Chapter 476: Strange Gathering
“So… that is your home country?” Derek asked. Both he and Alanah were already wearing cloaks, covering them from head to toe to hide their identities as a human and a half-elf once they passed through into Linderis. Currently, they were still on the Vorandell side of the border, but when they wanted to, it would only take them mere moments to move to the other, less accommodating, country.
“Yeah,” Alanah replied. “That’s it… the country where I was born, and where I spent the first decades of my life. Though, the vast majority of those years were spent trying to survive The Echoing Abyss.”
“Do you remember how to get to the abyss that you were talking about?” Derek asked.
“I don’t need to,” Alanah answered as she flicked her wrist and pulled out another map. “I thought it would be a good idea to ask about a map of Linderis when I was in that shop in Kyllar, and to my surprise, they actually had one.” She unraveled the map, then she pulled out another, and held them up together. “This is the city we just came from, so we would be somewhere around here,” she said as she nodded to an area on the map of Vorandell.
“I see,” Derek said. “So that would put us… there?” He pointed to a spot on the Vorandell map just a short distance away from the city of Purna. “Then…”
“Then that would put us right around here.” The map of Vorandell disappeared, and Alanah pointed at a spot on the Linderis map to the far east side. If they crossed the border where they were, then they would step into the boundaries of the map and they would be able to go from there. Alanah then traced her finger to the west until it landed on a dark spot near the bottom-middle of the map. “This is The Echoing Abyss, and our destination.”
“Got it,” Derek said with a nod. “It doesn’t look too far away… at least it isn’t on the complete opposite side of the country.”
“And there most likely won’t be many settlements near it,” Alanah explained. “The village where I lived was an exception, and its proximity to the abyss is one of the reasons that it was invaded in the past. Since it was so close to the dangerous area, the humans who raided my village—who killed my mother—were most probably traveling through that area to avoid any of Linderis’s major cities or soldiers. Not many people go through that area, after all. Other than raiders, only some either brave or foolish people will take that as a shortcut. Even our village was built on the far edge of what could be considered part of the area around the abyss.”
“And why do people avoid it? The surrounding area, not the abyss itself,” Derek clarified.