B6 Chapter 693: The Plateau, pt. 1 (Patreon)

Kaius rolled his shoulders, loosening some of the dull tightness that had built after scaling a sheer and vertical cliff. It might not have been that strenuous, but it wasn’t exactly as comfortable as lounging on a noble’s divan.

Crystal crunched beneath a hammerblow of strength as Porkchop drove his claws into the cliffs edge behind him, hauling himself up and over with a final heave of exertion. He stumbled past Kaius, before he flopped to the rocky plateau-top and rolled over onto his back. Thin shards of pulverised rock clung to his fur and under armour, evidence of his hard-fought battle to the peak.

“That was gods’ damned horrible,” Porkchop groaned.

It wasn’t exactly fun, that was for sure — but his brother had definitely had the worst of it.

They’d rotated around the plateau through the night, putting distance between them and the furious beast that had almost cleaved off Kaius’s leg. This far, there was no way it would be able to sense them. 

Climbing the actual cliff had been an ordeal to plan, simply because they’d been entirely unsure if Porkchop even could climb it. Ianmus could run straight up it in his lightform, Kenva could outright fly, and Kaius had the agility to leap easily between the distant handholds, especially with his friend’s lowering him rope. Porkchop though? He could hold his weight well on his claws, but he still needed to get a good grip.

Not exactly easy to find on a polished, glassy cliff. Kaius had nearly resigned himself to hauling Porkchop from cave to cave using lengths of rope, despite their very real worry that more of them could be occupied. That concern had grown on the way to the peak. Kenva had flown to scout a few of the closest ones out from the air. A few of them had wormed deep into the plateau, leading to some sort of cave-system within. It had to be the layer of the beast that had attacked him, perhaps multiple — if it lived in darkness, it explained how the things eyesight had been so crap.

Thankfully, they’d gotten lucky. The pink crystal ubiquitous to this desert was packed full of energy and hellishly durable — but Porkchop’s claws were formed of orichalcum, reinforced by his Skills, and backed by monstrous strength. With a heavy hit, he’d been able to drive them deep enough to gouge a hold. That let him climb, but the whole thing was arduous and slow, requiring to drive in each foothold with his full strength. Not exactly pleasant, especially when they refused to rest in the caves. 

Kaius’s climb had been downright pleasant in comparison, even when he refused to use his mobility spells on the off chance they were attacked.

But they’d made it. That’s what mattered.

Wandering over, Kaius patted Porkchop on the back. “Come on, big guy; we can rest when we’re not so in the open.”

Rolling onto his feet, Porkchop summoned his armour with a huff. Just ahead, Kenva and Ianmus were staring deep into the forest of gnarled trees, so different from their cousins below. Denser and darker, with their gnarled and twisting branches that scraped the ground, it was a lot more imposing than the open canopy they’d grown used to. Still, the trees were immense, and the branches equally large — they could move through them.

Tusock and fragments of crystal crunched underfoot.

“Huh, that’s odd,” Porkchop said. “I know you said they were different, but it’s quite stark.”

“It’s not all that surprising,” Ianmus said. “Plateaus like this quite often act like little islands, developing differently from the lands below. It happens on Vaastivar too.”

“Sense the energy?” Kaius asked. It was faint, but undeniable in its presence and quality — like the charge that heralded an oncoming storm.

“I do,” Ianmus murmured, leaning on his staff as he stared deep in the direction of its source, as if he could peel the walls of waxy, spined leaves away to reveal it entirely. “It’s potent in a way I struggle to put my finger on — and oddly familiar. Feels ancient, too.”

“Should we set off?” Kenva asked. “This plateau is immense, so if this energy is coming from the centre it will take us quite a while to get there.”

“Soon,” Kaius replied. “First, I wanted to show you something else.”

He nodded over the edge of the cliff they’d just scaled, towards the centre of the jungle that lay between the encircling plateau’s. He pointed to the distant clearing where he’d first spotted ruins the day before. Thick, square foundations of grey stone lay half buried in the pink sand, as scattered walls and half crumbling towers lay shattered and broken. Half of the small complex had been crushed beneath the bulk of the fallen jungle-giant that had revealed the ruin in the first place. It was ancient and weathered, but a few other traces had survived the long passage of time, preserved by the dry air and whatever lingering magic suffused them: half collapsed roofs of wooden shingle, the odd splintered beam, and even a shred of faded red that fluttered on a distant wall.

“Ruins?” Kenva whispered. Ianmus just gasped.

“That’s incredible!” Ianmus said a moment later.

It really was — Kaius hadn’t expected to find anything of the like. 

“They dot the jungle within the ring of plateaus, but most are hidden by the canopy. I suspect they have something to do with the Proving. Same with that Mirage in the centre.” He nodded at the distance haze that stood impermeable to his Truesight.

“What mirage?” Porkchop asked.

“Huh,” Kaius said. Maybe his Skill had worked after all. “Well, it covers the entire centre of the area. There’s enough magic running through it that I suspect it’s way out of our paygrade, but if the three of you can’t even see it, I’m even more certain it's relevant.”

He looked at Kenva questioningly, but she just shook her head.

“The Proving? Who cares about that!” Ianmus said, still staring at the ruins. He paused. “Well, I do — but do you understand what these ruins mean?!”

All of them looked at the mage.

“This isn’t the Depths. The System called this a Shardworld — those might not be facsimiles. People might actually live here — or did at one point, at least. Who knows what we might find?”

Presumably some novel magic or artifice, if they were lucky. He’d considered it when he’d first seen them, but it was hard to get too excited when the next challenge of the integration loomed. The fate of the world was still up in the air — that took precedence.

“It’s a little hard to get excited about that when this might be the fate that awaits us if we fail, Ianmus.”

Ekum had told him directly that the integration might well prove the doom of the world. He didn’t know how, or what might happen to those that did — what if it was this? What if in some distant future, some other poor bastard was picking through the ruins of Deadacre, wondering what happened?

“Exactly,” Ianmus said. “Look, we don’t even know if this place is real, let alone how and why a world could be turned into a ‘Shardworld’  — but we might be able to find out. If they can build towers, they can probably write, too. We have to check them out.”

Kaius froze — that was a damn good point. Immediately, he bumped up the importance of investigating the ruins. He’d wanted to do it anyway, just in case they were important to their upcoming trial, but now he had even more reason.

“Soon,” Kaius promised. “But now that we’re up here, let’s investigate this energy. For all we know, it's connected to both the ruins and the mirage at the centre.”

….

Creeping through the gnarled forest, Kaius scampered up a steeply inclined branch, before jumping to an adjacent one as it went sharply vertical. There were no convenient branch-roads here, just a convoluted tangle of thirty-stride wide limbs that forced them to constantly adjust their route. The ground was no better — these trees grew like an endless hedge, and they would have been forced to scale solid barriers of wood and bark to make any progress. 

A few minutes later, Kenva tapped him on the shoulder — pointing out a large, bell-throated flower that grew out of a branch below them. Pale-white, and large enough to swallow him, they hadn’t even realised the things were carnivorous until he’d watched one swallow a lizard the size of a horse. They were devilishly good at hiding their aura until something wandered close.

Everything up here was a bit like that. Not only was it rare to see something weaker than Silver, everything moved in cautious silence — a taboo he saw no reason to break. 

In six hours they’d covered leagues of ground, the gentle incline of the plateau dipping into a shallow basin as the energy they felt grew ever more vibrant. Now, Kaius could feel it on his skin like an open flame, an ancient potency lingering in the air. He struggled to place it — there were hints of mana and essence within it, but the structure of it was strangely familiar in a way he struggled to place. 

Unfortunately, they still hadn’t found the source — but it had reached some sort of peak in the last half hour. Whatever was emanating must lie in the direct centre of the plateau, or it spanned far more ground than he first expected. It seemed likely they’d encounter it soon.

They kept moving, keeping as close an eye as they could on their surroundings. The dense, waxy leaves that sprouted from these trees made it difficult to see far.

“Stop!” Ianmus hissed. “Below us.”

Kaius paused immediately, creeping to the edge of the wide branch they’d been making their way along. He peered over, freezing as he saw a shattered collection of stone ruins on the rocky ground beneath them. Three small buildings — a small house and what looked like a couple of sheds, or maybe barns. They were made of the same grey stone he’d seen earlier, with disintegrating beams holding up half collapsed roofs. Scanning outwards, he saw more — scattered, but growing denser and larger in the direction they were moving. Were they on the outskirts of some sort of settlement?

“It’s not the source of the energy, but they might be linked — we should check it out,” Ianmus whispered as they grouped up.

“Agreed.”

They jumped down.

…

Kaius stood before a doorway lost to time, the grey stone worn by sand and wind. Dust piled high around its edges, scattered with chunks of dissolving wood and rusted chips of what might have once been nails. It was impossible to tell how old the place was, but it felt ancient — and was shockingly well preserved for it. Maybe it was the dry heat, or maybe it was the Skill and magic that had gone into its crafting. 

Kenva poked her head out from around the side of the house. “I think it might have been a farmhouse or something.”

Kaius frowned, approaching to see what she had found. A farmhouse? Even ignoring the massive trees and the deadly beasts, how in the hells could they grow anything on a plateau of coarse sand and chunks of crystal?

“See?” Kenva said, pointing to a couple of stone pegs that had been hammered into the side of the wall. There was a pile of pitted metal, most of it little more than red dust — some bits, though, had survived enough to be recognisable. An axehead, the wasted curve of a scythe, and the flat plane of what might have been a hoe.

“That doesn’t make much sense,” he said, frowning.

“I think she’s right, though,” Ianmus said, exiting one of the sheds to wander over. “Only thing recognisable in there were sacks of dessicated seeds, and some odd tools I've never seen before. Maybe they grew things on the sides of the trees?”

“Or this place has changed since whenever people lived here.”

It was possible. “Maybe we’ll find something inside,” he suggested.

“I’ll stay out here, since the roof might collapse if I force my way in.”

Nodding back, Kaius entered the ruin with the rest of his team. Immediately, the building opened into a wide living space, with a kitchen and what looked like a larder at the back. Three doorways opened into other rooms, and the place was scattered with shattered pottery, half-fosslised and broken bits of wooden furniture, and the odd bit of grey stone furniture that had survived mostly intact.

They split up, poking around. Kaius made his way to the kitchen, curious about what he would find. A stove dominated most of it — not entirely unsurprising for a modest home like this, since it was likely how they’d heated the place. It was an oddly simple thing of stone masonry. The top must have once been iron, but it had rusted away to leave an open pit of rust and scattered coal mixed through with dust.

Kaius paused. That was weird. There were no inscriptions, not even any remnants. For that matter, he hadn’t seen any runic magic in this place. The stove, at least, should have had some. Some simple inscriptions were so ubiquitous, rote and easy that just about any skilled artisan could manage a little of them. Even if they were shoddy and burned out every three months, it was often far cheaper to maintain than buying coal or even spending the time to chop your own firewood. Why go through so much effort, when you could heat and cook off ambient mana alone? No one that destitute would have a farmhouse with four separate rooms.

Strange.

Continuing his search, he moved to the small larder in the corner — and found an open hole in the ground, the stairs down into the cellar long since rotted away. Crouching down at the edge, he peered inside.

There, amongst broken pots, mummified tubers, and baskets that had been reduced to little more than dust, he saw bodies. Three withered souls, clutching at each other in the corner. Their proportions were strange: maybe five and a half strides, with too-broad shoulders and thick skulls covered in the straw-like remnants of hair. Time had taken their eyelids — all four of them, with the second set on their temples.

Kaius froze, staring at the way they clutched at each other, buried as deep in the cellar as they could have possibly gotten. They’d been hiding.

The sense of trepidation coiling within him only grew as he saw a pile of rust scattered through one's skeletal hand, their body hunched towards the wall.

On instinct, he dropped down, moving closer — and froze.

There, sheltered by the corpse’s hunched body, were words carved into the stone.

In Common.

Kaius clenched his jaw, reading the final message left by the ancient. 

‘Ingwa has forsaken us, the end comes.’

A/N: https://imgflip.com/s/meme/Ancient-Aliens.jpg