The sky lightened in the North when four misfits set out from their camp. The tracks were hard to follow at first but became far more visible as they went on. Janette hypothesized that the abductors must have hastily carried the family off and then when they were far enough from the farmlands they must have taken the time to bind their victims and then dragged them the rest of the way. From what Raven was able to tell it looked like four bodies had been dragged through there, with around three sets of misshapen footprints barely visible here and there.
They were on the right track.
Their journey through the wilderness was swift but quiet. Only when they found a safe spot to take a rest did they dare to converse. Otherwise they just followed Raven in silence. Occasionally they would come by wildlife like deer or imrals but these creatures merely observed them from a distance and then ran off.
Raven, trying to use her valkyrie abilities sparingly so as not to completely fill her nilshards prematurely, had to sometimes rely on Kurai’s sharper natural senses to pick up the trail.
They followed the tracks through rolling green hills that seemed barren of any trees or bushes. High up above in the clouds, floating among fractured islands they observed a greenish wandering ocean that had various sea life dart in and out of it. One time they saw an ironback whale breach the barrier of the ocean before disappearing into its murky depths once more. Although a majestic sight they had a job to do so they only allowed themselves a moment to take in the sight before continuing on their journey.
Every now and then they would spot the carcass of an old vehicle or the bones of an old structure. For the most part they steered clear of these for fear of running into carnivorous wildlife or even bandits. They did however follow the tracks through what looked like an old depot of some kind. It couldn’t have been more than 40 years old but it clearly hadn’t been used for decades and had mostly crumbled in on itself.
“They must have camped here one night.” said Raven, looking at barely visible tracks on the debris covered concrete floor and the unrecognizable animal carcass in one of the corners.
“Guess blood magic monstrosities still need to eat.” said Kurai while looking at the bloody mess they had left behind.
“Can you tell how old these tracks are?” asked Arcaea.
“Hard to tell. I’d guess 2 days old. Which makes sense.”
“Are we stopping here or moving on?” asked Janette, out of breath. “Cause I’m so torking tired.”
“I agree. I’m not built for relentless tracking like this.” added Kurai.
Raven and Arcaea looked at the two of them with little to no pity in their eyes.
“Innocent lives are at stake here. If we…” Arcaea started before being cut off by Kurai.
“Okay, okay, fine. Can we at least take a two minute break?”
“Two minutes should be fine.” said Raven.
While the three of them sat down to catch their breath Raven walked around, scoping the interior of the depot.
“We need to teach Raven how to chill.” said Kurai.
“She’s always been this way, as long as I’ve known her.” said Janette.
“To be fair you’ve only known her five days longer than the two of us.” Arcaea commented snarkily.
“What can I say? I gleaned a lot from her personality during those five days.”
The three of them laughed and then silence fell upon then as fatigue set in.
“Girls?” they then heard Raven call out from somewhere in a different room. “Come check this out.”
The girls looked at each other with worry in their eyes. What now, they all collectively thought.
They walked into a long dark hallway where Raven stood looking into one of the adjacent rooms. As they joined her they looked in and saw what she had called them over to see.
Lying in a pile in the far corner of the room were three heavily decomposed bodies. Their clothes and armor had almost completely rotted or rusted off. But what was curious about these bodies was the bright red fungal growth that had sprouted all over them. The fungus had grown up into these spiraling helix-like shapes, reaching for the ceiling.
“What in the void is that?” asked Kurai.
“I’ve read reports about this.” said Janette. “They call them crimson sprouts.”
“And they grow out of corpses along the Frontier?” asked Kurai.
“No.” said Arcaea. “They only infect the living and slowly spread throughout their bodies until they die.”
The silence that followed was palpable.
“Be careful of what you touch out here.” said Raven as she began leading them back. “Nature is just as deadly as the beasts and the bandits.”
Janette and Arcaea walked back with her but Kurai stood there for a moment, looking at the corpses. She felt a pang of loss and worry course through her heart as the unbidden image of a face sprung to her mind. She closed her eyes and pushed the visage away. She didn’t need that right now. She was on the job and needed to stay focused.
But she couldn’t help but take one more look at the bodies before joining the others.
They left through a collapsed opening on the other side of the depot and followed the tracks until they reached a densely forested area.
“This might slow us down a little.” said Raven. She knew it would be much harder to spot enemies or an ambush in the woods. “Everyone stay close and keep your eyes peeled.”
They slowed their pace significantly but pressed on. The tree trunks were all almost black in color but the leaves that formed the natural roof above them were almost exclusively yellow. The ground was near completely covered with fallen leaves so the ceiling and floor were the same color, connected by jagged pillars of black.
Luckily this made it that much easier to see the tracks since where the family had been dragged, leaving a thick red path was left in their wake. Janette had feared that the path was now red because they had been bleeding out when they came through here but quickly realized that it was only because the dirt beneath them was red in color.
But even though the tracks were easy to follow Raven refused to speed up. She kept stopping the group and looking around them, frequently amplifying her perception, slowly filling up her nilshards one by one.
“I appreciate finally moving slowly.” whispered Kurai. “But do you think we can speed up a little bit? This is excruciatingly slow.”
Raven simply stopped and put up her index finger over her lips. Kurai rolled her eyes and nodded.
They had been crawling through the woods for what seemed like forever when Raven stopped all of a sudden.
“What?” whispered Arcaea.
Raven stood there for a few moments, silently looking around before she moved to the side and picked up a sign post from the ground. It had been completely covered by leaves and nobody but her had seen it.
“There is no way you just noticed that.” whispered Kurai.
“I didn’t.” said Raven as she showed them the sign.
It was a black sign with the symbol of a red skull that seemed to have strange growths emerging from different places. They all immediately recognized this as a warning against void corruption.
“I felt it. Up ahead.” Raven whispered, barely audibly. “Looked for the sign because of it.”
Arcaea looked at the tracks leading towards the invisible corruption. “What do we do?”
“We have to go around.” Raven whispered back.
And that’s when they heard it.
It was faint at first but then it seemed to get closer.
Whispers. For one fleeting moment they all wondered if those were their own whispers somehow echoing back at them but that made no sense. The woods were completely silent and no rocks or cliffs to echo anything back at them. No, these whispers belonged to someone else. It was at that point that they also realized that the world around them seemed to have gone terribly silent. No birds or insects, no wind, nothing. Nothing but whispers.
Raven looked back at them and with an expression of the utmost severity motioned for them to stay silent and to follow her. They did.
They snuck their way around the corrupted area, all the while the whispers seemed to move with them. Sometimes they seemed distant and sometimes they seemed frighteningly close. But never were they able to hear what was being said or see who was saying it. They continuously looked all around them. Look for monsters hidden in the trees or bandits trying to sneak up on them. But they never saw anything or anyone. For one maddening moment they heard a twig snap behind them which made all of them stop and prepare for battle. But nothing came for them. Nothing attacked. The whispers continued to move around them but the girls remained unharmed.
They kept on traveling around the corrupted area, which only Raven could sense or see. But eventually they found the tracks again and continued to follow them until they exited out the other side of the woods. As they did the whispers faded away and the world seemed to come back to life around them with birds chirping and insects humming.
“What the tork was that?!” asked Kurai, still too afraid to raise her voice.
“Might have been a void rift somewhere in there or a valkyrie at some point used her powers too much. Either way, the Void has seeped into that area.” explained Raven.
“What were those whispers?” asked Janette, her round eyes big and wide with fear.
“Like I said, the Void is a strange place and unexplainable things happen around rifts to it.” said Raven as she continued to follow the tracks.
“Well, that’s eerie and unsettling.” said Arcaea. “Is there nothing we can do to seal those rifts or clean up the corruption?”
“No. It’ll slowly fade out in the next 300 years or so. Unless there is a rift there. Then it’ll continue to corrupt that area forever.” explained Raven. “I’d be more worried about the family, though.”
“Because they’re in the hands of physical monsters and not some disembodied whispers?” said Kurai with a snarky laugh.
“No. Because they were dragged, unprotected through a corrupted area.” said Raven.
The dawning realization hit the rest of them like a bag of bricks. Even if they managed to save the family they would still probably succumb to void corruption in a few years. Tumors growing in their bodies until they withered away, too weak to even feed themselves.
They all still followed Raven but it was as if something weighed them down now. They had hoped to heroically save the family and return them to their old lives intact. But now it seemed doomed no matter how hard they tried. Only Raven continued unhindered. For she was used to carrying a great weight upon her shoulders.
Their journey continued throughout the day and as the sun began sinking to the far North they began noticing a change in terrain. The rolling green hills soon gave way to a black and barren desert littered with ancient structures and jagged rock formations with the Argal mountains peeking over the horizon.
The four misfits continued on, blindly following their quarry, as they passed into the unnatural landscapes of the Argal Badlands.
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