(97) Snapping Branches

Nephthys stared down into a deep, black abyss, seeing nothing, even with her prodigious sight. The hole was close to a thousand feet deep, which she knew because she had dug it herself. The depth was staggering, not because a hole that deep was anything impressive. She felt she could drill down to the mantle if she really tried.

It was impressive because even with the Guardian’s shell towering over the city above, even this far down into the earth, it still took a thousand feet of digging to reach the bottom of the shell. This turtle was unbelievably massive, which she was already aware of, but still.

“This is really the easiest solution?” she asked.

“Fuck if I know. It’s just what I came up with,” Eirene answered, her arms crossed, staring down into the hole.

She stood at the end of the catwalk, the very same one on which Jace had met his mysterious demise. Eirene had yet to complain about any smells, so Nephthys’ burning the stench away with flames seemed to have been the right move.

“How easy will it be to connect the script already present?”

“Not easy, but not as difficult as carving it from scratch, that’s for sure. Whatever was down there originally, ‘fore you extended the damn hole a thousand feet, was storage for the energy feeding the Conductor. Shouldn’t be too tough to reconfigure it to both harvest and store,” Eirene mused.

“And you can connect these enchantments to the shell itself? I do not doubt your skill, Eirene, but if it were possible, surely the Praxics would have done it back in their time,” Nephthys reasoned.

“Maybe they could’a, but from what I can see, they had a much more potent source of energy. Shame that whatever they were using is gone. Could really help if we—” Eirene muttered, her hand on her chin.

“No,” Nephthys interrupted, catching herself when Eirene turned a confused look toward her. “No, that source is gone, and it will never return. It was an abomination.”

“Right…well, regardless, the shell should work, but just that. It’s not going to blow anyone away,” Eirene said, returning her gaze to the pit.

“How do you mean?”

“I mean, the shell pulls in mana gradually from the surroundings. Now, it’s a titanic amount of mana just from its size, but we’re talkin’ about operating spells on a city-scale, here. The passive draw should be enough to power the weak mana shield and keep the ceiling from collapsing, but if you wanted to encase the entire shell in a barrier? 

“You’d maybe stop one or two attacks with it before it broke, and you’re not getting that mana back for…I don’t know…probably a couple of days, at least. I can measure the draw more accurately once it’s working,” she finished, nodding to herself.

“I suppose the most important thing is preventing the sinkhole from swallowing Promise City whole, true enough. Do you need assistance?” Nephthys asked.

Eirene answered by stepping off the catwalk, descending down into the hole at a gradual pace, far slower than gravity would otherwise dictate. 

“Guess not.”

————————————

Redra ascended the slope steadily, wiping the sweat from her brow. She clutched her waterskin in one hand and stabbed her staff into the rough ground with the other, the weapon reduced to a walking implement. While not unaccustomed to physical labor, it was not her strong suit. It might have been more bearable still if everyone else were suffering as she was.

Esme walked leisurely at her side, her arms crossed. She seemed to disregard the uneven slope completely, never wondering whether her feet would land on stable ground or not. 

Wynn was no better, though she at least had the decency to be watching her surroundings. She scanned the surrounding cliffs, her head on a swivel, alert and watching for threats at all times. Her diligence softened the blow, which was that she, too, was unlabored from the climb.

“We could have just found a caravan—” Wynn started for not the first time, sparing Redra a glance.

“Wynn, we’ve had this discussion,” she interrupted, speaking between huffs and puffs. “How much do we have to do to avoid attention before you’ll understand?”

“Wouldn’t matter much either way,” Esme said, her expression uncharacteristically serious. “People don’t really move between Radaar and the Peaks.”

“What? Why?” Wynn asked.

“See for yourself,” Esme replied, nodding toward the crest of the slope.

The group reached the peak of the small, rocky hill and stared out over the remaining foothills. Similar hills spread before them as those behind, though smaller and more manageable. They seemed the same gray stone, but strangely, they grew darker in the distance.

There seemed to be some form of vegetation covering the ground, though it was low, like clover, maybe. It was certainly darker than clover, giving the faraway hills a darkness like stone shortly after rain.

Redra was about to ask what she was looking at, but a glance over showed Esme spinning her hands in some magical mime. Mana swirled around her, seemingly following her fluid hand motions before rushing outward, surrounding the group in a softly glowing bubble of magic.

The bubble washed over her, and Redra felt nothing more than a slight warmth, as if a warm wind had passed her. The magic appeared to be fire-based, as it glowed a soft orange, though it did not seem to cast any actual light into the surroundings, merely drew the eye to it.

“I didn’t ask you to—” Redra started, frustrated.

Esme held up a hand, her stern visage giving Redra pause.

“My job is to protect you, whether you ask it or not,” she explained simply.

“Protect me from what?” Redra asked.

“That, over there,” Esme said, pointing toward the dark hills, “is the Gloam.”

The Gloam.

Redra had heard of it, though only in scattered reports she had read. Information from Ashreach was rare, and even rarer was information about its most dangerous locales.

“The Gloam?” Wynn asked, staring with furrowed brows.

“The Fungloam. Hundreds of miles of the worst shit you can possibly imagine. Dark forests of fungus, stinking bogs, and an entire ecosystem that will turn on you if you piss it off. Even the air is poisonous,” Esme explained somberly.

She turned toward Redra and Wynn, her stare pinning them to the ground.

“Listen. This magic will protect us from the air, but we are not going to fuck around in there. We are making a straight line from here to the Peaks.

“Keep your eyes forward. Don’t wander. Stifle your curiosity. Don’t even speak unless I tell you it’s safe, understand? Not much in there could challenge me individually, but that's not what the Gloam specializes in.

“If we poke the wrong burrow, step on the wrong tail, this entire fucking region will come down on us like a poked anthill, and it’ll be all I can do to get us out safely,” Esme declared.

She stared directly at Redra, her gaze suddenly withering.

“You hear me? My task is to keep you safe, Princess. If you don’t want to live with the guilt of being the only survivor of this expedition, do as I say without question. Understood?”

“Yes,” Redra answered, gulping.

“And you,” Esme said, turning on Wynn, who flinched slightly, “you can do nothing in there, so don’t bother. Your sword will be useless, your shield only marginally more effective. 

“Let me handle it. I don’t need you throwing yourself onto a walker on some crazed mission to protect the princess. All you’ll accomplish is a senseless death, and you’ll risk pissing the horde off even more, which will make the princess even less safe, so just don’t. Got it?”

Wynn nodded, her hand resting on the pommel of her sheathed sword. She fiddled with the latch on the strap across her chest that secured her shield to her back, making Esme sigh.

“Whatever. Just don’t attack shit unless I give you the okay. Even if it seems like we’re in danger, I’ll handle it. Trust me, you aren’t seeing anything that I’m not, so if you see a threat, you better believe I’ve also seen it.

“Let’s go. We’re still a couple of hours from the Gloam proper. We’ll camp in the foothills and make our way into it in the morning. Day or night doesn’t mean much to the Gloam or its threat, but we should at least limit risks where we can, like fumbling about in the darkness,” Esme said, starting off down the slope.

They descended the hill, a walk much more manageable than the ascent, though the unstable footing became even more of an issue on the way down. Twilight seemed to arrive much earlier as the hills and mountains behind them hid the sun.

When they reached Ashreach, they had landed on a small stretch of sand that seemed a miracle, sandwiched between steep cliffs with crushing rocks as it was. The path from the beach had cut through the mountains in what appeared to be an ancient riverbed, likely one that had once emptied into the sea where they had landed.

Deciding to maintain a low profile, they had aimed north, ignoring any passages in the canyon that might have taken them south toward Radaar. It had taken a few days to navigate, but the wildlife had fortunately been sparse. Though there was an occasional bird overhead or shuffling heard behind a rock in the distance, they were left well and truly alone. 

Redra wondered how much of the peace was due to the canyon's lack of water and vegetation, and how much to monsters and animals instinctively avoiding someone as powerful as Esme.

 Now, coming on a full week since their arrival on the continent, the three were clustered around a fire, the atmosphere subdued. Esme sat with her back against the cliffside, staring out toward the fungal forest, now only around a mile to the north. Wynn sat with her elbows on her knees, her head resting in her hands as she stared at the fire, thinking about who-knows-what.

Redra had wondered whether a fire was a good idea, but Esme had assured her that anything the fire drew, she could handle. Apparently, nothing in the entirety of the Gloam would be attracted to it, which Redra found difficult to believe, but Esme was confident, and anything drawn from the mountains behind them was not a threat.

She tapped her foot, doing her best to keep her mind from falling into its usual spiral. It was in quiet, calm moments like these that the enormity of her task settled over her, and she began harboring doubts.

Their aim was to meet Nemesis and…what? Become friends? Formalize some sort of alliance? What even was her goal here? She knew Vitrimis was doing something in Ashreach, and she wanted to make sure he did not sour any potential relationship between Nemesis and Sardvend, but what, specifically, was he doing?

Should she waste time in Radaar trying to avoid attention while slowly gathering information on his machinations? No, she had decided to go directly to the source, to Nemesis, both to save time and show Sardvend’s sincerity.

However, she realized that not only had she not properly thought through the goals of her endeavor, but she had also sorely underestimated the scale of the journey itself. Just a week moving through the mountains had thoroughly exhausted her, and that was in decent terrain. 

They had a canyon carved by an ancient river to guide them, rather than clambering through the actual mountains, and she was still at her physical limits.

Now, if Esme’s estimates were accurate, they still had hundreds of miles to walk through some of the most dangerous, miserable terrain in Ashreach, only to arrive at another, larger mountain range that they had to cross, and the threats would only become stronger the farther north they went.

The scale was large, far larger than she had given it credit for back in her comfy room in the palace. Perhaps it was—

Her thoughts were interrupted by Esme, who stood quickly, walking over to the edge of their camp and staring into the fungal forest.

Redra was about to ask what she was looking at, but then she saw them: black forms shifting between the trees, somehow darker than the night’s umbra. She could just make out the crackling of snapping branches, the rushing of stomped mycelium groundcover. There were things moving in the distance, and there were many.

“What is that?” Redra asked, rising and approaching to stand next to Esme.

“Something’s stirred the horde,” she answered, still staring out at the forest.

Wynn stood on Redra’s other side, her shield already drawn. They watched the forest move and groan with activity, all of it slightly too far for Redra to make out clearly. Suddenly, Esme crouched low, bringing her hands up toward her face. Mana swirled around her, as if ready to deploy at any moment.

“Fuckers are leadin’ them right to us,” she growled.

Before Redra could question her, three figures burst from the forest, two men and a young girl, a nuarch, who could not be more than a teenager. They backed out of the forest, facing the stampede of forms overgrown with fungus that pursued them.

The girl split the fungal forms in half with whips of water, standing at the rear of the party. The man in the middle shot arrows that seemed to make any body part they struck explode. The man in the lead held his enormous shield before him as he backed away, striking any that got close with the tip of his spear, sending them to the ground or at least pushing them back.

The party moved in a controlled retreat for several hundred feet until they were firmly out of the forest, yet the horde did not relent. Their numbers seemed only to grow as more and more figures burst from the treeline, or mushroomline, all shambling at different paces, but all obviously aimed at the party.

Esme turned around, opening her mouth to order their group to retreat, Redra assumed, yet just before she could speak, a wall of blue flames burst out of the ground, separating the party from their pursuers. The conflagration rose high into the air, and though she could not see beyond it, none of the shambling fungal forms crossed the flames, either incinerated directly or denied passage.

A man in black plate armor that glowed with blue tracings strode out of the flames. His eyes glowed bluer than his armor, and his movements signaled absolute confidence in his abilities, born of power. Redra had seen it many times before.

A chill ran down her spine.