For the rest of the day, I worked on my preparations. Between drying out some fish and vegetables with a heating sigil and repairing my clothes, I was able to keep myself busy.
Every so often, I still cast worried glances at the urn shuddering away in the ring of sigils. It was unnerving having the thing anywhere nearby. Logically, I knew it was unlikely that the wraith would escape, but it was still worrying.
As night fell, I headed for one of the few buildings that hadn’t been damaged by the rampaging horror. I had already painted a handful of sigils over the place to replace my previous shelter.
I considered activating dream study again, but dismissed the idea. If I was going to be climbing down the side of a cliff, I needed to be as rested as I could be. I was just going to have to deal with the inevitable nightmares.
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Waking up to the morning light, I shook my head. All night long, I had been chased by sentient pots with shadowy arms. A quick look at the urn still trapped inside the ring of sigils helped settle my racing heart.
Before heading to the cliff, I took one last look around the ruined village. Very few of the buildings were left standing at this point. The wraith had torn massive paths of destruction across the entire village. Looking at the destruction all around, I realized just how lucky I was to be alive.
I dug up a bit of breakfast from one of the last surviving patches of edible plants. I would have liked more of the tubers, but they hadn’t been spared the otherworldly horror’s touch.
Making my way over to the cliff, I saw that the watch tower I had climbed before was gone. An odd thought struck me as I looked at the pile of mud that was all that remained. Why did the villagers feel the need to build a tower when the cliff already gave a perfectly good view?
My interface filled with a very long explanation of why the Northsight Tower had been constructed. I skimmed over the ridiculous tale of envy, betrayal, and something about a stolen lahir. I closed the message from my identification boon long before reaching the end.
Just how much random nonsense did I have taking up space in my codex? I was very grateful for the magical knowledge, but most of what I had gotten from the legacy codex seemed to be fairly useless. I dismissed thoughts of the codex. It wasn’t like it was going to help me down the cliff.
Or could it?
I pulled up my map to see if it had been expanded by the legacy codex. To my surprise, not only did it supply me with a map of the various ledges of the cliff face, but also an optimal route down.
Cliff Map [https://i.ibb.co/wLMfyy6/Cliffmap.png]
I doubted that it would still be completely accurate, considering the state of the village when I found it. Even if half the ledges listed had eroded away, it was still a good start.
I took one last look down at the jungle. The clearing by the giant lake seemed to beckon me forwards.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
I was ready to find out if there really were people over there.
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INTERLUDE 2: Fun in the jungle
Norbert was miserable.
He had been promised a glorious adventure of riches and wonders. What did he have instead? Heat, bugs, monsters, and above all, never ending and infuriating rain.
At least the encampment had a decent supply of booze and a few pretty faces. Now, thanks to some light in the sky, even that wasn’t available.
With a great deal of disgruntled muttering, Norbert trudged along behind Martin as he hacked through the underbrush. As his boss came to a sudden stop, Norbert almost ran into the man. About to let out yet another of a long string of complaints, the burly man cast a look at why they were stopped.
Standing in a clearing ahead where some of the ugliest brutes Norbert had ever seen. The things looked like a herd of oxen that had tried to turn their front legs into arms but failed halfway through. Hopefully the dumb things tasted at least halfway decent.
Leveling his crossbow at the stupid looking creatures, he waited for the order to release. To Norbert’s disappointment, Martin shook his head instead. He waved his hand to the side, silently ordering the men to quietly circle around the clearing.
Begrudgingly, Norbert followed the orders. While he understood the boss’ hesitation to start a fight with the things, a bit of fresh meat would have been a great change from the awful rations that the group had been eating for the entire trek.
A sudden exclamation from Reginald had Norbert reaching for his blade. Norbert wondered what mess the portly magician had gotten himself into this time.
Rather than looking troubled, the fat man and an excited expression on his ugly mug.
“What is it Reginald?” Martin asked quietly.
“It is my understanding that we didn’t send anyone ahead for preliminary reconnaissance, correct?” The insufferably wordy magician began. “Intriguingly, my cartographer's expanded map has detected the presence of an anomalously placed individual ahead. The individual appears to be descending from the plateau we seek.”
There were a lot of reasons Reginald was one of Norbert’s least favorite people. The fact that he never shut up was one of the biggest.
Martin didn’t seem to share Norbert’s opinion on the man. “Can you tell us anything else about them?”
“Implausibly, I am unable to ascertain the exact nature of our unprecedented mountaineer. For reasons unknown, their system isn’t relaying any information at this range.” The strangely punchable man prattled on.
“Some form of stealth boon? It’s odd that you can see them on your map.” Martin remarked.
“It is my hypothesis that an archaic precursor of the system we have come to know may be to blame. Such an antiquated interaction of the system would have a greatly reduced range on its transmission capability.”
“Alright, if that is the case, let me know the moment you have more information.” Martin commanded.
Distracted by his interface, the infuriating man fell into blessed silence. With a grunt, Norbert started trudging along once more.
As the group continued slogging through the weeds and rain, Norbert was fairly sure that the magician had just misread his map. Nobody would have been stupid enough to actually live in such a awful place. At least the mistake was keeping the blowhard quiet for a while.
“Ah! I have established a partial connection to the mysterious individual!”
Nothing good could last forever.
“Oh, glorious, my spellbook boon is receiving new spells! Our mysterious individual appears to be a kindred soul walking the path of magic. Let’s see here, ‘phantom fire’ is a promising name. What do you…” Miraculously, the portly man shut up while reading the spell’s description.
The horrified look on Reginald’s face was one that Norbert was going to savor for quite some time.