Dare to journey the Stone Road

The ominous peaks of the Kyssyr mountain range do not at first seem a wise choice for your route. You reason that if you can evade the deep elves and other denizens of the mountains, and stick to the Stone Road carved through the rock itself, you might be able to enlist the help of the gnomes to transport you to your destination of Gerlangen. Storm clouds rolling over the countryside makes up your mind. If you can avoid a storm, you will brave the Stone Road.

You take the Victory Road to the signpost and veer off to the northern expanse of the Kyssyr foothills. Initially, this is easy going. The hills are gentle and the road is in good repair. As you proceed, you enter a deep valley just before the first of Kyssyr's lower peaks. The moon hangs above the looming mountain and it casts its shadow over the valley, creating a darkness deeper than night.

The Stone Road descends into the rock. You feel uncomfortably enclosed by the steep walls that create long, unpleasant echoes from Aegis's footsteps. Side channels cut into the stone, seemingly too narrow for a person, appear every few hundred feet. You wonder what made these channels and what might lurk in them. Sometimes, you rein Aegis to a halt and listen to sounds that you might be imagining.

The main channel finally enters the first mountain as a tunnel bored through the rock. You do not know what methods were used to build this road, but it must have truly been wondrous. Every so often - not often enough for your comfort - a sconce has been bolted into the arched ceiling of the tunnel and it is filled with a dull green alchemical fire that offers some illumination.

The road becomes a bridge as it crosses a plunging river within the mountain. The sight of the mountain falling away into darkness and the rush of distant water takes your breath away. Aegis seems unconcerned and plods steadily across the stone bridge. You keep hoping to see the light of the moon ahead, but the tunnel just seems to continue, deeper and deeper into the underground beneath the mountains.

You enter a large chamber, apparently natural, and ahead you see that it is filled with a forest of fungus and luminous lichens glowing blue, red and yellow. The Stone Road curves around this chamber, circling this strange forest and coming back around to cross another stream of black water. It would seem you could leave the road and cross the fungal forest and then rejoin the road on the opposite side, saving yourself perhaps an hour of travel by avoiding this ridiculous circumnavigation.

Aegis does not seem to like the fungus and you have to admit that there is something unwholesome about the fleshy, phallic stalks and bulbous fungal pods.