Aeoryi

Tales of the King's Folly: Chapter 9

The journey west is very bland. I wouldn't want to talk about it, but there are some intresting moments.  I decided to incorperates some I-outline elements, before we reach chapter 10, which will probably have some demonic stuff going on.

Anyways this is a double chapter for today so feel lucky.

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I walk for ages. I walk through day and night through the frozen wasteland. It is unforgiving and unfriendly to my journey.

I cannot remember how many days it was before something broke the landscape.

It was ruined walls of stone. It was assembed in squares, almost like an outline of a fortification. Why the west needed one so far north was a great question. It had clearly been abandoned to the massive sheets of snow, and hadn't been visited in a long time. Ice coated the floors of this stone brick outline of the castle. Discarded lanterns lay unused on the ground. I walk through this desolate foundation and find a well preserved item among the ancient ruins. It is a ceremonial plate of some sort, embedded into the ground. It is a iridescent silver, gleaming in the sunlight and shimmering as I walk by. The plate is square, and about 2 feet wide and long. It has an indented pattern on the side resembling diagonal markers. It stands out in the snow, the plate's shiney surface is a sign of some sort of civilization here. Whether they were connected to the west was a question only those in the west could answer.

The foundation's outer layer all connects up to what looks like part of a tower, with oddly colored rocks layered upon itself. There is a few drawers, that were already looted by ambitious thieves who preyed on the few who lived in the north. There is a bookshelf with books that have yellowed pages, I open one and find that it is written in a glyphic language, which has a few characters repeating but does not look like a western or central dialect of glyphs. How strange.

Either way, I leave the terminated castle alone as I start to head southwest. The ruins were not unsettling, they were just curious. Many strange groups had tried to colonize the north, and most were largely unsuccessful. Northernmast was the major city the farthest north. It provided some unique exports, and joined the Western empire almost two hundred years ago, even if it maintained its strange culture and people.

I start to head through a narrow canyon that I know leads to Northernmast. Northernmast would be a good place to stop at, even if the people were being weird. I had only been there once, and only visited the rural areas of it. They had some nice folk, but the city council - the people behind all the desicions of Northernmast - were not. Hopefully they would have changed by the time I arrive there. The west had been apparently putting more resources into upgrading the Northernmast's technology, and their leaders would probably also have to change. But either way the city council held no military power and wouldn't really be a problem for the most part. They probably wouldn't even know the world was flooded yet.

As I make my way to Northernmast I can see the people. The people would have to hunt and gather far from the city, and would likely be looking for food. Animals were scarce around these parts for that reason. They had tracked and killed all their prey. 

I can soon make out the jagged skyscrappers of the Northernmast's imperial district. It was very much a westerner thing to build massive towers out of metal for no reason other than to prove wealth. It was quite strange to see such collosal towers puncture the skyline. I always think that the high imperials that make up Northernmast's elite had too much time and money on their hands.

I could see the rural district of the Northernmast. It was... pathetic and underwhelming. It didn't show the same wealth and effort as the high imperial district. It looked like a bunch of hide barely scraped together to make shelter. It swarmed with people who walked on the dirt paths that made up the city. Some of the major roads were paved with aphsalt, but that was mainly a thing of the imperials. The city was said to be built the shell of a massive metal dragon, which was hard not to dismiss of as a myth after seeing a literal dragon blow up a few days before.

So their entire city was built on lies. The city council had probably created those myths - they liked control and were quite power-hungry when it came to money.

Their entire city was made on lies, and functioned off of corruption and I was going to visit it.

I couldn't wait to see this rotten trade outpost of the north.