“Since there’s no reason why we shouldn’t, we’ll go that way.” Einen struggled to his feet.
With a wave of his hand, he sent the mat he’d been lying on back into his spatial artifact.
“The fact that you supported the barbarian so easily gives us-”
“Tom!” The elf girl followed Einen’s example and got to her feet as well. “If you don’t have any logical arguments for why we should go down your route, we’ll go that way.”
“Why?”
“Because,” Anise held out her hand and a silver bird landed on her palm. It flared up like the brightest star and then crumbled to dust, leaving a piece of ice behind, “There is an exit there.”
This forced Tom to shut up. It was a strange sight as there was absolutely no ice or snow in the gorge. The blizzard was raging overhead and tons of snow flew from one rock to another, but the gorge was only slightly damp and wet, no more.
“Holy shit! The barbarian actually guessed right.” Tom said, losing his noble composure for a moment.
Pushing aside Anise’s outstretched hand, he rose awkwardly. The atmosphere of the mountains didn’t allow him to quickly heal the injury he’d received in the fall. He’d drunk Dora’s concoction at least, which had partially restored the energy structure of his leg. Crouching on one leg, he bent down and took a branch from the fire. Armed with it and cursing up a storm, Tom hobbled off in the direction Anise’s bird had come from. The rest of the squad, after taking a burning stick from the fire, followed him. They moved as quickly as Tom – the weakest member of the group – could manage. Even nobles knew to try and avoid getting separated. After all, their parents had paid fabulous sums of money to numerous Masters and Scholars to ensure it.
Einen and Hadjar were right behind Tom. Dora and Anise followed them. After what the two friends had done during the storm, the atmosphere in the squad was tense, even hostile. Everyone understood perfectly well that the duo simply couldn’t have acted otherwise — their survival had depended on it. Even then, they were still wary of them.
“Can we talk?” Hadjar asked in the islander’s native language.
“Do you hear that? They’re discussing something in their own language again, and we’re supposed to pretend that nothing is happening!”
“We can.” Einen replied, ignoring Tom’s indignation.
“Calm down, Tom,” Dora said. “Everyone has their secrets.”
Tom swore a few more times, then fell silent. Hadjar turned back, met the stern gaze of Anise’s green eyes, and shivered slightly. Despite his considerable experience as both a soldier and a wanderer, he was as clumsy with women as when he’d first entered a brothel. Not in terms of actual sex, of course, but when it came to ‘forging a relationship’. He had no clue about what to say or how to act to avoid such gazes.
“She’s your problem,” the islander smiled. “You came up with that idea, so you’ll have to deal with the consequences.”
“It’s not about her.” Hadjar and Einen didn’t use names. Whatever language they spoke, names all sounded the same.
“Then what is it?”
Hadjar trusted his friend, so he asked the next question mostly out of curiosity.
“When I told all of you about the ancestral path, I noticed-” Hadjar tried to find the right words, “I noticed that you already knew about it.”
“I did,” Einen nodded. “But just like with the true path of cultivation, I couldn’t tell you anything about it or teach you. My understanding of the ancestral path is worse than your own now. I could’ve hurt myself and you.”
He wasn’t wrong about that. One of the immutable truths of the world of martial arts was that only someone with a talent for teaching and a deep understanding of the subject’s essence could teach others. Otherwise, a pseudo-Teacher, instead of imparting knowledge, only harmed both parties involved.
“But how did you know about it? The orcs told me that they were the only ones who remembered the way of the ancestors.”
Einen didn’t stumble, didn’t sigh, but Hadjar nonetheless felt that the question had made him tense up.
“The same way you learned your sword Technique.” Einen briefly opened his bright, purple eyes.
Hadjar realized that his friend had learned about it from the Rainbow Trout.
“Alright.”
Hadjar held out his hand. Einen immediately responded to the gesture. They clasped each other’s forearms, nodded, and continued on their way in silence. All the important things had already been said.
For almost a full day, the squad walked through the acrid darkness, one dispelled only by the light of their improvised torches. They didn’t speak, remaining very alert the entire time. They were ready for any obstacles and foes that came their way. But none did.
Twenty hours later, Tom disappeared around another bend and suddenly shouted:
“The exit! Come take a look! It’s incredible!”
Chapter 668
H adjar and Einen, holding their weapons, slid around the bend. As they did so, a cold wind blew across their faces, bringing with it sharp needles of ice. A low hum hit their ears, created by a sinkhole at the end of the gorge. A small stairway wound along the sheer rock wall, having been cut into it. It didn’t lead up, but to the side, toward a hill, where, despite all the snow, stood a flowering tree. Its green leaves were covered in white flakes, and whitish clouds curled above it. At the foot of the hill was a river. It wasn’t frozen over, either. Upon closer inspection, Hadjar saw that it wasn’t water flowing in that river, but some kind of metal which emanated a pressure that took his breath away for a couple of seconds.
“That’s impossible.” Sounded behind him.
Dora and Anise had also climbed out of the gorge. Now the five of them were standing on a small stone parapet, and the icy void stretched out beneath them. There was nothing on the other side of the river, apart from more snow.
“Well, it is rather unusual,” Hadjar agreed, but after seeing the expressions on the nobles’ faces, he ventured a guess: “This is an unusual tree, isn’t it?”
“It’s Arva’Lon!” Tom was overjoyed. “We’re here! We’ve reached Greven’Dor!”
Einen and Hadjar glanced at each other. They didn’t like this. They still didn’t know everything that the aristocrats knew.
“Isn’t Greven’Dor a huge abode and training ground that the warriors of the Last War era used?”
“It is.” Tom said. He was the first to climb the stairway, despite his injury. Sticking to the rock wall, he crawled toward the hill. “But it’s hidden by a spell. Otherwise, it would’ve been found and looted long ago, barbarian.”
Hadjar didn’t argue with him. He suspected that if the key and map hadn’t been found in the Wastelands, awakening all sorts of creatures that had fallen asleep here during the Last War, this entrance would’ve never appeared. It was unlikely that this gorge, which had previously been hidden by an impenetrable wall of ice, had simply popped up by itself. Most likely, its presence was connected to the awakening of the Ice Giant.
Hadjar followed Tom up the wall. In order to grab the irregular handholds, he had to dispel the Black Blade and use both hands. Pressing his body against the rock, he carefully moved his feet up step by step. Even though they’d been carved several eons ago, the steps were still intact. Some of them were covered with a layer of ice, but that was brushed away by Tom with a wave of his hand.
Something hummed below them.
“Wind!” Hadjar shouted.
An updraft burst out of the gorge. Everyone managed to stop and cling as tightly as possible to the rock. If they hadn’t done so, they would’ve fallen off.
It took them only about an hour to climb up the stairway, and everyone was soon standing next to the tree. It didn’t radiate an aura or any energy at all, as if it were an ordinary, simple tree.
However, magic runes and ancient hieroglyphs had been carved into it. Moreover, the tree had its own name, had been mentioned in legen
ds, and had stood here before the Darnassus Empire had even formed.
“Can you take a look at it, Dora?” Anise didn’t draw her sword. She’d sheathed it at the beginning of their ascent, and she left it in its scabbard for now.
“Of course,” the elf girl smiled. It was one of the rare few smiles that the squad members had recently had reason to show.
The elf, drawing her fur coat more closely around her, went over to the tree. She squatted down in front of it and brushed away the flakes of snow, then ran her fingers over the runes:
Among beautiful peaks,
Where Arva’Lon gleams,
Poor Greven’Dor sleeps,
Watching Ana’Bre’s dreams.
“That sounds beautiful,” Einen said thoughtfully.
“Is that all it says?” Tom’s voice trembled.
“That’s all I can read,” Dora got up and brushed herself off. “I don’t know the other symbols.”
Tom swore bitterly.
“Your father assured our clan that you spoke the language of the Hundred Kingdoms!”
“Silence, junior heir of the Predatory Blades clan!” Dora suddenly wielded the full authority of who she was — the future Head of the elven clan. “My father never lies.”
Tom and Dora stared at each other angrily, then suddenly backed down:
“The Predatory Blades clan apologizes to House Marnil. We didn’t mean to offend you or question the veracity of your Head’s words.”
“Apology accepted.” Dora crossed her arms over her chest and moved away. “As for the symbols, they might be a cipher or a dialect I’m not familiar with.”
“An unknown dialect? A cipher?” Tom walked up to the tree, touched it, and tried to use his energy on it, but failed. “How long will it take to decipher it?”
“I have no idea,” she shrugged. “Anything from a week to a year.”
“We don’t have a year.”
While the nobles were arguing, Einen cleared the snow off one of the stones and sat down to meditate. The islander hated wasting time.
“We can camp here for a week,” Anise suggested. “If Dora doesn’t crack the code by then, we’ll go back out into the Wastelands and hopefully get there before cultivators from all over the country come to search for the map and key.”
“What if there’s another snowstorm?”
“Then we can camp in the gorge and-”
The nobles continued arguing. Einen plunged into deep meditation, but Hadjar, guided by some kind of instinct, came closer to the tree. He had no idea what the runes and symbols carved into the tree meant, but the Black General whispered their meaning to him:
If you’re brave and bold,
If you’re fearless and strong,
Grab the flower and hold,
The magic will lead you along.
Too busy arguing, the others didn’t hear Hadjar’s words. Only Einen, emerging from his meditation, opened his right eye. He grabbed his spear-staff.
“Crazy barbarian,” he whispered, and prepared for the worst.
After repeating the little poem several times in his head, Hadjar suddenly noticed a white flower blooming on the tree. Without thinking things through, he plucked it, placed it in his palm, and then blew on it. The white petals rose from his palm and mingled with the snow. The world shuddered.
Chapter 669
A small stream of snow suddenly turned into an avalanche that covered the rumbling mountains with a wide shroud. The earth shook. Gradually, the outlines of a huge complex of stone buildings emerged from the snowstorm below them. There was a distinct sense of mystical beauty to all of it. It had numerous stained-glass windows and flat roofs connected by many staircases and stone bridges. Those same bridges led up into the hills, where they joined to become a wide road that led into a kind of temple. The domes of the temple were unlike any Hadjar had ever seen: all of them were elongated, shaped like a spindle or an awl, and the temple was covered in them. Behind the many buildings and the temple they led up to, atop the highest of the hills, stood an inconspicuous, hemispherical building. Perhaps it was a laboratory or an observatory.
“What did you do, barbarian?”
Hadjar felt cold steel against his skin.
He turned around, raising his hands. Tom was holding his weapon against Hadjar’s collarbone. Anise and Dora had captured Einen. Dora was holding his spear-staff, and Anise was pressing her blade against the islander’s neck.
“We were sent somewhere else, weren’t we?” Hadjar asked Einen, ignoring the aristocrats.
The islander shrugged casually.
“I’m talking to you!” Tom pressed down on the hilt of his sword and scarlet rivulets ran along its edge.
“What exactly do you want to hear, Tom?”
“We all want an explanation.” Anise’s tone made it clear she was angry.
“How could you read those lines?” Dora looked worried.
“And what’s wrong with me doing that?”
“Don’t you get it? That language was erased from all the records and libraries of all the Empires. Even my father only has a part of the alphabet and just a few scraps of old chronicles.”
“A part? A few scraps?” Tom turned away from Hadjar and stared at Dora, furious. “The Head of your House assured me and Anise that you knew the language of the Hundred Kingdoms perfectly!”
Dora’s eyes flashed. The tips of her ears quivered with outrage.
“This is the second time that you have accused my father of lying, junior heir of the Predatory Blades clan. I-”
“Stop it!”
Anise’s shout was filled with so much raw power and potent mysteries of the Sword that the stones around her were suddenly cut, as if invisible blades had slashed them.
There was a moment of silence.
“But, sister-”
“Our uncle deceived us!” Anise interrupted her brother, shouting at him. “He doesn’t care if we die or win here. The former is most likely the option that bastard would prefer.”
“Anise! You’re talking about the Head of our clan! Watch your tone!”
“I can speak-”
“Ahem.” Hadjar cleared his throat loudly. “We don’t want to watch your family drama.”
Hadjar’s words calmed the siblings down. Tom turned to him again. Of the five of them, it was the islander who looked the most calm.
“Barbarian!” Tom hissed. “Answer me! How did you learn this language?”
"Cut my hand."
“What?”
“I said… Cut my hand. I’ll take an oath. If we’re going to Greven’Dor together, we have to trust each other for a while. Otherwise, we should turn back.”
“Why?”
“I think a lot of dangerous creatures have awoken in there. Moreover, if the line about Ana’Bre’s dreams tells you nothing… Then your clan has wasted so much money-”
Hadjar couldn’t finish his taunt. Tom had pressed his sword down so hard that one more tiny bit of effort would’ve sliced Hadjar’s carotid artery open.
“Hadjar is right, Tom.” Anise kept an eye on Einen. “Let him take an oath.”
Tom thought about it for a moment. He was clearly tempted to take Hadjar’s life. However, the voice of reason prevailed over his momentary desires. Reluctantly, he took out a carving dagger and ran it across Hadjar’s palm.
He did so with deliberate cruelty, almost cutting a tendon, which would’ve incapacitated Hadjar for a little while.
“I swear that I don’t know this language, and this is the first time I’ve seen these kinds of runes. I simply heard the poem during my travels. If I’m lying, then may the World River be my judge.”
His blood flashed with a golden glow and the wound instantly healed up without any scarring. Judging by Tom’s grimace, he’d been hoping that Hadjar would disappear in a flash of golden fire. However, it hadn’t happened.
“So, you claim it was pure luck?”
“It was a coincidence. I can offer another oath,
if it makes you feel better.”
There was silence once again. The wind had died down and the rumbling and shaking had stopped.
“Lower your weapon, Tom,” Anise finally sighed.
She put her own sword away and even offered her hand to Einen. The latter replied with a silent refusal. Moving away, he stretched out his hand toward his spear-staff. Dora smiled apologetically at him and whispered:
“I’m sorry.”
Einen remained silent.
Anise walked over to the edge of the cliff and examined the magnificent structure.
“We’ve found Greven’Dor, but how do we get there?”
“Does your map offer any clues?”
“It doesn’t say anything about this.”
Tom stood next to his sister and looked down.
“We could go down and cross the river,” he suggested.
“That’s a bad idea,” Dora said at once. “Even a Nameless couldn’t cross that river.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s not water, but molten metal. Celestial Metal.”
Upon hearing Dora’s words, Hadjar flinched. In order to use the ‘Path Through the Clouds’ Technique, he needed only an ounce of this rare substance...
“It has properties that still haven’t been studied in the Empire. But one of them is a known fact — its fumes are deadly even for a Nameless, and their bodies are as tough as an Imperial level artifact.”
Is that even possible?
“Then we’ll have to think of something else.”
The nobles began to discuss various ways to get to Greven’Dor. Hadjar was still shocked at the sheer amount of Celestial Metal. Only Einen had remained calm. He approached Arva’Lon. Picking up some snow off its roots, he hurled it into the chasm. Part of it landed in the river, but another part scattered through the air and froze.
“There’s a bridge here.” The islander said softly.
The nobles looked at Einen. Checking the path in front of him with his spear-staff, he was actually walking along the bridge, slowly finding the invisible path that stretched out over the endless abyss.
Dragon Heart: Land of The Enemy. LitRPG Wuxia Series: Book 8 Page 14