During the entire trip, the caravan only pases by rooms that were on the pleasant side of the spectrum. Field with small hills and large open areas, forest with large paths already created by people in charge of infrastructure. Even the arid desert wasn’t that bad and had a few rest spots with water and bathrooms, all working thanks to mana stones. However, the room they would spend the night in today wasn’t that kind. Some monsters were moderately aggressive, being marked with an orange label on the list that Ka’mal gave the Harmony Guardians, but it still wouldn’t be the most dangerous place for them.
This room was called ‘Drowned Bog,’ and was a stark reminder that the MAZE wasn’t only made out of beautiful and lush locations. For starters, an eternal dark cloud and constant rain covered this place. Although it wasn’t enough to plummet the room into an endless night, but it got close. A layer of water covered every part of the floor in this room, there were no large rocks, elevated ground, or anything that could give a small reprieve from the freezing bog. Trees and large pieces of vegetation were also missing, the only things that could be seen were reeds and bushes growing in the water. Because of that, travel here was dangerous. Unless you knew the path, or had a skill to show it to you, it would be hard to not fall into the holes and open lakes hidden by the dark murky waters. If that wasn’t bad enough by itself, the entire room had a strong smell that caused anyone who stayed here to be slightly disoriented. It was like a bedroom that was kept closed for years. Still air and water, along with old mold. The combination was on the verge of making you sneeze, but not enough to push one over that edge, giving that permanent feeling of wanting to sneeze but being unable to do so. The icing on this uncomfortable cake was a unique visual effect caused by the awkward reflection of the clouds in the water that would create silhouettes very similar to that of the monsters in the room.
There was a single place here that could give them a break from the water, and that was the abandoned village in the middle of the bog. No one knew the name of that place, and according to Randolf, it should be something created along with the room itself. The waters here had an odd property. Anything that was left in the room for a long time would eventually sink and be swallowed by the bog. Towers, houses, benches, carts, shoes, everything. Some years back, someone even tried to build a hotel in a boat, hoping that since it floated, it wouldn’t end up sinking, but after a few months, that vessel was clearly being dragged down. People tried to figure out the reason, maybe replicate the effect for traps or even to know more about the MAZE, but that didn’t work. In the end, the bog consumed everything.
With the exception of that village. There were wooden paths going around two dozen of buildings, some big and other small. Each house was half rotten and filled with holes, not to mention permanently drenched. On the walls close to the water, both inside and outside those structures, people found hundreds of barnacles of various sizes. And they were dangerous. Not that they would attack, or anything of the sort. But the kind of barnacle that existed here could attach itself to someone’s skin. If someone touched them with their bare hands, or have any direct contact with them, they would likely see those crustaceans coming out of their bodies in the next few weeks. They would not only trick healing spells to understand the creatures as part of the host’s body, but also attach themselves to someone’s skin, making the removal process complicated. And the new ones that grew on a person could spread to others. There was a real life horror story about the first group of people who came here, discovered those things and went back to their city. A few weeks later, almost every single inhabitant of their village was infected, and the barnacles were growing all over their bodies.
At leas that story had a happy ending. No one died, and people were able to rally healers and doctors to cure them. Still, it became a warning for anyone who came to this room. And because of that story, Randolf decided against sleeping in the village. It would be too easy for someone to end up touching one of the barnacles by mistake. Instead, they headed to one of the larger open areas with a wall of reeds around a path and set up the caravan to be in what he called ‘sleep mode.’ Several tall metal rods raised from the sides of the container and he placed a heavy tarp over them all. It was almost like making a tent, including a few partitions for people to have more privacy and some windows to look outside. In addition, Flint and Britta crafted some walkways organized around the container so people who stayed on watch could actually move around the upper area instead of just staying on the ground with water up to their ankles. Hera also did her best to help, trying to move the earth underneath them to make the support pillars more stable, but her stone shape spell was too simple to work here.
The entire caravan split off into three groups. Each would be on watch for 3 hours and when the last watch was over, they would get out of this place. They all wanted to finish this as soon as possible. And on the way back, they wouldn’t need to come here again. Each day they spent with the supplies was a day that things could go wrong and the humans could disrupt the Alliance army. But when everything was delivered, they could go the long way around. It would take 5 extra days to return to the Kalandria Empire, but they would be able to sleep in a city or village in all those days. They could even reduce one or two days of their journey if the people driving the caravan were willing to take turns driving through the night.
Either way, this was a conversation for later. And Hera ended up taking the first shift. She spread the court around the container and found a nice place to stay seated. The titled blades were also split, each of them joining one of the three teams. For now, the only one of them that was with Hera was Vulcan, since if the influence got too strong, the Empress would have to stop him.
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About one hour into her shift, the Ophidianite noticed how Kalahan, who was also part of this team, seemed more comfortable when she passed by, and he wasn’t as stray eyed when looking at her compared with his two party members. Thinking that there would be no better time than this to ask about it, she approached the dwarf.
“Hey. Mind if I sit here?” Hera smiled.
“Of course. It will be my pleasure to keep you company,” Kalahan gestured for her to sit.
“Have you ever been here before? Or around here?” Hera asked as she sat down.
“Not at all. This is the farthest I have ever been from home. How about you?”
“Honestly? I don’t even know. I’ve never been here, or to any of the rooms we passed by, but I don’t know how far I’m from home. Then again, my home is also kind of new to the MAZE.”
“How so?” Kalahan turned towards her.
Hera paused for a moment, she couldn’t tell about the whole situation with Zaxalam without mentioning that she used to be human. Doing that wasn’t part of her plans, not until the war was over, at least. Thinking about the fake back story the Alliance council helped her create, she replied, “It’s complicated. Ever since I started traveling, I didn’t really have a home. Mostly because I had no idea where my people used to live. So I never stayed around in the same place for long. Unless I was stuck there for some reason. The place I currently call home is related to maybe my old, old ancestors. Or at least, a species that has the same ancestors as I do. I have no clue I am part of their evolution or not.”
“How old is this civilization?”
“Maybe 10 thousand years old or something. We never managed to pinpoint an actual date, but apparently it’s among the oldest, if not the oldest, civilization on MAZE,” Hera replied.
“Damn. Don’t tell that to Drew or Veronica. Elves pride themselves on being the oldest ones. But from what you are saying, this civilization is significantly different from you. Right?”
The Ophidianite nodded, “Yeah, they didn’t have legs, and their face was more snake like than mine.”
“Then you are likely just part of the same branch, but not someone who came from them. Evolution takes a long time. Hundreds of thousands of years for even small changes. If the difference is that big, it should take millions of years. Which means that the only way the time lines match is if you are both branches from the same path,” Kalahan glanced at Hera, realizing that maybe he was saying too much, “Sorry. I quite enjoy the biology part of my work, and I learned a lot about evolution.”
“Don’t worry. I appreciate the information. But why were you learning about evolution? I feel like if you say you like the topic, you either have a specific goal, or want to play god,” Hera asked, knowing full well that she might be a hypocrite for the comment. After all, she quite literally tailor made her body, even including spell circles created with the position of her veins.
“I have a brother that was born with a genetic anomaly. That happened when I was young and I got curious about why that happened and at the time, if we could control it. I quickly realized that line of thought was stupid, but the curiosity about the subject remained.”
“I’m sorry to hear it. Is he ok?”
“Oh yeah. He had something called lipomyelomeningocele. A fancy word for a vestigial tail.”
“Are you going to say that having a tail is a genetic anomaly?” Hera playfully huffed, crossing her tail over her lap.
“One like yours, no. Of course not. That’s simply evolution. But an odd flimsy growth on the end of someone’s spine is,” Kalahan smiled.
“That’s fair. I can understand that curiosity,” Hera nodded and looked into the distance, trying to see if there were any monsters coming. A few minutes passed with the two in silence before the Empress finally approached the topic she wanted to, “Do you mind if I ask a weird question?”
“Not at all.”
“You, and mostly Britta and Remy, keep looking at me with a strange expression. Why is that?”
“Oh. My apologies. They are not used to be in the presence of someone such as you. I am a bit more experienced in that. I’ll ask them to be more careful. We meant no offense.”
Hera shook her head, surprised with the response, “None taken, but why are you doing that? I’m the only Ophidianite out there, it’s not a surprise you are not used to be near me.”
Kalahan stopped and stared at Hera, “No. I mean royalty. Not to say that your species is not something new to us. But Britta has never been to the aerie and beastmen in general don’t have the same culture of nobility as we do.”
“Wait.. What? Why do you think I’m nobility?”
“Are you not the Ophidianite Empress? That’s what the Alliance told us. Besides, you have a court, and they call you Empress.”
Hera let out a loud groan, “No. Look. I’m only the Ophidianite Empress because I’m the only member of my species. So yeah, technically I speak for the whole species, but only because I’m the only one! And the Empress and court thing is about my legacy. I didn’t choose that theme, it just came with it.”
“Oh! So you are not like a noble with history of being a noble, retainers and all that stuff?” Kalahan asked.
“No! Well, sort of, my legacy does consider Nimbus, Vulcan, and the others with full bipedal bodies as my retainers. But again, that’s not me. I was never raised to be a princess or anything like that. My parents were also not royal blood or something.”
“I see,” Kalahan looked back to the tent, “Britta is going to be so sad. She was really excited about meeting royalty.”
Hera shrugged, “You don’t need to tell them if you don’t want to. It’s not technically wrong, but far from being what she expects. And now that I know why you are looking at me like that, it makes things easier.”
“We were making you that uncomfortable?”
“How you would you feel if people who never met were constantly looking at you like you were some celebrity? If you were closer to my level, I would be freaking out. But I’m a bit cocky now and I think I can handle myself,” Hera realized why this felt so weird now that she had more context.
“Ok, I get the point. Sorry.”
“No worries,” the Empress replied as she started into the murky waters beyond the rest area they found. After having this conversation, all she wanted was to end her shift and take a nap. When that time came, she plopped onto the makeshift bed created by flint, too tired and only wishing for a good night of rest. Unfortunately, she was also too tired to realize, she just raised a flag.