Altered Destiny

Ch. 23

I have an excuse.

...

Actually, no, I don't.

--------------------

Ingressus had never thought of himself as sheltered. In the Barrier Mountains your life was regularly in danger, and though the adults tried to avoid scaring the kids, it was both foolish and impossible to deny the threats the Voltaris faced. Ingressus couldn't recall a time when he hadn't been aware of the fact of the raids, the war, that Ardoni existed who would shed his blood without a second thought, no matter what he had or hadn't done to them. In Ataraxia he'd had to deal with the suspicion of those who believed his clan were the monsters and warmongers, who made accusations that Ingressus realized he could sometimes defend but not fully deny. He had been exposed to a different kind of hostility in those days– one that didn't threaten his life but was unpleasant in an entirely different way than he'd learned to deal with.

But despite all he'd seen and been through, Ingressus was now realizing that in some ways, his perspectives of the world were also very limited. Currently the most obvious was the fact that he'd never set foot outside a mountain range before in his life. He didn't count his time in the ocean after the raid. His entire life he had been surrounded by high peaks of stone, from the sheer, jagged spires that scraped the sky in the Barrier Mountains, to the lower, gentler slopes of the Heart Mountains that still dominated the land, places where the horizon was ridged and jagged and close, and taking in your surroundings meant looking up and down as much as to either side. Ingressus had never known anything else.

Admittedly, the land outside the mountains wasn't quite as flat as Ingressus had imagined. There were rolling hills, miniature valleys where rivers wound over the earth, a deeper canyon or two they had passed by as they traveled. The hills were reasonably high, yes; they blocked the horizon and would make a good vantage point, but still, you could see for what felt like miles in all directions, even if you weren't standing at their summit. A Human had appeared further up the road, leading a pair of donkeys in their direction, and it was a good ten minutes before she passed Ingressus and Galleous as they rode along in the opposite direction. You didn't need to re-evaluate your path with every ridgeline; everything just gradually came into view well before you reached it.

It was now the second day since they had left Ataraxia. The Heart Mountains had faded to little more than a dark line on the horizon, visible only when there was a break in the trees and the horizon was low between the hills. Ingressus had found himself looking over his shoulder as they rode further and further away, watching the mountains slowly shrink behind him. It was hard to fathom that a landscape so vast could be hidden so easily, just by traveling far enough away. The past decade of Ingressus's life was contained in just a handful of peaks and valleys inside those distant mountains, and it had all disappeared from view so quickly.

He knew that Ataraxia's isolation had been the key to his safety over the past twelve years. But still, the fact that his corner of the world could vanish so entirely... Ingressus was reminded once again of just how big the world was. There was so much he hadn't seen, so much he didn't know. Even the large structure they'd just passed with the spinning sails of cloth– the windmill, apparently– was utterly foreign to him. They were in the district of Conchord, apparently, with its flat plains and thick oak forests, but he knew there were the stark and unending deserts of the Cydonian district, the lush jungles of Felora, the jagged cliffs and winding seaways of Hydraphel, the city of Crown Peak from where the Enderking ruled.

The day would come. One day he would be able to walk these same roads openly, without having to cover himself in layers of cloth and armor. One day all of Ardonia would be his to see and travel without fear.