Chapter 593: The Gathering of Remnants
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In a sunlit clearing within a dense forest, Nina and Morris stopped, transfixed by a tall silhouette that appeared from nowhere. This mysterious figure looked just as surprised.
After a few heartbeats, the figure revealed herself as a nimble elf maiden dressed in light hunting gear, holding a peculiar weapon with an elongated axe staff. Her voice, reminiscent of a pristine spring bubbling through the woods, asked, “Didn’t you two get the command to fall back? Why are you lingering beyond the boundaries of the Silent Wall?”
Nina and Morris exchanged a knowing glance, silently communicating their predicament.
“Uncle Duncan,” Nina relayed through her thoughts, “we’ve run into a third ‘Shireen’. She’s mentioned the Silent Wall, too.”
Shaking off his initial shock, Morris greeted the elf maiden respectfully. “We weren’t informed of any such command. Can you enlighten us about the current situation?”
A look of surprise momentarily flashed across the elf maiden’s face, realizing Morris’s genuine unawareness. She swiftly regained her composure and said, “Things have taken a turn for the worse. A dark corruption is expanding beyond the Silent Wall. The only refuge lies within the wall’s confines due to the Creator’s absence.”
The Creator’s absence?!
Grasping the weight of her words, Morris managed to maintain a stoic front, solemnly inquiring, “Would you lead us to this ‘Silent Wall’?”
The elf maiden promptly answered, her gaze reflecting both duty and worry. “You’re fortunate to have come across a ranger like me. I may be one of the last of my kind still patrolling these parts. Follow my lead before the ominous corruption reaches this place.”
She began to make her way deeper into the forest but halted after a few strides, casting a fleeting glance back at the duo. “Just so you know, my name is Shireen. It’s a name you’d do well to remember.”
Both Morris and Nina acknowledged with a shared nod, watching as the elf maiden named Shireen resumed her path, guiding them further into the forest towards the Silent Wall.
After what seemed like an endless journey through the dense woods, Shirley began to question something she had always taken for granted: was the so-called “Silent Wall” just a myth, or did it genuinely exist?
She had been walking for so long that she had lost count of the hours or days. The sprawling forest, with its towering trees and thick foliage, had a disorienting effect on Shirley. No matter where she turned her eyes, the view was virtually identical—an endless stretch of trees. The occasional sight of a fallen tree or obstacles like hefty boulders and rivulets offered a brief, albeit limited, variation from the repetitive landscape.
Navigating through the forest was no easy feat. The ground, littered with rotting leaves, presented an unpredictable terrain replete with concealed pits and treacherous spots. Obstacles like intertwined vines, sharp thorns, and protruding tree roots often lay in their path. Recalling her days in the city, Shirley had once believed that navigating the narrow, cluttered alleyways, crisscrossed by pipes and conduits, was the most daunting terrain she had faced. However, this wild, untamed expanse of nature made even the most neglected urban landscapes look easily navigable.
She remembered an old saying of the captain. Wasn’t it something about the civilizing influence of human development?
As these thoughts flitted through her mind, memories from her distant past seemed to play in her mind’s eye. Pulling herself back to the present, she looked up to find the elf leading her.
Shireen, the elf, maneuvered through the forest with an ease and grace that left Shirley in awe. She glided through the thickets and around the trees with the ease of wind weaving its way through a wide plaza.
Eventually, Shirley’s exhaustion got the best of her, and she stopped in her tracks.
Almost immediately, Shireen too stopped, even without turning around. It was as if she had sensed Shirley’s need to pause.
“When will we reach the ‘Silent Wall’?” Shirley asked, seizing the chance before Shireen could question her sudden halt.
“We have a long way to go,” answered Shireen, her face etched with concern. Her reply seemed both ambiguous and specific at the same time. “We must keep moving. We need to be back in Atlantis before the encroaching vision engulfs us.”
This term, “encroaching vision,” had been on Shirley’s mind for a while. After some contemplation, she decided to ask, “What do you mean by encroaching vision?”
She had been reluctant to raise this inquiry before. She feared her lack of understanding might offend or upset Shireen. Miss Lucretia had explained that Shireen was a native soul existing within the dream. Shirley wasn’t completely sure about the nuances of a native, but she understood it to be a fragile consciousness. Introducing unfamiliar ideas or asking too many questions could potentially unsettle its delicate balance.
Shirley was familiar with the phenomena called “blackouts” or sudden lapses in consciousness. She had personally experienced these during her tutoring sessions with Alice, especially when they delved into concepts far beyond Shirley’s understanding. These episodes usually manifested as brief interruptions in her chain of thought.
These mental disruptions made her reflect on the teachings she had received from Lucretia. Shirley had a theory: if she ventured into certain taboo topics, Shireen, the elven girl guiding her, might undergo similar mental disturbances. As a result, she was initially very cautious about discussing specific subjects in Shireen’s presence.
However, the more time she spent with the elven maiden, the more Shirley came to understand that Shireen wasn’t as susceptible to these disruptions as she had originally thought.
In fact, Shireen was remarkably resilient.
Even when Shirley asked her questions that were out of the ordinary, Shireen often chose to sidestep them. It appeared that aside from guiding Shirley to the Silent Wall, nothing else could truly perturb or distract the elf.
Over time, Shirley’s confidence grew, and she began to probe Shireen with a barrage of questions. While the majority were met with ambiguous responses, occasionally a casual query would extract a profound revelation from the elf.
“The decay started after the Creator disappeared,” Shireen remarked, veering away from her usual dismissive tendencies. She continued with a somber tone, “Its true nature remains a mystery to us, but it consumes and distorts everything it touches in the forest, morphing them into grotesque shapes. It poses a significant threat.”
Hearing about the missing Creator, Shirley’s interest was piqued. Although she didn’t always actively participate in the lessons, she never missed a gossip or tale shared among the crew. She was well-versed with elven folklore. “Wait, are you talking about the legendary Creator… Saslokha?”
A moment of panic hit Shirley after she spoke the name. She worried that invoking such a sacred figure might upset or even anger Shireen. However, she soon realized she might be over-analyzing the situation.
Shireen appeared unbothered by Shirley’s candid reference to the Creator. Instead, a profound sadness seemed to cloud her eyes as she softly responded, “The Creator will return. He’s simply surveying the boundaries; he just ventured a little farther than usual this time… Until He returns, Atlantis will employ the Silent Wall to protect the elven kind… Atlantis will patiently await His comeback.”
Shireen’s concluding statement resonated with a tone of self-consolation, which didn’t go unnoticed by Shirley.
Before Shirley could delve deeper into the topic, she observed a striking change in Shireen’s demeanor. The elf, who seemed deep in sorrow just moments ago, now radiated alertness. Gripping her battle spear-axe tightly, Shireen’s eyes bore into the forest’s dense foliage as if anticipating an impending threat.
A sudden unease gripped Shirley, and she blurted out, “What’s going on?”
“Quiet!” Shireen whispered with an intensity that made Shirley’s heart skip a beat. “A corrupted presence has infiltrated our sanctuary…”
Corrupted? What did she mean?
As she ruminated on the word, Shirley began to discern faint disturbances emanating from various parts of the forest—the underbrush, the ground, the shadowed hollows of the trees, and even the ambient air seemed tainted.
A looming sense of danger pervaded the atmosphere. It felt as though malevolent beings, lurking unseen, were slowly closing in on them. An oppressive weight of evil, coupled with an uncanny feeling of being under surveillance, choked the dense woods. Through a deep empathic link with her canine companion, Dog, Shirley sensed the malefic entities that were seeping, like liquid darkness, into their realm.
From every corner, tendrils of pure obsidian darkness began to stretch out and intertwine, forming an ominous web.
The followers of the Black Sun? Or could it be the Cult of Annihilation?
This revelation stunned Shirley momentarily. She vividly recalled that as they entered the forest, Dog had detected the faint aura of the Annihilators. Then why were they now being ambushed by these horrors, the vassals of the Black Sun?
Shaking off her momentary paralysis, Shirley’s instincts screamed for action. Readying herself, she watched the encroaching shadow tendrils with intense scrutiny. She whispered urgently to Shireen, “Brace yourself. These monsters lurk and move within shadows, making them exceptionally challenging adversaries. They’re incredibly resilient.”
As she communicated this, she noticed a rippling motion beneath the shadow cast by a nearby tree. The tendrils, hiding within, were rapidly coalescing into tall, slender, humanoid apparitions, materializing with unnerving speed.
But Shirley was prepared. She had been anticipating this very transformation.
In an instant, chains clinking and air slicing around her, she lunged at the closest shadowy figure. Summoning Dog with a ferocity she had seldom displayed, she hurled her partner as if it were a giant flail.
Dog, reminiscent of a meteor hammer, charged headlong into the initial Black Sun offspring. A sickening crunch, echoing the squelching of a rotting fruit, followed. The shadowy humanoid was annihilated before it could even fully comprehend its environment, bursting into a splatter of putrid ichor.
Simultaneously, throughout the forest, where the dense canopy and foliage played games with the light, countless shadowy figures began to materialize at an alarming rate…