CHAPTER 77: Grave of the Mistwalkers
Cortez, ever the musician of the group, was of course thrilled to hear I had instilled some music into the camp. Although the men still needed some work on their rhythm, it wasn’t too bad considering. Perhaps they synchronised together better because most of them were already familiar with each other.
We probably talked too far into the night and almost everyone fell asleep. Hana and I slept in the same tent, I offered her another tent of her own, but she refused, posing a lame excuse that she was still my slave. It seemed strange to think that someone capable of punching holes into concrete didn’t want to sleep alone. I confess, there was a part of me that liked her there. What could I say, I enjoyed her company? We placed our tent closer towards the rear of the encampment, closer to the fort, making it quicker for me to come and go.
I’d learned my lesson from the marsh iron quest and made the fort walls five stories high, enough to avoid both ogres and direwolves being able to access the top. Although there were windows, they were smaller to stop any attempt to enter them. As a result, they didn’t have much of a view. Feeling restless that night, I wandered up to the parapet on the fort rooftop. From there I got a commanding view of the encampment, a sea of treetops visible for as far as the eye could see. I greeted the parapet guard, but surprisingly Tobias stood there too.
“Hi there Shane. I hope you don’t mind, I couldn’t sleep and decided to cool off a bit up here.”
Tobias spoke softly so as not to disturb the guard’s concentration or wake up the camp below. I shook my head.
“You’re always welcome. I came for the same reason. I can also sense the wildlife around the camp better from here.”
Although, what I would have paid for a cup of coffee right about then. If I ever found it, I would grow plantations of the stuff.
“Ah, ever the watchman. I wish I had your skill. Can you say what’s exactly out there now?”
I did a quick air scan. Ara confirmed that there were a variety of birds and forest animals. Nothing that my scolems hadn’t already reported in before except for one little dinosaur critter that seemed to be scratching its head with its tiny forelimb. I couldn’t believe it, the bloody dinosaur was there too, I bet it didn’t expect me to find it. What puzzled me though was that the scolems never attacked the creature. Obviously they didn’t see the creature as a threat, something that could only be programmed into them which meant that Ara had something to do with it.
Anyhow it wouldn’t be a problem. It was nice for once to catch the dinosaur with its proverbial pants down. Mentioning the head scratching dinosaur to Tobias wouldn’t help anyone, so I decided not to mention it. “Ah, the usual forest denizens, although it feels different when I’m in the north.” “After our patrol this morning, it was immediately apparent that the animals and trees were far more prolific and varied here. It may have something to do with our proximity to the Ironwood Forest.” He was correct. From our vantage point we could probably see the beginnings of the Ironwood Forest in the south. Then he made a statement that floored me. “Interesting that ogres and goblins always come from the north, never from the south.” It wasn’t a minor observation. For some reason they never came from the south. They certainly had enough time to populate the southern areas. Perhaps something in the Ironwood Forest kept them out? Thinking about that caused me to shudder because it meant they, it, whatever, posed a greater threat. Staring into the south as if looking for an answer wouldn’t help me so I decided to change the subject. “Did you see the ruins?” He nodded. I explained my thoughts on them. “It’s a bit of conundrum for me. The ruined fort obviously protected the trade route that used the road here, it’s that wall that has me puzzled.” “We noticed you dug up a bit of it for your paving. I wonder what the previous owners would have thought about that?” He chuckled at the idea. We hadn’t even dented the amount of rock used on that wall. We could pave a small city with the remains. Heck we could build houses with the stuff. “Although, you’re right. Thinking about it, the ruined wall extends straight from east to west. It seems to be an impractical construction for defending a fort.” Tobias didn’t answer me immediately but lent on the bastion while thinking a bit. “Perhaps we’re making a wrong assumption. Was it there to protect the fort from attackers? Just how big would the wall have been?” “It would have been a serious sized wall, probably as high as this building and thousands of paces long.” I couldn’t see Tobias’ face well in the dark, but I could sense he was frowning. “You’re right, that’s a serious wall to put out there for no reason. A wall by its definition is a boundary or a barrier. I wonder which one of those functions ancient people intended. Perhaps both?” “I want to have a closer look at that wall tomorrow. How about you come with us as part of your patrol?” “Sounds like a good idea, bring back some memories.” We chuckled at his obvious joke. Other than the camaraderie of the Red Sparrows and the remoteness of the basecamp site, the fighting and constant worry of monster attacks didn’t enamour me to the trip. Early the next morning the Red Sparrows and Goldcastle teams left to inspect the wall. I didn’t expect to find anything worth mentioning since anything other than the walls had disappeared a long time ago, but I was wrong. Not only was I wrong about that, but we also found something significant within a few minutes from the camp. Passed over the wall’s ruins Ara stopped me. The forest reminded me of a mixture of forest and jungle, with taller trees and more undergrowth. In between the straight tree shafts of the forest stood a peculiarly, moss covered trunk without any branches. It looked like a dead tree trunk that drooped over time. From our vantage point we could see the trunk was half the hight of the forest trees, but it looked peculiar. I didn’t realise how peculiar until my eye caught sight of a similar drooped tree just a little distance through the forest. Something about those trunks triggered a memory. I had to check it out. I quickly walked to one of the trees and scraping the moss from the trunk with my bush knife, I realised it wasn’t a tree. “No way, this can’t be.” I appraised it and received a shock when I saw the results. Name: Mistwalker Skeleton Type: Rib Material: Bone Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. It was a rib bone from a monstrous animal that died here. Five seconds later Ara said, I started scraping at the bone with my knife and after some effort removed a small scraping and placed it on the core. “Shane, what exactly are you doing?” My explanation dumbfounded them. They certainly didn’t think the object was bone and they couldn’t help but keep looking up at it, as if trying to come to terms with the size of the animal. If they thought that was overwhelming, what I found next amazed us. Meanwhile in the capital city of Shimmerstal, Karato updated King Leopold with the latest information regarding Shane’s exploits. “An ancient ruin you say?” “Yes, I’m sure. He found an ancient ruin.” “It’s the first time I have heard about a ruin out there, but I seem to think I have heard of something before for some reason.” “It surprised me. If Shane hadn’t gone into the woods at that exact point, I doubt we would’ve ever found it. He must have somehow realised it was there because I didn’t see it from the road. He has an uncanny ability to do things like that.” King Leopold wasn’t concerned about Shane’s abilities. A while ago, after meeting the young man for the first time, he came to understand that surprises would be the norm. When Karato spoke to him about supporting Shane’s woodcutter’s business, he first thought Karato was joking. After Karato explained his reasoning, King Leopold understood what he was thinking about and agreed wholeheartedly. “Help him as much as you think necessary. I give you temporary lordship of the Obon territory to that end. You have full permission to make whatever calls you need to.” After Karato left the king’s office the king chuckled to himself. It seemed Shane developed faster than he ever could have anticipated. I came more to terms with our surroundings in the forest. Since I was more familiar with the shape of the bones of the mistwalker, more and more skeletal bones of other behemoths became apparent to me through the trees. I wasn’t sure how we missed it before but thank to Ara’s keen eye, we might have missed it. After earth sensing the area around the walls, it became apparent to me that the southern side of the wall was once an almighty graveyard. Imagine a valley where all the elephants in Africa came to die, and then multiply it many times over the centuries. That’s what we found there, except many of the massive skeletons were deeper underground where eyes couldn’t see, and those were only the bigger ones that survived the termites of time. Many of smaller skeletons that once lay there, a long time ago, probably covered a far larger area and in many more numbers. Unexpectedly, the bone graveyard stopped at the ends of the wall as if an invisible line was drawn at the ends. Looking at the ruined wall, I couldn’t help but wonder why the people of that time built a massive mausoleum to cause that epic event. Did they destroy those beasts, or did the beasts die on their own from the sheer mass pileup? When I related to the others what I found they didn’t say anything for a while they were that shocked. Everyone except for Tobias who seemed to be bawling his eyes out. “Why are you crying?” “I would give anything to have been there. Imagine it, a fight of a lifetime!” That totally shattered me, just what was that tank maniac thinking about? Later that evening, as the sun set, the satisfied Red Sparrows and Goldcastle team sat in a hot spa bath I created behind a private wooden palisade fence Mr. Papadopoulos’ men set up at short notice. “Ah, Shane, you’ve done it again. This is truly spectacular.” Tobias looked out over the southern vista from on the hill behind the small fort. A small wooden cover covered the bath from the prying eyes of the fort guards on top, not that they were looking. The bathing facilities included a private wash down area and clothes booth for hanging up clothing. “You know, if you hadn’t forced me to make it straight away, I could’ve made a much better arrangement.” “It’s fine Shane. Just relax and enjoy the moment.” Hana said with her eyes closed. It was fine for her to say it, they didn’t have to rush to make it. At least one good thing came out of making a hot bath; everyone wanted to use it. Could you believe it, high demand for the hot bath from the rest of the woodcutters forced me to set up a bath schedule just so I could get an opportunity to use it. The next day merchants from Shimmerstal stopped at Camp Endeavour en route to Obon. The word of our camp reached the merchant’s guild and the possibility of a safer route to Obon was available. Not just that, but there was a protected layover point midway where travellers and their animals were welcome to refresh. The merchants, stunned at what they found, couldn’t but wax lyrical about the large size of the camp and its facilities. I realised that the Camp Endeavour could become much busier with traders preferring to use the safer route, albeit a long road. Their only complaint was the difficulty in finding the road sometimes due to the bad conditions on the road. By that time, I already started receiving good returns from our lumber operations. The gold coming back from Shimmerstal’s lumber sales looked good, so I decided to bring in more labour. Through Mr. Papadopoulos I placed a request with the Labour Guild for more men to help reconstruct the road, and through Olivia, a request with the guild for another adventurer team to support the road reconstruction men. Karato arrived ten days later from Shimmerstal with more supplies. When he heard of the reconstruction efforts he insisted on paying for the road teams through the palace, saying that we were fulfilling a municipal function for which we could legally claim compensation. We even managed to double the number of labourers and repaired the road from both ends. Elle proved to be an amazing addition to our team, zipping through our paperwork like racing cars in a chicane, her proficiency, elvish to a fault. I used that opportunity as an excuse to travel with Hana to visit the road reconstruction teams over the weeks. Riding horses we covered large distances a day and sleeping in the forest wasn’t a problem with my earth skill. A few rest-over points receiving good facilities and protective towers for travellers. All the towers received the Goldcastle standard. Immediately apparent were the number of culinary and medicinal herbs I found. Since those parts of the kingdom were never plumbed by adventurers it was virgin forest. I felt like we could hunt there forever. Of course, I wasn’t beyond trapping for forest rabbits, and found a proliferation of the critters. Much to Grenfell’s extreme happiness he feasted well on a few Silk Rabbits I captured, feasting well on those. I never neglected to keep a few extra cooked meals as emergency food supplies for a rainy day. Through pure luck we once cornered a large wild boar and Hana dispatched it with her bow quicker than I could say, ‘hey look there’s a wild boar’. Of course, the whole encampment had a good feast that night and there were even sufficient bits left over, becoming my rations. Mr. Papadopoulos spoke to me soon after that, while Karato, Olivia and the Goldcastle team sat around the night’s campfire. “Mr. Karosaki, could I make a selfish request?” “For you Mr. Papadopoulos, anytime.” “Thank you, I really appreciate it. Firstly, I would like to say that the men are enjoying their stay here. In fact, I’ve had numerous requests to stay here longer.” “There’s more than enough place for temporary families while they work on the road you know?” “Aye, that’s true and although that’s not what I had wanted to ask, it would go a long way to improving things for the men.” Then surprisingly, Karato piped up. “Have you requested to start a mobile Labour Guild?” Mr. Papadopoulos looked a bit surprised at first, then guilty, and finally he laughed. “I must confess that the option was put to me by the guild management, but I felt reluctant at the time because there were too many unknowns.” What he didn’t mention, it was the palace that requested the guild to do that. Mr. Papadopoulos, uncertain of what the future held, did not request one. A mobile Labour Guild contained similar powers to an office, allowing quick establishment of labour teams to deal with on the moment issues. Since he was already a manager in the guild, Mr. Papadopoulos held the requirements necessary to qualify to hold the mobile office. That was all a side issue, however. “You mentioned that you had a request?”