As I left the graveyard behind me I looked just to my right and was met with this wondrous sight…A City The thought rang loudly in my mind…I was excited yet cautious wondering how I would be greeted…but alas it was as dead as the cemetery. Broken wagons, waterless fountains, large buildings with no signs of life. I roamed the streets for ahns looking inside and out searching for something that might give me clues to the culture of this people and perhaps some idea of what happened to them. As I neared the center of the city I came upon a religious temple of some sort, it was beautiful and ornate. Large gems of great value adorned the walls.
I went inside the temple and found documents and scrolls all in a language I could not read, It seemed very ancient like a culture that thrived even before the Priest Kings, But how could that be possible….Yet I wondered and contemplated what kind of Temple this was and to what did they worship. There was an alter made of gold with beautiful gems placed in a circle on the top of it, more writing…and what was this…I looked..scraped with my knife….mmmm…blood perhaps… A sacrifice of some animal or person…who knows…I took some of the documents and scrolls, tucked them in a pouch to study later and left the temple behind moving out of the city over a stone bridge.
Here I found a grand house with tremendous gardens filled with all kinds of flowers and plants that seem to be growing all on there own for there was no one to tend them. I entered the house and found a grand place with signs both inside and out that this once belonged to a sea faring Man….perhaps I thought…perhaps I am not far from the sea. I left this place reminding myself to return, for there was great wealth here just waiting to be claimed. Heading off toward the North The direction I believed I had been walking…the land scape changed and offered a different view than what I had been faced with the past 2 days. It was dry devoid of water, no vegetation the ground crusty and chared like a great fire had consumed it all in an instant…In the distance there were jagged rocks jutting from the ground like they were forced upward by a tremendous force…
I walked out on this charred ground each footstep crushing clumps of dirt beneath my feet. I could feel the heat that lay under the ground I walked on and I was moving quickly as I did not want to be here very long…almost running toward the jutting rocks for it did not feel right nor safe to be in this place.
I picked up the pace to a dead run for at least a pasang and ran right into something most strange…hitting and bumping some types of form…drawing my sword and swining it about me striking bone and breaking them to pieces…stopping taking a breath and gazing upon my foe
There before me was what might have been thousands of Warriors all in battle armor with swords and spear and shield..all without any flesh…just standing as if facing a great enemy…What force could have whipped the flesh from them and left them standing as if it happened in an instance. I took the tip of my sword and pushed against one of the Warriors and he collapsed into dust like the ground around us…There is more to this story than meets the eye…I remember Talarius telling me about a mysterious Island like this where old sea tales speak of two great waring peoples that just disappeared without a trace and legend said a great light devoured them all. I will think on this and many other things, but for now I am moving on….What strange new things await me…what danger…what beauty?
