One would assume that returning from a large-scale late-night ambush with only minor injuries would be cause for celebration.
“I demand hazard pay!”
“No.”
And yet, now that they were out of danger and safely behind Cherrytown’s walls, the Sage of the Sands and the Sky Splitter were at each other’s throats as per usual.
“The hell you mean ‘no?!’ The contract didn’t say jack shit about demons!”
“I didn’t know.”
“Doesn’t matter! You still forced me to fight them!”
“I did not. You could have left.”
“As if! What kind of heartless bitch would leave a little kid behind?!”
“So you admit you acted of your own volition?”
“Like! I! Said! I didn’t have a choice when you put the kid in danger!”
“She would not be in danger if you weren’t so slow.”
“YOU USED YOUR APPRENTICE AS BAIT!”
“I used myself.”
“SAME THING!”
Though one party spoke at a relatively low volume, the other one more than made up for it. It was turning into quite the heated argument, quite literally at that. Both mages were so agitated that their combined magic seeped into the air around them as an uncomfortably hot and stiff breeze that made one’s hair stand on end. None of the guards stationed at the eastern gate dared to approach, but they’d have to intervene if things turned violent. So, the night watchmen just stood back and watched, much like the civilians who were peeking out of the surrounding windows despite the late hour. The pair were so caught up in their own little world that they didn’t even realize how much trouble they were causing for the people around them, let alone for themselves.
“Mistress! Please! You’re making a scene!”
Raela’s shrill voice cut through the heated argument before it got out of hand. She’d been too scared to speak up at first, but then realized these two might just demolish a neighborhood or two if they didn’t calm down. Not to mention that Fifteen’s arm was still bleeding from that botched spell, and though not urgent, she needed medical attention.
“Ms. Stormblood saved our lives! I don’t know what kind of deal you made, but I’d say a bit of extra coin is a fair trade for that! Or do you want her to actually abandon you the next time you need help?!”
“…”
The senior flame-flinger didn’t say anything, but the way she turned her head away and crossed her arms made it clear she was thinking something along the lines of ‘I could’ve handled them myself.’ Her rival apparently disagreed, given that triumphant ‘told you so’ grin, which prompted Raela to get on her case next.
“And Ms. Stormblood! Please think of the time and place! You have my gratitude, and I understand your vexations, but surely this is a matter for the guild and not public debate!”
“Hmpf,” Azyra scoffed in response. “Brat’s cheeky, but she’s right.”
“Indeed,” Fifteen agreed.
The ladies nodded at each other and stormed off in the direction of the guild, where they could resume shouting at each other behind closed doors. The apprentice would have followed, but she was so exhausted she could only fall to her knees with a huge sigh. Between the day-long hike, the ensuing ambush, and now that shouting contest, she was so drained that she didn’t even have the strength to stand. She looked pleadingly at Bahm, but the saber-tooth showed no signs of offering any kind of support. In fact, he seemed far more interested in Azyra’s pet roc. It was quite the majestic bird, now that Raela got a good look at it. It was much larger and more colorful, but Bahm somehow seemed fiercer. Thankfully the two familiars did not seem to share their masters’ animosity towards one another. At least, not to the same extent. The girl had no idea what they were doing by staring each other down by pacing around in a circle. They appeared to be sizing the other up for a brawl, but neither side was outwardly hostile. In fact, the beasts were so calm that they didn’t even care about the bone-chilling rain.
The tamed monsters aside, once the two disturbances were gone a few of the guards on duty walked over to help the young lady up to her feet. They asked her some questions about the incident. Apparently some of the lookouts had spotted the inbound roc from a distance thanks to the glow of Fifteen’s Wandering Starlight, but weren’t sure who or what it was due to the downpour and had raised a general alarm. That would explain why all the guards were up in arms well before Azyra’s familiar touched down just inside the gate. The girl wasn’t sure how much she could say about the evening’s events since there was much she herself didn’t understand, but she did her best to answer their questions. Thankfully they didn’t probe too deeply once they made sure Cherrytown didn’t seem to be in immediate danger and offered her a private room to spend the night in, to which she happily agreed.
The next morning Raela was woken up by a knock at her temporary quarters’ door. She’d gotten a dry change of clothes the night before and just went to bed in those, so there was no need to make herself decent. In fact, she didn’t even bother getting out of bed and just sat up.
“Yes?”
The door swung open to reveal a grumpy-looking Sage of the Sands accompanied by four equally grumpy guards.
“Oh! Good morning, Mistress. Did you come to pick me up?”
“Not… exactly.”
The sorceress jerked her head at the escorts, and only then did it dawn on the apprentice that her mentor wasn’t here by choice. Somehow, Raela wasn’t all that surprised. She turned towards one of the men, who she recognized from last night. Seemed quite dependable then and still looked that way even though he clearly hadn’t slept a wink.
“Mr. Norbert? What’s this about?”
“Protective custody, missy. Seems someone nasty is after your boss here and the guild wants her kept out of trouble while they investigate.”
“I see.”
That uncomfortably public argument had helped the girl piece together that Fifteen went on that camping trip fully expecting to come under attack and recruited a powerful ally in advance. It was something she did entirely on her own without telling the authorities, the guild, her apprentice, or even her colleague. Now that the secret was out none of those parties trusted her not to take matters into her own hands again. In other words, this protective custody was more about stopping her from running off on her own than keeping away any bad guys.
“Am I to be detained as well?”
“I’m afraid so. You’ll be staying with us a while longer.”
“It’s alright. I’ll just go back to sleep.”
The girl yawned and hid under the covers, still tired from yesterday’s trouble.
The next few days were largely uneventful. Fifteen and Raela spent their time lazing about that private room, which was more of a deluxe jail cell. The accommodations were more or less on the same level as the bare-bones dorm room the girl was given before she bunked up with her mentor. The only real issue was boredom, so they had to rely on the guards to provide them with entertainment. They brought in some books and woodcarving supplies to keep the mentor busy while her apprentice indulged in idle chatter and games of cards and dice. She would’ve liked to work on her cooking skills, but she’d need an open flame and the two of them were forbidden from so much as looking at an unlit torch funny. At least she got her brand new pot and pan back. Though they had to abandon the bulk of their luggage when they fled their campsite, the guild’s investigators recovered some of it. Most of their stuff was burned or trampled, but all of it was easily replaced. In fact, the Sage had insisted they bring only disposable items and supplies for the outing, likely in anticipation that something like this would happen.
Long story short, Raela got her first real break ever since her apprenticeship started, and though she was glad for it initially, by the fourth day she had grown as agitated and restless as her mentor was since the start. Indeed, Fifteen wasn’t handling the protective custody very well. She was unusually irritable and short with everyone, and on more than one occasion spent several hours just pacing around the room and muttering to herself. That kind of behavior was in fact what awoke Raela that morning, and the girl decided it was about time she addressed the troll in the room.
“Mistress? What’s got you so upset?”
“It’s nothing.”
“That’s clearly not the case. You’ve been on edge ever since we came back.”
“… I suppose.”
“Is it something to do with the demon ambush?”
“Not at all.”
“Then what?”
“It’s just an itch I need to scratch.”
“What… kind of itch?”
Raela’s mild concern quickly turned to genuine worry. She didn’t know much about drugs or alcohol or anything of the sort, but she couldn’t help but think this was some kind of withdrawal.
“My inner fire is restless. I need to let it out.”
“Oh,” the girl visibly relaxed. “Is that, like, a fire mage thing, or something specific to you?”
Fifteen paused her circular stride as she contemplated that question.
“Both. We all get these urges, but they’re more frequent in my case. My inner fire’s not used to being idle this long.”
“I see. Then, why not just let it out in the corner or something? I know the guards said not to, but–”
“No,” Fifteen cut her off. “I need to let out a lot. Enough to destroy half the building.”
“Huh? But, it’s a stone tower.”
It wasn’t as if there was nothing flammable in this little room, but all the walls, ceiling, and floor were solid bricks.
“Yes. That’s why it would be only half.”
“Ah.”
Fifteen wasn’t one to boast or exaggerate, so her statement gave Raela pause. She heard about her mentor flattening out a wooden lodge with one giant spell, but this was a fortified structure intended to withstand attacks from feral monsters and rogue wizards. Could she really wreck it with just a discharge of built-up energy? Not even the sorceress herself was certain about that, but she definitely felt like it. As far as she could tell, all of the demonic energy she’d converted and then absorbed had been successfully ‘digested.’ Her inner fire’s capacity had grown by 50% at the least and up to 80% at the most. Hard to tell the exact amount without burning through most of it, and she needed a chance to do that rather desperately. She felt that excess energy build up a sort of pressure, not unlike whenever she took an ashplume ignition potion. If she didn’t find an outlet soon, this protective custody thing could very well come to a premature and violent end. That was why she didn’t want it in the first place.
Thankfully, she and Raela got some very welcome news before noon. The church reported that it had tracked down and neutralized the people responsible for the demonic summoning and destroyed the dangerous relics which made it possible. Bit of a shame, in Fifteen’s opinion. That night had been a bountiful harvest, indeed. Being able to recreate it on demand would’ve been a tremendous help to her. Then again, growth that rapid was unprecedented even among the Order of Ash’s acolytes. It probably carried its own fair share of risks, and she’d undeniably taken too many of those recently. She wouldn’t have cared too much if it was just her, but this incident served as a stark reminder that she was now responsible for Raela’s safety as well. The girl wasn’t used to an Ashwalker’s self-destructive lifestyle and mentality – not yet, at least – so actually taking things slow for a while would probably be for the best.
Some more glad tidings were waiting for Fifteen back at her dorm room. The care package from the Order of Ash had finally arrived. She’d sent for it months ago, shortly before she was dragged into that mess at Roderick Asylum, and its contents improved her mood drastically. Firstly, a fresh set of robes made with her homeland’s special fabrics and dyes. These were impossible to find unless she ordered them directly, and all her old ones were ripped or torn in some way or another. The package also contained two dozen ignition potions, three jars of honeyed dates, a box of sand sugar, an extra tin of ashplume tea leaves, an assortment of exotic alchemical oils to soak her robe in, and a batch of letters. The contents were more or less what she always got from back home, aside from the unusually high number of envelopes.
It would seem word of her missing limb and saber-tooth familiar had spread like wildfire. As a result, a whole bunch of her old instructors and fellow acolytes had sent letters full of concerns, questions, and well-wishes. She hadn’t seen or spoken to some of those people in almost five years, so she was genuinely surprised to hear from them. It was rather heartwarming, and Fifteen felt genuinely homesick for the first time in a long while. The desert she could live without, but she still cared for the people there, and she wouldn’t mind seeing them all if the trip wasn’t so agonizingly long. Coincidentally, her mail contained two messages on the subject of visitation. The first was from Acolyte Two-Thirteen, a very good friend who graduated alongside her. He was going to stay in Cherrytown for a while and requested she show him the ropes, which she would happily oblige. The other letter of import was from the Twentieth Master of the Order of Ash, who summoned her back for a physical, mental, and magical evaluation. She wasn’t exactly thrilled about it, but this wasn’t something she could refuse if she hoped to continue receiving support from home.
Both were matters for next summer, so she prepared a couple of affirmative responses and sent them off for express delivery. If it was just those two letters, they’d arrive home in a week or two through a series of winged familiars. She’d reply to the other correspondences as well, but those weren’t as important. She could take her time preparing those replies while she was on the road and send them off in a big batch along with some souvenirs and supplies. Right now, the sorceress had a more immediate concern to deal with.
Though the care package had provided a welcome distraction from that ‘itch’ Fifteen told Raela about, it was high time she finally scratched it. She stormed into the guild’s stove facility and went wild for the most refreshing ten minutes of her life. By the time she was done venting her built-up inner fire, she’d stripped most of the interior’s fireproof coating and blasted two of its four solid steel window flaps clean off their hinges. She got a bone-chillingly calm reprimand from Daisy for going overboard, but it was worth it. Aside from feeling a lot better, Fifteen confirmed she could now use about two-thirds more magic before her inner fire ran cold. However, she also needed to rest proportionally longer to fully recharge it. Higher capacity did not mean faster recovery, but it would eventually translate to increased output. A wizard could somewhat regulate how much energy they put into a certain spell without altering the chant, and it would take some time and practice before the Sage was able to squeeze all that extra juice into her usual incantations. All things considered, that demon-fueled growth spurt had come at a very opportune time given that she was intending to devote herself to several months of meditation and study at the Vigil Valley Archive.
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And that was where the day’s bad news came in. Though the guild agreed to let her and Raela undertake that journey despite them being targeted by a powerful cult, they only did so under a rather vexing condition.
“How’d you do, Miss Name-too-long!? Still handling multiple shafts at once, I see!”
“… Quite.”
It was an hour after dawn, two days after Fifteen’s protective custody was called off, and she wasn’t the least bit happy to find Brother Tacitus waiting for her near the city gates.
“Good morning, Sir Knight!”
Her apprentice, on the other hand, was positively thrilled.
“I heard you’ll be escorting us from this day on! Having you around will be a tremendous relief!”
“Hahaha! Well, aren’t you a ray of sunshine?!”
“Ah-hah. That is in fact my name, very clever of you!”
Technically it was her alias, but unlike her know-it-all mentor, she didn’t let that minor detail stop her from humoring the witch hunter.
“If you say so, but keep that between us, aye? I’m not allowed to be clever.”
“I suppose not. You’re already strong, swift, and brave. It would be unfair to the rest of us if you were incredibly intelligent as well?”
Fifteen rolled her eyes assuming that was sarcasm, but the praise was in fact genuine. Raela, her sister, and her mother owed this man her life. He was every bit her hero as the Sage was.
“I know, right? Have to give you twinkle-fingers a chance. Though, if it makes you feel better, I have a mug only a mother could love.”
“Nonsense. I’m sure you could be quite handsome if you wanted to be.”
“No, I mean it. Just look.”
And with that, he whipped out a metal soup cup that was so banged up and rusty it looked like something he’d picked out of a trash pile. In fact, Fifteen was certain that was precisely what he’d done, all on the off chance that he could make that ‘mug’ pun. Raela, or ‘Ray,’ didn’t seem to notice the object’s questionable origins and just giggled merrily with a hand on her lips.
“Let’s move. Daylight’s wasting.”
“Right you are, Mistress. Sir Knight?”
“After you, my lady!”
“Then we’re off!”
Thus did the party set off in a needlessly triumphant fashion. Fifteen hoped to enjoy the peace and quiet, but her two human companions kept blabbering on and on about insufferably inconsequential things. Thankfully they seemed content to leave the socially awkward sorceress out of their nonsense, and Bahm was more than happy to silently walk at her side as always. The saber-tooth had much to think about himself. He’d apparently spent the last few days with Azyra’s familiar, who had been bestowed with the somewhat demeaning name of Hoot. It – or rather, she – and Bahm had traded tips on how to make the most of their wild magic. Apparently the two familiar had manifested strikingly similar abilities since becoming bonded, but faced various difficulties. The roc struggled to maintain her innate physical boost under duress while the saber-tooth’s fire breath suffered from short range.
Fifteen wasn’t sure exactly what kind of information they exchanged and was even more mystified as to how they were able to communicate in the first place. Unfortunately, Bahm insisted on keeping those details a secret. That he acted that way was an issue in and of itself. The beast’s thoughts were getting a bit too cocky and sassy lately, and the sorceress felt like a bit of humbling was in order. This partnership wouldn’t last if one of them kept acting superior all the time. She just had to figure out a good way to knock Bahm down a peg without openly imposing her will upon her familiar. A tall order, but she had plenty of opportunity to think about it. It would take about a month of travel before they reached their destination. And that’s from Cherrytown, which was in fact the closest major settlement to Vigil Valley. Some people had to go there from the capital, another frontier, or even a different nation, which could take a full year in some cases. And that was just one way. Fifteen couldn’t imagine being on the road for that long. In fact, the main reason she chose to settle in Cherrytown was to minimize that travel time.
The Vigil Valley Archive was the only place in the world that still housed functional grimoires, and the Sage of the Sands intended to visit it a dozen times or more. This would be her second trip, so while she wasn’t exactly familiar with the route, she wasn’t a total stranger to it, either. The first leg of the journey was to follow the highway east out of the city for half a day, then turn north towards the Armal Mountains. Fifteen got a momentary urge to drop in on that lodge of northlanders and see what they did with that enchanted hot spring, but the climb up and then down was too much effort to be worth it, especially during the rainy season. Her destination lay far beyond that mountain, but it was way less effort to go around than over, so that’s what the party did.
image [https://i.imgur.com/44ehJJd.jpeg]
Having been through this arduous trek before, Fifteen found herself appreciating the company quite a bit, and not just because it was less lonely. Raela’s cooking was improving at an incredible pace and there were plenty of small settlements along the way to keep them supplied with ingredients. Even if there weren’t, Bahm made sure they had no shortage of fresh meat to go along with whatever the wizards foraged throughout the day. Every meal was hearty and delicious as a result. Unfortunately, Tacitus proved quite useless when it came to wilderness survival, but having someone with both brute strength and opposable thumbs proved useful in many other ways. He also helped keep watch at night. Another curious thing about the witch hunter that Fifteen noticed was that his constant giggling disappeared completely when he seemed to be genuinely having fun, such as when ‘playing’ with Bahm or chatting with Raela. Conversely, he was at his loudest when he was bored or frustrated. Something definitely wasn’t right with the man’s head from a clinical perspective.
At least his face wasn’t horrible to look at, which was good since it might ruin Fifteen’s appetite otherwise. At the apprentice’s insistence, masks and helmets were banned at mealtime. Something to do with building trust. It seemed a valid suggestion so the Sage didn’t oppose it, though it did highlight a rather odd thing they all had in common. Everyone in the group wore something to cover their face. Even Bahm, though in his case it was to satisfy his ego, whereas the sorceress had a medical condition and Brother Tacitus needed to be ready to go into battle at a moment’s notice. Because of Raela – who was mainly concerned about her identity leaking out – the witch hunter and the Sage were practically forced to see eye to eye at least twice a day.
Fifteen hadn’t gotten a glimpse of the guy during the asylum incident, so she was mildly surprised at how normal he looked. Brown hair, brown eyes, and white skin typical for midlanders, slight stubble on his chin. Hard to call him handsome, but it was definitely a manly face. The only truly remarkable feature about it was a peculiar tattoo on his forehead, above the right brow, that read ‘M-15-43.’ Probably some witch hunter specific thing that the sorceress didn’t feel like delving into. She was far more worried he’d use her facial situations as an excuse to tease and belittle her like before, but surprisingly he said not a single word about it. In fact, he’d been shockingly well-behaved during this first part of the trip. Almost suspiciously so.
In any event, the party was able to complete the first leg of the journey without any major incidents. The most exciting thing that happened was bumping into a group of lizardmen that were hunting to stock up for the winter, but the savages knew better than to attack a group of humans, especially with a mage among them. Even if they succeeded, the casualties would be too great to be worth the plunder. Fifteen’s group took the expected three weeks to reach the Rolling River, so named because of the peculiar way it snaked its way left and right through the northern highlands. The team threw together a raft and drifted with the current for another five days. This was the easiest part of the journey by far. The return trip would be considerably less relaxed unless the river randomly decided to flow in the other direction.
Riding the Rolling River all the way would lead the group to the Misty Sea and the frozen wastes that surround it – the homeland of those bumbling oafs known as northlanders. Instead, Fifteen had everyone disembark at a gravelly stretch of shoreline marked by some imposing ruins. Two massive circular pedestals of solid stone rested on each side of the river at an equal height. Legend claimed they served as pedestals for a truly titanic statue carved by the giants themselves. It was more than twenty meters in height, making it tower above its creators much like the giants themselves stood over the other races. It was supposed to have been the magnum opus of some prodigal sculptor and served as tribute to their gods. The giants eventually granted it life and turned it into a weapon against their elven neighbors to the east, which was also where Fifteen’s party headed as they entered the third and final phase of their month-long journey.
It was on the second day after leaving the Rolling River that Raela noticed something was off. The area around them seemed strangely silent and desolate. No animals whatsoever, and the only plants to be found were patches of dry grass or stinky moss. These barren badlands were a drastic and sudden departure from the ancient taiga forests they’d passed through over the past week. It had gotten especially bad ever since the group passed through a line of chest-high stone pillars, spaced roughly thirty paces apart and stretched as far as her eyes could see to the left and right. The rectangular totems were clearly carved by hand, given their uniform shapes and red-colored tips. Raela studied one up close – with permission from her mentor – and noticed the paint was a lot fresher than the weathered stone it was masking. Someone was maintaining this odd fence-like formation. A lot of someones, actually, given the sheer manpower something on this scale required. The novice mage would come to understand that those post-like stones served to act as a border about three hours after passing through them, at which point the rapidly shifting terrain undertook a much more sudden and pronounced change.
“Mistress? What is this?”
“Vigil Valley. A dust zone.”
“You sure? Rather than a valley, it seems more like the surface of the moon. Or… what’s left of it.”
Everyone had heard of these places before. Huge swathes of land so utterly decimated by the War of the Ancient, so profoundly dead that not even the wind stirred. Raela had previously imagined them akin to the desert that her mentor hailed from, but reality proved far more terrible. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but flat, barren ground covered in gray dust so impossibly fine and light that it lingered in the air like a blanket of gravelly fog easily tall enough to reach the girl’s neck. There were no visible terrain features whatsoever, just a flat and seemingly infinite horizon of concentrated pollution. That included the sky, which was perpetually covered by another, slightly whiter layer of unmoving gray smog where the clouds should be. The afternoon sun still shone through, though its blinding glare was reduced to a barely visible flicker.
In short, not a pleasant place.
“Hah! Chin up, Ray!” the witch hunter roared. “Perhaps all that floating dust tastes like candied apples!”
“I… somehow doubt it, Sir Knight.”
“Oh, pish-posh. Let me enjoy my fantasy while I can, will you? Hahahahaha!”
Given how giddy he seemed, Tacitus clearly wasn’t a fan, and neither was Bahm. The saber-tooth didn’t consciously share his displeasure, but Fifteen still felt an overwhelming sense of ‘I want to go home’ from his general direction. The woman herself wasn’t exactly thrilled to be here either, but this wasn’t her first foray into Vigil Valley so she was somewhat used to it.
“Could be worse,” the sorceress claimed. “There’s daylight and we don’t need to worry about anomalies or ancient bioweapons.”
“Is… Is that what dust zones are usually like?” the girl hesitantly asked.
“Mhm.”
As far as desolate wastelands went, this was indeed one of the nicer ones.
“Great. And, uh, how do we get through this one?”
“With this.”
The Sage pulled out something from her shoulder-bag as she said that. It was the second magic item that had come into her possession after the Wandering Starlight. It looked like a steel magnifying glass, except there was no lens and the ring’s inner side was covered in cog-like teeth that she started fiddling with. It looked cheap and unassuming, but was in fact quite expensive. There weren’t many magical devices humanity could make themselves, and this was one of them.
“Stick close, walk where I walk, and keep clear of the fog. Don’t cover your face – it won’t help.”
Fifteen made her way down the long yet gradual leading into Vigil Valley proper, and as Raela followed in her wake, she was disturbed to find that her feet sank deeper and deeper into the sea of dust covering the ground. She was already up to her knees before she even hit the incline’s halfway point and each motion sent those ominous particles flying everywhere in waves, though they quickly settled. As she observed the curious phenomenon, Raela noticed that there were hundreds of deep trails all around her, each of them more or less identical to the one she was making. If the stories were true and this place was indeed utterly devoid of wind, then some of those tracks could’ve been here for more than a century. Also, it was getting rather difficult to move one foot in front of the other. This layer of dust wasn’t anywhere near as heavy or hard as snow, but it would still take a lot of effort to keep plowing through it like this, especially if it kept getting deeper. Still, she trusted Fifteen knew what she was doing and kept her complaints to herself.
“Huhuh. Hehehe. Hahahaha. Hee hee hee.”
Tacitus wasn’t as calm. In fact, if the chaotic nature of his quiet giggles were any indication, he was panicking quite a bit despite valiantly trudging forward. As for Bahm, he was fine for now, but if this stuff kept getting any deeper then he’d be up to his neck in it, not to mention that it surely stained his magnificent black mane. Though he wasn’t happy about it, like Raela he also trusted the sorceress to lead them through this bizarre environment. The group’s faith was rewarded when, once close enough to enter the fogged-up part of the so-called valley, Fifteen activated the item she brought out earlier. Formally, it was called a convection wand. Informally, it was known as a heat-fan. Functionally, it used a pyromancer’s inner fire to generate a constant outward-flowing current of air within five paces around the sorceress, just as she’d configured it.
The fog and most of the dust on the ground parted before the woman like a curtain and just as smoothly slid back into place behind her once she’d moved past. Naturally, this caused some rather tall and ominous clouds to dance around the party, threatening to block what little sunlight they already had, but none of them could breach the convection wand’s area of effect. Thanks to that, the party was able to take a relatively leisurely stroll through relatively heavy residue that barely went up to their ankles instead of reaching all the way up to their waists or beyond. Raela’s earlier assertion that the fog blanket wouldn’t go past her neck was proven horrendously ignorant as she had no idea just how easily people sank into this stuff or how deep it went. As things stood, even the towering witch hunter would be catching lungfuls of probably toxic particles if not for that heat-fan. And to think, Raela was secretly using it to dry her hair and clothes after being out in the rain. She’d have to show it more respect in future now that she knew how vital it was for this important journey… though that didn’t mean she’d stop.
“Uh, Mistress? I’d like to ask you a few things, if that’s alright.”
“Mhm.”
She had to maintain the air flow and navigate the sea of filth, but the mental effort required was equivalent to that of holding down a button.
“What exactly is all this dust?”
“The result of large-scale disintegration, most likely.”
“Disin…” the girl’s eyes went wide as her voice trailed off. “But… why?”
“‘If I can’t have it, nobody else will.’ That was the ancients’ idea of ceding territory during the war. More than 80% of the world was like this or worse by the time the fighting stopped, and humanity has barely reclaimed half of that since. It seems unlikely we’ll ever cleanse all of it.”
“What? But… doesn’t it slowly spread outward?”
“Mhm.”
“Prophet preserve us…”
“He did, does, and will continue to do so,” Tacitus chimed in from the back. “That a single one of us still draws breath is evidence of that.”
“A fair point, Sir Knight,” the girl flashed him a weak smile over her shoulder, then turned back to the sorceress in front. “But why would anyone live in a place like this, much less maintain a library?”
“Because we lack the means to move it. You will understand when we get there.”
“Alright. And, uh, when will that be?”
“About four more days, if we don’t get lost.”
“How do we avoid getting lost, exactly?”
Absolutely nothing in sight could serve as a landmark, and with that layer of sky-dust overhead the stars wouldn’t help much with navigation.
“We follow those who came before.”
Fifteen pointed at the ground in front of her, revealing that the bottommost layer of dust had a clear path in it, hard-packed into place by countless others who’d made the same trip. It was reassuring, and perhaps even a little inspiring. Though, Raela was reminded to stay on her toes when she noticed what appeared to be a mummified hand sticking out of the ground as they passed by.
“I take it that inhaling the dust is fatal?”
“Mhm.”
“But, can you keep it at bay for four whole days?”
“There are checkpoints. We will rest there.”
“Let me guess, I’ll know them when I see them?”
“Mhm.”
“Great…”
The apprentice knew why her mentor was being so obtuse. Figuring things out for herself was an important skill for a mage to have, and Raela needed all the practice she could get. Knowing she was being tested didn’t exactly make her feel better about it, though.
“Hahahaha! Chin up little Ray! The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step!”
“… What the hell’s a mile?”
“Oh, Miles is a witch I hunted once. Short fellow. Huge head. Remarkably quick. Had a knack for making dirt clones of himself. Gave me the run-around for five days. He’s reformed now, runs a pastry shop in Redhaven. Heh. I still chase him around sometimes. Keeps us both in shape, you see!”
“Uh-huh…”
That story really didn’t explain the strange proverb, but the girl felt like she’d get a headache if she tried to probe deeper. The witch hunter was peculiar like that.
“So, anyway,” she turned her attention back to Fifteen. “Is there something I can do to help? Hold the heat-fan, maybe?”
“Cut the idle chatter if you have no more questions.”
“Right. Sorry, Mistress.”
The sorceress wasn’t normally so curt, but this place held secrets she’d rather not expose an innocent young girl to if she could help it.
Chief among them being that a significant portion of this impossibly fine dust they were treading through used to be people once.