The Terral Gate

Chapter 5

It had been four days since the group met Krystal Rowland in the abandoned monastery of Stonehaven. They hadn’t eaten anything they didn’t pick or hunt for the last day. They hadn’t been on a trail for the last two. Nobody minded, though, because they hadn’t had to fight more than a few wild animals so far. With the exception of a few hallucinations in the shadows it seemed like good fortune was finally with them.

The strange thing about good fortune is how it can mislead you.

Gerberkan and Kat were working together to set up some shelter for the night while Mar’Jania was starting a fire with wood Gallus had gathered. Lodi was looking wearily off into the sunset and LT stood guard on the far side of the camp. He didn’t seem to need to rest and nobody objected to employing him as their lookout. Lodi had at first felt very uneasy about LT, but he’d grown on him. All things considered, the skeletal warrior should have been eager to kill Lodi, not serve him. Lodi’s mind wandered backwards through the events of the last days, weeks, and months, but he physically struggled to stand. Lodi didn’t want to tell the others because they hadn’t been complaining, but he had not gotten more than an hour or two of sleep every night since they left Stonehaven. The mark on his hand ached and throbbed with pain every time he began to doze off. It was getting to the point where he was having hallucinations: shadows moving that nobody else saw, waves in the sky as if someone were dragging their finger through the surface of a pond, and phantom noises all around him. Lodi was desperate to make it to Halicron City before letting these issues affect the group. At the very least, he thought, there would be a place to rest- food, beds, and a good chance at finding a cleric or at least some more answers. Kat talked about the famously wise council of the arcane college that was in Halicron City once everyone was sitting around the campfire.

“I heard that the members of the arcane council harness powerful magic and that’s how the city floats!” she went on as the others took turns cooking what they had caught that day. “When the council members retire and new ones are inducted they pass on the secrets to that powerful magic along with the robes!”

“Just think,” Gallus added. “How the corruption of one man could literally bring a city crashing to the ground.”

Gerberkan laughed and put on his most insightful facade, “Corrupting a man is as easy as finding a good woman!”

“Or perhaps…” Gallus continued, nodding at Lodi whose focus shifted to something imagined off in the dark woods after he shook his head to wake himself up.  “it is just a matter of starving one’s mind.”

“Are you alright, Lodi?” Mar’Jania asked from the tree stump she was sitting on.

“I’m fine,” was all Lodi said.

Lodi went to sleep that night without eating. With the morning sun came the revitalization that everyone needed to boost their spirits: Halicron City came into view. They were still almost a full day’s journey out, but since the land had flattened out and the remainder of their trek seemed to be mostly downhill, the city became a visible target; a goal; a finish line. It looked surreal from their vantage point, like a toy model. Countless buildings of different shapes, sizes and colors blurred together in front of a giant building at the back, several stories higher than the rest. Kat identified it as the Arcane College. She started talking about it again as they walked, describing it as the focal point for some of the wisest and most knowledgeable people in the world. They studied everything from rocks to magic, from animals to the terral gods. It would be a great undertaking in itself to learn of everything that was studied, tracked, and documented in the Arcane College. They kept incredible libraries that were constantly expanding. There were also living quarters for the professors, various council members, and scholars that lived, worked, and studied in the city.