The night following the Gorgon attack was harrowing and restless.  Banshees shrieked close enough that Leon, Maia, and Valeria were constantly on edge, they occasionally felt the chill of ice wraiths as they passed nearby, and none of them could shake the oppressive feeling that the Gorgon was only waiting for the three of them to fall asleep before she struck.

Fortunately, neither Leon nor Maia strictly needed to sleep every day, and Valeria only needed a token amount, but not getting a full night’s rest still left them all feeling extremely tired and irritable by the time morning finally arrived.

Despite these dangers, though, they made it through the night without being overtly bothered.  They had hidden themselves not too far from where they fought off the Gorgon, in a denser patch of foliage to conceal themselves from view while Leon carved a few enchantments on nearby trees to hide their auras from ice wraiths.  He and Artorias had used such enchantments many times before, but now that he was more experienced in the field, Leon realized that these enchantments were actually deceptively simple.  They were light enchantments with a few amplification runes, enough to make the ice wraiths think their immediate area was bathed in sunlight, and thus making them avoid the area.

Leon never realized when he was younger, but it struck him just how correct Xaphan had been when he described the ice wraiths as being unintelligent and lacking in proper leadership.  If Leon tried to use similar methods to hide from humans or other creatures of comparable intellect, it would probably have the opposite effect, serving only to shine a spotlight on them rather than hiding them from view.

None of them spoke at all during the night, other than a few quick words once they got settled in and concealed in the bushes and flowers, which amounted only to what they ought to do if attacked.  Their options on that front were limited, being run or fight.  Leon settled on run.  Staying around to fight would only lead to their deaths as their battle drew more and more attention from other creatures in the forest.

They only felt comfortable moving again—let alone talking out loud—once the sun started to peek through the few holes in the canopy and slightly brighten the inside of the forest.  By then, the near-constant shrieks of the banshees had abated, the chill of the ice wraiths had receded, and all three had regenerated quite a bit of their depleted magical reserves.  Leon counted them lucky that even in these dark parts of the forest, the ice wraiths and their pet banshees were still much less active during the day than they were at night.

Still, as the three began to rise out of their ‘camp’, they were quiet and on edge.

Silently, Leon motioned for them to get moving again and set a route roughly northeast.  None of them were yet willing to admit defeat even after the harrowing experiences of the previous day.

About the only thing that was said out loud was a warning from Leon to stay alert in case the Gorgon decided to attack them from below.  They would have a second at the most to react if she did, so letting their guard down would only result in them being gravely injured or outright killed.

He and Maia kept their magic senses constantly projected and stayed on the lookout for ice wraiths, banshees, the Gorgon, and any other threat that the forest may present them with and moved much more slowly and cautiously than they did the previous day.

But that didn’t stop Leon and Maia from being able to converse.  Leon felt a little bad about leaving Valeria out of the loop, but he wanted to know everything that he could about their current situation.

[So,] he began, speaking into Maia’s mind, [feeling a bit more willing to talk about what happened yesterday than you were last night?]

[I suppose,] Maia replied with a deliberately nonchalant shrug.

[Did you know that Gorgon?  It seemed to me like you did…]

Maia was silent for a long moment, almost long enough for Leon to think that she wasn’t going to answer.

[… I… don’t know her personally,] she finally said.  [I guessed that she was, in human terms, my aunt.  My mother’s youngest sister never found a mate for whatever reason.  She left Saron before I was born; coming here, I suppose.  I don’t know that much about her.]

[But you’re sure that was her?]

[She said as much when we spoke,] Maia admitted, her tone sharp and spiteful as she remembered their initial fight against the monster.  [I think she spoke more to me than you might realize.  She was constantly mocking me during that fight.  Telling me… all sorts of things.]

[Like what?]  Leon’s tone was curious and concerned.  He didn’t mind if she and the Gorgon had shared river nymph secrets that he wasn’t meant to know, but from the way Maia was acting, he doubted that was the case.  More than that, he was worried about her.  She wasn’t letting on too much, but he could sense the pain and anger she was feeling clearly enough through their connection.

[Things I would rather not repeat,] Maia replied.  Leon was disappointed to hear that, but based on the steel in Maia’s tone, he didn’t press for more answers.

After a moment of silence, he said, [She said she wanted to eat me.  I can’t deny that that freaked me out a little bit, but on a more… intellectual note, I thought they ate stone.]

[They do,] Maia replied, her face contorting in momentary anger and disgust at the Gorgon.  [They don’t lose the ability to eat meat, but eating stone is necessary for survival.  The former is optional, the latter is not.]

[I see…] Leon murmured.  He could sense that Maia did not want to talk about the Gorgon right now, so he reluctantly let the matter drop, for the time being.  They would have to revisit the issue, but for now, he had no problems giving Maia her needed space to think.  He reached over and squeezed her hand, conveying as much as he could with that one gesture.  From the way she glanced at him and lightly smiled, he got the impression that the sentiment was received.

With a sigh, Leon turned his attention back to pathfinding and keeping an eye out for threats.  And there were quite a few; he noticed a few ice wraiths slaughtering a pack of relatively high-tier wind wolves; he saw a tree that certainly held a tree sprite; he saw a large spotted cat, bigger even than the Snow Lion he’d killed to awaken his power; perhaps most wondrously, he saw a creature that he’d never seen before, a quadrupedal thing about two and a half or three times the size of a full-grown bull.  It had taut black hide stretched over intimidatingly large, rippling muscles; a ridge of dark brown fur running along its massive, curved spine; four beady eyes shining like obsidian in its long, angular skull; a pair of vicious ebony spear-like tusks jutting out of its toothy maw; and hammer-like hooves that were displaying that similarity as the creature busied itself mashing an ice wraith into snow like it was nothing, a pair of crushed banshee corpses not too far away from it.

‘Better to avoid that one, I think…’ Leon thought with a sense of terrible danger.  It radiated an aura of the seventh-tier, but from the ease it seemed to have taken care of the wraith and its attendant banshees, Leon wanted absolutely nothing to do with it.

However, given that the other dangerous creatures that he was able to see were giving it a wide berth, too, Leon decided to try and find some kind of middle ground.  He stayed away from the tusked-creature, but not so far that the other monsters might be willing to approach them if they were viewed as easy prey.

And so, moving with much greater caution than they had the day before, Leon’s small party slowly made their way through the dark forest.  They were all of them too anxious to properly appreciate the forest’s natural beauty, their attention almost exclusively settled on keeping an eye out for more wraiths and the Gorgon, with their destination coming in second.

After a while of peace, though, Leon was unable to stop himself from relaxing and trying to see further ahead of them.  There were still at least a dozen miles between them and the northeastern corner of the Vale where the Cradle map was leading him, and over that much land, he struggled a bit to focus on details that didn’t have a magical aura.  But he started to devote more of his attention to getting an idea of what lay ahead of them as they proceeded.  He wanted to see if he could find this pillar they were seeking before they just ran across it.

So far, he hadn’t had much luck—until, that is, around noon, when he realized that there was some kind of artificial structure closer to them than where he’d been focusing.  The northeastern corner of the Vale bent inward a bit and seemed to be little more than rock and ice.  However, there was a cylindrical pillar about three stories tall and maybe five feet in diameter about two miles away from them.

Leon almost stopped walking out of surprise.  The pillar seemed to almost blend into the background, for it barely had any aura as far as he could initially tell.  However, after a few seconds of staring directly at it with his magic senses, Leon finally saw what the problem was: the pillar did have an aura, but that aura blended so well with the background magic in the Vale that the pillar seemed practically invisible.

But see it Leon did, and he whispered to the other two, “I think I found the pillar we’re looking for…”

He quickly gave Maia directions so that she could find it with her own magic senses, but Valeria hadn’t the luxury of doing so with hers.

“Can you… see any evidence that it’s been visited recently?” she hesitantly asked.

Leon took a closer look at the pillar’s immediate surroundings.  The forest had swallowed it completely, leaving the structure practically trapped in the branches of a pair of nearby trees.  The bottom quarter of it was covered in moss and vines, and the base was completely hidden by the glowing multi-colored foliage of the forest.  As far as he could tell from so far away, the pillar hadn’t seen a human visitor in a long time.

“I… It’s too hard to tell from here…” Leon answered, not wanting to crush Valeria’s hopes or to confirm her fears quite so soon, but already, his heart was starting to madly beat in his chest on this off-chance that they were going to run into Justin Isynos.

Keeping his magic senses projecting and staying on the lookout for Justin or anyone else, Leon led the three toward the pillar.  About an hour of tense marching through the dense, dark forest later, they finally came within visual range of the pillar.

What little that Leon could see of it was made of stone, but most of it was hidden by leaves.  More intriguing to him, though, was the fact that he could see millions of tiny runes carved into its surface that had escaped his magic senses.  Whatever enchantment was carved upon it was terrifically complex.

Leon was about to lead the other two over toward the pillar to examine it closer and to rest a bit when Valeria suddenly groaned and almost keeled over.

“Hey!” Leon loudly said as he moved toward her instead.  “You all right?!”

“Yeah… yeah…” Valeria replied, sounding breathless and beyond tired.

[It’s this pillar…] Maia said into their minds and drawing Leon’s attention as Valeria leaned against a nearby tree, sweat starting to form on her brow.  When Leon’s eyes fell upon his river nymph lover, he saw that while she wasn’t in nearly so bad a condition as Valeria, she was still clearly tired and struggling a bit—her arms were hanging limply at her sides, her bronze skin seemed stretched over her bones as if she were somehow dehydrated, and her eyes were partially lidded.

Leon quickly understood what the problem was.  The two had mentioned that they were feeling magically suppressed several times, but they had pressed on with him anyway.  However, it seemed that their close proximity to the pillar had suddenly intensified that suppression to the point of making them almost physically sick.

“I’m going to get closer, I might be able to find a way to turn whatever enchantment is carved upon it off,” Leon said.  “Fall back a few hundred feet, but don’t let your guard down.”

Maia could only nod while Valeria seemed about ready to collapse.  Both ladies turned around and started to move back into the forest.  Leon then ran toward the pillar, hoping that he could find the problem and fix it before it got worse and before anything that might be watching them decided to take advantage of his party’s separation.

Apart from the trees immediately next to the pillar that were covering it in leaves, the forest seemed to thin out a bit around the pillar, letting in plenty of natural light and creating quite the picturesque scene.  Leon couldn’t help but appreciate it a bit as he approached the base of the pillar.

However, as his eyes swept over the area, he froze as something else came into view, then instinctively dropped to a crouch to hide in a patch of tall grass.

He saw a small tent tucked behind one of the trees and so well-hidden amongst the bushes and other flora that it had been practically impossible to see until Leon had come this close.

[Head’s up,] Leon said to Maia, [don’t say anything to Valeria, yet, I don’t want her running this close to the pillar, but I’ve found a tent here.  I’m going to investigate.]

[Be careful,] Maia replied, her tone deadly serious.  [I’ll be there if you need me.]

[Thanks,] Leon replied as the emerald on his invisibility ring flashed green as his magic coursed through it, and the light around his body bent and distorted.  Once he was fully invisible, he drew his sword and began to sneak closer to the tent.

His guard was raised as high as it could be, and he withdrew his magic senses so as to not give his position away.  However, as he did so, he realized that both he and Maia had already saturated the area in their magic senses for hours, so if whoever this tent belonged to was still there, they’d already know that they had company.

And yet, as Leon carefully snuck closer using every trick he knew to approach safely and quietly, nothing about the tent changed.  He heard no movement around it, he couldn’t see anything inside moving about other than the occasional flap of fabric with the wind, and he sensed no strange magical auras in the area that might’ve given away the presence of someone else.

Still, Leon didn’t let any of that goad him into relaxing.  He kept moving forward with the expectation that at any moment, Justin Isynos and a hundred of his allies could jump out from behind the pillar and ambush him, even though he knew such a thing was impossible in every practical sense.

The closer he came, the more the set-up seemed both suspicious and completely harmless.  The tent wasn’t that large, maybe barely large enough for two people to use comfortably.  It didn’t seem enchanted, or at least, there wasn’t any magic flowing through it, so Leon had a hard time believing that someone as strong as Justin Isynos would be using it.  And, the closer he came, the more obvious it was that there wasn’t anyone around.

And then it hit him about fifty feet or so away from the tent.  The stench of decay, of long rotting flesh in a damp, verdant place.

Leon’s nose wrinkled in displeasure, but after another thirty feet or so, he finally saw why the tent seemed to have no enchantments: the other side had been torn asunder as if some hungry beast had ripped it apart.  The level of damage sustained would’ve completely destroyed any enchantment that the tent may have had.

The hole in the tent also gave Leon a nauseating look at what was inside.  He saw what was left of a human corpse, its limbs scattered around the inside, the flesh of its face having been torn away, leaving nothing but a bare, blood-stained skull sitting amid pulpy, fly-infested flesh.

From what little remained, Leon guessed that this was the corpse of a male, his body had been here for at least a month, perhaps as many as three or four, and that whatever had killed it had not eaten him.  There was just too much meat left behind for him to have been made a meal.

‘Could this be Justin?’ Leon wondered.

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