| There is a magic to life. I do not mean this in a wishy-washy sort of metaphysical sense. Rather, I am speaking of the topic of ‘ambient magics’, as they are commonly known. Great regions of the world, such as tall mountains, deep, ancient forests, or awe-inspiring, vast oceans, emit a constant, passive amount of ambient, magical energy out into the world. It stems from the abundant life that lives atop or inside of these places. Every living creature has some innate amount of magical residue to itself, from the smallest goblin to the largest dragon and everything in between. While mostly these magics are used to sustain the life of the creature, there is always a leaking of sorts, a radiance. Just as one’s body emits warmth from itself, so do all living things emit a tiny amount of their innate, magical properties. These collective vapors rise all throughout the world, being carried by the global trade-winds that span across all continents in the cloud-zone of the sky. They float, being carried from shore to distant shore by strong currents and tides. This total collection of millions of magical presences is what we call ‘ambient magic’. It sticks to things across the world, forests, caves, wild-lands and imbues them with this collective power. It is the magic that fills the world and powers many processes that we can not otherwise explain. |
~ Of Ambient Magic - A Beginner’s Guide to Adventuring as a Caster
| ~ [Salvator] ~ |
| Human, Male, Wizard (Wind) |
Salvator holds on to the trunk of the tree, trying to hold himself steady as a great rumble pulsates through the flying island. The forest around himself, the tents, the constructions of varying levels of structural integrity, all shake and wobble in the quake. He stands near the edge of the island, watching, in what can only be described as significant horror, as a massive, spiraling serpent careens up towards the sky, having just violently crashed into the great staircase that leads up to the island.
His ears ring from the deafening sound that had just come and gone, leaving him with a weakness in his knees and an odd lightheadedness — That is, until he realizes that he has been forgetting to breathe.
Then he notices the screams, and his attention drifts back downward, down to the hundreds of people, who tumble down the staircase, falling over themselves and one another — Over their shields, their weapons, and massive rucksacks. Several of them fall off of the edge, already at a very significant height.
Out here, outside of the tower itself, a fall like this is more than fatal.
In all honesty, he doesn’t know what to watch, his attention drifting between the monster, which is at a scale and grandness that he has never seen before, and the impending death about to happen as these men fall towards the forest.
— His morbid choice is taken from him, as something changes in the world.
The screams continue, but the falling men stop falling. They hover, suspended in vivid, bright orbs of many colors that catch them and then slowly begin to lift them back up towards the staircase, despite their continued flailing and screaming in terrified confusion.
“Wow…” silently mutters his party-member, standing next to him, at their camp at the edge of the island as they watch the spectacle, a rare happening that is surely divine in some form.
What else could explain something like this?
He continues to stare, not finding as many words as his friend just had.
| ~ [Isaiah] ~ |
It is a few minutes later.
“- What were you thinking?!” barks Crystal.
Red waves him off. “It’s fine. The plan worked out great.”
“Great?!” asks Crystal incredulously. “Do you know how much trouble we’re going to be in, if there isn’t a way up to the tower anymore?” he asks, flying up to her and grabbing the collar of her robe. Red, being significantly larger than Crystal, raises an eyebrow and then a few fingers, pushing him back. “- The rules say that a dungeon always has to be accessible! Or else!” He points off to the side. “Damaging the staircase to make them funnel through slowly is one thing. But you weren’t supposed to completely destroy it!”
Red inhales deeply for a moment and then purses her lips, blowing at Crystal. He covers his face, his wings buzzing as he tries to keep his position. “It’s fine,” says Red. She gestures around them. “See? Still alive. Everything is great.”
Isaiah looks at Red and then at the island.
It is true, everything is fine.
But if what Crystal has said is true, if a dungeon always has to be fully reachable by any outsiders in order to prevent a totally destructive damming of dungeon-magic, then… why is it fine? Surely, there can’t be anything left of the staircase after that impact? So, there is currently no way to reach the island, is there? Maybe the pilgrimage tokens allow access still, but those can hardly be enough to ‘count’, right?
A quiet uthra in the back lifts his hand. “Uh…”
“Yes?” asks Isaiah, looking at Teal, the tailor. Actually, now that Isaiah thinks about it, it has not heard much from Teal in a while. He was tasked with making the robes and some fabric for the tower here and there, but apart from that, not much else.
“I think it’s because of the uh… Hmm…” Teal turns his head, looking towards Red. She nods. Teal looks back. “- It’s because of the rope.”
“The what?” asks Isaiah.
Teal points off to the side. “Red asked me to make a rope, so that’s what I’ve been doing.”
Isaiah lifts an eyebrow, looking at Teal. “Teal, you have been without significant work for weeks.”
“— It’s a really long rope…” replies Teal, rubbing the back of his head.
Red nods, clearly pleased. She crosses her arms and smiles a smug smile. “Just about three kilometers long, in fact. From the back of the island to the south, all the way up.”
“What?!” yells Crystal. “A rope?!”
“Call it a ‘creative architectural feature’,” remarks Red. “I knew this would happen.” She looks at Isaiah. “I told you, you can’t trust humans. They’ll turn on you like hungry chickens.” She shrugs. “They can get up to the island just fine. They just have to climb, that's all," says the uthra, sounding very smug and pleased with herself.
“— Are chickens known for eating their own?” asks a voice from the side, Beige.
“You have no idea,” remarks Red off-handedly.
Isaiah sighs, holding its arms behind its back. “It is true. Chickens will devour anything weaker than themselves, including their own.” It shakes its head. “But this is not relevant. Red.” It looks towards her, not entirely sure what to say.
On one hand, Red has apparently been co-opting the uthra to work on odd projects, and she has been going out of her way to be cruel to the humans.
On the other hand…
Isaiah looks off towards the distance.
It itself had once told her to be more self-sufficient and it can not deny that she is delivering tangible results. They may be a little cold and methodical, like a chicken's, but they stand strong in the face of their troubles. The human army is repelled for the moment and the island is safe.
“A rope is really dangerous,” says Crystal, breaking the silence. “If someone just… picks it up off of the ground below, we’re officially detached,” he explains. “It’ll be over. Everything’s hanging on that.”
Gray lifts a hand.
Isaiah already has a suspicion about what he has to say. “Yes, Gray?”
“Um, while we’re talking about it… I may, uh, I may have made a chain too.”
Isaiah nods. It had assumed as much. “And did Red ask you to do this?” Gray looks at Red and then back towards Isaiah. He nods.
In a way, Isaiah wishes to be mad. But, in comparison to when they had first met, Red has indeed grown. She has not grown in the ideal, perfect, obediently reverent manner that Isaiah would have hoped for, for any of its young. Instead, she has grown into a different direction and into a mold of her own making.
— But perhaps this is the point of growth? To become something different, to become something separate from that which has progenated oneself.
“Just think of it like a big anchor,” says Red, placing her hands behind her head and leaning back, kicking her feet up onto a branch. “Come on, chief. You know that I wouldn’t just leave everything up to some stupid, flimsy rope. I have skin in the game here.”
“Hey!” says Teal, offended. "I worked really hard on that rope."
— The other uthras fly back in towards the roost, having finished their task of saving those who need to be saved from falling.
Isaiah thinks for a moment longer. It considers whether it should make an appearance itself before the intruders. However, it has learned in the past that making such an appearance itself might simply lead to more trouble than it is worth. It could send some of the others, the uthra, the workers of the tower. But outside of the tower itself, they are at risk of dying, as the effects of the ‘mercy’ ability only work inside of the structure itself. There is also the quest-board. But only the people who are already on the island itself can read what is posted there.
Isaiah looks up towards the sky, wondering, how does one communicate without the ability to directly do so?
The gods… How are they said to communicate with their creations to this day, since they can no longer utter clear, direct words?
— A flock of birds flies by, cutting through the cloudy sky.
Isaiah stares for a moment, watching them.
Ah. Of course.
Isaiah realizes that there is a tool of the divine that it has failed to even consider up until now, let alone master.
Omens.
Or maybe… a prophecy is a more apt term.
“Red…” says Isaiah, needing something for her as both a half-punishment, and as a reward at the same time. Balance is important, after all. “— Bring me a rock,” says Isaiah. “In fact, bring me many.”
It thinks that it finally has an idea for its dungeon sub-element choice.
| ~ [Gadrian] ~ |
| Human, Male, Swordsman |
It is later that same night, several hours after the failed attempt to climb the massive staircase, several hours after the attack by what can only be a guardian of the tower, of the island.
Everyone has collected themselves back together, having no further orders, as command is scrambling to come up with some kind of new plan. The current idea is to just set up an improvised bridge over the destroyed gap in the stairway. But this will take a night’s worth of work, even for the skilled engineers here.
— That’s assuming the dragon doesn’t just come back and knock that over too.
A man hobbles by, limping on his leg that has been mended with a splint. A lot of people took some really, really bad falls from that staircase. But somehow, as if by a miracle, nobody died.
Well, a ‘miracle’.
He saw it with his own eyes. He saw how those people, who were destined to fall down into the distant forest below, were impossibly spared from this fate. He saw how they were carried back up to the staircase, as if time were flowing in reverse. What else could that have been, if not a miracle?
The man with the broken leg stumbles, tripping over something. Gadrian gets up, walking over to help him up from the ground. “Unlucky,” says Gadrian, patting him on the back. “Two falls in one day.”
“You’re telling me,” replies the hurt man, wincing as he stands back up. “Thanks.” He nods and hobbles off towards the eating area. Food is served in shifts, given the large number of people here, and, depending on which group you belong to, you might get your dinner first at around midnight or so. This man is apparently one of the latter.
Gadrian shakes his head. Very unlucky indeed.
He returns back to his stool by the fire and sits back down.
— The leg of the stool breaks, and he falls over backwards.
Gadrian curses, swearing as he fumbles around, trying to get back up now himself. The others around the fire laugh at his misfortune. Gadrian gets up, dusting himself off. He looks at the stool and its broken leg. It just looks like it has broken all by itself. It’s just the normal wear and tear of time. He had no idea this stuff was this old, though.
He sighs and unceremoniously tosses the whole thing into the fire.
The man, sitting across from him, still quietly chuckling, takes a sip from his mug, full of broth. He smiles, shaking his head as he takes another sip.
— The handle of the mug breaks off, and the cup full of hot soup falls into his lap. The soldier hisses and swears, immediately jumping up and shaking himself off, looking at his broken mug. The laughter turns his way now.
Gadrian looks around himself, not laughing. Now this is starting to get weird. “Pretty bad luck, huh?” he quietly mutters to the man next to himself.
“Yeah…” replies the man, warily looking around, as if he was going to be the next one to be befallen by ill fate.
A loud crash shoots through the forest; it sounds like a heavy strike of an unusually loud whip. People scream in alarm and look around, watching as flocks of nightbirds scatter into the darkness above their heads, vanishing all at once into the sky, as if a predator were lurking in the forest.
— The trees rustle.
“What the hell…?” mutters Gadrian, narrowing his eyes as he watches the forest. He grabs the man next to himself, pointing. “What the hell is that?”
The life in the camp stops; many voices fall silent as the trees of the forest at the bottom of the staircase, not only here but all around the camp, begin to change.
The verdant, flush, thick trees, full of heavy, dense crowns of leaves rustle in the wind, their colors dancing in a change of hue.
The leaves first turn from their brighter tone of springtide to a heartier, healthier green of summer, before pulling together before their eyes, withering away into the autumn's auburn tones. The wind pushes through the camp, the forest and the trees, bathed in moonlight, fall barren, leaving only wispy, thin, sharp winter branches that point out towards them like accusing fingers. This all occurs in the span of seconds, in the span of a single breath.
“…It’s a sign…” whispers a man from the side. “We shouldn’t be here.” He grabs the man next to himself. “- We shouldn’t be here!”
The wind continues, however, as does what appears to be their bad luck.
The soldier's tents, hundreds of them, collapse in on themselves all at once, as if supporting the weight of too much heavy snow, despite it being warm and dry outside. The dense, waxed fabrics drape downward, covering the insides that ought to be mostly empty, but aren’t.
People begin to scream all around the camp, some of them because they are suddenly trapped inside their tents, others because they have looked into their own.
— Gadrian steps to the side, towards his own collapsed tent, and looks at it, together with the other half of a dozen men from the fire behind him.
The fabric of the tent is draped over something that looks suspiciously like a body. The collapsed fabric resembles a heavy burial shroud, awash in firelight.
He gulps, bends down and lifts it up, peering inside at the ornately carved stone statue of a man laying there inside the tent with his hands folded over his chest, as if laying at his final rest. The statue has no face.
Gadrian, without a word, drops the fabric of the tent and picks up his rucksack, not even thinking twice about leaving now. He can take a hint.
— The leather strap of his rucksack breaks, and all of his gear falls down at his feet, having become just as rotten and weak as everything else around them all.
So it is true, what the bishop had said would happen during his many appeals to the people of the city.
They’ve angered the gods.
It’s a curse.
The camp falls into chaos.
| There is a magic to life. I do not mean this in a wishy-washy sort of metaphysical sense. Rather, I am speaking of the topic of ‘ambient magics’, as they are commonly known. Great regions of the world, such as tall mountains, deep, ancient forests, or awe-inspiring, vast oceans, emit a constant, passive amount of ambient, magical energy out into the world. It stems from the abundant life that lives atop or inside of these places. Every living creature has some innate amount of magical residue to itself, from the smallest goblin to the largest dragon and everything in between. While mostly these magics are used to sustain the life of the creature, there is always a leaking of sorts, a radiance. Just as one’s body emits warmth from itself, so do all living things emit a tiny amount of their innate, magical properties. These collective vapors rise all throughout the world, being carried by the global trade-winds that span across all continents in the cloud-zone of the sky. They float, being carried from shore to distant shore by strong currents and tides. This total collection of millions of magical presences is what we call ‘ambient magic’. It sticks to things across the world, forests, caves, wild-lands and imbues them with this collective power. It is the magic that fills the world and powers many processes that we can not otherwise explain. |
~ Of Ambient Magic - A Beginner’s Guide to Adventuring as a Caster
| ~ [Salvator] ~ |
| Human, Male, Wizard (Wind) |
Salvator holds on to the trunk of the tree, trying to hold himself steady as a great rumble pulsates through the flying island. The forest around himself, the tents, the constructions of varying levels of structural integrity, all shake and wobble in the quake. He stands near the edge of the island, watching, in what can only be described as significant horror, as a massive, spiraling serpent careens up towards the sky, having just violently crashed into the great staircase that leads up to the island.
His ears ring from the deafening sound that had just come and gone, leaving him with a weakness in his knees and an odd lightheadedness — That is, until he realizes that he has been forgetting to breathe.
Then he notices the screams, and his attention drifts back downward, down to the hundreds of people, who tumble down the staircase, falling over themselves and one another — Over their shields, their weapons, and massive rucksacks. Several of them fall off of the edge, already at a very significant height.
Out here, outside of the tower itself, a fall like this is more than fatal.
In all honesty, he doesn’t know what to watch, his attention drifting between the monster, which is at a scale and grandness that he has never seen before, and the impending death about to happen as these men fall towards the forest.
— His morbid choice is taken from him, as something changes in the world.
The screams continue, but the falling men stop falling. They hover, suspended in vivid, bright orbs of many colors that catch them and then slowly begin to lift them back up towards the staircase, despite their continued flailing and screaming in terrified confusion.
“Wow…” silently mutters his party-member, standing next to him, at their camp at the edge of the island as they watch the spectacle, a rare happening that is surely divine in some form.
What else could explain something like this?
He continues to stare, not finding as many words as his friend just had.
| ~ [Isaiah] ~ |
It is a few minutes later.
“- What were you thinking?!” barks Crystal.
Red waves him off. “It’s fine. The plan worked out great.”
“Great?!” asks Crystal incredulously. “Do you know how much trouble we’re going to be in, if there isn’t a way up to the tower anymore?” he asks, flying up to her and grabbing the collar of her robe. Red, being significantly larger than Crystal, raises an eyebrow and then a few fingers, pushing him back. “- The rules say that a dungeon always has to be accessible! Or else!” He points off to the side. “Damaging the staircase to make them funnel through slowly is one thing. But you weren’t supposed to completely destroy it!”
Red inhales deeply for a moment and then purses her lips, blowing at Crystal. He covers his face, his wings buzzing as he tries to keep his position. “It’s fine,” says Red. She gestures around them. “See? Still alive. Everything is great.”
Isaiah looks at Red and then at the island.
It is true, everything is fine.
But if what Crystal has said is true, if a dungeon always has to be fully reachable by any outsiders in order to prevent a totally destructive damming of dungeon-magic, then… why is it fine? Surely, there can’t be anything left of the staircase after that impact? So, there is currently no way to reach the island, is there? Maybe the pilgrimage tokens allow access still, but those can hardly be enough to ‘count’, right?
A quiet uthra in the back lifts his hand. “Uh…”
“Yes?” asks Isaiah, looking at Teal, the tailor. Actually, now that Isaiah thinks about it, it has not heard much from Teal in a while. He was tasked with making the robes and some fabric for the tower here and there, but apart from that, not much else.
“I think it’s because of the uh… Hmm…” Teal turns his head, looking towards Red. She nods. Teal looks back. “- It’s because of the rope.”
“The what?” asks Isaiah.
Teal points off to the side. “Red asked me to make a rope, so that’s what I’ve been doing.”
Isaiah lifts an eyebrow, looking at Teal. “Teal, you have been without significant work for weeks.”
“— It’s a really long rope…” replies Teal, rubbing the back of his head.
Red nods, clearly pleased. She crosses her arms and smiles a smug smile. “Just about three kilometers long, in fact. From the back of the island to the south, all the way up.”
“What?!” yells Crystal. “A rope?!”
“Call it a ‘creative architectural feature’,” remarks Red. “I knew this would happen.” She looks at Isaiah. “I told you, you can’t trust humans. They’ll turn on you like hungry chickens.” She shrugs. “They can get up to the island just fine. They just have to climb, that's all," says the uthra, sounding very smug and pleased with herself.
“— Are chickens known for eating their own?” asks a voice from the side, Beige.
“You have no idea,” remarks Red off-handedly.
Isaiah sighs, holding its arms behind its back. “It is true. Chickens will devour anything weaker than themselves, including their own.” It shakes its head. “But this is not relevant. Red.” It looks towards her, not entirely sure what to say.
On one hand, Red has apparently been co-opting the uthra to work on odd projects, and she has been going out of her way to be cruel to the humans.
On the other hand…
Isaiah looks off towards the distance.
It itself had once told her to be more self-sufficient and it can not deny that she is delivering tangible results. They may be a little cold and methodical, like a chicken's, but they stand strong in the face of their troubles. The human army is repelled for the moment and the island is safe.
“A rope is really dangerous,” says Crystal, breaking the silence. “If someone just… picks it up off of the ground below, we’re officially detached,” he explains. “It’ll be over. Everything’s hanging on that.”
Gray lifts a hand.
Isaiah already has a suspicion about what he has to say. “Yes, Gray?”
“Um, while we’re talking about it… I may, uh, I may have made a chain too.”
Isaiah nods. It had assumed as much. “And did Red ask you to do this?” Gray looks at Red and then back towards Isaiah. He nods.
In a way, Isaiah wishes to be mad. But, in comparison to when they had first met, Red has indeed grown. She has not grown in the ideal, perfect, obediently reverent manner that Isaiah would have hoped for, for any of its young. Instead, she has grown into a different direction and into a mold of her own making.
— But perhaps this is the point of growth? To become something different, to become something separate from that which has progenated oneself.
“Just think of it like a big anchor,” says Red, placing her hands behind her head and leaning back, kicking her feet up onto a branch. “Come on, chief. You know that I wouldn’t just leave everything up to some stupid, flimsy rope. I have skin in the game here.”
“Hey!” says Teal, offended. "I worked really hard on that rope."
— The other uthras fly back in towards the roost, having finished their task of saving those who need to be saved from falling.
Isaiah thinks for a moment longer. It considers whether it should make an appearance itself before the intruders. However, it has learned in the past that making such an appearance itself might simply lead to more trouble than it is worth. It could send some of the others, the uthra, the workers of the tower. But outside of the tower itself, they are at risk of dying, as the effects of the ‘mercy’ ability only work inside of the structure itself. There is also the quest-board. But only the people who are already on the island itself can read what is posted there.
Isaiah looks up towards the sky, wondering, how does one communicate without the ability to directly do so?
The gods… How are they said to communicate with their creations to this day, since they can no longer utter clear, direct words?
— A flock of birds flies by, cutting through the cloudy sky.
Isaiah stares for a moment, watching them.
Ah. Of course.
Isaiah realizes that there is a tool of the divine that it has failed to even consider up until now, let alone master.
Omens.
Or maybe… a prophecy is a more apt term.
“Red…” says Isaiah, needing something for her as both a half-punishment, and as a reward at the same time. Balance is important, after all. “— Bring me a rock,” says Isaiah. “In fact, bring me many.”
It thinks that it finally has an idea for its dungeon sub-element choice.
| ~ [Gadrian] ~ |
| Human, Male, Swordsman |
It is later that same night, several hours after the failed attempt to climb the massive staircase, several hours after the attack by what can only be a guardian of the tower, of the island.
Everyone has collected themselves back together, having no further orders, as command is scrambling to come up with some kind of new plan. The current idea is to just set up an improvised bridge over the destroyed gap in the stairway. But this will take a night’s worth of work, even for the skilled engineers here.
— That’s assuming the dragon doesn’t just come back and knock that over too.
A man hobbles by, limping on his leg that has been mended with a splint. A lot of people took some really, really bad falls from that staircase. But somehow, as if by a miracle, nobody died.
Well, a ‘miracle’.
He saw it with his own eyes. He saw how those people, who were destined to fall down into the distant forest below, were impossibly spared from this fate. He saw how they were carried back up to the staircase, as if time were flowing in reverse. What else could that have been, if not a miracle?
The man with the broken leg stumbles, tripping over something. Gadrian gets up, walking over to help him up from the ground. “Unlucky,” says Gadrian, patting him on the back. “Two falls in one day.”
“You’re telling me,” replies the hurt man, wincing as he stands back up. “Thanks.” He nods and hobbles off towards the eating area. Food is served in shifts, given the large number of people here, and, depending on which group you belong to, you might get your dinner first at around midnight or so. This man is apparently one of the latter.
Gadrian shakes his head. Very unlucky indeed.
He returns back to his stool by the fire and sits back down.
— The leg of the stool breaks, and he falls over backwards.
Gadrian curses, swearing as he fumbles around, trying to get back up now himself. The others around the fire laugh at his misfortune. Gadrian gets up, dusting himself off. He looks at the stool and its broken leg. It just looks like it has broken all by itself. It’s just the normal wear and tear of time. He had no idea this stuff was this old, though.
He sighs and unceremoniously tosses the whole thing into the fire.
The man, sitting across from him, still quietly chuckling, takes a sip from his mug, full of broth. He smiles, shaking his head as he takes another sip.
— The handle of the mug breaks off, and the cup full of hot soup falls into his lap. The soldier hisses and swears, immediately jumping up and shaking himself off, looking at his broken mug. The laughter turns his way now.
Gadrian looks around himself, not laughing. Now this is starting to get weird. “Pretty bad luck, huh?” he quietly mutters to the man next to himself.
“Yeah…” replies the man, warily looking around, as if he was going to be the next one to be befallen by ill fate.
A loud crash shoots through the forest; it sounds like a heavy strike of an unusually loud whip. People scream in alarm and look around, watching as flocks of nightbirds scatter into the darkness above their heads, vanishing all at once into the sky, as if a predator were lurking in the forest.
— The trees rustle.
“What the hell…?” mutters Gadrian, narrowing his eyes as he watches the forest. He grabs the man next to himself, pointing. “What the hell is that?”
The life in the camp stops; many voices fall silent as the trees of the forest at the bottom of the staircase, not only here but all around the camp, begin to change.
The verdant, flush, thick trees, full of heavy, dense crowns of leaves rustle in the wind, their colors dancing in a change of hue.
The leaves first turn from their brighter tone of springtide to a heartier, healthier green of summer, before pulling together before their eyes, withering away into the autumn's auburn tones. The wind pushes through the camp, the forest and the trees, bathed in moonlight, fall barren, leaving only wispy, thin, sharp winter branches that point out towards them like accusing fingers. This all occurs in the span of seconds, in the span of a single breath.
“…It’s a sign…” whispers a man from the side. “We shouldn’t be here.” He grabs the man next to himself. “- We shouldn’t be here!”
The wind continues, however, as does what appears to be their bad luck.
The soldier's tents, hundreds of them, collapse in on themselves all at once, as if supporting the weight of too much heavy snow, despite it being warm and dry outside. The dense, waxed fabrics drape downward, covering the insides that ought to be mostly empty, but aren’t.
People begin to scream all around the camp, some of them because they are suddenly trapped inside their tents, others because they have looked into their own.
— Gadrian steps to the side, towards his own collapsed tent, and looks at it, together with the other half of a dozen men from the fire behind him.
The fabric of the tent is draped over something that looks suspiciously like a body. The collapsed fabric resembles a heavy burial shroud, awash in firelight.
He gulps, bends down and lifts it up, peering inside at the ornately carved stone statue of a man laying there inside the tent with his hands folded over his chest, as if laying at his final rest. The statue has no face.
Gadrian, without a word, drops the fabric of the tent and picks up his rucksack, not even thinking twice about leaving now. He can take a hint.
— The leather strap of his rucksack breaks, and all of his gear falls down at his feet, having become just as rotten and weak as everything else around them all.
So it is true, what the bishop had said would happen during his many appeals to the people of the city.
They’ve angered the gods.
It’s a curse.
The camp falls into chaos.
