In the Shadow of Mountains - a litRPG adventure

Even dead gods can dream. Something ancient lies in the depths of the Iona Chasm, and its dreams leak into the world. Creeping fingers of madness slip their way out of this rent in the earth, and seep soundlessly into the surrounding desert. They infect the earth, holding back the endless tides of the grassy steppes, and surround the chasm in a halo of unreality that warps the very nature of the world in its invisible shadow. Bones rise from the dust on a whim, and horrors walk the bowels of the chasm, searching with the crooked purpose that only a sleeping mind can conjure. Do not venture deep into this place dear reader, for only madness can survive in the land of a dreaming god.

- Extract of ‘the lost mysteries of Tsanderos’ – transcribed by Seneschal Skeratim from the ‘Book of the Bone Tower’, an artefact from the 1st Cleansing

Jorge had explained his philosophy behind attribute training to me later over a meal, the others already being aware. Nathlan had yet to experience it since his attributes had hardly changed since travelling with the team, but Vera had, and he had watched with amusement.

The problem with gaining attributes was that it expanded a person’s potential, their maximum threshold. They wouldn’t accidentally break a table when leaning against it despite their enhanced strength, because they weren’t trying to. It was based on intention and effort, and so if a person wanted to truly understand what their enhanced attributes were capable of, they needed to push themselves.

Traditional training - focused on progressively pushing harder and harder – was all well and good for straight line sprints, endurance runs and calisthenics. A person could even start hefting boulders around, even particularly well-made temporary buildings if they were strong enough, but that didn’t much help with the gradient of their new strength.

Sure, they could gain a feel for how strong they were at their limits, but would they understand how that strength could be leveraged while moving? Did they gain a feel for how much strain it took to control a small moving weight vs a heavy static one? And how the movement vs the weight affected the intensity of the exercise?

Ultimately, the answer to all the above questions was probably ‘yes, if they trained carefully and thought it through’ but those were only the most visible effects of strength and possibly endurance. There were a million ways that attributes influenced the body, and it was nearly impossible to design a training program that would isolate each attribute in all the ways that it needed training.

Jorge’s philosophy was to focus less on isolation and more on synergy. Don’t train specific attributes – instead train specific movements. The exercise wasn’t supposed to move too far from the goal it was being trained for. If a person wanted to train to fight, they should practice fighting. It seemed like an alien concept to me in many ways, but in a world where levelling up increased attributes so dramatically, I supposed it didn’t make sense to grind away with physical training to increase them.

That thought had surprised me and gave perhaps the first decent insight into my life before I came to this world. It implied I had lived without levels or attributes, and that strength or agility must have been trained.

I’d queried Jorge about this, and he’d confirmed that while training could help somebody make the most of their attributes, they could only do so within the limits that their attributes proscribed.

My hypothetical question of ‘who would be stronger out of two farmers with identical attributes but one worked out like a madman and one sat round at home all day’ was met with confusion. Apparently, absolute strength, even in something as simple as lifting objects, still relied on skill. The lazy farmer may have an identical limit to their strength as the other farmer, but they would lack the connection to their body, the awareness of how to move and maximise their potential that the other farmer could bring.

It was ‘ultimately a useless made-up situation’ as Jorge said, since the more driven farmer would be much more likely to level up anyway, enhancing their attributes and so surpassing the lazy one.

The point being that attributes were important, and proscribed an absolute limit above which a person could not reach. However, it was essential to train in a way so that your body would be used to the movements you required of it, and you would understand the new limits of your body in turn.

So, how to push yourself consistently as hard as possible, without falling into the trap of training only isolated movements? Either put yourself in danger or do something fun. Since putting yourself in danger to train kind of defeated the whole point of training as a preparation for danger itself, fun was the way forward.

Jorge had beamed with pride when he revealed his philosophy of ‘fun training’. Children, he explained, spent their time sprinting around, constantly pushing their limits in every dimension of movement. They didn’t just run, or jump, or climb in set patterns, repeating over and over until they gained experience. No, they galivanted around as fast and free as possible, pushing their bodies to their limit without conscious direction.

Their goal was not self-improvement, even though that was undoubtedly the outcome. Their goal was always something more tangible. Catch the ball, chase the person, climb the tree.

Which was why I spent most of the afternoon chasing the short little bugger all around the grassy plains of the Wandering States, flitting past Vera and Nathlan with whoops and cheers, skidding around shrubs and leaping over small streams in the mad pursuit of catching just a hair of the man who never ceased his taunting.

By the time he called it, I had sprinted harder than ever before. I had swerved and ducked, leapt and skidded to a halt. I’d made mad dives after my prey, and pushed my agility, strength, cognition, and perception to their absolute limits, without even mentioning the endurance.

Whenever I was starting to lose enthusiasm, he would slow his place, dodge a hair slower and give me just a bit of hope. He even allowed me to catch him on occasion, and our roles would be reversed for a time.

I was mildly surprised to find myself pushing my limits for a game, but Jorge was just insufferably smug when I gasped the thought out between heaving breaths as we finished.

“Joy is just as potent a force as hatred Lamb, and one that is rarely harnessed.”

I had to admit, I couldn’t argue with the results of his childish training;

A skill has increased in level. Cloven-Hooved – Level 6

A skill has increased in level. Hillfolk – level 6

The days passed in a blur of travelling, childish games, banter, food, beautiful sights and weapons-work. I felt like a sponge, soaking up knowledge and information until it was dripping out of my ears. Come the morning though, I would find sleep to have wrung me out and I’d be once again eager for more.

My skills stayed relatively stable, without much movement other than that first day of joyful training with Jorge, and the lack of any experience other than the occasional small animal I hunted kept my level static too. But my competence was growing by the day. The guidance I was receiving, either actively from Jorge, or passively in the form of Vera’s stories or Nathlan’s lectures, was having a profound effect. I started to feel more grounded in this new world, as I learned a million minor things that I’d never have thought to ask about but was infinitely glad I had been shown nonetheless.

The idyllic peace of our journey received its first chip mid-way through our second week of travel. Jorge raised his head and sniffed the air as we moved, prompting a childish joke from Nathlan that still managed to raise a snort from both myself and Vera. Jorge didn’t respond with his usual levity though, and his lack of reaction was enough to tell us that something was wrong. His next words only confirmed it.

“Death ahead. People. Burnt.”

We picked up our pace, weapons appearing in hands from storage devices. Jorge handed me a spear and shield wordlessly and I hefted them as we ran. Vera raised a questioning eyebrow at Jorge and pointed her sword out wide, but he just shook his head.

“No, we’ll stay together this time. I smell…something. Reminds me of Gardemne.”

Something significant passed between them at that, and I felt just a hint of an aura leaking from Vera before it was withdrawn so fast I thought I might have imagined it.

Within a tenth of a bell, we came across the remains. Smoke was still curling from the thick central planks of a large rickshaw, which was only recognisable as such by the two wheels, broken apart in several pieces and blasted away from the rest of the wooden contraption.

Three corpses were sprawled on the floor, burnt beyond recognition. I felt my stomach churning, my spit thick and sour in my mouth. I swallowed thickly and moved to step closer, but Jorge held his spear out, blocking my way with the haft.

I watched as he crept forwards, eyes skimming the ground as he moved his head from side to side like a curious bird. Nathlan nudged me, pointing behind myself and gesturing to the empty plains around us. He pointed at his eyes, and then back at the plains again and I nodded, rotating to face behind us and scanning the grasslands.

I knew the trick of being on watch now, and let my gaze wander over the view, not stopping to get caught. I moved my head, seeking movement or disruption in the natural balance of colours and shadows that danced through the high grasses. I could feel Nathlan doing the same behind me, and together we covered most of our surroundings. It wasn’t a perfect net, but it wasn’t meant to be. There would be holes in every sentry setup, and the goal was to reduce the likelihood of a successful ambush, not eliminate it entirely

Jorge was still investigating, and Vera seemed to be standing still as a rock, keeping herself tightly controlled, all natural movement suppressed. “We know what this is Jorge.”

It was said through gritted teeth, as if to open her mouth even slightly would lead to her screaming at the heavens. There was no reply for nearly a tenth of a bell as Jorge continued to pace around the scene, eyes never leaving the floor. He spent a few moments examining each of the bodies, and then called over Nathlan for his opinion on the final corpse.

They spoke in hushed tones, and then the shorter man clapped his hands and spoke for the first time.

“Aright, gather round. This was recent, no more than a day. Vera you were right, it’s definitely the same as Gardemne. I don’t understand why they’re still looking but its irrelevant now. They’re here and we’ll deal with them.” She just nodded through gritted teeth, and while I didn’t want to interrupt, I was still lost as to what was happening.

“What’s going on? Who did this? Was it bandits or something?” I asked, hoping for a simple answer but knowing it was likely in vain.

“No lad, this was not the work of bandits. To make a very long story short, Vera here is very much not a fan of the ruling family of the Western Marchlands in the Sunset Kingdoms, and they like her even less. There’s a specific mercenary company they’ve used before dedicated to dealing with high-level threats to their rule, and for some reason they are still keeping her in that category despite her being as far from the entire Sunset Kingdoms as physically possible for a good few years now. There’s a chance that’s partly my fault to be fair, but either way it doesn’t matter. They are here now.”

“Are they the same group of red-cloaks that attacked you back in the mountains?” I asked.

He nodded, “The very same. And before you ask, no, we don’t know why they’re coming after us right now.”

He pulled out his canvas map again and poured over it, him and Vera both bouncing ideas off of each other as to where our new enemy could be. After a few more moments of discussion, the map was rolled back up and deposited in his necklace, and we were moving on again, weapons still in hand.

“We’re heading to the Iona Chasm – small crack in the earth from some calamity in a previous era. Running water, protection from the elements and the most likely place for them to be camping out. This is gonna be above either of you two for the time being, so we’ll be ditching you on the plains above the gorge, while me and Vera descend in and sort this out.”

I didn’t bother to ask them how they were so certain whoever they were looking for were at this particular chasm. I could see Jorge sniff the air every few miles, and I simply had to trust that they knew what they were doing.

We drew to a halt as a shape started to appear on the horizon. Vera instantly dumped her armour out of her storage device and began buckling it on, while Jorge turned to Nathlan and I.

“Right lads, we’ll be gone for most likely a day or two – possibly up to a week if they’re slippery and run before we get to ‘em. As long as you’re within half a day’s travel of that crack” He pointed at the shape that had yet to fully resolve itself to my view on the horizon, “then we’ll find you. If one of us hasn’t picked you up within 10 days – get to the Panyera.”

Nathlan nodded, clearly having some confidence in crossing an entire country on foot that I didn’t exactly share.

“Keep each other alive, and feel free to explore, but DO NOT go down into the chasm itself. The area around the Iona Chasm is apparently relatively safe, and you shouldn’t run into anything above 1st tier by my best guess. That being said; Nathlan – I want you to put up one of your wards around the edge of the chasm, as large as you can make it, and if anything, And I mean ANYTHING, breaks it, I want you both to book it as far away as possible. If its me or Vera, we’ll catch you before you’ve gone a mile or two, and if it’s not, you don’t want to be waiting around to find out what exactly it is, aright?”

I was starting to get nervous now with the orders flying around and the threat of death rearing its ugly head again after a week or two of stress-free living. Nathlan seemed resolute though, and Jorge only continued talking, leaving no time for my nerves to grow.

“That’s worst case. More likely, we’ll be gone for a day or two. In the meantime, I want you both training. There’s a tingle in the air that feels a little off, so keep your wits about you. Nathlan - keep that sword out, I want you to use as little of your magic as possible. If either of you are in danger of death then go wild, but a little light maiming never hurt anyone right?”

He laughed at his own joke, and Nathlan cracked a smile in turn. “So use it sparingly. And Lamb – keep the spear and shield out, with any luck fighting in danger again will give you a new weapon skill related to them to round out your repertoire. Whatever you do though, do not accept a merger, keep it separate for now okay.”

I was bewildered by the words, and spoke quickly, worried he’d cut me off if I wasn’t able to puncture his barrage of instructions.

“What are we going to be fighting!?”

Nathlan smiled grimly as he answered, “There’s always something.”

The cryptic answer didn’t really help but Jorge had paused only long enough to nod in agreement with the tall, lanky scholar before speaking again. Vera had nearly finished buckling on the plated portions of her upper armour, and was working on the plates protecting her hips, shins and upper legs.

“Nathlan has plenty in his storage item, so you’ll be fine for living. Remember; work on your skills, and do NOT go down into that gorge.”

With that said, he clapped us both on the shoulder, gave us a measuring look and then pulled out his own armour. Within 30 breaths he was checking over Vera’s gear while she was doing the same to him. They looked now like they had when I first met them – dressed for war, and imposing in a way I hadn’t even slightly appreciated at the time.

A final nod at each other, then us, and the two left towards the shape on the horizon. It did not take long for them to join the haze and be lost from view.

I turned to Nathlan with what was likely a nonplussed expression on my face. He just shrugged in response and started trudging towards the smudge on the horizon. I followed and we walked in silence for a few moments before I opened my mouth to break the ice. He beat me to it.

“I don’t know.”

I blinked and responded, “But I’ve not asked you anything yet.”

“It’s the answer to any bloody question you could ask right now!”

I could hear the anger in his tone, bubbling away under the surface. I also knew it wasn’t directed at me though and was instead caused by the simmering uncertainty were both feeling after Jorge and Vera had run off.

“I thought you were the one who knew everything?” I asked innocently. He whipped around to face me, staring for a few moments with an inscrutable expression on his face. The tension broke as he huffed a laugh, although it sounded far too strained to be natural.

“Alright, sorry. I genuinely don’t know though. They’ve given me challenges before, but this is the first time they’ve both run off like that since I met them. And don’t ask about the Crimson Lions, I don’t know anything about that, and I’m not interested in speculating. They might just be the remnants of one of the Talons we sent scattering back at the foot of the Unclaimed Peaks after bumping into you.”

That sounded a lot like speculation to my ear, but I thought better than commenting on it. “After abandoning me, you mean?” I asked instead, deciding to antagonise the man from an entirely different angle.

Rather than rise to my bait though, he just looked back at me calmly, replying “Yes exactly.”

I blinked, surprised at the answer before he crooked his lips in a grin. I sighed, conceding the point.

“So…what do we do? Just walk over?” I asked.

As much as I had learned in the last week and a half, 10 days was still only 10 days. I didn’t want to return to the reactive, unthinking animal the endless valley had made me into, but I could feel the instincts creeping back in all the same.

“Yes. We’ll approach slowly, get a lay of the land and set up a safe spot to camp. We can scout out the area from there and decide more once we know what we’re dealing with.”

I agreed, glad to have some direction, and focused on the warm sensation of the mid-morning sun bathing my face as we walked on. It was an awkward few miles of walking punctuated by brief respites of stilted conversation. Nathlan was not keen on idle chat at the best of times, but at least often seemed willing to talk about something, and would ask questions of me regularly in our travels.

This situation was clearly wearing at him, and he seemed more closed-off than usual. As time passed though, the brief moments of conversation disappeared entirely, and we were left with a strange silence.

No, not silence exactly. An absence of spoken words surely, but something was there above the sounds of our boots on the cracked ground, increasingly free of grass, as we approached the sight before us.

A strange whispering, like the wind given voice at the edge of our hearing. Before us the ground rose unevenly towards the sky. The grasslands ended, an invisible line demarcating where the territory of the great green sea ended and the barren dirt began. It was a subtle shift when we looked around us, with endless grass slowly giving way to the odd clump and tuft before falling away entirely within several dozen meters. And yet as we stood at the end of the grass and looked away to either side, the nuance was lost, and we saw only a single line where grass met dirt.

Miles of grassland stretched as far as the eye could see behind us, gradual rolling slopes and wind-whipped long grasses, and before us was a desert of red-brown dirt. Only a few hundred meters into this desert rose towers of stone. Great spires, some as tall as twenty meters, jutted out of the ground.

Some were slim as a tree at the base, leaning precariously with strange bulges and protrusions giving them a wonky and unsightly appearance. Others were so thick that not even ten men could link their arms around their bases, and they rose towards the sky with pride. They formed a forest of stone around the base of the rise, and behind them was a small ridgeline. It was uneven and rather than the jagged edges and straight lines to be expected from stone formations, the ridge appeared soft and curved.

We looked at each other again before heading into the forest of stone pillars, heading up towards the ridge. As we walked, the whispering wind became a murmur, and then a faint humming. By the time we reached the ridge, that sound was clearly audible, and felt as if the wind itself was howling at us with fury. A low, keening cry that undulated and withdrew at a whim, but never quite stopped.

The stone pillars around us began to show signs of damage. Not the wear of long aeons of wind and sand erosion, or the constant fury of water, but rapid damage that only people could manage.

Chips of stone, taller than me and twice as wide, were cluttered around the base of one particularly large pillar. A dozen meters over there was a hole blasted in the centre of another. Evidence of felled pillars littered the ground along the bottom of the earthen rise, with large boulders broken off after hitting the dirt.

It looked as if two stone giants had fought a frantic battle, using the environment as weapon and armour both. The wind weaving in and around the forest of stone must be what was producing the eery sound, but I was amazed it could have such a profound effect even so. As we ascended the earthen ridge however, I saw the true cause.

We stood on the crest of a bank of dirt, rocks, and roots over a dozen meters above the grasslands behind us, with some of the larger pillars of stone standing tall at our backs, peeking over the earth embankment to catch the wind.

I had erroneously compared the stone forest behind to a battlefield, but I saw now how wrong that was. It was less a battlefield than a light skirmish in comparison to the massacre that lay before us. Stone pillars dotted the plateaux below by the thousands, trees crowding their bases and some adventurous ones crawling around their torsos, seeking to bring the giants down. Rather than thick vegetation covering the ground between the sandstone columns, there was just arid red dirt, packed hard and cracked in honeycomb patterns.

Some of the columns were toppled, some stood firm, but most bore signs of destruction. The wind howled around us, and we descended in unison to the forest in front of us, seeking to hide from the wind and its terrible moaning.

The moment we hit the floor and left the ridgeline, that horrible noise cut out. There was a gentle background whisper again, but nothing like the harsh sound we had endured above. I let out a sigh of relief, and I could see Nathlan relax similarly.

“So where do we setup?” I asked, eyeing the tall rocky pillars ascending to the sky. Some of them seemed near tall enough to be considered buttes, but most were far too thin, and rose abruptly from the flat ground without any significant mound surrounding them.

Nathlan replied, his tone weary, as if resigned to a half bell of exhausting labour. “We’ll head to the edge. I need to set a perimeter ward up along the crack, and we can pace out our domain from there. Once I’ve set the ward, we’ll search for a good spot. Can you climb?”

I grinned and said “Aye, better than you I’d wager.”

He snorted, but his reply was half-hearted. “It’s cheating with your attributes. 5 per level for a first class – fucking ridiculous.”

“You know, that might be the first time I’ve heard you swear.” I remarked and was met with a head shake.

“Let’s go” he said simply as we headed towards the edge of the plateaux.

We moved right to the edge of the plateau – it must have been half a mile between the edge and the ridge of packed earth and screaming wind we had crossed earlier, and the ‘crack’ as Jorge had called it was no less epic in scale.

It was a chasm, yawning nearly a hundred meters wide, and it plunged into darkness. I couldn’t make out the bottom, and Nathlan said it was likely hundreds or even thousands of meters deep. I couldn’t see any evidence of Jorge and Vera’s descent, but with their attributes they probably could have survived a fall of a few hundred meters without worry anyway, let alone their skills. That was a complete guess, I just didn’t have the data, but it felt true to what I’d experienced of this world so far.

We skirted the chasm for a couple of miles, and then looped back round to the ridgeline before returning to where we had stepped onto the plateau to begin with. Nathlan had laid his ward down, although the exact mechanics of it were far beyond me. He would pause every hundred or so meters and shift the dirt below himself, muttering and gesturing strangely, but I never saw him actually carve anything into permanence. I trusted him on this though – even Jorge seemed to defer to the scholar when it came to wards.

We eventually settled on camping atop one of the smaller and thicker columns. The top was higher on one side, providing a bluff of thick rock to protect us form the ever present wind, and while on the smaller side of its brothers, the pillar was still at least 10 meters tall.

Nathlan carved some more permanent wards into the soft stone (relatively – it was still stone after all) using a chisel and hammer, and I set about making our temporary camp from the supplies in his spatial ring. Namely, a couple of bedrolls, some dried wood for a fire, and a couple of pans. I made sure to keep anything light well secured so it wouldn’t blow off, and didn’t retrieve any of our food yet, since I didn’t want to encourage scavengers.

“I think we should head out soon.” I said into the silence as Nathlan worked. He looked up at me with an annoyed scowl on his face.

“I’m a little busy at the moment” he bit out, tone acerbic.

“Sorry, I know. I just don’t like the waiting, its freaking me out a bit. Feel like I should be moving you know?” I said, forcefully stilling the hand that was drumming against my thigh. He looked up at me again, meeting my gaze for the first time and I saw him relax his shoulders and let out a sigh.

“I understand. Its easy to forget you lived in the wilderness for months. I suppose its hard to kick those instincts, yes?” He hesitated. “What’s your- what should I call you by the way?”

The question caught me off guard, and the phrasing made it clear he was choosing his words carefully. He had returned to carving the rock, but I could see his focus was on me and my reaction.

I chuffed a laugh, however forced it was. “I guess Lamb? That’s what Jorge and Vera use anyway. Unless you wanna go with ‘lad’ instead?”

I let out a long breath and continued, “Honestly Nathlan, Lamb is a bit of a shit name really. But one is as good as any other – I don’t know my own name, and choosing one feels too…significant maybe? Like I’ll be deciding more about who I am or want to be rather than just the name. I don’t know, it sounds stupid when I say it out loud but…” I trailed off.

Nathlan didn’t say anything, giving me time to let my thoughts out without interruption. For somebody who seemed to care little for social mores, he was surprisingly sensitive to them when he wanted to be.

“It still seems mental to me, and I try not to think about it too much ‘cus I just end up going down this rabbit whole of questioning everything I know. I don’t know who I am sometimes, and I just feel so lost…but then other times I have the absolute conviction that it’s not this.”

I gestured around vaguely at the battlefield of columnar rocks and the yawning chasm that cut through it.

“I wasn’t a soldier. I don’t know what soldiers looked like on my world, but I know I wasn’t one of them. I have no memory at all of what life was like, but I’m just struck with this feeling sometimes that everything is so surreal. Like the magic and the levels and the fucking spears! It’s not who I was!” My voice echoed off the irregularly shaped stone spires before being snatched away by the low droning of the wind.

I felt Nathlan grab my shoulder and roughly shake me round to look at him as he spoke. “Did you like who you were?”

I hesitated at that, his words halting my pacing as much as his hand. “I…Yeah I did…I do. I just…” I trailed off.

“Were you fulfilled? Were you satisfied with everything you had, or were you searching for something more?”

No hesitation. That was something I could answer with confidence. “No. I wanted more.” Nathlan nodded at that, hearing the stone-certain conviction in my tone.

“Jorge doesn’t make soldiers Lamb, that’s not why I’m here, and that’s not why Vera’s here either. I won’t give you my life’s story yet but suffice it to say I stood to inherit a position of acclaim and I left it behind because I wanted the freedom that personal power can bring. The Shepard doesn’t train soldiers, despite what you might think, and this world works in ways you don’t yet understand. Just because you weren’t a soldier, and just because you’d never held a weapon – it doesn’t mean that’s not who you will be. Who you can be now.”

He moved to stand next to me and we both looked out at the view, accompanied by the mournful call of the wind.

“Each of us has experienced our lives being constrained by forces beyond our control. Each of us is searching for the power to make our own choices. Who cares who you were? There isn’t a person on this whole continent who knows who that was. Take the good, leave the bad. You said you were missing something? So go out and find it. I can guarantee that whatever it is you’re looking for, it’ll be easier to find if you have control over your own destiny – and on Tsanderos, that means you need power.”