SEVENTH INTERLUDE – IRREDEEMABLE

Malinor had spent enough time getting tortured by the mad scientist Spangalore to come to a mutual understanding in all of that suffering. If Malinor could prove he was Dracobra’s exalted Spangalore would take him to the East. It took exile, imprisonment, and torture for Malinor to finally find his meaning, his place in this world. It all became so clear once his life was boiled down to basic needs like survival. He saw MagnaThora so vividly now, as a whole. The continent was its own animal, its own god.

A great deal of MagnaThora was the Burning Mountain Range. The mountains have two massive sets of slopes running separately from west to east and then connecting in the east, making up the MassifLands. The mountains are the northern and eastern barriers of greater MagnaThora. The Barren Sea is the western and southern barrier. But if you brave the passage south, which Malinor already accomplished with ease, beyond the WasteLands, and the SwampLands, there is something else. Malinor had seen it briefly on his way to Morticomb. Now he was obsessed over it. What if there was a way off MagnaThora? Malinor could become a famous explorer, a conqueror of the rest of the world. This would be his chance to start over. He brokered a deal with his captor, Spangalore, and gained passage to the far eastern reaches of the SouthLands.

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Still battered and bruised he was transported to another prison wagon and carted out of the Morticomb Caverns. Malinor’s eyes burned at first. He realized it had been some time since he saw daylight. The darkness became normal. It would take time to acclimate to the daylight. When he did, he took in the sights and couldn’t help but smile. Everything looked so vibrant and alive even though it was the dingy SouthLands. He didn’t mind the overcast day. He could appreciate a lot after what he had just been through. Who knows how long he was kept in the Morticomb dungeons. He’d rather not think about it. Instead, he dwelled on the landscape around him. Most of the light was not coming from the sun kept behind the clouds. The light was coming from the east, where they were headed.

The closer they got the better he could see the raging arms of mist. They danced together in unexpected colors. The dormant volcanoes emptied into the delta, the molten plasma, met land, met water, fusing together into something else. Malinor wanted to get a closer look, but the road became increasingly more bumpy as they made their final approach. The outlying storm of the divide made it almost impossible to reach the fortress.

Finally, they reached their destination and Malinor was taken back inside, into another dungeon. This one had far fewer torture racks. Instead of pure darkness these cells had massive windows hanging off the edge of the fortress into the storm. Malinor quickly realized the imposing windows were the torture devices. He closed his eyes and, after spending an entire night listening to the volatile sounds of the reach, finally regretted his decision to journey to the edge, or to the south for that matter.