Part six  

Posted by The Alchemist in

The surface of the lake which Anias sat next to was frozen solid, and a light dusting of snow blew across its surface. For the last few minutes he had been watching the weather. He knew little about weather patterns but to him it looked like a big storm was blowing in from out of the north. From here he could see the surface compound that led down into the old college of sorcery. Its white marble walls lay in ruin, and past them in the middle of a courtyard an old fountain could be seen. It had taken him several hours of searching through rubble when he had first arrived there to find a way down into the college itself, the main entrance had partially collapsed.

If the storm was going to be a blizzard it would probably be the first heavy snow, making travel much harder. If he didn’t go now, the snow would be a lot higher the next time he tried. It would only take him half a days hike to make it to the great pine forest not far to the south west, and once there he would be secluded from the icy winds of the storm. On the other hand getting caught out in a blizzard didn’t really seem like all that good of an idea either.

Having made up his mind Anias stood, shouldered his pack and began to make his way towards Hillsboro. The storm seemed far away for the time being.

The going was slow. The snow was already a foot deep and it was no task for an old man. It was nightfall before he reached the safety of the woods. Once there he set himself up a camp and shelter. Searching through the trees he gathered deadwood and pine branches with his hatchet. Pine branches made for a great shelter, and insulation, and dry needles would make for a good fire starter. Finding the dry needles took some digging through the snow but they were there. Even with those things it was a long cold night.

The blizzard hit in the night, blanketing the land in several feet of snow before morning, and just as quickly as it had arrived, it was gone. The hiking once Anias returned to the open plain was miserable.

The next few days passed slowly, though there were a lot of things to occupy his thoughts and his time. Getting supplies to the academy was going to be a problem. He really didn’t want to reveal its position to the world, and if he brought a wagon driver and some muscle to move boxes along with him, word was sure to get out about such a marvelous place. He supposed near his death he would tell someone about what he had found but until then he wanted the place to himself. He didn’t think he could get several months worth of supplies back to the academy by himself.

The second problem was the well itself. Something seemed to be wrong with it. Why would someone engineer a place to make such a peculiar vibrating sound? It permeated the whole compound, and it would have driven him nuts. Perhaps if the well had been drawing in energy from its surroundings for so long without having energy drawn from it, it had become too full, it contained too much energy. Even if all that was true, great, so what was he supposed to do about it? Its not like he could make it all magically disappear. Well, okay, maybe he could magically make it disappear, so to speak, but he had no idea as to how.

Regardless of what he was going to do about the other things Anias firmly resolved to get a pair of those snow shoes, it had been bad foresight on his part to venture up here without them.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 2, 2008 at Wednesday, January 02, 2008 and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments feed .

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