Oscar didn’t know that Amon was following him, Amon wasn’t particularly stealthy, but Oscar had a lot on his mind, both of them did. During the monster wave Amon ran away, hid away inside his house, even though he was one of the only people in the town with an essence. Amon and Oscar were about the same age, Amon was only 2 months older, but in a human life 2 months was a blink of an eye. Both Myles and Althea had larger age gaps, so that wasn't the problem, it took him a few years to realize the real reason they weren't friends: their fathers.
Oscar’s father: Emryll Wyvern was a stickler for the old ways of the village, all of the different rituals and rites flowed through him like his blood, ironic because Emryll moved to the village as an adult, and proved himself worthy with a new water ceremony. Amon's father on the other hand, Dresk Keybalar, wanted to move the village in a more modern direction, declaring himself as mayor of the village and collecting taxes from the townspeople and sending some to the nearby lord, Amon never truly understood his fathers actions, because his father never gave him a straight answer, only saying it was for, “strength” or “prosperity”.
With the two fathers always at odds, it made sense that the sons would as well, especially with how much Oscar followed in his fathers footsteps. Amon never understood his father’s actions entirely but that doesn’t mean he would sit by and let someone turn his father into a villain. In recent hours, Amon was even less sure of his fathers actions, he said it was for safety, but when the town needed to be safe people only came after everyone was dead, and they weren’t sent by the lord, they were sent by the adventurers society.
There had to be a reason as to why, the village had given the lord of Eastern Drascus a nonzero amount of money, to Amon it was a lot, and his father met with the lord frequently, leading to Amon meeting the lords children as well, however the young heirs and heiresses treated him terribly, the Lords children talked about him behind his back, treating him even worse then one of their servants, meanwhile people from his village at least had the decency to insult him to his face.
Amon was currently walking behind Oscar at a fair distance, until Oscar suddenly pulled a book out of his bag and slowed down to read it, Amon took this as an opportunity to talk to Oscar, really talk to him. Oscar was more perceptive than most, trained by his dad since he was young to track animals, skills that are also useful for proprioception. So as Amon sped up, Oscar noticed him. Oscar usually acted and spoke without thinking, but he’s been thinking a lot today, so instead of immediately being hostile he decided to just be slightly hostile by saying “Thank you for doing the New Water Ceremony, you did it all wrong obviously but you did it to the best of your knowledge, you even gave your dad one, I thought he would want to be buried.”
That was easily the nicest thing either of them has ever said to the other.
Amon continued the half-assed niceness by saying “I’m glad you were there to fix my mistake, I'm glad I had someone there that paid more attention to the rituals than anything taught in school, or anyone around them” The first blow had been dealt, and it hit much harder then Amon had expected
“Yeah.” Oscar said, in that one word contained all of his sadness and useless feelings. Amon had never felt that much weight in a single word, especially not from the usually aggressive Oscar.
“Do you… want to talk about it?” Amon asked. Oscar ignored him, the nearest town was only about two days of travel, those were the last words shared for a few hours.
Oscar said “It's getting late. You gather firewood, I’ll prepare a campsite, meet you here in an hour”
“On one condition-” Amon responded “-You let me talk to the people in the hospitals and morgues, I trust you with nature, you trust me with people”
“Fine” Oscar responded, with full intention to split with him the second they made it to town.
Oscar had found a part of the “path” to Shran, which was mostly just a line of thinner vegetation, that would make for a half decent camping spot, clearing the area of sharper rocks and putting out piles of leaves to be makeshift beds. Oscar had brought a tarp large enough to make a tent for him, but he didn’t have enough room for Amon and himself to sleep underneath it. He decided to use it himself, but as much as he wanted to, he wouldn’t leave Amon in the cold, so after he put up his tarp, he leaned some branches on it, leaving enough room underneath it for Amon to sleep somewhat comfortably.
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The adventurers in the forest were in a bad way. Rodrick was propped against a tree, bleeding from pretty much everywhere that could bleed. The others were doing better, at least being able to stand, but they were all running low on stamina and mana. The Woodland Guardian was not doing much better, but it was doing better.
The Woodland Guardian was previously impervious to fire, but due to the repeated casting of Calida’s spell, the Guardian was becoming more and more weak to it, and the living flame had grown stronger and stronger due to being fed. Calida had a strong mana potion in reserve for a time like this. She uncorked it and downed the entire thing, while Fenrir distracted it. She had to plan her next moves carefully, she made her plan quickly.
Her first move was to use an ability from her Fire Essence by chanting “Sit by the fire, and heal yourself, body and soul.” The flame that had wreathed the creature up to this point had receded instead flowing through the air and landing on her teammates, but instead of being burned, her teammates were slowly being healed. Rodrick very obviously had the most flames, covering almost his entire body.
Fenrir and Ownyn weren’t just sitting by the sidelines waiting for Calida to finish the job, but both understood that Calida was their best chance of winning. Fenrir was using his wolf abilities to jump around the battlefield, while using his myriad and pack abilities to make everyone participating in the fight stronger. While Onwyn was relentlessly attacking the creature from range, and supporting anyone they could, mostly Rodrick. The Woodland Guardian was strong and was bulky, but was slow and lacked far range abilities.
Calida’s next move was to inform her party members to give her some time. Often people confused her Flame and Inferno essences, the difference was hom efficient they were, Her flame spells usually don’t do all too much damage, but did not cost much mana, the opposite was true for Inferno. She was going to cast her single most mana intensive spell save for summoning her familiar.
Fenrir immediately sprung into gear, his five misty tails growing in front of him and slowly changing forms into five wolves with eyes as yellow as Fenrir’s, all beginning to distract the Guardian. Onwyn cast some support spells on the wolves to make their distractions last longer.
Before casting her big spell Calida cast another support spell: “Thousand year drought” after the spell was cast the wood on the creature began wilting a little bit, her other spell makes the creature weaker to fire, while this one was to make her next fire spell stronger. She then began casting her spell, the chant of which was closer to a paragraph, and the hand gestures needed for it changed every few seconds. Notable phrases included “Immortal flame”, “Collapse to dust” and the final line of it “Roaring Flame: Solar Flare” , during the entire ritual the heat of the air began steadily rising and drying, it was borderline unbearable by the end of it. When the line was said the sky began growing brightly as a beam of light parted the sky.
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When Amon returned, a fire was already going, even though he had been sent to collect firewood, Oscar had apparently just sent him away so Oscar could do everything without distraction. Oscar sat on a large stone in front of the fire roasting something on a stick. Amon couldn’t see what it was, but to him it smelt amazing.
“What is that?” Amon asked.
“My dinner.” Oscar began reaching into his bag before pulling a smaller drawstring bag out of it about the same size as larger fruit, distracted from his own meal as he dipped the small animal on the end of the stick into the fire, at this point it was pretty much unrecognizable, save for being some small mammal.
“Here’s yours” Oscar continued before throwing the sack to Amon. When he opened the bag thrown to him Amon gazed at its contents. It turned out to be almost a complete and balanced meal: dried vegetables, some slices of dried meat, nuts, there was even a dense fruitcake for a desert. Compared to what Oscar was cooking this was definitely the better meal, which left Amon confused, and if he was being honest ashamed.
Being sent to do busywork, being given the better meal instead of working for it, he also noticed the camp, there was an obviously better sleeping spot under the tarp and a worse one under branches haphazardly leaned on the tarp. He knew he was getting the good bed. He was wrong, after Oscar finished eating, and putting the fire out, he crawled under his tarp to go to sleep. Amon was even more surprised than before, he dropped it though, somehow happy that he got the worse of the two sleeping arrangements. Both young men cried that night, and had duel nightmares containing most of the same imagery, the difference being that Amon didn’t help and his nightmares were centered around that fact, but Oscar couldn’t, his dreams containing themes of shackles and the door to the cellar with blood seeping below it. These nightmares would haunt them for a long time, and never fully subside.
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The fire from Calida’s spell spread around all of the members of her party, a small bubble of tranquility in a roaring tempest. Outside that area the blast was devastating. Removing anything even close to alive for a dozen meters in every direction from the epicenter, trees reduced to charcoal instantly, and the shrubs reduced to dust. For just a bronze rank, it was incredible power, at an incredible cost. Not only were all of Fenrir’s wolves gone, needing to be resummoned later, but even more worrisome was Calida who was completely passed out. Physically, mentally and magically drained dry. Rodrick was able to stand up by himself at this point, shakily, luckily the tree he was propped up against was pretty much untouched.
Calida’s spell that turned fire into healing ended when the massive spell was cast, but none of the party were actually on fire anymore, the living flame entering back into Calida’s veins, trying to up her mana production. Onwyn went over to Calida while Fenrir went to Rodrick. Onwyn began using their life essence abilities on Calida, before casting a few rituals to first relax the ambient mana, this was necessary to make their other rituals work correctly. They had specialized in the ways that rituals and ambient magic interact with each other, the reason this group was chosen for this job in the first place. These rituals were very time intensive, and mentally exhausting.
It was getting dark, so the two men started putting up their camp, making sure to put Calida in a bed comfortably. She had cast this spell before, and it usually took her around half a day to wake up after it. Onwyn was busy slightly adjusting the rituals, and casting them, one after another, the end result was to get an average mana density of the area for the past few months, and to get a magic density map of the entire region.
The end result was something obvious, it was not normal. The map showed that it really only affected a small area, centered really close to where they were, which was known by Onwyn due to having an ability to see ambient mana, always guiding the group to move to denser and denser magic, until any direction they moved in would lower the density of the mana of the region. For about a month and a half the mana has been slowly draining from the region, always getting slightly smaller and smaller, then 3 days ago something released all that mana, like if you dammed off a river only to get rid of the dam, causing a flood.
What was revealed as well, was that after the wave, the area had quickly returned to its natural magical density. Onwyn now knew that what happened here was 100% caused by something other than happenstance. As the moon rose above the sky, they still had more rituals to cast even as everyone else had fallen asleep, and even as they woke up in the morning, not getting any sleep, the fruit of their labor, knowledge that this wasn’t a monster, an essence or a god: a person made this.
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The next day Oscar woke up much earlier than Amon, almost a whole two hours. In that time Oscar broke down the camp around Amon, started a new fire, hunted game for breakfast, and started heating up some water for tea. Amon was still asleep even as the tea steeped, so Oscar thought it would be safe to check his book. He read the first page, the original text from the Bunker having somehow disappeared; replaced with “Make friends with him.” Oscar didn’t recognize the calligraphy, but it definitely wasn’t the vague chicken scratches he had for handwriting.
Oscar was downright repulsed by the thought. The reason he gave him the meal yesterday was just because he didn’t want him complaining, giving him the bed he wanted was just a happy accident. That wasn’t the end of the message however, instead on the next page was written “In a small valley to the near east of Shran lies an ancient battlefield, the warring factions have been long lost to time, but the blood spilled has soaked into the dirt tainting the place even the air with a permeation of death and blood, enter this field and stay the night there.”
Oscar didn’t like being told what to do, especially by a book, which wasn’t something he knew about himself until now. However there was something pulling at his soul, telling him on a subconscious level to go to the workshop, and to befriend Amon. He had always trusted his gut feelings like this. He was willing to at least look for the field. As for Amon, he was still unwilling to even entertain the idea.
When Amon finally awoke, Oscar handed him a cup of tea, and a bowl of the stew he made, while he was eating Oscar continued doing his morning exercises, mostly just pushups and running in place. He had done exercises almost every day since he could remember, a habit his father had drilled into him over time, being able to hunt his prey relentlessly was what separated humans from animals, he wouldn’t waste millions of years of evolution because he was simply lazy.
Amon on the other hand was embarrassed that he didn’t, which was part of the reason that Oscar didn’t get done with his exercises until after Amon had woken up, he had more than enough time. After breakfast, Oscar finished clearing up the camp, which was mostly packed up due to his earlier work. The flame had been dead for a while, only needing the coals to warm the pot anyways, he just made sure nothing dead was close enough to the coals to catch. They both started down the road again.
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Shran wasn’t exactly a sprawling metropolis, but compared to the village with no name that Oscar and Amon came from, it was huge, the men approached from the north. The city was made of four concentric rings, the largest and outermost was the farming district, about 2 kilometers further is the living district, then the working district, and then finally the ruling district. Just because the 2nd ring was called the living district doesn’t mean it’s the only one with houses, the ruling district is only 1 kilometer across, but there were still houses for the ruling elite, Amon and his father would actually stay in a guest house in the ruling district during their stays.
The living district was surrounded by small wooden walls, there were gates but no posted guards, the wall wasn't to protect the city from invading people after all, and it had open borders, but still it was a feat that they made it here without killing each other.