B6 Chapter 688: Dreams Set Aside (Patreon)

Strolling along a wending road hundreds of strides in the sky, Kaius felt a little peckish. Given the rays of gold that filtered through the canopy far overhead, it seemed right around lunchtime anyway, so he didn’t see a reason to wait. Not that he’d be suggesting they make camp — they had far too little time for that. 

Instead, he pulled a wrapped sandwich from his ring — one of several he’d made that very morning, as he had every time they’d stopped to rest since their fateful rise to Gold. 

Spinning midstep, he lobbed it hard at Kenva. “Catch!”

She snatched it quick as lightning, cradling it in to avoid smushing her precious cargo. 

“Oh, chicken! Nice.”

Kaius lobbed another in a decidedly less aggressive underhand towards Ianmus. He caught it gratefully. Porkchop was not so lucky. Summoning an unwrapped stack to hand, Kaius hurled them as hard as he could. 

Lettuce fluttered in the wind as chicken sprayed like shrapnel, and a small deluge of jam and dressing splattered wide.

Porkchop just opened wide and caught the whole thing, smearing only a little. 

“That,” he said, chewing. “Was an utter bastard of a throw. Good food though.”

Laughing, Kaius bit into his own — enjoying the sweet mix of jam with the heartiness of last night’s roast. With their frankly excessive food stores, they hadn’t had to worry about dining on hardtack and jerky, even if they had stopped resting most evenings. Really, they’d only taken a few hours here and there to cook and Refine. Progress was steady on that front — but it was slowing as they approached the bottleneck. Since getting ambushed, all of them had wanted to stop wasting time and get to the plateau as soon as possible.

Somewhat surprisingly, the last week had been calm. That was a little annoying in and of itself, since it had meant their leveling had slowed just as much. They’d still made gains, of course — six levels wasn’t nothing by any means. 

That said, the progress was practically vanishing compared to the actual distance they’d manage to cover. The plateau loomed high on the horison, and with every league they closed, the more Kaius realised it was closer to a titanic vertical mountain than anything else. 

Hells, a day more and they might actually start getting hit by its shadow when the evening sun dipped behind its bulk. 

That wasn’t all. During the moments the branchroads took them high up into the canopy, and they basked under shining sun and decidedly furious clouds, Kaius could spot more of the rises scattered through the jungle. They looked like they splayed out in a line from horizon to horizon. Hopefully when they reached the top of the one they were heading towards, they’d have enough of a vantage to see more.

It wouldn’t take long — they were only a couple of days’ travel away at most by this point.

Crisp lettuce crunched as Kaius took another bite of his sandwich. He looked up with a smile, enjoying the warmth of the sun filtering down onto his face. Opening his eyes, he spotted a small blue and green furred beast watching from nearby. It was perched on one of the many thousand branches that burst from the sides of the massive limbs they walked upon, it’s elongated nose twitching as it watched his sandwich with driven intensity.

On a whim, Kaius flung a chunk of chicken at the creature. It snatched it and vanished.

“You know, it's quite nice to explore like this,” Kenva said, pausing while eating her own lunch. “ It feels so much more alive than the Great Depths, and it's definitely more exciting than our journey through Franlen and the swamp was. It might be mostly desert and jungle, but it’s just so…active, you know? I didn’t think there could be so many types of flowers in an entire forest, let alone the amount I've seen packed into a single league.”

Kaius definitely understood. Much of their last few years had been running from one crisis to the next. Even when they had gotten to explore, it had mostly been in the Frontier and adjacent territories — it wasn’t exactly like they’d been flitting through all of the weird and wild stretches of Vaastivar. Vainblood, at least, had been a little different from the usual fair.

“The journey here wasn’t that bad,” Porkchop said as he eyed Kaius’s sandwich longingly. Kaius rolled his eyes and tossed the remnants to him, pulling a second from his ring. “I’d never been to a swamp before. I think once was enough — but it was still interesting.”

“True enough,” Kaius said, unwrapping his second sandwich. “I’d originally planned to stay on the move when I got my class. Growing up in the forest kind of left me hungering for something a bit different. Fate had other plans, though.”

“Such is the way of things,” Ianmus said. “At the very least, the whims of the weavers saved me from getting stuck in Baanswell for the better part of the next decade. A placement with the Archivists sounded fantastic at the time, but i’ve grown a bit more fond of the adventuring life since.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Kenva pointed out. “You would have ended up in the Wellspring one way or the other.”

“Oh great, kidnapped by the Onyx and then eaten by a dragon — that sounds so much better than what we got up to.”

“Surely you wouldn’t have just stayed in Baanswell,” Porkchop said. “There had to have been some part of the continent you’d wanted to visit. You’d spent your whole life in Mystral, right?”

Ianmus smiled, taking a bite of his sandwich with a slight crunch. Keeping pace with the group, he took a moment to consider his response.

“I suppose there were a few, now that I think about it. Most of the truly fantastical ones I wrote off as far out of reach, but there were some that I wanted to see once I had a bit of coin and a few levels.”

“Well, share with the class,” Kenva said.

“The Northern Imperial Wall, for one. It’s the damned biggest structure we know of, stretching from the edge of the Wildguard’s all the way to the east coast of the continent — entire thing was built just to seal off the central lands from the more magically unstable north. Supposedly its shadow stretches a hundred leagues, and plants refuse to grow at its base.”

Kaius doubted the shadow actually stretched a hundred leagues — that would make the thing as tall as the damn mountains themselves, and he knew that wasn’t the case. Still, it would be a sight.

“What else?” he asked. 

Letting out a considerate hum, Ianmus ate some more of his sandwich. “Probably the Arches of Gabriel.”

“Ah yes, the Arches of Gabriel, how could I have possibly forgotten such a masterwork,” Kaius shot back.

Kenva let out a loud snort. “They’re a natural mana formation a couple of days off the north-eastern coast. Some sort of conflux that creates visible arches in the sky during dawn and dusk.”

“Indeed,” Ianmus said. “They were named after the storm mage who found them, and they’re supposed to be so beautiful that the world itself holds its breath for the single minute they appear.”

“Im pretty sure it's just the guys who sell the boat charters that say that,” Kenva said. “That said, it was on my list too — just not quite as high.”

“What’s at the top?” Porkchop asked.

Kaius was curious about that too. His friend had grown up amongst a clan of wanderers and explorers — she must know of a dozen hidden treasures that most people on Vaastivar had never even heard of.

“Blackmound,” Kenva said immediately.

“Oh, that’s a good one,” Ianmus agreed.

Kaius shot them both a confused look. “Isn’t that a country?”

He vaguely remembered hearing about it from Nast and his team. Something about it being just up the coast from their home.

“You know, Kaius, it’s really quite astounding how terrible your geography is,” Kenva immediately shot back.

Kaius waved her off and returned his attention to the route ahead. So what if he was bad at geography? He was fine picking up things as they went along, and it was far more exciting that way anyways.

Ianmus, at least, took a little pity on him.

“It is a country,” he said, patting Kaius on the back. “But it’s named after the high-mana zone at its centre. Blackmound, a very inventively named mountain of black glass.”

“A mountain? That’s it? It sounds pretty, but glossy rock is still rock.”

“I think you’re underestimating how striking it's supposed to be on a sunny day,” Kenva replied, amused. “But yeah, there’s a bit more to it. The caldera at its peak holds a Place of Power. An extremely minor one, to be fair; it strengthens stealth Skills by a barely perceptible amount, and the journey there is so dangerous that most people don't bother. That said, saying you have summited the Blackmound is something of a bragging right, and it was an enhancement I could make use of, so it was at the top of the list.

“What about the crater lake?” Ianmus asked.

“That too. It’s the only place the fingers of midnight grow, and I am tempted to try those.”

Kaius’s brows shot up. Fingers of midnight were something he’d heard of — mostly as pasting references in cooking books he’d browsed in Baanswell’s archive that were clearly written for the wealthy and resourceful. They were supposed to be some spindly, purple root — but one of the authors had described it as ‘mustard birthed from divine fire’, whatever the fuck that was supposed to mean. If they only grew in a place like that, it was no wonder they were supposed to be impossible to get a hold of.

“Do they have alchemical value?” he asked.

“Nope! Just make the best damn condiment on the face of the continent. Allegedly. And they only keep for a few hours out of stasis. Mother tried to warn me off them, when I told her — apparently my great-grandfather had some once, and it ruined mustard for him for the rest of his life.”

Kaius frowned, immediately unsure if he wanted to try it. How could something ruin mustard? He liked mustard!

“What about you, then?” Kenva asked, nudging him. “Even with your terrible sense of countries, you must have had something you wanted to see. You can't have been that eager without something you were hoping to reach.”

“The ocean, mostly,” Kaius replied immediately, thinking of a vast and endless plain of water — he still struggled to wrap his head around it. “Everything else I thought I'd take as it came. Although…”

He scratched his head, feeling a little silly. “The Deep Sea was up there too. I spent so long living in its shadow that I spent a lot of time thinking about what I might find in the depths of it. That said, I always sorta brushed it off — never really saw any viable path of actually doing it without getting squished by some horror multiple tiers higher than me.”

“Not really a problem any more! We can do that as soon as we’re strong enough to bop a Celestine in the nose.”

Ianmus flicked to Porkchop with an incredulous look. “It can’t be that dangerous, can it?”

“Not really, no — a Platinum could manage if they were careful and stayed away from the deepest reaches, and recognised how weak they were. Maybe even a Gold, if they had the right Skills and knowledge. The elves manage it by Silver, but they tend to stick close to their Conclaves, which are cleared of most serious threats by elvish elders. That said, that’s not really the issue for us. I can think of more than one Patriarch who will probably need to be hit in the face before they get the picture that I made the right call in violating a millenia-old cultural taboo.”

“Well, that’s not terrifying at all,” Kaius muttered.

“Eh, we’ll be fine. We’ve got stuff to do before then, anyway. Thankfully, mine is easy — and we’ll see it pretty soon.”

“The steppe?” Kenva guessed, looking confused.

“Almost. The dwarven kingdoms. My Matriarch always said that the only two people worth paying attention to were the elves and some group of burrowing folk from some of our oldest tales — it wasn’t too hard to put the pieces together when I got out of the Sea.”

“What made you so interested?” Kaius asked — he hadn't expected the dwarves to be at the top of Porkchop’s places to visit.

“Well, they have proper sleeping habits for one. Houses are nice and all, and I've gotten used to sleeping under the stars — but its not the same as sleeping with solid stone above you. Other than that, a lot of the old tales mentioned that they had very little patience for elvish oddities, which made it sound like we might have some cultural similarities. Plus, I want to see how different the real thing is from that city we saw during our first delve.”

Kaius chuckled — but he couldn’t deny he wasn’t interested himself. In every place his friends had mentioned, really. He could only hope they would find the time to just go where the winds took them, but he knew deep in his soul they wouldn’t have the opportunity for a while yet.

Thankfully, it wasn’t like they had a dreary future ahead of them — he still needed to find his ancestral home, and he had no doubt that their quest to finish the integration would show them plenty of interesting things to look at.

Still, it was nice to think about. There was nothing wrong with having a few mundane dreams — and it would be all too easy to lose themselves in the enormity of their task if they let it happen.

They carried on, chatting away about the many wonders that lay scattered while they finished their lunch.A/N: Hunger closed beta came out, and yet I must still write. Truly, life is cruel and vexatious. Might need to bank a day off some time in the next few weeks if I dont manage to write a minimum of five chapters this week, but i'll see how I go. I didn't manage any yesterday, but I did do my 2k outline for the last act of b6, so thats something.