Release Schedule: Once per week.
With no recollection of her past or even her own name, our heroine has merely been existing since waking in a place known as the Obsidian Terraces. Uncertain how to fend for herself or earn coin, she turned to protec...
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I plopped down in the grass with a small sigh and glanced toward where Yahui was tending his qilin. After several hours on the qilin my legs felt wobbly. We had stopped for lunch, and so that he could send a message to his disciples somehow.
Most of the countryside we had traveled through was beautiful, forested mountains crowned with blue, blue-green, and violet foliage. Many of the roads bordered rivers and creeks that wound through the bountiful region.
However, not too far off in the distance, everything was a dull, lifeless gray. I frowned slightly, looking for any clear cause. The color reminded me of ash but I saw no charring. There didn't appear to be any volcanoes in the area that could have affected it, either.
"The people who once ruled these lands, and the Terraces, ruined the land with their practices. It has taken centuries for us to recover what you've seen." Yahui came to a stop in front of me and dangled a folded cloth in front of my face. "In their hunger for power, they stole from nature and made much of the soil inert. Restoring balance and coaxing energy back into this domain has been...trying."
I frowned deeper, feeling our surroundings with my other senses. "The damage...what caused it, precisely?"
"They called upon light arts far beyond their reach. To sustain themselves and their arts, they called upon natural energy—at the cost you see." Yahui glanced off in the direction of the gray wasteland. "If a deity truly ordered them to commit such heinous acts..."
Yahui clenched one fist, but his posture and demeanor relaxed again after he took a deep breath. When his gaze flicked toward me, I found his expression unreadable once more.
"Wouldn't reaching too far with any art cause damage?" I stared back at him, befuddled.
"For most, the damage would be done to their bodies and not their surroundings." Yahui shook his head. "Their arts weren't meant for mortals, perhaps not even for immortals. Where they learned such techniques remains a mystery."
A mystery deities should be investigating, by the sound of it... I unwrapped the cloth from around my box of food and opened the lid. "Will we be hunting in the wasteland?"
"Close to it." Yahui studied me. "You can't sense the scars left by light arts?"
"I can sense the scars. If it's from light arts, it feels unfamiliar. Nothing like the arts I use." I shook my head.
In the next moment, I felt the flat of a blade pressing into my throat and Yahui's chest against my back. Darkness like vines snaked around us, coiling around my ankles and waist. His breath was hot against my ear when he finally spoke, "You are certain of that?"
"Quite certain. Does it feel the same to you?" I called an orb of prismatic light to my palm and then shifted so I could see Yahui, offering him the orb. "Here, feel for yourself."
"You..." Yahui swiftly moved his blade from my throat and snatched a cloth from nearby to press against my neck instead. "What possessed you to turn with a weapon to your throat?! Do you fancy yourself immortal?"
