12.II

It has been twenty-three years since I came this way.

Seeing it again brings me to reminisce.

I now lead our caravan in the place of my father. I have seen so many things but somehow I had not expected the valley of Shialtza to ever change.

Yet when we arrived the calm pace and simple village was gone. Replaced by a bustling fortress town and harried field workers. The monastery on its peak was rubble and instead of being guided by farmers an escort of armored and armed soldiers led us to a fortress where the town had once been.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

They welcomed and bought the load of silk we carried but to my shock the god wyrm was apparently dead.

Our host claimed his father slayed the creature whom the peak carried the namesake of but when I asked a villager they confided that the god wyrm had perished years before the man’s father and his soldiers came.

The scales he had fashioned into armor and the skull which adorned his feasting hall had been plundered from Shialtza’s tomb.

Of the two of us it was not I who expected to live the longer.

It has been a long day and the lord of the valley’s feast demanded heavy drinking to avoid insult. I will inquire into the further truth of Shialtza’s death in the morning with the villagers.

-Excerpt from the travel log Pythra of Veracules