Knight of Endrell Book One: The Red Empire

The Reach and Chapter Five

The Reach

The reach was on the far eastern edge of the fields after the forest that surrounded the city of Endrell and was notorious for its rough plains with its wild patches of grass, some a fresh green others a dry brown, and its twisting water-worn rocks. Scoring the reach were scattered trees and rugged, jagged hills that lead right into a thirty foot high massive sheet of solid rock plateau called the Valhithon Pass. Stretching forty square miles, the pass was carved with endless water-weathered trenches that twisted and turned into each other while streams ran through them, as well as various hot spots of dome-like cave openings with water pools and waterfalls that often served as resting spots for weary travelers.

Amidst the plains were several clusters of goat hills posted in different locations and upon their slopes the hedgehorn billies dwelled, known for a crown-like bone growth that protruded from their heads like a wall or "hedge" and extended into its under-coiled horns. The hedgehorns had long manes and beards with fur coats of white to grayish-black mixtures although, every once in a while, there was one with a deep brown coat that had a sharp red streak running along its spine from its head to where its hind legs began. These were generally peaceful creatures that usually kept to themselves although if met by a man had a tendency to be very nosey and often walk around the man sniffing and searching as they urgently and even rudely scrutinized him.

If not perceived as a threat, they didn't mind a person's company as long as that individual maintained the peace and did not interfere with their way of life. A man might even have attracted an audience if he stuck around, however the hedgehorn goat would only withhold hostility towards mankind so long as men kept their distances at first and let the goats come to them which was a sign of respect.

Between the plains and the Valhithon Pass lay the valley of the Calacon craters, most with a circumference of 1,582 feet and a diameter of 504 feet. Calacon was the event of the rain of stars upon the earth, or meteors for that matter, during the wars of the ancient cities of the old kingdom of the Lowlands. They were demolished by the storms of the sky in that day, some thousands of years before this time. Some of the remains of those cities still existed amidst the craters left behind by the meteors, but now make for thriving gardens consisting of vines, wild weeds and clusters of trees, while some craters have become lakes with streams running through the gardens. The hawks of the reach make their home there. 

Other than the rare morth hawk, indigenous to the reach, there existed the tathecon coyote, a mixture of wolf kind and dingo with a rich brown coat, which occupy the reach in various packs of five but only come out around the first hour of sunset and hunt during the night. Those scattered in the reach usually find homes in caves while the majority of their greater numbers and pack leaders dwell in the thick of the Mistmarch Forest in the south eastern portion of the reach spanning roughly three square miles. 

The Mistmarch Forest is named such because of its propensity to be seized day and night by a flowing sea of mist just light enough to see well within a twenty foot distance. This often makes for a beautiful and colorful sight when the sun peers through the canopy of the forest's trees that reach one hundred feet high and are ten feet wide. The trees and all their surrounding vegetation are what fuel the mist by maintaining an extremely moist environment.

Also slithering along the ground from dawn to noon was the vixaka serpent, born of blood from snake, chameleon, and iguana along with a concentration of rare fungal sand formations that, when fully developed, formed pebbles and stones on the serpent's scales with a sandy coating between the patterns. It was for this reason that it is called "vixaka" serpent (vixa- or vix, meaning stone or base earth structure and, ka, meaning moving or to move.) The vixaka was well known for hiding in plain sight wherever food might be found and lunging out to strike its prey suddenly, after inching towards it in small increments if necessary.