Tost woke to the morning sun.

The ground around him burned. It wasn't grass, or brush, not even that strange burning mud from the swamps, peat, it was bare earth, and yet it burned.

He didn't know how many hours had passed, they had woken in the night but at what hour he didn't know, but the fires around him had been going all that time.

They didn't hurt him, they didn't hurt him back then either, he remembered the feeling of his clothes burning off his skin, he was sat naked now, and his skin was unblemished, if covered in ash. He grabbed a patch of burning dirt, flinching as his hands met the flame out of habit, but the pain didn't come. The soil was sand and gravel, but in it he saw flickers of light, once again in a colour he couldn't describe.

He had heard of magic, of course he had, Lars could even do some basic evocations, start a fire, or provide light, but matches were just as easy, and lanterns more convenient for long term use. It dawned on him what the strange light was, octarine they called it, the colour of magic, though even among mages the ability to see it was considered rare. The octarine light glinted in the dirt, and flames leapt up from those sparks.

He let the dirt fall from his palm, it was a peculiar sight, a burning stream of gravel. He remembered what his pa had said about it.

"This earth is barren, there wasn't even a forest here, thousands of years ago, nothing could grow. Ok, not quite nothing, but only the hardiest of plants, and so a wasteland stretched a hundred miles, dividing the human and elf lands, as the forest does now."

Tost felt his mind drifting, but he welcomed it, closing his eyes and letting the memory take him back.

"Ironwood trees didn't grow on this continent before, but they were brought here from Igrar, they make better fortifications than stone if you have the tools to chop them, though it takes an adamantite or enchanted steel axe to make a dent in these trees. So nobles bought them and grew them, and they spread. They grow slowly, and rarely beat out other plants for resources, so they only grew where there was nothing else. And here where only the hardiest of plants can grow, well, ironwood trees are nothing if not hardy.

"The forest wasn't a problem for a hundred years and a hundred more, but slowly it spread and the plains of Alm became the forest of Alm. The elves were on good terms with humans then, so both sides made an enchanted corridor to keep a trade route open. It's what we're walking on now. Imagine it though, imagine enchanting soil like this to be even more lifeless.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

His pa reached down and scooped up some of the dirt, pouring it into Tost's hands.

Tost returned to the present. He looked down the road, the demon had carried on south, it's legs leaving deep pits in the dirt, and the canopy above was scorched. He wouldn't follow it, not for a few days at least. He tried to remember how long it would normally take for a demon to be stopped, days usually, but sometimes over a week.

He stood and strode back to the wagons, averting his eyes from a charred shape by a fallen horse as he walked back the way they had come. Of the 5 wagons only 2 remained mostly undamaged, the canvas had burned away but some of the crates inside were intact.

The mana stones were cold and lifeless now, they didn't glow with the octarine light they had before, but that wasn't what he was after. He broke open boxes of tools, replacement horseshoes and rope, before finally finding what he was after. It was old man Tommen's ration box. The blonde hard tack biscuits and pale brown pemmican was something he would normally dread having to eat, most traders carried these rations for emergencies, a broken axel or a lame horse could leave you stranded for days at a time, but now they were a welcome sight, easily enough to feed him for more than a month if it came to it, Tommen had stored rations for 4 after all.

If he had water that was.

He sat back on the ground and looked up at the sky, but it was clear and blue, and the sun was almost taunting him.

There had been water in the wagon of course, a whole barrel full of it, but while looking for the rations he'd found it had poured out onto the ground when the wagon toppled over. As for the other wagon he could see the water barrel from where he sat, it had rolled away from the wagon, and then been skewered by the demon's leg.

He got back to searching and 15 minutes later he was sat back down with 3 waterskins, mostly full. A month's worth of food, and less than a week's worth of water. There was a river running parallel to the road, but it was about 3 miles to the east, an hour if it was flat ground, but this was the great border forest of Alm. It would likely take him the whole day, if he didn't die to one of the animals of the forest before he made it.

He decided he would camp near here for 3 days, then start the trek south, if he rationed the water he could make it last the whole week, and he should make it to edge of the forest by then if he started walking on the 4th day, he could only hope that the demon had been dealt with by then.

----------------------------------------

40 miles to the south a demon had passed the treeline and rampaged towards the northernmost city in Volst, Corridor (full name Corridor's End), Grown through trade with the elves it was a bustling walled city of over 20,000 residents.

The walls proved to be a liability though, the alarm was raised the moment the demon was sighted, they didn't try to hold the walls, they simply evacuated, or tried to.

There were only 3 gates in the walls in and out of Corridor, and the rush of bodies to escape overwhelmed them, people died in the stampede before the demon even arrived, some elected to jump off the battlements to mixed success.

But the real nail in the coffin for the residents of Corridor, was the hellfire that the demon began raining from the sky.

Of the over 20,000 residents of the city, less than 100 survived.