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By the time we’d finished taking down the tents, Jess had Dino healed and awake. He was at first grumpy and angry, but after talking to Jess for a while, he became embarrassed and apologetic. I didn’t think he had it in him to apologize for anything, and after a while I was wishing that he didn’t! He simply wouldn’t drop it! “I’m sorry. Honestly guys, I’m soooo sorry. I don’t know what got into me. I’m not like that. Yeah, you say it’s OK, but still…. I feel bad! I’m sorry!”
Gods above! I swear, I think I’d rather have ‘arrogant ass’ Dino with him, over ‘apologetic broken-record’ Dino! By the time we had packed up, and Jess and Dino had gathered a few burning branches to use as torches, I was ready and happy to go charging into Death in the dark. Anything to put some distance between me and him!
The moment we crossed the threshold and entered into the perimeter where the death energy pulse, I knew it. The energy was wrong. Corrupted. Not at all like the normal energy that death provides naturally. Whatever was creating this energy was dark, twisted, and wrong, and it left a foul taste in the back of my mouth that wouldn’t go away.
If it wasn’t for the fact that Earth was my primary affinity, I never would’ve noticed that there was a slight undercurrent of earthen energy which marked the border between where the death was, and where it wasn’t. Honestly, it was such a subtle and mellow feel, I doubt even one out of a hundred experienced wizards would have even felt the earth flows. Mother, herself, probably would have even overlooked it. Only the fact that I’d spent years basically practicing in the forests secretly at home, drawing almost exclusively upon the earth and fire of the island, allowed me to notice it.
Around the perimeter of the… ‘Graveyard’ doesn’t seem like the proper term anymore for what we had stumbled into. I suppose ‘disturbance’ is a better term for it…
Around the perimeter of the disturbance was a small and subtle ring of earth energy which contained the deathly miasma inside and kept it from spreading outwards any further. Using my talents subtly so Dino and Jess wouldn’t notice, I felt the presence of a foreign ore in the ground below up, shaped and formed in an unusual arc that probably formed an enclosed circle around the whole area for miles ahead of us. The ring was relatively thin, being no more than a hand's width in thickness, and was only about half that size in height. Buried several feet below the surface, it was something that most people would never dig deep enough to notice by accident, and the energy it gave off was light, subtle, and easily overlooked from the corruption and thickness of the death flows around us.
Truly, one could almost say that it was even a miracle that someone like me even noticed it!
Taking a moment to probe the ore a little more carefully once I became aware of it, I was surprised by the fact that I couldn’t readily identify it. It was primarily iron of some sort, but it had been altered in subtle ways and didn’t have the same feel or composite to it of anything I’d ever felt before. It was iron. At some point in time, it was probably pure, refined iron ore. But now it was…. almost iron, but not quite.
The oddity was enough that I finally stopped moving completely, held up my hands for the others to stop as well, and then I turned around and starting walking back to where we’d been camping at before.
“What the hell? Where you going now?” Dino asked, all puzzled at my sudden change in behavior, while the two girls looked odd and curious at me as well.
“Back out of here for a moment. Come on,” I told them without stopping. We weren’t far from the edge, but being inside even this much was enough to make every hair on my body stand erect. I needed a few moments to think about what I’d learned so far, before we went any deeper.
Crystal was the first to shrug her shoulders, turn, and then walk back with me. Jess followed after a brief pause, and once Dino realized he was in the rear and probably closest to anymore skeletons, he quickly caught up and walked closely beside her.
Finally getting outside the influence of death, I breathed the pure air deeply several times and enjoyed the true feel of nature all around us, without the taint of that corruption influencing things. I knew the others would have a thousand questions for my actions, so I took a deep breath to steady myself and started talking before they could.
“Jess. Dino. There’s something I need to confess before we go any further. Sit down, relax for a moment and hear me out. I’ll answer any questions you might have in a few moments, but let me speak for a bit to explain first.”
“What the hell, man? You gay or something?” Dino asked with a puzzled look on his face. “Not like something like that seems important right now.”
“No,” I said with a slight sigh, “I am not gay. And that’s not what I was going to talk about anyway! Sit your ass down and actually listen to me for a moment and hear me out for a change!” For whatever reason, he just pushes my buttons in the wrong way quite easily.
“Fine.” Dino snorted, but finally leaned back against a nearby tree and crossed his arms to show that he was listening.
Waiting a moment for the others to get settled, I tried to arrange my thoughts as best as possible. I wasn’t certain how what I was going to say was going to be taken, so I figured the best thing to do was to simply get to the heart of the matter from the start. Drawing some of the energy from the fire that flows deep within the earth, I pulled its power to me, pointed, and then set a nearby bush on fire. “I, also, am a male wizard,” I told them calmly.
“Wha.. What?!!” Dino was so shocked that he would’ve feel on his ass, if he wouldn’t have been leaned against the tree for support. Jess simply stared wordlessly and ogled me like I was some two-headed rat or something to dissect. Only Crystal remained calm and completely composed – but then again, she knew that already.
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“Yes,” I tried to explain, calmly. “I too happen to have magic like you Dino. Never before have I ever seen a male wizard, and it was quite shocking to see you practicing your talents at the school. I’d always figured I’d tell you sometime, but I wanted to wait until I met the rest of our roommates and saw a bit more about what type of people they are first. A male can never be too careful with who he trusts telling about his ability. There’s some unscrupulous people out there that would take advantage of us in a heartbeat. I’m certain you can appreciate and understand that.”
Slowly, he nodded, and then sat down. “You could’ve told me sooner,” he pouted. “I’ve never seen another man with magic either! It’ll be nice to have someone to confide in and compare notes with sometime.”
“And I’m certain we can do that in the future sometime,” I agreed, nodding. “But for now, we need to focus on the task at hand.” Everyone simply stared at me for a few moments, and then finally nodded slowly. The look Jess had on her face was actually a little worrisome to me – it seemed almost calculating and cold, as if she was weighing her options with me now, the same as she had been with Dino earlier. It bothered me, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it at the moment. I’ll just have to be a little more cautious and on guard around her a bit more from now on.
“So why tell us now?” Jess asked, out of the blue. “You’d hidden your gift this long from us. What made you decide to suddenly tell us about it?”
“Because we’re walking into something really nasty,” I told her. “I mean really nasty. Just a few feet in that direction,” I pointed ahead, where we’d just came from, “the flows of energy and nature are completely twisted and corrupt. I’ve never felt, or even heard, of anything like it before in my life, and I’ve listened to talks about magic and how it works my whole life.” When they looked at me curiously, I simply shrugged and offered the barest truth. “My mother has magic, also.”
“But,” I continued on before they could ask any questions about her that I might not feel comfortable answering at the moment, “that’s not important right now either. What is important,” I stressed, “is the fact that we’re walking into someplace really wrong and nasty, and I have no idea what in the hell could cause something like that.”
“Dino seems to have focused on learning fire magic as his primary element,” I said, while looking at him for confirmation.
“I have.” He agreed.
“Well, I’ve focused heavily on earth magic. It’s my primary element, and my gift seems to work greatest with it,” I explained simply. “One of the things I’ve noticed, with my gift, is that this corruption seems to have been contained in some manner. There’s a barrier of energy that is keeping it from spreading beyond the limits of where it's currently at. Under the ground there,” I pointed ahead and downwards a bit, “is some type of metal that’s been purposefully shaped and formed to create a ring which holds the corruption inside.”
I paused for a few moments for what I was saying to try and sink in for them, before continuing. “What that tells me, is that whatever this corruption is, it’s probably been here for a looooong time. Somebody, sometime long enough in the past that people have forgotten about it, felt this corruption and trapped it.”
“They trapped it,” I repeated for emphasis, “but they couldn’t cleanse it or get rid of it. And now, it’s had God only knows how many years or centuries to build up and grow inside it!”
“And that,” I said while slowly waving a hand to indicate the whole forest in front of us, “is where we need to go. In there is where the graveyard is, and where the other team will be. If they still be, that is,” I added grimly.
Everyone was glancing back and forth at each other nervously now, and I could tell that my words had sunk home for them. We were walking into an old, powerful, and forgotten darkness – and they all realized that now.
“Are we certain we want to go any further then?” Jess asked nervously.
“I don’t know,” I told her honestly. “I think at this point, that’s something everyone will have to decide for themselves. I’ve come this far; I’m not going to turn back now. But, I honestly can’t say that I’d blame anyone who did decide to turn back at this point. What’s out there ahead of us is just plain wrong, and I can’t blame anyone for wanting to stay away from something like that.”
“Well, I’m going wherever you go,” Crystal said with no hesitation. “If you’re heading forwards, then I am as well.”
Dino and Jess were both quiet for moment, weighing their choices. It was Dino who finally spoke up first. “I’m going as well,” he finally said. “I believe you when you say it’s dangerous, but they’re my roommates and my friends. Since we’re this close, I want to help them if I can. Or, at the least, I want to know what to go back and tell their families about them, if it’s already too late somehow. I’m going to see this through to the end as well,” he said resolutely.
“Then I’m going also,” Jess said with a slight frown. “I realize it’s dangerous moving forward, but I’m also not stupid enough to try wandering through the forest and traveling the roads back all alone. If everyone else is going forward, I’m not going to be the only one running away. I’m with you guys.”
Slowly, I nodded to each of them. “I know we wanted to move on tonight, but let’s not do that right yet. Let’s wait and see if things change any when the sun comes up, and I want a little time to try and see what I can learn about that ore which works as a barrier against this corruption. Who knows. I may even be able to replicate it, or find some way to use it that can help us resist the trouble ahead.”
Without saying anything, everyone simply nodded and sat and stared forward into the darkness, waiting for daylight to come.