Chapter 133
Ruins of H'vel
Sylas sat by one of the ruins--one of the better-preserved ones, with one wall even standing almost whole, etched in it a squared hole where a window used to be. He'd cleaned up most of the interior, removing the far-reaching vines and grass that had taken over it, revealing beneath a very simple decor--if it could even be called that.
From what he could tell, there were two rooms--likely a bedroom, and something akin to a combination of a kitchen and a dining room. Remnants of a hearth-like structure built into the inside of a wall spoke to that, as well as the mostly rotten bed-like box he found in the other 'room'. Aside from that, what withstood the test of time the best was, strangely enough, basic cutlery--he came across several spoon-like and fork-like tools built out of copper or bronze--he wouldn't even be able to tell if they were made in present, let alone through the rot and decay of the time.
Furthermore, he came across several smaller cauldrons, similarly mostly made of copper or bronze with one, the one he was holding at the moment, maintaining silveresque surface, even lacking the distinct touch of rust of the time. Though it couldn't be called 'new' due to some general scarring, it did look like it could still be used, which surprised him the most.
All around, the technology of the village seemed to actually be in tune with the Kingdom--present Kingdom, that is. People in the Kingdom, though, did prefer ceramic cauldrons, and there was a lot more clay involved in general for everyday tools as, from what he learned anyway, it was much cheaper to produce than silverware, copperware, and other metals.
It was all so strange and bizarre in more ways than one. It felt as though this entire place came from an entirely different time and dimension and, even while dead, 'kept up' with the rest of the world.
"I found it!" a chirpy voice brought him out of his thoughts, causing him to look back where he saw Asha running toward him, cradling what looked to be mushrooms with both her hands. "I found the food!" she exclaimed excitedly yet again and stopped in front of the house, peeking in and looking around. "This the place you mentioned?"
"Yup," he nodded, standing up and walking out, taking a few mushrooms from her arms. They were fairly large, their stems white and their caps a mix between beige and brown. "How do you know these won't explode our buttholes or something?"
"Huh? You don't recognize these?" she asked him with a strange look on her face.
"No, why?"
"These are fyner 'shrooms," she explained. "The cooks in the castle use them all the time while making that broth that you like."
"Oh! Right! I see it now, these little flakes are those white spots, right?"
"Yeah. Wow, you couldn't even be bothered to learn what goes in your food?"
"Too much mental work," he said, snapping one of the caps in half. "Are they edible raw?"
"If you want stomachaches for days, sure."
"I don't want stomachaches for days."
"Then we need to cook it," she said. "More specifically, we need to remove bottoms of the stems and boil the rest. Did you learn anything?" she asked as the two headed toward the lakeside where they set up their camp. They barely had any food left at this point and were forced to cut their meals down to once a day.
"Just that this place is even stranger than I thought," he replied. "Where'd you find the mushrooms?"
"Southside of the lake," she replied. "A little past it and past the woods, there's a small prairie of sorts. It's not just fyner mushrooms--I also saw cherry trees, wild plums, and even some berries I didn't recognize. There's enough for us to live for a while, at least."
"Not that it matters, it looks like," Sylas sighed as they reached the campsite. "There are no tomes or books or even goddamn parchments anywhere here. They're just... normal ruins of a settlement long gone."
"Well, let's run down the things that you do know," she said, putting down the mushrooms and scooping some of the lake's very drinkable water into a bowl while Sylas started working on starting a fire. "It was a small community, right?"
"Yup. And from everything that I've read, at least the majority of the world is entirely unaware of its existence."
"Hm, what else? The way the buildings look is fairly uniform."
"Their technology doesn't seem that far off from ours," Sylas said. "But I can't say they were neck-and-neck since, well, what if this is all they had? Plus, it looks like they all bathed collectively in the lake since I didn't come across anything resembling a bathhouse. There is a much smaller building that looks like it could have been an outhouse, but it's just that one. And I ask myself--can an entire village really live by just having a single outhouse? Then I figure, hey, maybe some of them took a shit in the woods. And then I realize I'm taking my frustrations by shitting on them."
"... yeah, your head is all kinds of messed up," she said. "Maybe it has something like that village beyond the forest does? An underground space?"
"Maybe," Sylas shrugged. "But I haven't seen any doors or entrances leading to it."
"Maybe it's hidden by magic."
"Then we're fucked. Alright, I got the fire going," he said. "Gimme half of 'em so we're faster. So, I'm supposed to cut off the bottoms of the stems and that's it?"
"Yes," she nodded, handing him half of the mushrooms and picking out one to show him. "This little cutoff--where the stem's color turns a bit brighter, see it?"
"Yeah."
"Cut everything below it, the darker parts."
"The super poisonous?"
"Eh, not all that poisonous," she said. "Even if you ate them raw, you wouldn't really die. You'd just be in a lot of pain for a while. Well, probably not you. You could probably drink vials of poison directly and treat it as an exotic alcoholic beverage. And you are the one calling things weird and bizarre."
"Alright, ouch. But... I don't know. I was expecting more of our venture this far west."
"More?" she scoffed. "What more do you want? We found an undiscovered settlement!"
"Yeah, and that's great and all, but I ain't a historian," he sighed. "We didn't find any traces of the cult, or of the dead, or anything, really, that can help us with our current predicament. As it stands, I'll still have to condense a second heart and go fight that thingamabob on my own."
"How far away are you from condensing it?" she asked.
"Far," he sighed. "It's not hard, it's just... long and boring. It's not even that painful anymore. Or maybe it is and I've just grown numb to it."
"It's definitely the latter," she said. "I've yet to see, with eyes or mind, someone say 'yes, commanding my blood to flow against its nature is actually pretty painless'. Alright, get to the cutting."
"... still nothing?" he asked after a momentary silence. "Even on that prairie or whatever?"
"Nothing," she replied.
"And you're unwilling to say this place is weird and bizarre? I mean, we ventured into the land of the dead, and you still didn't lose your connection to the Gods. But here..."
"I don't know," she sighed. "But it's not this place, I don't think--it's the mountains. The higher up we went the weaker the connection got until... it just stopped. So, whatever it is, it's in the mountains."
"Or--or, we just got closer to this place, which radiates some anti-Gods energy in a specific radius."
"Could be anything, sure," she said as they began to pool the cut mushrooms into the bowl of water. The fire, by now, was roaring strong and steady, and they actually had to wait for a little while for it to calm down to put the mushrooms over. "But you really want this place to be negative in some way, huh?"
"No, it's not that," he shook his head as he leaned back, letting her do the rest. "I'm just... angry and disappointed. I was expecting to find something that will help me make sense of the world, and yet, I just found more questions. That seems to be the theme of my life here. Go someplace expecting answers, come out of it with a thousand new questions and virtually no answers."
"Can't you just be inspired by wonder and forget the questions for a little while?" she asked, smiling lightly. "Treat this as... as sort of getting away from it all, from all the questions and answers and the uncertainties of the world."
"Ah, I suppose," he sighed. "There's been one thing that's bugging me, though."
"What's that?"
"You haven't looked me in the eyes since last night."
"..."
"It's very lonely, you know."
"S-shut up," she mumbled, lowering her head and hiding her cheeks. "I... I need time."
"Time, I suppose, is one thing we have in spades," he said, chuckling but not pressing any longer. "So, take as much of it as you'd want. I'll train for a bit. Just call me out when the meal is ready."
"Don't push yourself too hard."
"Wouldn't dream of it."