The next monarch on my list was the Governor. This mystery figure ruled over Garland, a nation made up of a collection of City States who voted in this figure once every ten years. According to the information that those in Altheron gave me before I set off the first time, this particular Governor was twelve years through his tenure. There was no record of any underhanded dealings or threats, the Governor had been voted in a second time, as there was no law against it, though it had never happened before this particular intance.
The only thing that I couldn't find out through sources in Altheron was the actual identity of this Governor. It was kept secret to the public, known only to the City Lords who had taken part in the vote. Added to that level of secrecy, the only time where the Governor ever came out was during a private meeting between City Lords, and even then, the Governor was masked.
I could recognise that this wouldn't be easy. The information that I recieved didn't tell me when the next meeting would be or where, so I would have to find that out myself.
I gazed about the field that I was stood in, Dire Boars roamed about, staying well away from me. I had to get to Garland, the easiest and fastest way would obviously be to use Incandescent Travel, so I double checked the mana stored within the pendant, then I topped it up to thirty million. Then I pictured the direction to Garland, it was to the direct north of Altheron, and its capital, as I had seen in that map the man had shown me just before I had met Fulcrum, was almost at the edge of the map, in a very snowy region. I activated the skill and the field burst in a flash of light, fading into a snow-covered landscape.
Garland was cold, much colder than both Helios and Xarthos. As I looked around, I could see that it was also nearer to Xarthos than Helios in its landscape. Hills rose up all around me, covered in white snow, some rose even higher, surely to the height of mountains with jagged peaks. I was nestled in a valley between two hills, both of which had such steep slopes that the snow couldn't cling to them and revealed the dark stone they were made from. Resting in the sharp ledges and cracks of the stone were birds and in the larger cracks, some alpine creatures lay. There didn't seem to be any settlements nearby, or any monsters like Dire Boars, so I took flight, raising myself into the air, just below the dark layers of cloud overhead that slowly let down flakes of snow. From there I could see over the hills that had surrounded me, but still there were no settlements to be found.
As I scanned the horizon, my eyes lit upon a trail through the snow, in a valley that was carved between two mountains to the east. The valley was a few thousand feet above where I had appeared, but still looked to be even ground. I willed myself over to the trail and landed in the snow, my legs sinking up to the knee, some of it falling into my boots. Through the white snow ran two deep grooves cut by what looked to be wheels on a cart of somekind. Why someone would actually go through the trouble of using a cart to navigate these hills, I had no idea.
There was still mana in the air here, colouring everything in the distance a vague blue tint to my eyes as individual motes of mana blended together. Nearby they looked like azure stationary snowflakes that hovered as their white compatriots floated down all around them. I gathered some of the mana into my palm and knelt down, placing my hand in one of the grooves. In an instant, a set of arcane symbols flashed through the tracks and formed a breif arrow pointing towards myself. It looked as if the cart that was traveling through the snow was heading south, against the direction that I needed to go.
Knowing that the cart was travelling from where I needed to be left me with a decision, either go to the cart and ask for directions or a map leading to the capital of Garland, or follow the tracks to whatever settlement that the cart had come from. I gritted my teeth and surpressed a shiver, despite my high constitution, I could still feel the relentless frost creeping in. My clothes weren't exactly suited to the snow afterall, but I couldn't imagine someone of lesser constitution surviving out here for long. I let the bulk of my mana affect me, and felt myself warm up as the snowlflakes in the air stopped falling.
There was no-one around, so I stripped off all of my clothes but my underwear and created a new set of winter clothing that would let my numerous artifacts fit the outfit. The result was a set of thick clothing that had sections missing on my left and right arms to make way for the Left Gauntlet Of The Demon Lord, and my Bracer Of Storms. There was a section of warm fur about the shoulders that I tucked over the Cloak of Demonic Shadow. I decided that I would have to figure out an enchantment that let me merge artifacts together once this whole thing was over as I was placing the remaining pendants about my neck. More than one pendant was more than any one Arcane Lord should have to wear.
Once I was fully changed, I lessened the effect that my stored mana had on me, and time bled back to full speed. It was still cold, but in these heavier clothes, with the fur resting against my neck, I was significantly warmer. I opened up my Storage beneath the clothes that I had piled up on the ground, and they slipped into its endless blackness.
But all that getting changed had done was allow me to linger instead of making a decision. I gazed down the path towards where the cart had gone. Wherever they were headed, I doubted that they really wanted to be disturbed in this extreme heat. My best bet of information was following this trail that the cart had left, if I was lucky, it would lead me all the way back to a settlement, maybe even the one I was wanting to go to. If I was unlucky, then I could always use magic to guide me if the trail faded.
As I looked towards the other direction and to the clouds dark and heavy with snow and ice, I was pretty sure that the trail would have faded already.
--
A few miles down the snowy path, the ruts in the snow had faded completely amidst a mounting snowstorm and I had begun to wade through almost waist-high piles of the stuff. Visibility was reduced to only a couple dozen feet and the cold was starting to pierce my new, specially made, winter clothes.
"Fine then," I hissed against the howling wind. I undid my cloak and dropped it into my Storage, making a newer, longer and heavier fur cloak in my other hand as I did. This one appeared to be made from long shaggy fur that was a mixture of grey and black in a kind of striped pattern. I pulled some mana from the air and forced it into the cloak, naming it 'Winter Cloak of Warmth'
WINTER CLOAK OF WARMTH
THE WEARER OF THIS CLOAK HAS IMMUNITY TO ENVIRONMENTAL COLD. A WARM ATMOSPHERE RADIATES FROM THE CLOAK, MELTING ANY SNOW OR ICE WITHIN FIVE FEET OF THE WEARER. THIS WARMTH CANNOT HARM CREATURES.
+10 AGILITY
MANA STORED 0/20,000
I'd added the buff to my agility just to make it so the loss of my other cloak didn't effect my overall capabilities, if ten agility was what made a difference in a life or death tussle, then I would have the extra ten.
As I placed the new cloak about my shoulders, and clipped it into place, the snow around me suddenly hisses and melted away, even the steam vanishing, leaving me stood on solid, dry ground in the form of a stone track. The snow flakes that reached my five foot dome melted before they even had a chance to land or settle. The cold that I felt before was replaced by a comfortable warmth as I walked, similar to when you hold a cup of hot chocolate after a day out in the snow.
With not only the track, but the snow now gone from about my feet and my vision limited to within around twenty feet from myself, I had no choice by to pull some mana together. It flashed in a familiar ring and pointed the direction where the tracks had come from, I continued feeding the spell mana as I walked, making it so that the complex and ornate glowing arrow that hovered before me stayed there and gently shifted direction with the curves of this pass.
It wasn't too long before I stumbled across a wooden signpost that was covered almost completely in white snow, so much that I thought it was a strangely shaped tree at first. But as I approached, the aura of my cloak melted the snow and revealed an old signpost made from a dark wood. At its top, were two arrows of wood that jutted out in opposite directions, one pointed towards where I'd come from, the other pointed in the direction I was heading.
The one pointing behind me read: Gorsall Pass, 48 miles to Gladton. The other read: Enmiota, 12 miles. I must've just wandered along a section of Gorsall Pass, and now I had twelve miles until this place called Enmiota. It wasn't the capital, I knew that much from the information I'd been given, the capital was called Gaholt. But any city or settlement was better than this tundra that I was wandering through. I may have been comfortably warm, but there was only so far you could walk in total whiteout without growing unbelievably bored.
"Twelve miles, yeah, that's like what? Three hours?" I murmured to myself before trudging on, my feet on the reasonably level gravel path. Behind me, the signpost was already starting to be covered in snow before it was entirely swallowed by the blizzard.
It wasn't even five minutes after I passed the signpost when I noticed a red glow passing in the blizzard ahead of me.
"Hey, is someone there?" I called towards it. The red glow stopped. "Hi there-" I began, but was cut off when the glow sped towards me and the only thing that saved me from getting hit in the chest by a flaming arrow was my agility stat that slowed down time by such a degree that I dodged the arrow and caught it at the same time.
As I did, from the blizzard lept six snow covered men and women, they had heavy furs on, weapons drawn, and wrappings coving their heads so I couldn't see their faces.
"Drop all of your valuables and you'll leave with your life," said one of the women. She was holding a long glaive that seemed to glow from within the wood that its haft was made from. The snow that hit the weapon evaporated with a hiss. It was subtly different from how my cloak melted the snow and evaporated the water, more sinister and threatening. Instinctually I knew that the heat the weapon produced could be used to kill.
I held my hands up, this would be a good opportunity to level up my Psychokinesis skill.
"I'll give you all one chance to leave before this starts," I warned, giving the group a slight grin.
Confused looks crosses the faces of each of the bandits.
"No-one leaving?" I shook my head, hands still in the air. "That's a shame."
"Shut up!" One of the bandits called, a bulky man who fidgeted with a large warhammer. "Let's kill him."
With a sudden roar, the man charged at me, closing the distance between us with surprising speed. The hammer drew an arc of flame through the air as he swung it over his head, bringing its full weight to bare against me.
In one swift movement, I struck upwards, punching the hammer with my bare hand, letting a pulse of absorbed mana run through me on impact. The head of the hammer shattered and in the next instant, I struck out at the bandit with my other palm, lacing the strike with Psychokinesis. He went flying when I hit, landing in an embankment of snow and was quickly covered by the falling snow.
"Next?" I asked the remaining bandits who all stared on in shock.