Chapter 64 - Rotten

The argument has left a bitter taste in the now renewed march. 

Arrian and Roach take the lead as unwilling partners. I walk just behind them keeping my head down trying not to invoke any further disagreements. 

As we leave the clearing behind, I notice the mana is becoming more disciplined in its direction and shape. No longer just a random network that has spread across the forest.

Though it seems to have come with a caveat, the overwhelming colour of the stream has become that same sickening shade of red we have come all too familiar with. 

I stagger my step to whisper to Clovis at my flank “The streams are merging together here. Something is pulling them together.”

Clovis nods, her eyes scanning the woods, not for mana, but for physical threats. “The concentration must be getting stronger.”

Her words prove prophetic. 

As if manifesting the devastation we encounter. 

The forest becomes more pronounced, more bizarre. The damage is no longer just the brute force of a stampede. 

The trees are warped into impossible shapes, their trunks spiraling in on themselves. With bark that seems to have exploded under the pressure causing the trees to look like they are physically wounded.

The wood beneath is exposed, and it’s wrong. It doesn't look like wood. It’s a pale, fleshy substance that throbs with a febrile luminescence, a sickly, rhythmic beat that seems to sync with the pulsing red artery in the lens.

The whole expedition pauses momentarily to gawk at their sullen appearance. 

“What the fuck could have caused this?” I hear Arrian mutter to himself, dropping his grace and poise at the disgusting reality of the situation. 

Strange holes in the ground slow our steps as they release a weird mist of smoke that causes some of the soldiers to dry heave. 

“Keep your mouths covered!” Clovis orders. “Don’t breathe it in.”

The pressure starts subtly, a dull ache behind my eyeballs, the kind that comes from staring at a screen for too long. 

I try to ignore it, attributing it to the strain of focusing through the lens. 

But then Roach grunts, rubbing at his temples with the tips of his fingers. A few minutes later, one of Arrian’s soldiers stumbles, shaking his head as if to clear it.

The ambient mana is becoming so condensed that it must be exerting a physical force on us.

The atmosphere is clammy pressing in from all sides. The dull ache behind my eyes sharpens into a piercing throb. My skull is a size too small for my brain.

“I feel… sick.” a young town guard steps out of line, his face pale and slick with sweat.

“Keep moving.” Arrian commands, his voice tight. I can see a muscle jumping in his jaw; he’s feeling it too, but his pride won’t let him show it.

The nausea builds, a greasy wave rolling in the pit of my stomach. It’s a struggle to keep my focus, to hold the lens steady when the world wants to tilt on its axis. 

I feel a hand on my shoulder and I know it’s Clovis before I even look.

“How are you holding up?” she asks, as if getting my opinion to make a clinical assessment. 

“The pressure is getting worse.” I admit, my own voice strained. “But I can handle it. We have to be getting closer to the source.”

My reassurance feels empty when, a few moments later, one of the kingdom guards lurches to the side of the path and retches violently, collapsing to his hands and knees. Two of his comrades move to help him.

“Pick him up! We have to stay together!” he barks, his own face ashen.

We are a column of misery, pushing forward through a world that is actively trying to reject us. 

The ground begins to change, the soft, loamy earth gives way to packed dirt and loose rocks. We are moving uphill. The trees become sparser, their twisted forms giving way to skeletal, leafless husks that claw at the sky.

The change in elevation is abundantly clear as the hill is a great, bald mound rising from the heart of the forest. 

Not a single tree grows on its slopes, not a blade of grass, only grey, lifeless stone and dust.

Roach comes to a dead stop, his head tilted back as he stares at the summit. His face is a canvas of disbelief.

“This… this isn’t right,” he says as he fumbles in a pouch on his belt, pulling out a folded, well-worn piece of parchment.

He unfolds it, his eyes scanning the hand-drawn lines. “It’s not here. It’s not on the map.”

He looks up from the map, a frantic edge entering his voice. “I’ve patrolled these woods for twenty years. I was in this part only three weeks ago. This hill was not here.”

His words break any remaining semblance of discipline in our expedition as they begin to chat and gasp amongst themselves briefly. 

The pressure in my head is deafening. But I have to look. I have to see it one more time.

Any more revelations today and my brain might just explode here. 

The chaos is gone. Every stream of mana, every shimmering thread of gold, blue or green, is gone. 

There is only red. 

From the thinnest capillary to the great, pulsing artery it all flows up and around the barren slope of the hill. 

I can’t quite see where it ceases but it has to be on the other side of this hill.