Onwards they went into the dark crimson of Lindequalme. A place that had once been full of life, then poisoned, and was desperately trying to make a come back still. The Forgotten One Pode, who had been the one to scar the forest, had been defeated, and in a way Stare felt a loss for that. She wondered in that moment if Vitruvion had ever met any of the Forgotten Ones and made the connection to the ancients who knew about Althanas so long ago.
I have met the pantheon gods, he growled back at her. That was enough for me.
You might have found an ally in Pode, or another? Stare suggested, quite honestly. The story goes that they were once mortals, they have a vendetta against the gods here as much as you do ...
Bah, he cursed back at her, and that was his answer. Stare could understand, maybe empathise with him for his dislike of the gods. They were the ones, after all, who had forced him into a human form and taken away much of his more godly powers. Omnipotence and bodilessness was beyond him even now with Stare.
Her eyes kept scanning the darkness before them. It was only when she realised that one of her other sights might be more useful.
Heat sense. Apparently part of the natural colour spectrum of light. She let her eyes widen and gaze around, letting the range of hot red to black fill her mind, the red all the warmth in the land, black the complete lack of it. She saw small red lights on trees in many places, birds hiding in the crowns. A brood of deer slowly made their way along the edge of a river far away. And … there was a distant figure, humanoid in form, striding away from them.
She blinked and reached out to grab and tug Nevin's cloak. “Nevin” she whispered, “There is a being over there,” she pointed.
The blood mage nearly jumped out of his skin when his friend grabbed his cloak - for the past bit, he had been concentrating on pursuing the feeling of the disgusting tainted blood magic in the air - and that had been consuming his attention as he tried to keep pace on the thing that was creating the taint. So when Stare tugged on his cloak - well. He didn’t scream, but there was a swallowed shout that made him cough as he turned to look in the direction that she had indicated.
In the darkening gloom of the forest, he couldn’t see what she had spotted - but at the same time, Nevin was fully aware of the fact that her eyes were far superior to his own. So he closed his eyes and instead focused on the sense of his own he could trust - and sure enough, the bitter, angry chorus was stronger in the direction that she had indicated. His eyes snapped open and he pulled his whip from his belt, coiling it up to prepare for the fight that was coming. He began moving through the brush after the figure that she had detected, his eyes piercing through the gloom as he did his best to make his way quietly.
