Vraxious- The Forsaken Lands

  Vrax trudged up to the edges of the crumbling, vine-covered walls of the fort. Lifting a weary leg onto the rickety ladder he had placed here years ago. With practiced grace he scampered up to the top of the wall and settled into a small perch he had covered in grey-green tarp fragments and a few scattered leaves. Was he a bit paranoid to have a dedicated lookout perch to survey his campsite? Probably. But being at least a bit paranoid had kept him alive a surprisingly long time out here now.

  His piercing green eyes scanned the familiar ruins. A large, mostly intact stone barracks sat in the dead center of the Camp foreboding red paint half-finished on its exterior. An unused stable with a fenced-in yard sat attached to the barracks. Past that, along the far wall, was a mostly finished greenhouse. Just missing one of the top glass panes and the actual door for the building. It had a very nice setup inside with rows of planter boxes and an expensive environmental control enchantment that would let the building sit at the exact temperature you desired.

  Well, if he ever bothered to finish what the duke's men had left behind and fill it with plants. Someday he probably would; his room was starting to get a bit crowded, and the neighbors were complaining the porch plants were a danger to the neighborhood tabby. Which was probably fair, honestly; if he let the [Silent Gulper] grow much larger, it might actually be a threat to curious neighborhood kids too.

  Just off from the greenhouse a half dozen strides was the half-constructed towering monument to the duke's arrogance. Or, as Vrax called it home away from home. The watchtower had been the first major fortification started after the walls were erected. It shot thirty strides into the air, towering above the battlements below, and just abruptly stopped, like a god had reached down and roughly slapped the top off. Vrax had been planting climbing vines on it for years now, and it was utterly awash in cool blue-white lilies that ambled their way down from on high. Fiery climbing wildflowers grew upward from the base, meeting somewhere towards the middle in a swirling pattern.

  Feldwin had been trying for years to get Vrax to “please stop making this place so goddamn obvious.”

  But Vrax had been in his teenage years when he started with all the sprucing, and half the fun was pissing Feldwin off. The crowning achievement of that was what he had done to the ruins of the grand fountain. Vrax looked towards the pitted fountain; the main bowl had been shattered in whatever happened here years ago. The only obvious signs of a battle are the subtle claw marks scratched into the stonework.

  Rising from the center of the fountain was a golden-barked tree with leaves of a reflective red gloss that were so dense the branches themselves almost sagged. When the sun caught it in the midday, it sent a dazzling array of red and golden flecks of light everywhere around it. It also glowed with a dull golden luminescence at night. The best bit was Feldwin couldn’t cut the damn thing down. He was a follower of Sentra, goddess of the hunt, and the radiant elm was featured in most of her iconography. So he had begrudgingly accepted the new nightlight and set up a small shrine for himself to leave offerings at.

  Which was good because getting that damned tree to grow had taken some serious trial and error. The reason no one had ever successfully taken one from the forsaken lands was simple. They wouldn’t take root when planted again. Or that's what everyone else had thought. Vrax stumbled on the trick to it by accident. Seeing the sapling of a divine elm sprouting from the ground directly next to the corpses of not one but three Forsaken wolves who had been ripped limb from limb by...something. He had assumed it just needed fresh fertilizer and that was the trick...sort of. Monster blood—literal buckets and buckets of blood—had to be dumped into the soil where you wanted these things to take root. Which honestly kind of makes sense why it's a favored plant of a hunting god. That had taken Vrax a very grisly week and a whole lot of dead [Moss Swine] to accomplish. He still had something like forty pounds of swine meat in the larder at home.

  Vrax’s gaze roamed around outside the walls, taking note of how his last major addition to this place was faring. That ubiquitous orange glowing moss that was almost inescapably common on the fringes. It was his version of a moat and was growing in a rough circle around the fort. Minus a few narrow paths like the one he used to get to his ladder. It was a fun plant. Any sudden impacts to it and it instantly immolated. Such as footsteps from unlucky explorers or animals. And not in, like, a cute little puff of fire. If you tossed a mundane sword into a patch of the moss Vrax lovingly called smelter's moss. Odds were pretty fair once you were done being blinded by the searing heat and light. You would find a half-glowing sword dripping bits of itself into the now-glassed ground.

  Vrax nodded approvingly towards his moat and ambled his way down into the overgrown ruins. Taking his time to inspect the tree for any unwanted critters that might be nibbling on it and skirting the stables. He made it to the tower and began the long climb up the side. Feldwin had long ago blocked the staircase off to make the refuge even more secure. In full gear it was a fairly strenuous climb; his spear kept trying to catch onto the walls' stones, and he would have to awkwardly hold on while shimmying his body until the spear tip behaved.

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  Vrax heaved himself into the third-floor window with a slight grunt of effort, climbing through the window in exaggerated slowness so as not to trigger the traps he had placed on all the windows. It was a surprisingly cozy room, 10 strides around, with a roaring fireplace set into one wall and the smallest glimpse of the sky visible through the chunk missing from the roof here. Feldwin was already set up with his gear, and weapons leaned against the down mattress he had “procured” from the barracks officer’s quarters below. Vrax grumbled as he walked to the perfectly serviceable but more modest bed that lay under the opening in the roof and nearest to a window.

  He and Feldwin gave each other a nod but were both preoccupied with their well-practiced bedding-down rituals. Feldwin is already seasoning some kind of fatty meat steak and throwing it into a small pot with potatoes and water. Vrax checked himself to make sure he didn’t have any leeches from the marshy areas or bits of unexplained plant matter growing from him. His wound looked like it was almost completely healed as well, the small scab already falling away.

  Feldwin broke the silence while he slowly stirred his pot of stew. “Pull out your map, Vrax. I don’t know why you want this spot specifically, but not my business. Just so you know, I took all the echo stone; there were only two of the buggers.”

  Vrax tore into one of the loaves he had bought from Martha the day before, when her cart was still whole. Chewing slowly to savor whatever heavenly cheese she added to the dough. “That’s fine. I’m more tracking down a lead on an old druid’s grove, and the only hints I found were echostone and spriggan saplings.”

  Feldwin cringed at the mention of a Spriggan. “Yeah, echostones it is if you are trying to find them. Is this another class thing?”

  Vrax hesitated for a moment too long in his response: “Never mind, kid, it’s not my business. The place you are looking for is just a bit past your normal hunting grounds, almost a day straight north from Sorceless Falls. Keep going until you hit the very edges of the ruined town, and then take a sharp right. From there, look for the glowing well; you will know it when you see it.

  Vrax stared at his map in concerned concentration for a few moments. That put the echostone farther out than Vrax had ever gone before, but only slightly. And he did have a good route already to get him most of the way there. But going in farther meant farther from the border, probably far enough that the really scary shit wasn’t scared off by whatever system magic protected the borders. Especially with how far back the border had already seemingly receded.

  “Thanks, Feldwin. I’ll head that way in the morning. Any good camping spots near there? Vrax asked around with a mouthful of bread.

  “I really wouldn’t suggest you camp out there, Vrax. Most everything that far out would barely consider you a snack.”

  Vrax looked up from the map. “If I could make the trip in a few hours like a certain ancient ranger,. I wouldn’t. But it's better than traveling at night.

  Feldwin tasted his soup, briefly burning his tongue for the effort. “Probably some of the town's ruins. The old mill works towards the southern edge had a nice overlook. There were caves near the Echostone, but I didn’t check them.”

  Vrax lay back into his bed, pulling his bestiary out to start a page for that frankly amazing serpent. Tomorrow was the day he could feel it; tomorrow something would change.

  Vrax rose with the rising sun, carefully packing his gear tight to his body. He slipped out the window and made his way out to his moat. Taking a few empty jars, he very, very carefully filled them with the Smelter moss. Generally, he wouldn’t carry something this volatile with him, but he didn’t know how bad it would be in what was for him uncharted land.

  Vrax started by making his way to the sourceless waterfall; it was an oddity around here. A sheer cliff rose up from the ground thirty strides tall and several hundred wide along the top. A cascading waterfall of pure water crashed into a lake below it that drained off into small rivers heading towards town. There was no logical source for the waterfall; it just seemed to pour from the stone above itself. People had tried to find the source over the years. Scouring the cliff for clues and eventually realizing it had something to do with the lake itself.

  But something lurked in the waters of the lake. Whatever it was was big enough to cause waves when it shifted and supposedly left you alone as long as you didn’t dive too deep. But there had been an awful lot of sourceless expeditions that just weren’t seen again. Personally, Vrax just stayed the hell out of the water, not trusting the benevolence of the unidentified mystery monster.

  Vrax stopped at one of the rivers running from the waterfall lake, filling his waterskin for the trip. The next leg of the journey would be through the ashen stands. A magically twisted stretch of a few leagues, something caused the ground to burn, periodically scorching vast swatches of pine trees without warning. It was relatively easy to traverse as long as nothing was on fire. and had long sight lines, but the few things that lived there were not fun to try and work around.

  Namely the ashbound. Things that died by fire here tended to come back as undead bound to something. Like most damn things here, no one had discovered why or how the fires did this, or at least no one that survived or felt like sharing was a good idea. The ashbound were slow and tough, but all of them had a movement skill that let them step from one fire and out another. Which made getting away from things that saw you a damn problem. So the goal was to avoid any areas with any active fire. Move fast, move quiet. And do not wake up the [Ashbound Voroks] that slept in the burned-out husks of trees.

  Vrax didn’t know if he would be able to even slow one of those things down with his entire trap maker’s kit he had with him. And he certainly couldn’t kill one.