Chapter 120: Broken Lands
A sickly sky bleeding its color down the acres of dead land stretching endlessly around them, riddled with mountainous rocks, steep cliffs, and jutting parts of plants corroded by time. Sticky air through all of it, as if there in the winds was something eager to seep in underneath the skin.
Nothing seemed whole here. The sun was a broken thing gracing half the land, leaving the other half deserted. The ground gave in when he least expected it, breaking as though his feet pounded on brittle glass. His sound vision scarcely helped since the frequencies were rather alien for him to take in.
That was Valens’s first impression of the Broken Lands, and he had to admit there was some thought behind the name.
They marched in a single file through the boulders, down across worn paths, the crimson lights of the day roasting mercilessly their unprotected skin. Further in the distance was the promise of long walls and faint outlines of pointy towers which suggested there truly had been an effort at taming the land here in the Broken Lands.
It is a good change. A much-needed change. I don’t have to look over my shoulder anymore. This scarcity comes with its own unique sense of peace, I suppose.
There wasn’t much else to do anyway. You get dealt a new hand, you play it just fine. Nothing complicated. That was what Nomad had told him once, and by the look of him, he was rather diligent with his own suggestions.
“Do we just go in?” Selin muttered, one hand clamped over her mouth, her eyes squinted toward the distant city, the tails of her dress sweeping the dusty ground of this half-deserted area. “What if they ask questions?”
“Never been to Broken Lands before, eh?” Nomad shook his head. “People don’t ask questions here. There ain’t much sense in that.”
“Adventurers abide by different codes,” Celme said, looking somewhere between mildly bothered and slightly offended. “Money and stones are the most important ones of them. You pay your dues, you get a pass. They don’t care whether you’re out searching for a beast or a quest.”
“The duality of it, I suppose, is what makes the distinction of these worlds so interesting,” Valens commented. He’d heard many a wild thing about Broken Lands, the guild-owned city-states being one of them, and the notion that he would be visiting one soon brought the curious academic within him. “But surely they’re not barbaric people tearing through skin with their teeth? Self-interest isn’t a sin, is it?”
“You’re going to be one hot commodity in these lands, Val,” Nomad said, giving him a false smile through his recently fitted lips. “We just have to watch out that you don’t burn yourself in the middle of it.”
“Healers are always in high demand.” Celme nodded. “The mere mention of them will turn heads, especially in the Broken Lands.”