NOVEL NEXT Chapter 45: Observations
Hera saw. Her perception, honed from her high level archery class, and further enhanced from light magic let her see much further than most of her level. She stood on one foot at the tip of a spear-like pine as she looked over the landscape that had once been the Kingdom of Pherin.
It was a bleak, disturbing reminder of what could have happened to her own homeland. To all the northern kingdoms during the massive Enslaved invasion for that matter. Her keen vision flicked to the stone wall of jagged teeth jutting from the ground like a savage grin.
The northern mountains were a place of high mana density, danger lurked around every stone, even someone considered an ‘elite’ of humanity like herself had to be wary. But it wasn’t the mountains humanity had to be worried about. It was what lived beyond.
Even a few day’s travel from the mountains she diligently scanned the peaks, searching for any movement or glint that may grant her foreknowledge of an imminent threat. There was nothing, other than the boiling clouds that rolled between the jagged peaks there was no movement.
The threat was closer, from her life of living on the edge Hera had found that simple fact to be the most consistently true. Danger was always closer than you imagined.
It had been true when she was little, it had been true while she was training for the crucible. And now, years after she’d gone through hell and come back reforged… She shook her head and refocused.
The Academy Blade shifted her attention to her more immediate surroundings. The remnants of ruined villages and towns littering the landscape for miles in all directions, the lingering smoke trail from the expedition's campsite, a small flat plateau jutting from a nearby cliffside where three figures moved.
Hera had noticed this encounter happen over an hour ago as the sun had first risen and had been intermittently watching its progress. The pair she had intentionally put together fumbled over one another as they traded blows with the expedition's most recent, and most interesting addition.
She found it infinitely amusing that despite being so far removed from home, a strange remnant of her past would find her even out on the ruined frontier. Hera doubted she had ever met the man called Leif Vin. If the spriggan’s story was true, and despite the absurdity she did believe it to be so, then he would have died back during the war.
I would have been how old? Thirteen? Fourteen? She thought idly, months and years had somewhat lost its meaning after her experience in the distorted time of the crucible.
Movement caught her attention from the north. Two large, winged creatures had burst from a tree covered hillside. Hera watched the griffon’s panicked ascent as they flew perpendicular to the northern mountains and disappeared into the west.
The danger is far closer. She thought. They couldn’t stay here. Whatever forces were at play in this region were beyond her ability to contend with. She would need to observe the aftermath of the battle and find evidence of the powers at play.
“A day, then we head south. Maybe sooner, it depends on what I find.” She spoke aloud, her voice drifting on the wind.
“Y-yes ma'am.” Said Darius from a nearby, but notably shorter tree. His voice quivered slightly. He teetered, his balance unsteady. Hera could pierce the skill producing the misty shroud he used for concealment, but for those around his level he would be nearly invisible.
She suspected the less observant members of the expedition hadn’t noticed him at all. That was something she would need to train them on. So much to do. She thought, judging the distance from her current location to where the griffons had taken off.
A bow of light materialised in her palm. Hera drew back the string and an arrow blurred into existence. “Keep watch kid, I’ll be back soon.” Then she loosed the conjured projectile in a streak of white into the distance, the arrow whistling as it flew, a streak of shimmering white trailing the projectile.
A few moments later she mentally triggered a followup skill and vanished, but not before hearing his muttered reply of: “I’m not that much younger.”
===
An hour later she arrived outside Pherin, and in a few moments she had observed the scope of the damage. Hera winced as she beheld the sheer level of destruction. On her way to the ruined city Hera hadn’t discovered any sign of what was causing the local wildlife to panic.
Well, other than a small group of goblins, but those creatures were barely a threat to something as powerful as a griffon. Regardless, they were wandering too close to the expedition camp so she had eliminated them.
Now within the city proper, Hera felt the push coming from the ground beneath her feet. The wards, cracked and shattered from within the Mythhold, burnt the last of their energy as they projected a field intended to scramble the mana that naturally saturated the bodies of powerful beings.
She, as a human barely over level one hundred, was not the intended target of these defences. It reminded her of the less sophisticated protections that many banks and noble estates employed throughout the empire proper.
Hera had always wondered if they genuinely expected the whispered immortals of humanity to rob a bank. The idea seemed ridiculous, but she supposed it also prevented divination and other such skills.
The battle within the former capital of a once powerful northern kingdom had wrought devastating amounts of destruction to the ancient Mythhold. The entrance had collapsed, unsurprising considering the power at play as monsters used the corpse of civilization as a playpen.
In fact, the entire main square of the city's innermost district had sunk into the ground, as if slammed by a great fist from above. The morbid scene felt much like the rest of this part of the world, destroyed and with potential danger hiding behind every corner.
It made her worry, already two of the students under her care had nearly been killed in a newly discovered earthen attuned dungeon. Then, while she was travelling to rescue them, she received word that two more had vanished. And experienced second years at that.
Hera sighed and summoned a shard of mostly see through glass. The object had a thin outlining of metal around the edges that glinted under the sunlight. She focused her power, attuned to light as it was, into the small construct and captured an image. She would need proof, as a blade, her word ought to be enough…
Who am I kidding? Kaan probably won’t believe me even with proof. She grumbled internally. There was a time and place for strict military doctrine, but this expedition wasn’t it. Already they had needed to improvise and deviate from the established plan. She knew that if the former military man knew how much he would have a fit.
Hera moved around the city, leaping from building to building. Where she couldn’t maintain a height advantage over her surroundings she created shimmering platforms of white light on which she stood before bounding off.
The blade was searching for something. A minor inconsistency in the story relayed to her by Sieg, Marcus and their odd new friend.
Teleportation.
Not the act itself. Teleportation circles hadn’t been lost to the annals of time like so many of humanity's other wonders. Rather, it was where they had teleported from. The Mythhold should have prevented teleportation in and out of the structure, similarly to how it would prevent scrying. It was a basic ward, so basic it was even used in her backwater homeland.
She made her way to the mostly destroyed temple. Tall pillars framed the skeleton of the structure's internals. Judging by the tattered remains of several banners and an altar with bird iconography the temple had likely been Soarian.
Mind filled with dark thoughts, Hera quickly found the teleportation circle. Blood stained the marble engravings, the sheer amount gave her pause. Hera withdrew several mana shards from her spatial storage and activated the teleportation enchantment.
After testing the portal's stability she stepped through.
===
Thirty minutes later she re-emerged into the mid morning light of Pherin.
“Fucking hells. This is why I hate fanatics. Why the fuck would you deliberately undermine an ancient structure's defensive integrity? Just to build a back entrance?” Hera yelled at the rubble. “Utter, fucking, imbeciles.”
And what was worse. The undead she was informed about in the debrief had escaped down into the depths of the earth. Fractured cracks mired by hundreds of tiny scratch marks indicated the direction they had fled.
Hera hadn’t gone deeper. She was an archer, much of her strength relied on large open environments. Despite her reputation for being brash, she most certainly wasn’t suicidal.
A shiver ran down her spine. At this very moment they were likely crawling around beneath the northern frontier. If they found a way up to the surface. Or worse, if they were being controlled by something.
This isn’t just a regional crisis. This is a catastrophe waiting to happen. Undead in the north. The empire barely holds them back in the east as is. She fumed internally before firing off an arrow of light into the sky.
===
A crimson speck of light, invisible to all but its own kind hovered above the northern frontier of humanities territories.
The overseer observed. It was his job after all, not that he was getting paid. Data streamed into what constituted his mind, unseen rivers flowing into his consciousness wherever the system’s influence touched living beings.
He couldn’t observe the whole planet, not at once anyway. The overseer had been situated above this specific part of the world for the past fifteen years. He would seed his awareness into regions where major shifts in the power structure of the many warring factions of Earth occurred, or would soon occur according to his predictions.
It wasn’t an exact science you must understand. Do you know how difficult seeing the future is? Anyway, the overseer had been paying keen attention to this specific part of the world. It had only become more interesting after a major error let him slip through the cracks.
That wound in the fabric of the system’s directive had since healed over, nothing but metaphorical scar tissue remaining. It was disappointing, he would have loved to have another chat.
System errors weren’t an altogether uncommon phenomenon. But ones that left a large enough gap only happened on average once or twice a year.
The overseer watched several happenings all at the same time. A mundane trade agreement at the sky docks of Ahle-ho, two children struggling to survive in the streets of Kartinth, an ever growing horde of undeath beneath what had once been the kingdom of Pherin.
Over the millennia he had watched, humanity had lost more and more to forces they were unable to keep in check. To say the overseer had grown callous to the loss of life wouldn’t be incorrect. He had created several mental blocks and backup protocols just to prevent himself from being overwhelmed.
It wouldn’t do for this world to lose the last of his kind.
The overseer felt his awareness wandering. Focusing for an extended period of time was growing harder and harder. He just hoped something would change for the better while he was still around to see it.