum of its parts. That can be enchanted by a talented mage in the end, resulting in something even greater."

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"And old homes are like that?" I asked.

"Some are," Amaryllis said.

"And yet without care and attention, the sweat of many brows falls apart," Laine replied.

We reached the base of a cliff, and Laine started to follow around the edge of it. The terrain here turned a bit rockier, and there were no natural paths to follow. It looked like maybe some of the rocks on the cliffs above had tumbled down--in fact the entire hillside seemed to be crumbling with time.

Still, after scrambling over and past the rocks, it didn't take long to find a narrow stretch of leveled ground, butted up against the sheer wall of the cliff. The rocky terrain was pockmarked and strewn with shattered stone, but even so, I was sure it must've been a road at some point in the past.

"Here it is," Laine said a few minutes later as we reached the end of the road. It turned ninety degrees right into the cliffside. There was another landslide or something here once, the road was partially buried under crumbling rock, but some of those rocks had been shifted aside, revealing an entrance just large enough for someone to slip into if they were feeling a little acrobatic.

"Was this opening bigger?" I asked.

"Once, perhaps," Laine said.

"Do you know more about what happened here?" I asked. Laine was... well, I wanted to say that she was nice, but really she was only barely helpful at this point. But there was definitely more to her. Maybe she could help us with whatever was inside the cave, at least?

She nodded, and leaned against a boulder. Her expression soured. "I don't know everything. What I do know are the stories I was told when I was a child, the histories that we learned from the elders."

"Which elders?" Amaryllis asked.

"I don't want to be here for the rest of the day," she said. "My elders. They spoke of a time when humans ruled the lands between the mountains. A time when they fought amongst themselves and the grenoil, and their war spilled over onto the soil. Their greed and lust for power grew too much and they began to destroy the land itself. The grenoil fled, leaving their ancestral homes and settling in the marshlands to the east, and all was well for a time. And then the humans dug too deep, and awoke something that should have remained undisturbed. It happened over the course of weeks. Villages cleared. Towns burned. The forest reclaimed itself, fought against that ancient threat, and won... but only after no one remained."

"So the mine collapsed? Was this a mine?" I asked.

"It was. Though, that was so long ago, and nature has claimed so much of it, that calling it a cave is not wrong, either. The people of the nearest villages banded together and collapsed what parts of the mine they could. But the damage was done, even with the great evil sealed away."

"Oh," I said. "That was brave of them, then."

She nodded. "I'm sure they'd be pleased to know that someone acknowledged that bravery. They would have been more pleased if it had amounted to anything. It was too little and too late."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Sir Aberrforth said. "But, as much as I would adore to spend this time listening to your dulcet tones, I must carry on in. See this mark?"

He pointed to a mark etched into the stone, a sort of compass rose? Wait, that was the Exploration Guild's logo!

"Your friends are in here!" I gasped.

"And they must need our help," he agreed. "Onwards, my beloved! ... And friends. Onwards for you too."

I nodded, then pushed into the cave. It required a bit of smallifying myself to be comfortable, but I managed. The cave just beyond the entrance opened up a little, so I set down a magical light ball, then got to work clearing out some of the smaller, more movable rocks from the entrance so that my friends could get in easier.

I was itching to explore this place, and see if great unknowable evils were weak to Cleaning magic.

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