Chapter 732: Jaedon
Jaedon was a large town caught between the rolling hills of the empire and the prairies of the Arboreal Plains. In the last few hours, we’d passed by several small farming communities, but all of them had been abandoned. Now, as we stood on the last major ridge of the Empire, the horde spread behind us, we could see Jaedon on the horizon.
The prairie was vast and endless, so flat it gave sight to the curvature of Enusia. Ripples of wind course along the tops of the long grasses like waves on the sea, traveling from one horizon to the other.
The town itself was tucked between two gentle swells of earth, a small river passing between them. Close to a thousand houses were lined up on streets in a grid pattern, with hundreds more homesteads dotting the farmland around it. The fields were touched by spring growth, the furrows of stilled earth looking like freshly combed hair.
Black Mist curled around the town, filling the street and alleys like fog in the dead of night. The land was drained of color, the soft greens and browns of the fields gray. A few patches of darkness riddled the landscape outside the town, spaced out more the farther they got from the town.
"Did Connor come here?" R’lissea asked in a horrified whisper.
I squinted at the black mist, struggling to identify the source of the mana. There wasn’t one.
"One of our scouts came across a farmhouse smothered in the stuff," Fyren said. "It was attacked by a few rotting corpses wearing the garb of farmers. The mist seems to come from the undead themselves."
"Does it affect demons?" I asked.
He shrugged. "The scout was unaffected, but there’s no way to know for sure."
"Let’s get a little closer, but stay out of the mist. Could you have Incinderus join us while Zephyriss leads the horde around it?" I asked.
Fyren blinked. "Are you certain? It would be faster just to travel through."