CHAPTER SIX
Winter Beneath the Ward
That year went by uneventfully after those experiments. The advanced class was good, and in addition to history and science, Elina taught us what little we understand about ancient Araksiun technology.
Unfortunately, information about magic is still very scarce, and even Elina herself knows only a little.
Tarin eventually stopped being quite such an annoyance, but he continued keeping a close eye on me.
Meris seemed delighted to have new friends who were not from the nearby area. Truth be told, I do not think Meris had another friend besides me before. Now, she was growing close to Hana and Cedric.
Sometimes, I wandered near the edge of the ward, thinking about completing my experiment, but fear of the monsters in the fog always held me back.
Life became monotonous after a while, though I at least got to help Jharim with his Chainrunner-related work in the forge.
Elina said I gained some weight this year, probably because I was no longer starving. Still, it is almost nothing compared to someone like Tarin or even the Highrows.
As the months slipped by, winter arrived, and even though I went to “bed” with a full stomach, the cold did not relent. During winter, the advanced class was suspended, as most activities are, and was scheduled to resume once the season ended.
With winter came the bitter nights in District 98. Food production halted, and the dining hall stopped distributing rations. Meris and her family were fine. We still ate twice a day, though losing access to the rations did affect them. Adults have a hard time making do with such small portions, so Elina used some of her funds to expand them slightly. Although the advanced class was on hold, she continued receiving some pay to prepare for the next year’s lessons.
Meanwhile, many who could not afford food sank into the long sleeps and never woke again.
I am accustomed to rough conditions, but once it started snowing, I could hardly endure it. My consciousness slipped away repeatedly, and entire days passed without my noticing.
Often, the cold nearly drove me into another long sleep. Sometimes I tried to will myself to sleep faster, hoping to ignore the cold, but it did not always work. Other times, I simply could not doze off at all.
On such nights, I wandered through the district. Once, my coat got snagged on a piece of metal as I turned down an alley, and it tore. That same night turned out to be one of the coldest of the winter.
I tried to keep moving because I feared that if I stopped, another long sleep would come, and Meris, Elina, and Jharim would be worried. I also wondered if sleeping for weeks might cost me my place in the advanced class, making the Captain of the Chainrunners regret suggesting me. Wasting the district’s resources was the last thing I wanted.
I also worried people would try to wake me by burning me, as they do with others who drift into the long sleep.
The cold can drive a person to madness, so I tried to stay rational by writing my thoughts and fears in the book. It helped me sort through them rather than letting them rattle in my head.
Still, it made little difference, because I blacked out that very night in the falling snow.
My coat, or what was left of it, offered no warmth. At some point, I must have let it slip off without realizing it.
Darkness took me before long.
Strangely, when I came to my senses, I realized I had not entered a long sleep after all, and I no longer felt cold.
Glancing around, I noticed the thick fog surrounding me. While wandering, I must have walked out of the district’s ward. Not only that, but I had slept outside, on the doorstep of what looked like an abandoned house. From here, I could still see the district in the distance. The Obelisk was visible, far away through the fog, which seemed less dense than usual.
It looked almost translucent. I could tell it was there, but I could also see faintly through it. Then I lifted my eyes toward the sky.
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Even with this new, thinner state of the fog, it was hard to see, but I could make out the faint shape of a huge ball of flame above, the sun, presumably. It was as real as in my dreams, and I felt its warmth touching my skin.
For a moment, I wondered if I was dreaming again, but soon realized everything around me was painfully real. The fog was not cold inside, nobody had ever written that in a report, but then again, they are usually too busy running from monsters to notice. The second that thought entered my mind, I scanned the area, searching for any threat.
I saw nothing. No monsters. With that, my sense of urgency slipped away.
I had slept outside the ward, in the fog, and nothing had come for me.
“Am I insane?” I murmured to myself.
Trying to reason it out, I grabbed my book and wrote about it the way Elina taught me:
“Test 3
Experiment 3: Entered the fog in its entirety and, well, spent the night there sleeping, just outside the ward but near the district.
Result: No harm occurred, no beasts in sight.
Conclusion: Test subject Omen might be insane.”
That about sums it up. While considering why different subjects might have different reactions, I noticed I was still standing in the fog. Panicking, I ran back inside the ward, taking barely a minute, after all, the abandoned house was not far.
Once inside, the chill of winter consumed me again, and I saw that my coat was truly gone. For a second, I thought about going back into the fog but realized random monsters would likely kill me on the spot. Most of them are not sentient in a human sense, so they would probably not hesitate.
A flood of concerns rushed into my mind as I tried to reconcile everything. How could this be possible? This contradicted everything we know about the fog, yet there was no denying the evidence: I had spent the entire night out there.
Should I tell Elina and Jharim? They would surely know what to do… but what would I say?
“Hey, everyone, I just decided to take a stroll into the fog and sleep there because it was cozy. I know half the district already thinks I’m some harbinger of doom, but can we ignore that?”
Yeah, that would not go well. I chuckled at how absurd it sounded. I could not tell anyone without arousing suspicion. Elina and Jharim would have to report it, and failing to do so would put them in greater danger.
At the same time, I felt I needed to tell them, someone had to know some people might be unaffected by the fog.
But wait, that was not proof of anything conclusive. People have studied the fog for thousands of years, and no solution has ever been found, not even by the mightiest ancients of Araksiun.
Besides, what proof did I really have? I spent the night out there, and no monsters came for me. That might just mean they chose not to kill me, or they were unaware of me. Nothing definitive.
As that thought crossed my mind, my heart raced. The next experiment was obvious: I would have to seek out a monster in the fog to see if it would kill me or not.
As my pulse pounded, Elina’s words flooded back into my head, that curiosity is one of humanity’s greatest weapons. But really, if this was daily life for the ancient people of Araksiun, risking themselves like this to gain knowledge, it is no wonder they are not around anymore.
Well… I guess they kind of are, because we are their descendants. Still, it is hard to see ourselves as the same people when we have fallen so far from their height.
Wait, but what if they can’t refuse me in?
What if I find an artifact that helps produce food? Those lower districts that were destroyed on the day I arrived supposedly had such artifacts. If I manage to find and bring one back, they would not be able to turn me away.
Even though the Chainrunners went to all those destroyed districts in that veteran run, they kept moving nonstop. They did not have the time to search for artifacts, so it might still be there for the taking.
And no one would be able to take the artifact from me, because it is one of the oldest laws from when the Chainrunners were first created.
In order to balance the risks of the runs, especially those that involved searching for and recovering artifacts back in the Chainrunners’ early days, they established the Law of the Finders.
That law states that anyone who discovers an artifact is entitled to it for life. Its use is entirely up to the finder, and upon their death, the right goes to their closest relative, even if they die in the fog and the artifact is retrieved later.
Even artifacts like the Dawnbreak Bow have fallen into the fog before, like what happened in the early generations of Tarin Blacktorn’s family and yet they were reclaimed and returned to the family.
By bringing back an artifact that helps with food production, I would become the finder, since everyone in those districts died except me. That means the district would have to choose between punishing me and losing the artifact, or accepting whatever happened in my report once I return with it.
Would that even be possible? I have only walked a few minutes in the fog, and now I am already dreaming of traveling many kilometers away.
But then again, I did spend hours out there, even if it was close to the ward. Maybe this could work. Maybe I could help the people of District 98, possibly even those in neighboring districts, and finally end this hunger.
I guess the great curiosity of the ancients makes sense after all, even with the risks.