“We’re going to pack up and leave in about half an hour, are your things ready to go?” Dovhran had emerged from the tavern sober, or at least mostly sobered.

“I’ve been ready to leave since you arrived this morning.” Flip’s eyes were locked on the cliffs that obscured the horizon.

As the evening had progressed, the orange light of evening had begun to reflect off of the pale white mountain sides and scattered the twilight around the entire town of Norwen. It was beautiful.

“That’s… fair. I apologize for the wait, I had wanted to have a small moment of celebration before we reached the actual hard part of our work.” Dovhran had grown defensive, or perhaps ashamed. Flip wasn’t quite sure what the mercenary's expression was revealing, or why his shift in tone had occurred, though he was accustomed to shifts in attitude after a person had succumbed to drink and the drink had faded.

“I don’t think it was a bad idea. But I was already prepared to leave. The portable flat is packed and I don’t think we will need to restock supplies for at least a month.” Flip considered Selian’s role in the work they were about to undertake. “Or perhaps slightly less, depending on how much our navigator will require by way of food and water.”

“I think we’ll be fine.”

“Is Selian ready to leave as well then?” Flip turned to look towards the door to the tavern, but still couldn’t see the elf.

“She’s packing up the last of her things. I’m going to go move the cart around to the back of the tavern, the owner has agreed to buy the horse and cart. From here on out we’ll be on foot.”

Flip had been wondering when the horse would begin to be more of a hindrance than a help. Apparently it was right then. Though if Dovhran was to be believed, it was some ways back on the road up to Norwen.

“No goats?”

“High rock goats are expensive, even for rental.” Dovhran frowned, looking saddened by the information himself. “And even if we managed to get a hold of some, apparently they don’t like being on the plateau. We’d just be paying for a shorter journey up the side of the mountain.”

“Very well then, I’ll just grab my hatch out of the cart and you can take it away.”

Flip rocked forward in his chair with enough force to carry his tired body onto his feet. It seemed that the longer he rested, the more tired he became, and the more his body resisted movement. Once on his feet, it was much easier to make his way to the cart and awkwardly lean over the back end of the bed and pull the hatch off. Not yet ready to heft the straps over his shoulders, Flip rested the wooden hatch on the seat of the chair he had just been sitting in.

As soon as the hatch was free, Dovhran had begun to untie the horse and lead it around the side of the tavern. Flip had switched his focus to stretching out his tired body and only somewhat paid attention to the mercenary.

Somewhere between stretching his legs with knee lifts and adjusting his lower back with alternating toe touches, Selian had exited the tavern and propped herself against the outside wall. When Flip finally noticed the elf watching him he did his best to act as though he wasn’t surprised, but didn’t feel that he had convinced her. It probably hadn’t helped that he had jumped when he realized that she was there.

“Do you plan on hiking across the plateau in those boots?”

“Is there something wrong with them?”

“No. At least, I doubt you have a better alternative. New boots will do more harm than good at this point.” Selian tapped her own well worn boots as she explained. “But those look like they don’t have much to offer in the way of protecting your feet from the hard ground.”

“Rain, I’ve plenty of padding on my feet, the boots are just to keep the mud out.” Flip chuckled. “I may be younger than the two of you, but my body’s older and more worn. I don’t think I’ll have much problem.”

Selian looked Flip over, up and down, more carefully than Flip was sure she had actually done up to that point. The prolonged look made him deeply uncomfortable, but he staved off his discomfort by chewing away at the skin on his lower lip and avoiding eye contact.

“You’re right, you’ll probably be fine.”

The acknowledgement came as a surprise to Flip, but he accepted it gracefully. He wasn’t entirely sure how she had come to that conclusion, or what she had been looking for, but if she had the impression that he would be fine he trusted her. She seemed the type to travel constantly. Or at least, the wear on her boots and the fade in her cloak from the exposure to excessive sunlight indicated that the elf had spent many years traveling.

“Where are your things?”

“Oh, I travel light. Just my clothes and what I can keep on my person.”

“Pity. I have an extra few square feet of storage space.” Flip dropped his hand to the hatch. “And it would be nice to have an excuse to keep the remaining space for myself to sleep in. But as it is, I could fit the both of you in as well… and I could be persuaded to do so if it becomes too dangerous in the wastes.”

Flip took great joy in Selian’s baffled expression. He was sure the elf could tell he was speaking the truth, or at the very least there was confidence in his words. Having never seen the portable flat, it made perfect sense that the elf wold have no context or notion of what Flip carried with him. And Flip enjoyed that ambiguity and resultant confusion greatly. It reminded him that not every intelligent being was magically savvy, and consequently that there was still a place for him in the world.

“Are you two ready to head out then?” Dovhran asked as he rounded the corner of the tavern. He hadn’t even caught sight of the two waiting on the porch, which made them both think that he had been waiting for at least some short time around the corner.

“Yes.” Selian answered shortly.

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“Lead the way.” Flip grunted as he picked up his hatch and slid his arms through the carrying straps.

The mercenary led his wizard and navigator through the small town of Norwen on foot. It took much longer to traverse than if they had traveled by cart, but it was still only about an hour before the three were positioned at the base of the decapitated mountain range. There were still some buildings outside of the town proper, much the same way that the hearth temple had been built away from the main cluster of the town. These buildings looked mostly to be utility structures that housed materials and tools for farming and other agrarian professions. Further still away from the town were several larger buildings which looked to be warehouses of some sort, or perhaps even small processing mills. And, late in the day though it was, there were still workers buzzing between the large buildings and the mountainside.

What had not been clear from far away, or even from within the heart of Norwen, was the quarry. It was cut out in a remarkably natural shape from the the proper side of the mountain, but up close it was very clear that there was plenty of mountain missing. The ground was mostly still rock where the mountainside once sat and a subtle horseshoe shape in the cliffs themselves revealed just how much stone had been removed from the base of the wastes. And while the size of removed stone was impressive, it was still less that Flip had expected to see. There had been several hundred years at most for the workers to dig out the relatively rare and profitable pale white stone that made up the majority of the pale wastes plateau, but a column of perhaps only a hundred feet in diameter had been dug out. The wizard had no context for whether that was actually a proper amount of stone to have harvested or not, but it seemed like too little.

The wizard and navigator had almost begun to suspect that their employer would attempt to lead them into the heart of the quarry itself, as they had made a rather direct approach to the mouth of the excavation site, but Dovhran changed directions after getting almost up to a point where one would begin to draw attention from the workers. From there, the mercenary began to follow an unseen path around the mouth of the quarry and towards one of the talon shaped sides where forest clashed with livable land. Just around the edge of the talon and perhaps two hundred feet into what had immediately felt like older forest, Dovhran stopped and looked around carefully as if to be sure they were not followed.

“Selian, do you hear anything?”

“Just a few spikespur up in the trees, nothing on foot.” The elf answered after taking a moment to listen to her surroundings.

Flip had listened at the same time and heard nothing. Not even the birds that she'd mentioned.

“Alright, stick close and be careful to use the footholds I do.”

Dovrhan turned and walked halfway around a large balsam fir that was only a few feet from the side of the cliff face, and began to lift himself up the worn but sturdy low branches as though he were climbing a ladder. As Flip and Selian followed, they could see that there were deliberately stripped and reinforced branches for climbing up alongside the cliff side. The sturdy branches ran out about six feet up the side of the tree, and it was there that Dovhran carefully transferred himself to a different wooden structure that Flip couldn’t make out through the rest of the branches above.

“Ladies first.” Flip gestured for Selian to follow after Dovhran, his voice forcing politeness.

“You don’t have to ask me twice.” Selian smiled and rubbed her hands together before leaping up into the branches. “Not like I want to look up your skirt.”

Flip frowned as he reassessed his clothing. It was not ideal for climbing. He had anticipated a well worn path, but it made sense that the only reliable path up into the wastes in the area would be in the quarry. And Dovhran clearly didn’t want to go through the quarry, which made sense. He wasn’t being very open about the nature of their journey; so, the less people he told at all, the better. With little other recourse, Flip ripped open the side of his skirt and began to climb.

Just above the reinforced branches, there was a sturdy length of tree root that hung down from a small alcove. Where root tendrils dug into the rock, there were clearly accentuated hand and foot holds that made for extremely easy climbing. Once the root was scaled there was a small landing where the tree grew out. Moving around the back of the tree revealed a wide carved out stairway that wound up the side of the cliff. The stairs were geniusly placed around the main curve of the quarry so that it would be difficult to see from the town and above the treeline so that it couldn’t be spotted from below. The trees below were natural enough that if you didn’t look closely you’d never see the path up either.

“Where’d you learn about this route up the cliffs?” Selian asked Dvohran as they all paused at the bottom of the stairs.

“When there exists a place where you aren’t supposed to be, who goes there?” Dovhran had a crooked smile on his face that revealed the pride of this discovery. “Teenagers. And who else would have the time to carve out this path so well and so discretely? No one. So I asked around and paid a few kids to tell me how they got up on the cliffs. Apparently this is a relatively new route up, only been here maybe fifteen years. The boys in town use it to take girls up on the cliffs at night where they can be alone.”

“Of course. If teenage boys can’t find a way to get what they want, they’ll literally carve a path out of a mountain to get it anyway.” Selian sighed. “And people says elves are stubborn.”

“Better on the cliffs than in the woods or some wine cellar.” Dovhran shrugged. “At least they’ll probably stay sober up here. Not really a way to get up and down if you’re drunk.”

“I guess.” Selian was still shaking her head in disbelief. “Let’s go then.”

“A moment longer, if you don’t mind.” Flip held up a hand as he tended to the rip in his skirt.

It took almost exactly a minute for Flip to complete a mending spell for the tear, and both the mercenary and navigator looked annoyed at the hold up. But, still, the wait was shorter than the climb thus far had been.

“Don’t suppose you can refresh the color of my cloak with that spell, can you?” Selian had an eyebrow raised. Though she was annoyed at the wait, she was still clearly curious.

“That would require components that I do not have, though I could bleach it further if you like.”

“No. But let me know if you come across those spell components. I’d like to restore this if at all possible.”

“Alright, let’s go. Up the stairs.” Dovhran shooed the group up the stony ascent before overtaking them and leading the way once more.

After several switchbacks, the three explorers reached the top. It was a disorienting adjustment to go from a fairly concealed passage out into an open space with nothing to brace against. And though Flip didn’t want to admit it, he was more than a little winded from the climb. None of them looked very comfortable atop the plateau. It felt completely unnatural.

Before them lay an open expanse, nothing but dust and pale white stone for miles ahead of them. And a sheer drop into the forest behind them. A strong wind swept across the area, threatening to push them back down the stairs. The the east a short distance, the top and far wall of the quarry could be seen. Lights in the town below and the in the quarry were beginning to be lit, revealing the full range of the town below. Compared to the expansive void ahead, the town and the quarry seemed microscopic.

“We should head a few minutes in and then wait for nightfall. I don’t want to be around here when kids start to show up.” Dovhran looked to Flip. “Would you be willing to lend your flat for that wait? The quarry overseers usually do a sweep of the plateau around dusk to make sure no one’s up here.”

“It will be cramped, but yes.” Flip sighed. This was one of the scenarios he’d been hoping to avoid.

The wizard looked out across the plateau and into the heart of the wastes as they walked in, his eyes scanning for any tall dark figure. They found nothing. Though as the sun began to really set across the horizontal plane of the cliffs side there seemed to be something in the distance, though Flip wasn’t sure. It could have been a small stone on the ground for all he could see, but it sent chills down his spine to think that there really could be something else out there waiting for them.