The Cut Road
Greyfast was a stone city, though Alain and Michiko did not know it yet, and even the path to Heathron, once a bustling merchant village and the site of the Heathron Gate between Greyfast and RhyDin, became somehow less lifelike, and instead greyer, and more sharply cut like cloven granite. The strange plague that festered in Greyfast had seized the Heathron Gate and all things bound most permanently to it. It would never reach RhyDin, but just as Greyfast would soon fade from even its last faint connections to RhyDin, so too would Greyfast by century?s end. One hundred threads at least had once tied Greyfast to far-flung realms to bring in such exotic trade that only RhyDin could easily surpass, and now only a few such threads remained, one of which tied the doomed world-between-worlds to something poisonous and evil?
Alain walked along the narrowing path bordered by stone clifts, approaching the eye of a needle, carrying a brown canvas and leather backpack and, excepting a single British Bulldog revolver holstered snugly under his left arm, no weapons but his own cunning. Kael had told him not even to bother with the pistol, but the detective felt too naked without it. He had felt that way for years, and it was not liable to soon change. He turned his head to his shoulder, casting the kind of flat look back at Michiko that conveyed how deeply he was preoccupied, and pressed on towards Heathron in silence.
Michiko was keeping pace with Alain. Yeah, she had the sidearm, only because she hadn't been told otherwise. She also had a dagger at her calf. The way she moved made it hard to see her as that spoiled rich girl. She had managed to avoid bringing Veilos along on this. Something didn't feel right when she thought about the guy she was seeing, so here she was...
Backing the detective with very little detail.
As if he were reading her thoughts, Alain spoke of her other half - "Thought your beau might bring undue attention... Greyfast's a dead realm, but that doesn't mean it's empty." He looked over his shoulder again, and then turned back. They were very near to cresting the hill they had been climbing the last ten minutes. "Whatever might notice an intruder, well... we don't want its eye on us."
The top of the hill revealed the village of Heathron, or what was left of it, nestled among rocky outcroppings and the dead trees and underbrush that remained of a once thick and lively forest. The whole place was very... grey, and off to the west it had burned right up to the edge of the crumbling stone huts that marked the borders of Heathron. On the north end was the stone cliff, which was supposed to contain the Heathron Gate, once a great glowing beacon... but there was no light to be seen except a strange silver that shifted and washed over the buildings when the sun dimmed. It had an uncomfortable feel to it, as if it watched passersby.
"There... up against the cliff face, that's where the gate should be... some kind of a stair..." Alain descended into thoughtful muttering as he knelt and tugged a musty old tome from his pack. It was packed with writing that looked sort of like Middle English, and one page had a few rough maps sketched on it. He began skimming over it with some difficulty.
Michiko nodded as she had thought about it and spoke quietly. "I wasn't sure about his abilities or his recent changes." There was a shrug when she thought about it. "Easier to move without him hovering."
She looked up to where he pointed studying carefully. She shivered as she turned her eyes from the cliff to the village. "This place is eerie." She wasn't superstitious by nature, but this place was creeping her out. She turned her attention to Alain as he was reading, trying not to focus on their surroundings.
"Heathron should be okay," Alain offered absently her way, his long, rough fingers tracing one of the sketched maps. "The locals are superstitious about it, but let's face it... Who wouldn't be." The cloud cover seemed to shift in an unnatural way, as if the forces of nature were conspiring to put a storm over the abandoned village. "All-right, let's move." He rose from his kneel, tucked the book away and was soon on the move down the hill, into the outskirts of the eerie village. On their immediate right were the remains of a once very impressive mountain lodge - it was easy to imagine it much like the Red Dragon, in its heyday...
"You know, I'll bet there are other places a lot like what this used to be, hooked to RhyDin - the borderlands of our world-between-worlds, leading to more isolated places..." His voice was the only sound around them, besides its echo, the crunching of rubble underfoot, and the wind that howled down from the mountains.
Michiko readjusted her backpack as she looked around one more time before moving again. Her guard was still up though. ?Should be fine? was not much of a reassurance on her mind. After all the old instincts had the hair on the back of her neck standing on end.
She tilted her head as she followed and listened to his musings. "There probably is a number of places that caught in Nexus' shifts or fell victim to the monsters that sometime come into RhyDin." She wasn't sure she wasn't to meet up with said monsters but it is happened oh well.
Off in the distance was the distinctly shaped ruin of a chapel, octagonal in form and much too small to serve the village. In the coming years archaeologists would visit this place and postulate that the small single church meant the people here were not very religious - or did not subscribe to that particular religion - and the first group would be correct... Superstition, though, had been even stronger than economic turmoil in driving the villagers away as a terrible twilight fell over the once-great city of Greyfast.
"I mean places that haven't been driven under or abandoned... Mountain villages like this one that might depend on RhyDin's booming trade to supply the lands beyond them." Alain's lips tightened. "I'd be interested to do more trade out that way, but... kind of hard to get motivated by business these days..." He cleared his throat a little and walked on.
Fast approaching was the cliff that sheltered the north of the village, a great stone face with a stair cut into it, once quite broad, now so crumbled and strewn with rubble that two people barely had room to walk abreast. It wound its way fifty feet up the cliff to an archway ending in rock that, when the sun shone upon it, cast rays of eerie silver light out over the village. "That's our stop," Alain said, pointing at it and nodding. He hefted his pack and began the arduous ascent.
Michiko continued to follow him as she head for the cliffs. She had a tilt of her had at his comment about the lack of motivation of late. She really couldn't comment because she had heard the word about town. "Yeah, I bet." Really what can you say with recent events such as they were.
She looked up at the cliff seeing the arch in the rock. She shifted her pack again in thought. She was keeping up rather well, all things considered. "Looks like fun." She quipped as she followed him up. There were no complaints about the trip. Then again, she was used to hard work.
As they drew nearer to the Heathron Gate, there was an almost palpable feeling to the air, like a noise but just beyond their hearing, with an otherworldly pitch. It nagged and distracted first, but quickly became so thick that it was easy to feel they were drowning. A dark, huddled shape lay before the gate, but only when they were almost upon it did its identity become clear - a skeleton sprawled on its front away from the gate, still wearing the tattered remains of its clothes. Whoever it was had clawed their way to that point, as evidenced by the scratches gouged into the stone before the gate...
Alain stopped at a distance to stare at it in thought, but there was no discernible change in his expression. He had already made up his mind to go, no matter the peril.
Michiko was only mildly creeped by the skeleton. If anything it had her on edge and looking about. In for a penny as the saying goes. THere was no way she would back out now. They were too far already and she was not going to leave him without the back up. Yeah, this place was giving her the creeps, but she was coming to respect those thing more powerful than she was.
She squared her shoulder and followed his lead.
Alain muttered a vague swear as he came up to the gate with her. He looked over at her, then at the strange silver rippling before the cliff face... They took the final step together and were immersed in a strange, blinding light, traveling the now-dreaded path that countless had passed through in distant years...
Greyfast was a stone city, though Alain and Michiko did not know it yet, and even the path to Heathron, once a bustling merchant village and the site of the Heathron Gate between Greyfast and RhyDin, became somehow less lifelike, and instead greyer, and more sharply cut like cloven granite. The strange plague that festered in Greyfast had seized the Heathron Gate and all things bound most permanently to it. It would never reach RhyDin, but just as Greyfast would soon fade from even its last faint connections to RhyDin, so too would Greyfast by century?s end. One hundred threads at least had once tied Greyfast to far-flung realms to bring in such exotic trade that only RhyDin could easily surpass, and now only a few such threads remained, one of which tied the doomed world-between-worlds to something poisonous and evil?
Alain walked along the narrowing path bordered by stone clifts, approaching the eye of a needle, carrying a brown canvas and leather backpack and, excepting a single British Bulldog revolver holstered snugly under his left arm, no weapons but his own cunning. Kael had told him not even to bother with the pistol, but the detective felt too naked without it. He had felt that way for years, and it was not liable to soon change. He turned his head to his shoulder, casting the kind of flat look back at Michiko that conveyed how deeply he was preoccupied, and pressed on towards Heathron in silence.
Michiko was keeping pace with Alain. Yeah, she had the sidearm, only because she hadn't been told otherwise. She also had a dagger at her calf. The way she moved made it hard to see her as that spoiled rich girl. She had managed to avoid bringing Veilos along on this. Something didn't feel right when she thought about the guy she was seeing, so here she was...
Backing the detective with very little detail.
As if he were reading her thoughts, Alain spoke of her other half - "Thought your beau might bring undue attention... Greyfast's a dead realm, but that doesn't mean it's empty." He looked over his shoulder again, and then turned back. They were very near to cresting the hill they had been climbing the last ten minutes. "Whatever might notice an intruder, well... we don't want its eye on us."
The top of the hill revealed the village of Heathron, or what was left of it, nestled among rocky outcroppings and the dead trees and underbrush that remained of a once thick and lively forest. The whole place was very... grey, and off to the west it had burned right up to the edge of the crumbling stone huts that marked the borders of Heathron. On the north end was the stone cliff, which was supposed to contain the Heathron Gate, once a great glowing beacon... but there was no light to be seen except a strange silver that shifted and washed over the buildings when the sun dimmed. It had an uncomfortable feel to it, as if it watched passersby.
"There... up against the cliff face, that's where the gate should be... some kind of a stair..." Alain descended into thoughtful muttering as he knelt and tugged a musty old tome from his pack. It was packed with writing that looked sort of like Middle English, and one page had a few rough maps sketched on it. He began skimming over it with some difficulty.
Michiko nodded as she had thought about it and spoke quietly. "I wasn't sure about his abilities or his recent changes." There was a shrug when she thought about it. "Easier to move without him hovering."
She looked up to where he pointed studying carefully. She shivered as she turned her eyes from the cliff to the village. "This place is eerie." She wasn't superstitious by nature, but this place was creeping her out. She turned her attention to Alain as he was reading, trying not to focus on their surroundings.
"Heathron should be okay," Alain offered absently her way, his long, rough fingers tracing one of the sketched maps. "The locals are superstitious about it, but let's face it... Who wouldn't be." The cloud cover seemed to shift in an unnatural way, as if the forces of nature were conspiring to put a storm over the abandoned village. "All-right, let's move." He rose from his kneel, tucked the book away and was soon on the move down the hill, into the outskirts of the eerie village. On their immediate right were the remains of a once very impressive mountain lodge - it was easy to imagine it much like the Red Dragon, in its heyday...
"You know, I'll bet there are other places a lot like what this used to be, hooked to RhyDin - the borderlands of our world-between-worlds, leading to more isolated places..." His voice was the only sound around them, besides its echo, the crunching of rubble underfoot, and the wind that howled down from the mountains.
Michiko readjusted her backpack as she looked around one more time before moving again. Her guard was still up though. ?Should be fine? was not much of a reassurance on her mind. After all the old instincts had the hair on the back of her neck standing on end.
She tilted her head as she followed and listened to his musings. "There probably is a number of places that caught in Nexus' shifts or fell victim to the monsters that sometime come into RhyDin." She wasn't sure she wasn't to meet up with said monsters but it is happened oh well.
Off in the distance was the distinctly shaped ruin of a chapel, octagonal in form and much too small to serve the village. In the coming years archaeologists would visit this place and postulate that the small single church meant the people here were not very religious - or did not subscribe to that particular religion - and the first group would be correct... Superstition, though, had been even stronger than economic turmoil in driving the villagers away as a terrible twilight fell over the once-great city of Greyfast.
"I mean places that haven't been driven under or abandoned... Mountain villages like this one that might depend on RhyDin's booming trade to supply the lands beyond them." Alain's lips tightened. "I'd be interested to do more trade out that way, but... kind of hard to get motivated by business these days..." He cleared his throat a little and walked on.
Fast approaching was the cliff that sheltered the north of the village, a great stone face with a stair cut into it, once quite broad, now so crumbled and strewn with rubble that two people barely had room to walk abreast. It wound its way fifty feet up the cliff to an archway ending in rock that, when the sun shone upon it, cast rays of eerie silver light out over the village. "That's our stop," Alain said, pointing at it and nodding. He hefted his pack and began the arduous ascent.
Michiko continued to follow him as she head for the cliffs. She had a tilt of her had at his comment about the lack of motivation of late. She really couldn't comment because she had heard the word about town. "Yeah, I bet." Really what can you say with recent events such as they were.
She looked up at the cliff seeing the arch in the rock. She shifted her pack again in thought. She was keeping up rather well, all things considered. "Looks like fun." She quipped as she followed him up. There were no complaints about the trip. Then again, she was used to hard work.
As they drew nearer to the Heathron Gate, there was an almost palpable feeling to the air, like a noise but just beyond their hearing, with an otherworldly pitch. It nagged and distracted first, but quickly became so thick that it was easy to feel they were drowning. A dark, huddled shape lay before the gate, but only when they were almost upon it did its identity become clear - a skeleton sprawled on its front away from the gate, still wearing the tattered remains of its clothes. Whoever it was had clawed their way to that point, as evidenced by the scratches gouged into the stone before the gate...
Alain stopped at a distance to stare at it in thought, but there was no discernible change in his expression. He had already made up his mind to go, no matter the peril.
Michiko was only mildly creeped by the skeleton. If anything it had her on edge and looking about. In for a penny as the saying goes. THere was no way she would back out now. They were too far already and she was not going to leave him without the back up. Yeah, this place was giving her the creeps, but she was coming to respect those thing more powerful than she was.
She squared her shoulder and followed his lead.
Alain muttered a vague swear as he came up to the gate with her. He looked over at her, then at the strange silver rippling before the cliff face... They took the final step together and were immersed in a strange, blinding light, traveling the now-dreaded path that countless had passed through in distant years...