In the Shadow of Mountains - a litRPG adventure

We looked out over the forest of rock spires for what felt like hours. In a testament to how awkward silence can be with somebody you don’t know well, it had in actuality been less than a quarter of a bell before we both agreed to head out. Our temporary camp was secured and warded, we left a rope hanging from the top in case we needed to quickly scale it, and then we were down on the red dirt surface once again.

“Right. Before we go exploring together, we need to know what each other is capable of. I’ve seen bits of your training, but all I can gather from that is that you’re not a match for Jorge – not surprising. I want to know what you can do in comparison to me, so I know if I need to step in if we get in trouble.”

Nathlan’s tone was even, if a little clipped, and while I knew his explanation was for my benefit, it was a little tiring to hear him go on about his reasoning as if I was a naive baby who would take offence at everything. I may have had no narrative memories, but I still had half a brain in my head and could understand the need for a friendly spar before we went looking for danger.

On second thought though, our much more experienced and powerful teacher had just warned us about the life-threatening danger of the chasm, and we were still both determined to go poking around the top of it rather than safely train together from a distance. Perhaps I could forgive the caution this once.

“Yeah no problem, I get it. How do you want to handle this? Presumably full stats and stuff? I’m not yet able to lower my attributes with any degree of accuracy” I said.

He gave me a measuring look. “No need to hold back. But we’ll start slow and use training weapons. Here.”

He withdrew a training spear and shield from his storage device, throwing the wooden weapons over to me. I placed my new weapons against the pillar and started some pre-fight stretching. Nathlan did likewise, before drawing his own wooden practice blade.

I hefted the shield and spear, trying to get used to their altered weight and reach and coverage. Nathlan gave his wooden sword some practice swings and paced around a few times as he did so. We faced each other from a few feet away, and I felt a subtle shift in the way we related to each other.

I was aware that I had supplanted him as the newest member of the group, although he was still the youngest by my guess. I had quickly overtaken him in terms of physical attributes however, and while I knew he had far more skill and experience with his weapon than I did, I was keen to see how that could measure up against raw physicality.

I was trying to keep my excitement from showing though, as I didn’t want this to turn into some peacocking contest to see who was better. I knew my place, bottom of the rung, and I was happy to stay there for a while, soaking up experience and knowledge from those who had both to spare.

I was a little concerned that he would take this personally, given his prickly nature and possible background. I hadn’t seen much evidence of entitlement yet, and given he’d apparently opted to forfeit whatever inheritance was his to claim in order to slum it with Jorge and Vera, I would assume he had a solid head on his shoulders, but you never knew, especially with young guys.

If this became a competition where he felt he had to prove himself and put me in my place, it’d sour our relationship from the start. That seemed harsh as I barely knew the guy, but I knew what I had been like in my early years, and I knew I wouldn’t take a blow to my pride as easily as I would now.

I quickly shook the thoughts from my head as I strayed far too close to my recently lost memories, and refocused on the man in front of me.

A man I would not think to describe as lanky anymore. His long limbs now seemed to promise a reach I couldn’t match, and his usual closed-in, almost surly posture had filled out. He stood straight, shoulders squared and chin high and I realised that while I’d always thought of him as tall, I only now felt smaller than him.

I rolled my neck, clanging my spear haft against my shield in a signal that I’d unconsciously adopted to show my readiness, and settled into position.

“Stay away from the eyes, and pull your strikes before you make contact, please. I don’t want a broken leg from an over-eager sweep.”

The tone was commanding, imperious even, and I caught myself nodding my head in acknowledgement before I’d really registered his words. Despite the ‘please’ at end, it was clearly a demand not a request. It hit me then that the overbearing parents Jorge had mentioned, and the ‘position of acclaim’ Nathlan himself had spoken of moments before, was probably a tactful way of saying that this man was likely heir to a large principality or even throne.

Given the feudal-seeming nature of this world so far – judging by the names at least – it was entirely possible that he’d been groomed since birth to lead armies and command cities. Who I’d originally thought to have been a gangly scholar was more likely to be an ex-prince of some far off kingdom.

He seemed a little too competent for that to be honest, but that was my own biases speaking and told me more about monarchies from my old world than this one. Before I could continue my thoughts, he stepped forward to meet me.

He moved with small, fast steps. I tried to keep in mind Jorge’s lessons – to watch the hips, shoulders and legs of a swordsman primarily, with your shield raised – but a rapid shuffle from Nathlan obscured my reading of his movements, and a wooden point was glancing off the side of my leading calf before I could adjust.

I hopped back and nodded to concede the strike before closing in with my own offense. I knew he was far more skilled and experienced than me, so I tried to use my physicality to shut down his options. I had a longer reach thanks to my spear and could afford to bear some of his strikes with my shield while pining him in, or so I thought.

I jabbed out with a few probing strikes at his guard, alternating the angle of each strike and hoping to keep his focus on my spear point as I hemmed him in.

He deflected the first few before stepping forwards into a parry, driving my spear out of alignment and lunging inside my reach. I tried to use my shield to bash him backwards but was forced to raise it instead to intercept a high slash towards my head. As soon my shield rose into position I felt a point dig into my ribs, and huffed out a laugh at the move. Jorge had warned me about obscuring my vision with the shield a dozen times already, but the reflex to protect my head still had me overcompensating.

We reset again, and I stayed defensive this time, spear set against the rim of my shield and my centre of balance lowered, ready to move. Nathlan paced back and forth a few times, seemingly open and unbothered. I noticed that he was just outside of my range though, and while his sword was pointed at the floor, its tip stayed between us, no matter which direction his body faced.

I moved with him, keeping my shield between us and the spear level at shoulder height. A few more pacing steps and then his sword flicked out at me. My enhanced perception and cognition allowed me to just about track the point as it clacked against the centre of my shield, and I tried to settle back into my stance.

More probing strikes followed, all centred on the middle of my shield, clearly trying to lull me into a false sense of security. Each flick of his wrist caused me to flinch, spend effort to hyperfocus on the trajectory of his sword and brace my shield in preparation. I knew that this was an effort to exhaust my reactions, and as soon as I started to ignore some of the jabs a few would fly out aimed not at my shield, but my head or feet or hands.

It was a common tactic for dealing with defensive shield-bearers according to Jorge, and unfortunately it was common because it was so effective. Or it would have been against another opponent. Despite our similar levels, I had a rare combat class to Nathlan’s support class, and I received 5 times the attributes per level that he did. I only slightly edged him out in agility and cognition – more so the former – but I had a much larger endurance attribute and so while he could load up my central nervous system with anticipation of each strike, I would tire slower than he would.

He came to the same conclusion after a few more teasing strikes, and suddenly he lunged. Unfortunately for him, it wasn’t just my endurance attribute that outranked his. My enhanced perception allowed me to notice the moment he placed more weight onto his back leg, and by the time he was launching off of it, I was aware of the danger and already reacting.

His form was perfect as his leading leg floated only a whisper off the floor before planting down hard to take the weight of his thrust. As his arm extended and his sword sped towards my neck, just above the protective domain of my shield. I had no doubt that I would be done for if I only had the perception and cognition to give me early warning. A heartbeat of time might help a prepared swordsman, but I was inexperienced and the weapons I held still felt like clunky bits of wood to me rather than extensions of my limbs.

However, I had an advantage in every single attribute, including strength. I didn’t need to brace perfectly to absorb the blow, as I could shrug it off with ease. I didn’t need to have the optimum angle of deflection, or solid footing to disperse the force of the blow through my legs and into the ground. I took the thrust on the top of my shield as I leaned back at the waist but rather than being knocked off my feet, I managed to keep them under me as I back-peddled, absorbing the force of the thrust through my upper body instead.

Nathlan straightened and shrugged, unable to take advantage of the move, but satisfied to be safe from retaliation too. I did feel a little bad, that his years of dedicated training (I assumed) could be nearly cancelled out by a few weeks and superior attributes, but we all had our advantages. He’d worked for his skill, no doubt about that, but I had bled and faced death a dozen times over already for my levels, and I wasn’t going to feel too guilty for using whatever advantages I did have.

I rolled my shoulders before setting my stance again, and Nathlan actually grinned as he raised his sword.

“I’m glad to see you can keep up with me. I’ll make you a wager! Land a clean hit on me, and I’ll cook tonight.”

I smiled behind my shield as I replied. “And if I don’t land one?”

The grin turned predatory as his eyes met mine over the tip of the blade. “Why do you think you cooking is the default option?”

The howling of the wind, once a low whisper at the edges of our hearing, had grown gradually over the course of our spar. By the time we’d taken sufficient measure of each other, it was a mournful moaning that required us to raise our voices to be heard if we stood more than a few feet away from one another. I returned the now-drained waterskin to Nathlan for depositing in his storage device, and asked a question as I did so.

“So what’s up with the noise here? I get that its tied to the wind but it seems too….I dunno, weird to be a natural phenomenon.”

He shook his head as he belted on his scabbard and re-tied his long hair into a tail from where it had shaken loose in our spar.

“That’s because it’s not natural, in a sense. These stone pillars might be naturally formed but do you see the damage to them?”

He pointed at a chunk missing from a nearby pillar, a jagged hole missing from its side as if a giant had scooped a handful of rock out and hurled it around indiscriminately.

“From what little I know – and it is little, I know almost nothing about the Wandering States in anything but a macro scale – there was a battle between very high level individuals here; 3rd tiers, possibly even 4th. The wind likely would echo strangely regardless due to the stone forest, but with the gaps, and particularly the spires with holes through the middle, it almost sounds like whispering and moaning. There are a number of local suspicions around the chasm itself and ‘the voice on the wind’ or ‘the call of the void’ as it’s often known, but given Jorge’s caution regarding the chasm I would be inclined to give some of those stories at least some merit.”

I mulled it over, finding it all too easy to imagine what sorts of beliefs could spring up over the generations about a place like this. “Do people come here often? Is it a sacred place or anything?”

Nathlan cocked his head to the side in thought before replying. “Not that I’m aware of. Again though, that doesn’t mean it isn’t. Jorge doesn’t tend to exaggerate threat levels though, so I imagine there are fewer who leave than arrive. We need to stay on guard, although he did seem to think we could handle anything that stays up here on the surface. Let’s start spiralling out from our camp, see if we find anything interesting.”

“Is there anything specific we’re actually looking for? Bones, ruins, creatures, etc.?” I spoke idly as we began to walk, looking around at the contrasting landscape – reddish dirt mixing with granite spires in a strong juxtaposition – and so it took me a few heartbeats to realise Nathlan had stopped moving. I turned back to look at him, but he spoke as soon as our eyes met.

“I’ve not seen any bones at all yet. Have you?” I thought about it and shook my head in a negative. I wasn’t sure why that was unusual though, and so after a few moments I rolled my hand in a gesture asking him to go on.

“We’ve walked a few miles already, and there’s no grass or other vegetation covering the floor – I would have expected to see a tiny sliver of bone every now and then, but there’s been nothing. We’ve seen rodents and rabbits and other little creatures flitting about between the pillars, but no bones?”

I shrugged again, playing devil’s advocate. “Maybe whatever predators here drag the kills back to their nests before they eat? Maybe the bones get routinely washed away over the edge by flash-floods – the ground is dry enough that I doubt it can absorb much in one go. Maybe there are just fewer animals here than normal? Would make sense with the lack of vegetation – no easily available food source for small herbivores would ripple up the food chain and prevent a stable predator population from taking root. Maybe it’s not such a surprise.”

He shook his head, vehemently disagreeing with me. “No, no none of that fits. There should be small corpses around everywhere, built up over generations. The whole plateau isn’t sloped so it wouldn’t drain like that, and there should be plenty of prey – I’ve seen 5 vultures already in only a few miles. They have huge territories and require large amounts of carrion to sustain, and often leave the corpses where they find them.”

I shrugged and starting walking again, Nathlan reluctantly trailing after me. “So what do you think the likely explanation is, oh great scholar?”

He shot me a look at that, and I winked, trying to bring some levity back into the atmosphere. It seemed to slide right off him though, as he just muttered under his breath before telling me to keep my eyes peeled.

And I did. Despite my jovial attitude, he had me slightly rattled. Bones missing from a plateau overlooking a creepy chasm? Yeah, there was probably something horrible going on. A cult of cannibals hiding in tunnels beneath the earth, waiting to sneak out at night and snatch us up? Large predators that swallowed entire animals whole? Insect swarms that left no trace of their victims, even the bones? Maybe the dead rose from their places at night, reanimated by the eery wind and driven to hunt for new hosts.

“Hey Nathlan – is necromancy a thing here?” I asked tentatively.

He looked over at me with a measuring gaze, almost suspicious. “Not formally. Its long been considered impossible to raise something back to true life. There are various ways to reanimate dead tissue though if that’s what you mean? But nothing that can recreate a semblance of life.”

“Right….so if I was to see a skeleton walking around…what would be the cause of that?” My voice had dropped to a half-whisper and my footsteps had slowed to a crawl. Nathlan nearly bumped into me, only stopping an inch behind me, busy as he’d been looking around for signs of bone anywhere to confirm his worry.

“Well at first I’d doubt your eyes, but I suppose it’s possible. There’s an entire family of fungi throughout the southern half of the continent that can take possession of certain animals – it’s not inconceivable that they’d mutate in the presence of heavy magic or alchemical treatment to control bone tissue. But its unlikely out here, and there’d doubtless be a complete loss of fine motor control – they usually work by hijacking a hosts nervous system, but skeletons obviously don’t have a nervous system. So no, actually that wouldn’t work. If you saw a walking skeleton, I’d tell you to look again.”

He moved out from behind me, stepped to the side and looked over at me. “What prompted that question?”

I just raised my arm and pointed towards the shambling figure a few hundred meters away, partially obscured by one of the stone pillars, but making its way out from behind it and into our view.

“It was the moving skeleton, holding an axe and staring right at me that made me ask Nathlan. Would you like to look again for me, mate?” I said, readying my weapon.

“Oh” was all he said, as he took a step back and drew his sword.