Born From A Divine Gamble

The hills here where not only treacherously shaped, they were also full of holes. The wind came from who knows where and went through those fissures and openings at high speed giving the impression that the hills where howling. Emp was impressed but also, the closer he got, the more he found it annoying. If they howled only once in a while it would not have been that bad but the screams where as constant as the wind. Chinui had been right once again, it was impossible to miss that hill.

Even more annoying was the fact that the was not only one such howl but hundreds, all screaming at a different pitch and strength. The air, after going through the hills was blasted back out of those holes, wailing and shot through the whole length of the low-woods. Emp felt quite glad that the sound did not follow the air all the way to the other side of the woods.

While all the hills around here were screaming, only one of them was called the howling hill. It was a hill with a particularly large hole on its side, so large in fact that the road led straight in it. The howling hill wasn"t on the side of the road, it was the road itself.

Stepping inside, one could see it was almost hollow. Aside from the main tunnel, there were holes everywhere, reminding one of a giant ants nest. The tunnel had not been dug, it was there from the start, it seemed that the ones charged of the road had only smoothed out it"s floor to make travel through it easier. With time and so many travelers, the ground here had become really pleasing to walk on.

Here, the howls were even louder and came from all around and even bellow but Emp knew he would not be there for long so he just had to bare with it. The path led deep into the hill, often bordered by large crevices of unknown depth. If not for the few glowing crystals embedded in the rocky road to show the way, he would probably have fell into some hole by accident. The road twisted and turned on itself to the point that it pa.s.sed above earlier section of itself at two different places. He could see it by the glow coming from the chasms on either side of it.

This place would have been perfect for an ambush but it seemed he wasn"t the only one annoyed by the wind and screams of this place as nothing happened at all to him for the whole time he was there.

At some point, he arrived at a crossroad with a signpost he was unable to read but still easily found the way to Dark-glint by asking the book of answers. Knowing he was almost at Dark-glint already made him very happy since Chinui had told him that once there, he would be almost done with all that walking. He could not wait to rest his hard working feet.

As he progressed through the hill, he stopped in a place that overlooked most of this hollow place. He turned his back against the rough wall and looked over the cliff at the pathway of light snaking its way through the darkness and the maze of tunnels. That sight was splendid too. From there, after having walked through most of it all, he could clearly see that this place was much larger than he had thought when he stepped foot in it earlier.

In between the paths of light, large blobs of darkness hid the beauty of this place from his eyes. He knew that even in those spots were almost no light reached, the tunnels would continue on and on. If one was to step out of the path of light to explore on his own, there was no telling where he would end up. With all the fissures and chasms here, Emp felt that the tunnels did not limit themselves to this large hill but rather continued on bellow for a while longer.

The path had been made carefully by those who came before and considering all its twists and turns, the task must have been tremendous. Here, no torch could ever survive the power of the wind, explorers would have to rely on magic or be at ease in the dark to progress.

If a traveler ignored the path carefully made for them in the past, a terrible fate could await them. Unlike the water in the river, humans could make the choice to leave the road a.s.signed to them but was that choice always wise?

The paths here were limitless but only two led outside, if not for the lights, how would anyone know which was the right way? The path he was following to the school had been lighted for him by Chinui but afterward, there was no more lights to tell him the way, what would he do then? Would he end up wandering in the dark forever? Maybe the howls were just the spirits of all the lost screaming their despair, or maybe, and more simply, the hill just found that being riddled with holes was painful.

This was worrying him but the only thing he could do for now was continue to follow the path laid out for him. He could only hope that at the end of it, the way to go would still be as clear as this one. He left the dark sight behind and moved towards the exit.

Near the end of the cave-like tunnel, the wind became noticeably weaker and by the time he reached the outside world, he could enjoy the lack of wind for the first time in days. One would usually wish for the wind to pick up on hot days but, he had endured enough of it for the months to come.

The sound also became weaker but could still be clearly heard from this side of the hill, it would no doubt follow him until he left the vicinity of this place.

On this side, there were still rocky hills all around but the road ignored them all and smoothly cut towards the south. After that, Emp did not encounter any more problems on his way to Dark-glint.

A day and a half after he pa.s.sed the howling hill, the terrain started becoming smoother again and a normal forest took over the landscape once again. In a few days at most he would be in the next village.

Thinking about Dark-glint, was it not the place where the blacksmith"s sister lived? He should probably go see her to thank her about his equipment. He did not have it for a month yet and the armor alone saved him many times already.

Since Dark-glint village wasn"t such a big place, according to the book of answers, it should not be that hard to find her.

Still according to the book, the village was there mostly because the road was there. It had been built around a bridge often broken down by the surrounding wildlife and since this road was an important channel between Windbow and Artefine, they could not let this matter alone. Thus, they had cleared part of the woods around the bridge and built a military outpost there. The rest of the village had slowly been built around the promise of safety that presented such an outpost. Nowadays, it was mostly a village of farmers and loggers.

Emp, after yet another day of walking, was looking for a good place to rest since the night was already there and he had not reached the village still. He had refused to stop before because he thought he was really close but now that it was dark, he regretted his decision, he would definitely not reach the village that day.

As he was looking for a good tree, he heard a large amount of steps coming from further down the road. Was it a caravan, this late in the evening? They should have stopped for the night long before the sky darkened. Still, he was happy to meet a new traveler after all this time. He had seen no one on the road between Starfall and Dark-glint which made him feel lonely. He wondered who they would turn out to be.

Then, he understood that the pace of the steps was wrong, because of the dark, he could not see them yet but he was convinced they were running rather than walking. Where they in trouble?

Just to be safe, Emp got away from the road. He would only come out if he judged it was safe to do so. After all, those running sound could be anything from fleeing farmers to raiding cursed-bloods. He summoned the second him, got the thunder-chew hammer in his hands and awaited the runners. His copy took the s.h.i.+eld but did not get either of the blades out yet since both could produce light and reveal their hiding spot.

Moments later, the noise revealed itself to be a group of around ten people consisting mostly of children running away from an equivalent group of creatures.

The creature were so pale that they were quite easy to spot in the dark. They had the shape of a lean furless feline and were as big as a guard dog. They all seemed quite thin and their ribs were showing through their sickly skin. Most of their throat seemed about to fall off. From afar, it looked like it was full of blood dripping gashes. Emp would have thought they were badly wounded if not for the fact that they were all like that. They had a flimsy tail almost as long as an arm, thin and short fangs sprouting from their paws, short pointed hears and a disgusting jaw with flabby lips dripping with both saliva and what looked like blood.

The humans were running away from them and were surprisingly able to keep some distance with them. It was not because they were really fast but rather because the cats were slow. Emp did not know if the cats really were slow or just taking their time but either way, they would not catch up soon.

The fleeing group was made up of one women in a long dress carrying a baby, one man armed with a sword leading the escape, one man keeping an eye on their pursuers from the back and a bunch of kids of heights ranging from very small to as big as Emp.

One of those kids, a girl a head shorter than Emp b.u.mped her foot against something in the dark and fell arms first on the road. The man keeping the back picked her up almost immediately and sent her off running again with a short hurried sentence. They had such a large advance over the cats that Emp thought it would not matter at all but he was mistaken.

Three of the cats stopped following them, arced their back and raised their heads high. Their throat bulged like a frog and started smoking a little before they spit out a huge glob of liquid with a sharp jerk of their jaws.

The three globs of what he a.s.sumed was spit flew all the way to the man and the girl. Two splashed on the ground meaninglessly but the third one hit the man in the lower back. He first reacted by jumping in fright but then, immediately started yelling in pain. He let go of his sword and desperately tried to remove his tunic. Smoke rose from it as if it was burning and by the time the man managed to tear apart his clothes, it was far too late, he collapsed with a large smoking hole in his back.

The children started screaming in fear from the scene while Emp frowned in surprise. That was some scary spit! They killed that man so easily, no wonder they were not in a hurry. They could just keep their distance and kill their prey anyway. That attack was strong enough to eat everything it touched, from the clothes to the bones.

Emp was in front of a dilemma, should he go help them or not? Of course, he did want to help them but the real question was, would he be able to or would he just throw his life away? Chinui told him to not get in trouble if he could help it but would he think the same in this situation? Emp had no idea if his armor could withstand one of their attacks and more importantly, there were ten of them. If he was to reveal himself and attack those cats, would they not just keep their distance and spit on him until he stopped moving?

He wished to help them but had a really hard time figuring out which was worst between doing nothing and risking them all to die or dying himself and losing the bet of his creators. In the end, he felt like the situation in front of him was just like what he had talked about with Galana. He couldn"t ignore their problems if they happened right in front of him. He had to do something.

***

There are many paths between Windbow and Artefine but none are as used as the one going through the howling hill. This is mostly due to its relative safety compared to its southern alternatives.

A well armed and protected caravan can easily take a shorter route south of the low-woods but it is widely known that the path going through it is many times safer despite being a lot more time consuming.

The reason for its relative safety is the wind that blows from the howling hill and into the low woods. The winds are so strong that most critters and birds stay away from its whole wide expense. The lack of said critters cut off a huge part of the food chain in the region. The predators eating the smaller animals dodged the area as well for its lack of food and by consequence, their own predator stopped showing up too. Even the larger grazing animals dislike the place because of its treacherous footings and lackl.u.s.ter herbal density.

Going through the low woods can take up to a whole week but getting attacked during that week is as likely as catching the eye of the imperial princess. Only a few creature, able to survive for long stretches of time without food and undisturbed by the strength of the wind would dare linger in those woods. The few that can fit this description are either no match for a caravan or a truly unpredictable calamity.

The only downside to this path is also its greatest mystery, the howling hill itself. An impressive wall of hollowed out stone spanning over 15 kilometers in length, perpetually blasting hot wind from its many openings in soul frightening screams.

The path goes through it and since the empire invested into embedding light stones into the path, the risks incurred while crossing are minimal. The path being barely large enough to let a cart through, it is customary to send a scout ahead to the other side and confirm that no other caravan started crossing before engaging yourself in the path.

Before the lights were installed, many lost their way into the perceptibly endless tunnels of the howling hills but, now, only the blind or foolish could lose their lives in those caves.

The wind there is equal in strength to the smell of a kerradon. It"s so powerful it makes your head hurt unless you are used to it and it"s disturbing noise.

No one can explain where that air current comes from, many curious scholars and adventurers delved into the depths of the hills but none found the answers they were looking for. Their expeditions however, let us learn a lot of things about the hills.

First and foremost, there are no living beings in the maze of tunnels coursing through and bellow the hills, at least in the charted ones. Secondly, the caves are rooted far deeper than we first thought.

The man who went the deepest was sir Clive Veglan and his expedition. They set off from the southern howling entrance on the day following the first moon of summer and made their way downward. Sir Veglan was the only one who came back after months of exploration, his account on the subject, dreadful.

What he retold was incoherent at best but here is a general idea of what was conveyed through his ramblings. First, let"s get the obvious out of the way. Sir Veglan, as expected, never managed to reach the end of the tunnels. He said that the chasms and winding pa.s.sages went on and on, ever deeper into the earth.

His men and himself walked and walked but nothing was to be found here except the maddening howls unceasingly a.s.saulting their minds. He said that they were about to turn back because of how low their provisions were running when they finally found something. Down in the depths of this world, they found a crystal, dimly glowing in the absolute darkness, as tall and wide as a fortress. Around it, hundreds of humanoid creatures wors.h.i.+ping the stone in the silence imposed by the deafening wind.

When asked to describe the things they saw, he said that they were four armed creatures resembling huge insects. He would describe them as ant-like but noted that some of them had mantis arms or wings unfitting of cla.s.sical ants. Long after he left the howling hills, he still had nightmares about their strange appearance and by his words: their unnerving and disquieting faces, almost like a wooden doll with sharpened teeth, their intricate forehead ridges and many eyes.

When they met, both group stared at the other, the creatures, he recalled, as confused as they were themselves from their presence. The next part of his story is rather hard to understand and harder to put into words but one thing is for certain. A battle ensued and his expedition was defeated. Sir Veglan alone managed to escape and find his way back to the surface world.

Many questions still remain, and many including myself do not believe his story to be true. There are too many incoherence to be found in his tale. How could we ignore the existence of those ant-people until now? How would they survive so far bellow? Most of all, why would sir Veglan be the only one to escape? It is rude to speak hill of our ancestors but Veglan was not the fastest not the strongest, how he would manage to escape the gruesome fate of his whole party his a baffling mystery.

It is a more commonly accepted belief that the howls, with time, rendered them insane. Either they all killed each other in a frenzied state or Veglan left them all to die down there as he made his way back alone, after all, if we can give him one irrefutable quality, it would be his uncanny ability to never lose his way. With so few supplies left, who knows if he decided there would not be enough for them all?

The ant people should be no more than tale weaved by the feverish mind of Veglan and what delves or not in the depths of the howling hill remains a mystery just like where its winds come from.

-- Geography of the Steelwood empire, about the howling hill.

()I"m sorry this chapter is short (3,300 including the end bit) but there is nowhere to cut it after that point. The next couple ones are longer.

()If you were to consider the trip to reach the school as a story arc, we would be reaching the climax fight. Such a fight is usually easy to see coming but this one wasn"t because I never thought it would take so long to reach the d.a.m.n school. At least you know how those creatures are called, we talked about them twice before.