Broken Lands

It took a while to actually leave the Kestii ruins. Peaches was large, but he didn’t walk quickly; they were easily able to keep up with him on foot.

Sophia knew this because they were walking next to the wagon, not riding in it. Only Arryn was on the wagon, and he was on a sort of folded-out platform that let him see their surroundings from a higher vantage point. Oddly enough, he didn’t have reins; he directed Peaches with his voice. That probably shouldn’t have been as surprising as it was; she’d seen Arryn talk to Peaches before.

She looked up at Arryn, who seemed to be absently watching the ruins as they passed through them. He was alert but didn’t seem to actually anticipate trouble. “How smart is he?”

Arryn followed Sophia’s glance towards the giant sloth. “Peaches? It’s hard to say, since he can’t talk. I know he’s smart enough to understand what I’m telling him and to know that staying with me gets him treats. Beyond that, As far as I know, he’s unique. There are probably more monsters like him somewhere, but if so no one’s found them.”

Sophia blinked. Peaches didn’t have the touch of dungeon mana residue that meant “monster” to Sophia. Maybe that wasn’t how they measured it here? “He’s a monster? He doesn’t feel like one. I’d figured he was an oversized animal.”

Arryn chuckled. “Well, he is, but the only difference between that and a monster is if it’s trying to take your head off and eat the rest of you. Peaches gets a lot more by not doing that, and he knows it.”

Peaches ignored both of them and continued walking on all four limbs slowly down the broken road. He didn’t seem to notice the weight of the wagon. Sophia wasn’t certain if it was his presence or if they were simply lucky, but there were no monsters as they made their way down the streets of the ruins.

The particular road they followed dipped down into a valley that was strangely still filled with fog. It was late enough in the day that it wasn’t just a morning fog; instead, it seemed more like a stationary low cloud. Sophia could feel the increased moisture on her skin within minutes. Giant stone blocks loomed out of the fog several times, fallen from whatever buildings they were once part of, but each time they’d clearly either fallen far enough away to not be a problem for the wagon or they’d been shoved off the road.

“Places like this are better in games than in reality,” Dav commented. “I don’t know what happened here, but it’s sad to see places that clearly once held a lot of people so empty. It’s the opposite of the cities I’m used to.”

Dav hadn’t talked much about his home. Was he used to absolutely pristine cities? Sophia was about to ask him what he meant by that when Arryn answered Dav’s implied question. “The legend of the Broken Lord is a story of honor and sacrifice, triumph and loss. Though his name is never spoken, all know he was not the King but merely a Prince, and not the eldest, on the day the monsters first came to Kestii…”

It was a long story, and clearly one that was told the same way every time, like an old bard’s tale. Arryn paused several times over the hours the recitation took, either to drink some water or to try to remember what came next. Each time, Revina perked up and supplied a few sentences. She clearly knew the tale; the fact that she used the same sort of language Arryn did without rephrasing it told Sophia that it was frequently told, even though she and Dav hadn’t heard it while they were in Kestii.

The bones of the story were easy enough to decipher. Kestii once held the Monsters’ Lair, the place where all monsters came from, ruled by Typhos, the Father of Monsters. It was either the only or one of the few cities with a Nexus of its own; the story wasn’t clear about why the Broken Lord had to visit Kestii’s Nexus repeatedly, but he seemed to do so after each major victory.

The Broken Lord went through years, probably decades, of adventures as he grew powerful enough to challenge the Father of Monsters. When the Broken Lord finally defeated him, it was inside the Monsters’ Lair and he destroyed the Lair’s Nexus. It exploded and scattered the “seeds that monsters use to create places of their own” across the landscape, far beyond the bounds of Kestii. At the same time, it destroyed Kestii’s own Nexus and the Broken Lord disappeared, becoming a Patron instead of roaming the landscape killing monsters or ascending to the “now vacant throne of the empire that once ruled from fallen, monster-ridden Kestii.”

At least that explained why the center of the city was so much more dangerous than the outskirts; it probably held whatever managed to escape the destroyed Monsters’ Lair. Sophia wondered how many of the monsters were the females the Father of Monsters must have needed to create all of the monsters. Of course, that assumed that “Father” was literal.

It also explained what happened to Kestii. “I guess everyone ran when monsters came out of the destroyed Lair?”

“Most died,” Arryn corrected Sophia. “No one expected what happened. The people who were far enough away from the Monsters’ Lair and ran immediately survived; no one else did. That’s one of the reasons Fallen Kestii is where it is; it’s not the first group to try to reclaim the city. As long as they stay in the outskirts, it’s safe enough to live. I don’t think they’ll succeed; they’re going to fall to the same thing that killed the previous attempts.”

“What’s that?” The question came from Revina. “Aymini didn’t say anyone tried before.”

“You and people like you.” Arryn didn’t pull his punch. “If no one with a Vocation stays in Fallen Kestii, there will be only hunters to defend the place when the wards fall from the lack of an enchanter. At the same time, there’s no real way for people with low Level Vocations to grow in Fallen Kestii; there simply aren’t enough weak enough Challenges and what few are there are all Nests. Leaving is definitely the better choice; the only hope Fallen Kestii has is if the children grow enough when they’re gone to be able to fight in the outer ring. If that happens, Fallen Kestii could become successful.”

“How long ago did Kestii fall?” Dav waved at the ruins that surrounded them. “In a place as fertile as this seems to be, I’d expect them to be mostly overgrown if it was generations ago, but it isn’t.”

Arryn shrugged. “Kestii fell before any of the modern cities in the Broken Lands were established. It’s a legend and a warning.”

A gasp from Revina drew Sophia’s attention to the girl. She’d stopped walking and stared directly ahead, at at the road in front of them. Sophia’s hand moved to her knife as she looked forward, but there was no threat. Instead, the fog had lifted enough to reveal the land ahead of them. The road led forward, through a gateway that seemed to have crumbled on either side of the two towers that supported the opening over the road. Beyond that, the road continued down through a foggy valley and probably up towards a mountain in the distance.

“This is the Kestii East Gate. Kestii doesn’t have a full wall, but all of the entrances have an impressive gate like this. I guess they were only concerned about traffic that came in along the roads?” Arryn shrugged. “It is impressive, I’ll give them that, and it would probably have kept guards dry in bad weather; there are rooms built into the gate. You’ll see them when we get closer.”

“It was built before the Monsters’ Lair appeared, wasn’t it?” Sophia spoke louder than she meant to; she hadn’t really meant to be overheard. Since she’d started off that loud, she might as well finish the thought. “It was probably built as a mark of status and to show where the dividing point is. If there were guards there, they were probably to turn people away, not to stop monsters. I haven’t seen anything quite like this at home, but I have seen smaller versions.”

Quite a few universities had large entrance gateways. It had always seemed a little silly to Sophia, but if that was how they wanted to spend their donors’ money, it wasn’t her business. Businesses did it too, though many also had actual access control for the non-public areas. It wouldn’t stop anyone who was determined; it wouldn’t even usually stop anyone who could fly, at least not until you got to the building itself. Sophia was pretty sure a lot of it was for the same reason as door locks on houses: to reduce temptation. You had to do more if you wanted to stop people who were determined.

“I don’t know about before the Monsters’ Lair appeared, but certainly it was before the monsters scattered.” Arryn shrugged. “It’s impressive, but I only know the name from an old map in the Vocational Registry’s archives. Not that it’s much of a name.”

“What else is in the archives?” Revina had stayed mostly silent as they walked, but now she wanted attention. “Stories of times before the Shattering?”

“Only a few,” Arryn admitted. “It’s been more than a thousand years since the Shattering, after all. Most of it isn’t useful, since they didn’t have magic until the Monsters’ Lair appeared in Kestii. At least, that’s what the books say.”

“You don’t agree?” Dav sounded doubtful.

Sophia had to agree; magic might have become more common but it was unlikely it had never existed. She knew that “more than a thousand years” wasn’t long enough to put her Earth back into its time of magic and legends, but she also knew that magic existed the entire time, even if it was weak and hidden.

“How was this built without magic?” Arryn answered instead. “No one can lift a stone above their head without magical help. Even carving those columns … why, it would take years. All of these buildings are evidence of magic.”

Sophia shook her head. That wasn’t a good argument for magic. “It can be done. We build mostly without magic, and even then we’ve only had widespread magic for about thirty years. Gateways like this are built with knowledge and tools instead.”

“But it takes years without magic,” Arryn objected.

Sophia nodded. “Usually not anymore, but it can, if the building’s big enough.”

Arryn shook his head. It was clear Sophia wasn’t going to change his mind. “Artifacts of other worlds, then. We know those predate the Shattering.”

“Magic goes back millenia, probably longer,” Sophia agreed. “It’s a natural force. That doesn’t mean your ancestors knew how to harness it.”

No one seemed to know what to say to that. The silence lasted through the East Kestii Gate, but it wasn’t long after that when Revina once again asked for a story from the Vocational Registry’s archives. This time, Arryn obliged her with a story about a hero who fought demons. It was not a particularly good story in Sophia’s estimation, but it was good enough to fill the time as they walked.

It took two days of empty countryside before they finally arrived in the foothills of the mountain they’d seen from in the distance. There weren’t even many animals; it was spooky. Sophia kept expecting something to change but it never did.