A dark cave...

Macius rode carefully along the area for a while, but he finally had to admit it. The drop offered no way to climb down, the pathway back was hopelessly blocked, and the way up was much too sheer for an armoured warrior, let alone a rider. In truth, even armorless, only a trained mountaineer would have stood a chance attempting to climb up such treacherous rock.

Macius then started exploring the zone itself. For days, he lived on the crystalline waters pooling in little ponds, where lizards and dragonflies shared his thirst. He caught rabbits in little traps, and grilled them over a fire of cut shrubbery. Nights were cold, but Macius was a trained Knight-Errant, and if the deep honour of serving the Lady and his Lord came at a cost of some little hardship, then Macius thought it a fair trade.

As days went by, the proud Knight started feeling a growing anxiety. Was he really to stay stuck, up there, like an hermit monk, for the rest of his life? He had to admit it, that remainder of his life would probably be rather short in such a predictable future: spring would end, summer would go by like lightning flashing to the sky, then the heavy rains of autumn would turn the zone in a dirty swamp, before winter brought meters of snow and ice. He would freeze to **** and die in a horrible fashion, either of the dolorous spikes of cold through his weakened body, or of the gnawing horror of hunger. Yet, he reasoned, if such was to be his fate, then such was the will of the Lady, and he would suffer it with honour. Nonetheless, he kept looking for ways to escape his predicament.

The absence of trees made his options scarce, and indeed the paucity of possibilities brought its own blessing. After a little while, Macius came to realize that the dampness of the zone contradicted the meager supply in waterfalls, as only two tiny ones went over the mountainside to disappear into thin air and moist vapour. Some of the larger pools probably soaked through rips in the rocky ground, but he started building a mental map of the tiny water flows. The effort soon paid off, and he found a smaller depression rimmed with shrubs that he'd have kept missing, hadn't he been following a tiny river attentively. Several smaller waterways united to form a gurgling brook that disappeared under a mossy archway. The stone, rough-cut, didn't seem quite natural. Macius' trained eye recognised what could only be defined as defensive positions cut through the rock. A peasant would only have seen tiny holes pored by the erosive action of water, but to one of the best warriors in the Kingdom, a very different world unfolded here. This place, a long time ago, possibly eons before the Dukes of Elenar took their troops into the warm South and united the lower realms into the place of power and wealth it now was, had been a fortress of sorts. As he walked ahead of Endelion, slightly bent, he kept noticing tiny details. Rocks that could easily be pulled across the pathway, forming immovable obstacles to an attacker that only a mage would be able to blast through. Suspiciously bent rock that could slide into the pathway, crushing the unwary. Curving, looping parts of the tunnel that would allow troops deeper in to threaten troops coming in, almost unseen. The moist, mossy environment semi-natural looks would not have seemed that way to most others, but the deeper Macius went in, the more cautiously he moved. Even though the place did not seem to have known human presence for longer than he could imagine, there was something deeply unsettling to its very presence deep within the holdings of his Lord, unknown and forgotten.

After a long march, he finally reached a gigantic cavern. On one side, far up, three huge gaps into the rock opened a cathedral-like tympanon. At the bottom, a long, thin lake snaked through obsidian rock, and the light reflecting off the water lighted magnificent red granite. It looked more regal than the Royal Church of Saint Pelous in the capital, and more holy than the Cloister of the Blood Rose. Only the Monastery of Kereloin, faraway on the blue coast, with its high cliff walls and the ever breaking waves, could pretend to match the natural beauty at play here.

Macius felt like an intruder, a savage son of the jungle entering a world of power, opulence and sophistication. And yet, here, there was nothing but rock, light, and water.