Skylands Legends

17.1 Winter Keep

The gray fog faded away as the Sky Lady ascended out of the Lowlands. Stealth Elf took in a deep breath of the fresh air and slowly exhaled. It felt like she was cleaning her lungs out after being in the depressing mist for so long. She looked out at the clear blue skies and sighed. The flight back had been a rough one.

A somber silence had set over the group for a while as they all realized how close to death they had been. Following the quiet came the debating over what had saved them down there. A great wolf made out of red mist had knocked the creature away at the last possible second. No one on the ship had conjured it — no one really could have. The amount of arcane energy that would be required to do something like that was immense. The only two people who would maybe be capable of something like that were Eon and Enigma. The former of which was no longer living, and the latter had disappeared into the Outlands a few years ago and was yet to be seen again.

This left them with no idea as to who could be their mysterious savior. This fact, once again, left them all in a contemplative silence. During which, Jet Vac disappeared below deck, leaving Astroblast to take the wheel.

And now that they were officially out of the Lowlands, Stealth Elf figured it would be best to bring up the one question they had all been avoiding. Was searching for Awakening Stones worth it?

A debate immediately formed between her and Splat as they discussed the topic. The faun argued that they could just be a waste of time or even mistranslations. So far they had gone from one place to another doing essentially nothing but finding clues as to things that might help kill the Night Squatch. At this point, attempting to trap the beast in anhydroladium and transporting him to a secure location seemed like their best bet.

"So what? You want to repeat the events of Fizzland?" Stealth Elf retorted.

Splat pursed her lips. "No, I do not want a repeat of Fizzland. But you forget, we had the beast trapped! He was defeated until we brought the traptanium out. Couple that with the unexpected involvement from the King of Chaos and that's how we lost. He may be immortal, but he can still be bested or even overwhelmed."

Stealth Elf frowned. "You're missing the point. We cannot control all the variables. If we learned anything from Fizzland, it should be that. Even if the Chaos King hadn't interfered, it rained not even an hour later. The beast was escaping no matter what we did."

"Okay, fine," Splat said, crossing her arms against her chest. The next bit she said in a sarcastic tone. "We won't go after Night Squatch. We'll go looking for these magical Awakening Stones. Where do you suggest we begin? Near the Eternal Life Source? Because in case you've already forgotten, we lost the damn book that was giving us that information!"

"Sorry," Krankcase called out from somewhere on the deck, causing Splat to roll her eyes.

Stealth Elf felt her foot tapping on the wooden deck and forced herself to keep her composure. "Knight Light!" She called out. A brief scuffling came from below deck followed by the armored angel joining them above.

He walked exhaustively over towards them before taking a spot up on the floor, leaned back against the mast. "Yeah?" He asked quietly.

Knight Light had burnt himself out back at Ethersin, using up all his reserves of arcane energy. When one did that, their body would go into shock and shut down, almost like they were rebooting. The next couple of days would leave them exhausted and completely drained of energy as their arcane reserves were slowly replenished. He was clearly dealing with its effects still. If Stealth Elf wasn't so mad at Splat, she would have felt bad for disturbing the white knight. But as things were now, she needed an answer.