[I found a corpse,] Leon reported to Maia.  [Looks like it’s been here for a while.]

Maia didn’t respond with words, but he felt her acknowledgment.

He approached the tent a little bit closer despite the rank stench coming from the rotten man.  As far as Leon could tell, he’d been there, dead, for at least a month, probably more, which again threw off his estimates for Justin’s timetable.  Assuming, of course, that this man was affiliated with Justin, which Leon felt was a safe assumption to make.

The more Leon examined the corpse, though, the less he thought it was Justin himself, in contrast to his initial assumption.  There wasn’t enough lingering magic on the corpse to get an idea of how strong the man was, but judging from his physical proportions alone, he wasn’t Justin.

He couldn’t help but be disappointed.  If Justin had died in the Northern Vales—in Leon’s old home, no less—then Leon could simply chalk it up to arrogance and the universe administering justice on his behalf.  The question of what exactly to do with Justin was still one that weighed on Leon’s mind, for even though Leon had committed to making peace with him for Valeria’s sake, he couldn’t just let the man who ordered his father’s death to walk away from that scot-free.

As he gazed down at this half-rotted corpse, Leon remembered that Valeria had told him that one of Justin’s surviving seventh-tier subordinates was a man with a shorter and stockier build, and that certainly fit what he was looking at.

‘Alexandros, if I recall correctly,’ he thought.

What Leon found a little more confusing, though, was the sheer lack of evidence for a struggle that he could see that would’ve led to the death of a seventh-tier mage.  The tent had certainly been violently sundered, but apart from that and the violence done to the man’s body, the surroundings were serene and seemed intact.  Even if Leon were to go with his outside estimate and take the man as having been dead since shortly after Trajan’s death, there still should’ve been some sign of the kind of battle that would’ve killed him—broken ground, toppled trees, burns and stone rubble, that sort of thing.

Yet, there was nothing.  The ground around the pillar was perfectly serene and intact, as far as Leon could tell.  The trees were fine, the flora seemed undisturbed, and the man was lying in the tent as if he’d fallen asleep there, in rather disturbing contrast to the vicious wounds that covered his corpse.

Leon was tempted to just light the body aflame since the miasmic odor was so terrible, but he decided to just step away for a little while to clear his head and nose.

Turning his attention to the pillar after determining that there were no hidden threats ready to attack him, Leon finally got a good up-close look at the pillar with his own eyes.  It had clearly stood there for ages, perhaps long enough to have been built by the Thunderbird Clan before its fall, but it hardly seemed at all weathered.  The moss and vines that grew upon it and the trees that had enveloped it in their branches clearly spoke to that age, but the runes inscribed upon it and edges of its boxy base seemed to Leon to be far too sharp and defined to have suffered in the elements as he would’ve expected it to.

Additionally, the pillar was perfectly intact, without fault or crack that Leon could see, which he greatly appreciated as he approached to examine the tiny runes carved upon its monolithic surface more closely.

Even in just the few swift minutes he took to look the pillar over, he had to admire the sheer complexity of the enchantment inscribed upon the massive pillar.  The entire thing was covered in only a single enchantment, as far as he could tell, indicating that the aura that the pillar seemed to be emitting that was suppressing Valeria and Maia’s power was its sole function.  However, that complexity made it nearly impossible for Leon to figure out where to even begin to analyze it, let alone finding any controls that he could use to turn the damn thing off.

With a sigh, Leon turned back to the tent.  He felt like he could spend the next few years studying the pillar, but he hadn’t that kind of time.

Holding his breath, Leon began to rummage through the things that he could find in the tent.  There wasn’t much, mostly just some tattered bedding that was starting to rot, but Leon noted that there was a second bedroll in the tent beside the corpse.

‘This guy wasn’t alone…’ Leon thought.  After another few minutes of poking around and examining the tent’s surroundings for clues, he found little else of note, nothing to point him in a direction of where the second person may have gone or what their current status was.  ‘Maybe that other person was Justin…  Well, ‘probably’ might be better to say.  But we’re still months behind him if this corpse is any indication…’

With little else to learn, Leon began to trudge back to Maia and Valeria, feeling dejected and just a little bit embarrassed that he hadn’t been able to find anything more or a way to turn off the pillar.  The thought occurred to him to try and destroy the thing, but he figured that even with his current power, he wouldn’t be able to do much to a structure that had survived in such a state for thousands of years.

When he arrived, he found them looking a little better than they had seemed when approaching the pillar.

“Find anything?” Valeria asked, still looking a little pale but otherwise recovered.  At the very least, she was leaning against a tree but didn’t seem like she was about to collapse if she weren’t.

Leon nodded but decided to start off with something else.  “I couldn’t find a way to shut off that pillar, though, so we might have to live with it.  Has it steadily grown worse or was it more sudden once we got close?”

“A bit of both,” Valeria said as she glanced at Maia, who nodded in agreement.  “It’s gotten slowly worse the further east we’ve gone, but it wasn’t much and gradual enough that it was hard to notice in the moment.  Where we are right now, I’d say I could still fight if I had to.  That spike in intensity once we got within visual range of the pillar was unusual.”

Leon nodded again and leaned against another nearby tree.  “I… found something else,” he hesitantly began, his eyes finding Valeria’s.  He then quickly informed her and Maia of everything he found.

Valeria let him talk, but as soon as he was done, she hurriedly asked, “You didn’t find anything else that might’ve identified him?”

“I did not,” Leon replied.  “The rest of the tent was empty apart from the spare bedroll, and his clothes were too tattered to have any identifying marks.  I couldn’t say who that man was, but I can say with reasonable certainty that he wasn’t Justin.”

Valeria still looked more than a little worried, but she seemed to accept Leon’s judgment.  However, from the way her eyes glanced back in the pillar’s direction, Leon got the feeling that she was a hair’s breadth away from investigating the tent herself despite the pillar’s aura.

[What should we do now?] Maia asked them both.  [Correct me if I’m mistaken, but without anything else to go on, this is where our trail ends.  There’s nothing else to see.]

“Maybe…” Leon murmured as he projected his magic senses back over the region again.  “There certainly wasn’t any sign as to Justin’s whereabouts, or even any concrete evidence that he was here.  But… I can’t help but wonder if this is it.”

“I know what you mean,” Valeria agreed, to Leon’s momentary surprise.  “Can either of you see anything else in this place that might be worth checking out?  Something further east, maybe?”

“Not that I can tell.”

[Same here.]

Valeria raised a hand to her chin in thought.  “My father, after he learned of my interest in enchantments, once told me about some of the defensive wards that people in the Nexus use.  This pillar seems like one of those that he told me about…”

“Right, my father built something similar—though much less powerful—when we lived here after consulting some of my family’s old books,” Leon added, thinking of the obelisk that had been in the middle of his home’s compound.

“I never learned the specifics, and it was something he mentioned in passing,” Valeria continued, “but this pillar strikes me as not something that anyone would just put up for no reason.  What reason demanded that it be constructed?  Why would someone not want people who aren’t connected to the Thunderbird to enter this Vale?”

“I remember telling you about that map I found in the stone giants’ territory,” Leon said, to which Valeria nodded in recollection.  “All we’ve found so far of structures that old is the troll’s bridge and that pillar.  Nothing so far that would warrant inclusion on that map… assuming it points to places where my Clan built… things.”

[From what you’ve told me of these ancient people, they wouldn’t set something like this up just to protect this forest from interlopers,] Maia added.

“I’d agree with that,” Valeria said.  “The preservation of nature has never been a big priority of those in power in the Nexus, from what I’ve been told.  Nature magic makes preservation kind of unnecessary.”

“Then there’s something else here,” Leon said.  “Something hidden.  And if he told you about these things, Valeria, then I have no doubt that your father would realize this, as well.”

“Then he may have gone off to search for this place?” Valeria asked, her tone hopeful.

“I would think he did.  The question for us, then, is where to go.”

As Leon spoke, he remembered that he actually had a physical map of the points that the Cradle pointed to, and with only the slightest bit of hesitation from Valeria’s presence, he retrieved it from his soul realm to show the other two.

“It looks to me like this is pointing to roughly this area of the forest, basically the north-eastern quadrant,” Leon said, pointing to the relevant part of the map as Maia and Valeria took everything in.  “The scale is too zoomed out to get a more accurate picture, though.”

Leon felt Maia project her magic senses again, searching the northeast more thoroughly and with more focus.  However, from her expression, he doubted she managed to find anything.  On a whim, Leon projected his magic senses, too, but between them and the massive veritable ice wall at the base of the Frozen Mountains in the northeast, there was nothing else of note that he could see with such a cursory check.

And then, Leon felt something familiar, something that made him freeze just as he was about to propose they move past the pillar and explore the northeast a little more thoroughly.  He wasn’t sure if what he noticed was accurate, though, so he turned more of his focus to using his magic senses and used them to inspect the icy northeast in almost excruciating detail.

And he felt it again, the faintest wisp of demonic power.

“Shit…” he muttered.

Valeria responded with the question on her and Maia’s mind.  “What is it?”

“All that snow and ice covering the mountains out there… I don’t think it's natural.  I can feel some traces of demonic power coming from it…  Maybe the ice wraiths made it?”

[Ice wraiths alone couldn’t create so much,] Maia said as she inspected the area.

“Depends on how long they’ve been here and how determined they are,” Leon replied.  “However, I think you may be right.  Regardless, there’s demonic power coming from those mounta—”

As Leon was speaking, his magic senses were washing over the mountains and beyond the Vale and coming close to the limits of how far he could push them when they were suddenly scattered and dissipated.

“What is it?” Valeria asked, her tone taking a turn for the anxious.  She’d noticed Leon’s change in expression as he stopped talking.

“… There’s definitely something out there,” Leon said, his voice dripping with both excitement and terror.  “Something worth defending.  Something worth putting up wards that scatter magic senses.”

[How far?] Maia asked.  [Oh, never mind, just found it.  I didn’t manage to see anything else, though.  Just what looked like more mountains.]

“But no one sets up those kinds of wards on a whim,” Leon said.

“If you’re right, does that mean that there will be more ice wraiths around?” Valeria asked.  “From what you’re saying, it sounds like ice wraith central, or will be once the sun falls.”

“That’s… a valid point,” Leon conceded, checking his excitement.  “There’s nothing else up here, though.”

“I’m not saying we shouldn’t go and have ourselves a look,” Valeria said challengingly.  “All I’m saying is that we should probably make sure we don’t let our caution slip.”

“I think we can do that,” Leon said as he glanced at Maia.

[I’m willing to go,] Maia said as she nodded to Leon.  [I’d prefer if we could make this quick, though.  The sooner we leave, the happier I’ll be.]

“Right,” Leon said, understanding that they were all in agreement.

They now had a new destination, and none of them were keen on sticking around so close to the pillar any more.  So, Leon led them on, toward the mountains in the northeast, toward the field and practical wall of ice that covered them, toward the great barrier that was blocking his magic senses.

And with every step, his heart raced faster and faster.  He felt like he was so close to something amazing and something terrible at the same time.

—-

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