Chapter 19

They’d been walking for the better part of two days. Once Captain Lockewood let them go, they’d managed to make it out of Farvale with no additional issues. Cinder had even managed to find them, although where he’d been hiding, Osric didn’t know. They hadn’t seen the wolf even as they made their way out of the city, but as soon as they were out of sight of it and there were no people around, the animal appeared out of the underbrush, nearly scaring Grace to death.

Osric wondered if he’d been in the city watching them the whole time but staying out of sight as ordered, or if he’d left the city and been waiting outside of it for them. Not that he’d ever get an answer from the animal, but he once again wondered just how smart Cinder was.

Although Jasper hadn’t been able to bring any of Godfrey’s books with him, and had only looked at them for a few minutes, he still seemed fairly confident that he knew where they needed to go and could get them fairly close to the location of the temple.

They were heading into the backcountry, off any roads or even most trails, eventually ending on a cart path that roughly went in the direction they were headed. They weren’t far from the forest, but this corner of the barony, away from Great Road, didn’t have a lot of people. Rowan had said he’d heard the land wasn’t great for crops, which is why most farmers stuck to the northern side of the Great Road or further to the west, outside of the barony.

Osric was just happy they had some kind of path, rather than just trekking blindly cross country. A few hours earlier, Jasper had said they were around the area the book had suggested, but to Osric, it all looked the same. There were definitely no signs that an ancient battle had been fought anywhere around there, let alone the remnants of a temple. Heck, there weren’t even any people.

Or there hadn’t been.

As they crested a small rise, a weathered farmhouse came into view, up against a field that looked more like dry dirt and rocks than it did a proper field. The farmhouse was still in good order and looked to be lived in, though. That was confirmed a moment later when a man in a wide-brimmed hat came around a corner, pushing a rickety wheelbarrow full of what looked to Osric to be weeds.

“Ho there, travelers,” he called out as they drew near. “What brings you out this way?”

“Just passing through,” Rowan said.

“Nothing but rough ground south all the way to the border, and no people that I know of,” the farmer said, setting down his wheelbarrow. “You’ve come from the direction of the village and I don’t think you’re here to see me, so I have to ask, what are you looking for? You seem out of place, if you don’t mind me saying.”

“We are looking for the site of some old ruins. They’d be ancient, maybe just a stone or two, since way back from the founding of the kingdom,” Jasper said.

“You don’t want to go there,” the farmer said, suddenly serious.

“So you do know of them?” Osric asked, suddenly hopeful.

“I know there are some ruins to the west of here, not that I’ve ever seen them. Can’t be what you’re looking for, though. That area’s cursed. Most people who go there come back mad. Or don’t come back at all.”

“But someone went there once, right?” Osric asked. “For you to know there are ruins there. Is this curse new? Something that happened recently?”

As soon as the man mentioned a curse, Osric’s mind instantly went to the creature in the lake. The villagers there had talked of a curse, too, and it made sense that if this was where a great battle was fought at the fall of the Calaphium, there might be a weak point in the Veil near it, where something could have come through and caused a similar disruption to the area.

“No, no,” the farmer said, waving a hand. “Been that way for generations. My grandfather warned me about it, and his grandfather before him. Nobody goes out there, not if they value their life.”

“But you know there are ruins?” Jasper asked.

“I know some of those who’ve gotten lost and gone that way have come back, talking of ruins. But they spoke through madness, forgot their own names, and weren’t good for much else beside sitting on a stool, watching the sky all day. So who knows what’s really out there other than death or madness.”

“It sounds like that’s exactly what we’re looking for then,” Jasper said.

“Suit yourselves,” the farmer said with a shrug. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Writing them off as dead men, apparently, the farmer picked up his wheelbarrow and began pushing it to the corner of his plot, dumping out the weeds and who knew what else into a pile with a collection of other vegetation and scrap.

“Well, we thank you for the warning,” Osric said, turning west.

Grace looked back after a few minutes, as the farmhouse had already started to disappear in the distance. “If it’s cursed, maybe that’s exactly where we shouldn’t go.”

“No, Jasper was right,” Talia said. “If it’s cursed, it’s almost certainly just where we want to go. We’ve encountered curses like this before.”

“That began recently, though,” Osric pointed out. “Something escaped through the Veil a few months before and became trapped there. The Veil is failing but, based on what the Sage said, it’s only started tearing again in the last fifty or a hundred years. The farmer said his grandfather and his grandfather’s grandfather knew this place was cursed. If this has always been like this, maybe it’s different.”

“This isn’t the first time the Veil has been broken,” Talia reminded him. “The Sage said that, too. When the Calaphium fell, there were holes torn open in the Veil then too. So there’s a chance whatever this is has been stuck here for thousands of years.”

“If that’s true, and if it’s some kind of animal like the last one, don’t expect such a reasonable response,” Rowan said. “That other thing, it was nearly mad, and it had only come through recently. Imagine what it would have been like after hundreds of years.”

“Then we’ll deal with it,” Osric said. “We don’t exactly have a choice.”

They continued west for several more hours. It was still early afternoon, and they had a lot of light ahead of them, but Osric hoped they’d find the area they were looking for soon. If this place was cursed, he’d rather not have to camp here.

He didn’t have to wait much longer. He knew Talia well enough to tell when something was off, and for the past ten minutes, she had not been her normal self. She’d been agitated and twitchy, like she’d rolled in a bed of ants and had a few she couldn’t get off.

“There’s something off about this place,” Talia finally said. “Can you feel it? It’s like the very air is ... tainted.”

“I don’t feel anything.”

“I do,” Jasper said. “There’s an ... unnatural stillness.”

“The animals do, too,” Rowan said. “Have you noticed, no birds, no small animals in the underbrush? We’ve seen those for the last several days, but they’ve all disappeared as we’ve headed further this way.”

“That just means we’re still going the right way, doesn’t it?” Osric said.

“I guess,” Talia said, but she didn’t sound as confident as he did.

Even as she said that the sky darkened, turning a deep shade of red and orange. These were not the reds and oranges of sunset, which should still be hours away, though. These were deeper. More sickly looking.

It didn’t happen all at once or slowly. It was more like it had been that way for a while, but Osric just noticed.

“What’s that?” Grace said, ranging a little ahead of them.

It took a moment for Osric to make out what she was pointing at. The grass and foliage had taken it over so completely, it was hard to see anything but a lump of vegetation. At least not without looking at where Grace was pointing.

He did see it, eventually. Old, weathered stone, pitted and crumbling with age. As old as the keep he and Talia had found. Maybe older.

“These are ancient. Older than any settlement I’ve seen,” Rowan said.

“Creepy is what it is. Let’s just find what we’re looking for and get out of here. This place gives me the shivers,” Grace said, kicking a part of the stone loose.

Osric barely heard their words, his attention drawn to a strange shimmer in the air above him. It was like a heat haze, but directly over his head. Close enough he felt he could grab it if he jumped up. He wanted to reach out and try to touch it.

As he started to raise his hand, Talia hissed, “Osric, what are you doing?”

“There’s something...”

Before he could finish the sentence, the shimmer pulsed, expanding outwards and dropping to the ground in front of him. The air grew cold as it shifted, becoming more translucent than transparent, its shape slowly coalescing into that of a man. A specter.

“You will die for coming to this place,” it said, its voice both hollow and echoing.

Not angrily. Not threatening. More matter-of-factly. It floated towards them, its feet not touching the ground, as it raised a hand, reaching for Osric. Behind him, Osric heard the creak of Rowan’s bowstring as the ranger pulled it taut.

“Wait!” Osric stepped back, away from it, his hands raised. “We know why you’re here. You came through the Veil, didn’t you?”

The specter halted. Its placid face shifting for the first time. It was hard to tell, but Osric would say it almost looked ... curious.

“What do you know of the Veil?”

“I know it’s tearing, that it’s in danger. Things are coming through from other realities. That’s how you got trapped here, isn’t it?”

The specter’s form flickered.

“No, I wasn’t trapped here. I died here.”

“Were you here when the temple was attacked?” Jasper asked.

The specter’s face turned, looking to the cleric, “Yes. There was so much destruction. Fire rained down. Burning my family. My city. Everything.”

“You were trapped here?” Talia asked.

“I fell,” it said in its echoing voice, as if a dozen people were speaking at once. “My soul reached for the heavens, to rejoin the Veil. There was ... a flash of energy as a great tear opened above the temple. Things came through. Horrible things. I could see the Veil. So close. So close.”

“The energies kept you from it?”

“Yes. So close, but I couldn’t move. Couldn’t rise. The tear closed, in time, but even still, I couldn’t leave. Locked here. In this place. In this damnable place.”

It was becoming agitated. Angry. The pulsing of its form quickening.

“We’re trying to repair that damage,” Osric said, hoping to calm it down, unsure of what it would do if it got angry. “We’ve closed the Veil elsewhere, I think. I think there’s something in that temple keeping the Veil unrepaired. Otherwise, it would have fixed itself when the Veil was fixed elsewhere. The tear is gone, but it isn’t repaired. I think that’s why you can’t go through.”

“This should allow me to finally pass on?”

“I don’t know for certain, but I think so. I can try, at any rate.”

The specter nodded, its form beginning to fade. “Then you may pass. I hope you succeed. I am tired of this place.”