The Road to Ruodoon

The Road to Ruodoon

Blena led the way along the dusty, well-travelled road towards Helion Province. Tajan, the only Solarynite among them, walked beside her in the hope that one familiar face might make the party seem less peculiar.

It did not.

A Mechanum with a metal eye, a Virielian healer, a Thalorian earth mage, an Ironroot guardian and a Solarynite mage were strange enough company. The griffon rider circling above them made subtlety entirely hopeless.

Workers paused among the tall wheatgrass to stare.

“Did you see that?” Grend asked the woman working beside him.

She shaded her eyes as Drue and Dasher swept over the road. “Must be the end of the world.”

“Or the beginning of a very complicated joke,” called another worker.

They watched until the griffon was a dark speck against the southern sky and the travellers had passed beyond easy gossiping distance.

Anderix consulted the delicate gauges fitted along his wrist augmentation. “It will be another three and a half time until we reach Helion province, another two and a half to the Losden, and then three days by river to Bymotha. After that, we return to walking. You are taking us rather far, Kaelen.”

“Since when does a Mech complain about hardship?” Kaelen asked. “But you raise a good point, we won't have time to go into the city. ue has gone ahead to arrange a boat at the Losden docks and a gulather to carry our packs from Bymotha into the northern wilds and we need to get there before nightfall.”

“Can you tell us why we must travel so far?” Anderix asked.

“And why we are not travelling by carriage?” Tajan added.

Kaelen exhaled. “First, the High Council did not give me many gold pieces for this investigation, and I am fairly certain I have spent half of them already. That is why we are walking. Second, for my mechanical friend—”

“It is an augmentation,” Anderix interrupted. “I am flesh and blood, just as you are.”

He sounded more wounded than angry.

Blena glanced at the polished mechanisms around his eye and arm. “Not just like us. But we do like you.”

Anderix looked at her, uncertain whether he had been defended or insulted.

“As I was saying,” Kaelen continued, “we need to reach the mountains north of Bymotha. There is a volcano in the wilderness called Ruodoon. It has recently become active and...”

“We are not volcanologists,” Blena said. “Why are we investigating volcanic activity?”

Kaelen’s jaw tightened.

Alster stepped eagerly into the silence. “There are remarkable flowering plants in the Bymothan wilderness. The warmer soil around Ruodoon allows some species to bloom twice a year and grow nearly twice...”

“Thank you for the diversion, Alster. When investigators went to examine the renewed activity, they discovered the remains of another tower. The High Council wants us to inspect it because we are now, apparently, the resident experts on mysterious ancient towers.”

Kaelen delivered the title with dry amusement, although his expression betrayed more than a little pride.

“Experts?” Tajan asked.

“We have been inside one more than almost everyone else.”

“That is not what expert means.”

“It is what it means to the High Council.”

By late afternoon, the pale stone buildings of Helion rose around them. They passed beneath sun-washed arches, crossed crowded market squares where they met with more commentary and stares. Then they descended towards the Losden, where Drue waited beside a narrow riverboat with a deeply unimpressed boatmaster.

“You said six travellers,” the boatmaster complained.

“There are six,” Drue replied.

The man pointed at Dasher, who stood on the dock with her wings half spread and her beak inside an unattended basket of dried fish.

“She flies.” Drue insisted.

“She eats.” The man complained.

“That will be a separate arrangement between me and the fishmonger.”

The journey along the Losden took three days. The broad river carried them north between wheat fields, orchards and low villages whose white walls shone gold in the evening light. Dasher followed from above when she pleased and rode on the rear deck when she did not, much to the boatmaster’s despair. Alster spent hours leaning over the gunwale to inspect floating plants. Blena spent nearly as long predicting the precise moment he would fall in.

He never did, which she considered a personal disappointment.

They reached Bymotha beneath a violet sunset. Tajan refused even to discuss an inn and led them through winding streets to the home of an old friend named Maressa. Within moments, they were swept into a household of cousins, children, musicians, neighbours and at least one elderly aunt who appeared to belong to everyone.

The cramped house proved far more comfortable than any inn. Music spilled into the garden while the family passed dishes down a table too small to hold them all. Maressa served fish pies filled with river fish and greens picked from the garden that morning. The pastry was made with Solaryn wheat and rich gulather butter, then pressed to the inner wall of a clay oven until each pie blistered and turned golden brown.

Anderix studied the oven with professional fascination.

“It is a hole full of fire,” Blena told him.

“It is a highly efficient radiant-heating chamber.”

“A hole full of fire.”

He ate four pies.

Later, Tajan joined Maressa’s family in a song she claimed not to remember, despite knowing every word. Drue watched her from across the garden until Anderix asked him a question twice and received no answer. Blena noticed both failures. She said nothing, but the next song she played on a borrowed hand drum was loud enough to discourage conversation across three streets.

They left Bymotha the following morning with full stomachs, lighter moods and an unusually patient grey gulather named Moss carrying their supplies. The cultivated fields soon narrowed into rough tracks and then vanished beneath the northern jungle. Broad leaves knitted together overhead, trapping damp heat beneath the canopy. Insects whined in the shadows. Hidden birds called to one another with notes that sounded uncomfortably like laughter.

Ruodoon appeared only in glimpses: a black shoulder of stone beyond the trees, crowned by a slow bruise of smoke.

On their second night in the wilds, they made camp beside a shallow stream. Alster insisted that the ground beneath a stand of flowering brush was unusually soft. Blena insisted that anything described by Alster as “unusually soft” was probably wet, carnivorous or both.

For once, he was right and the soft ground provided some welcome comfort in the far from Inn quality campsite.

The camp had been quiet for perhaps an hour when Alster’s bedroll began to wriggle.

At first, he assumed he was dreaming. Then something cold and slightly sticky touched the back of his knee.

He sat upright with a strangled cry and launched himself out of the bedroll, dragging half of it with him.

Blena was awake instantly, sword in hand. “What is it?”

“Something is in there!”

“In your bedroll?”

“No, Blena, in the Helion Markets. Yes, in my bedroll!”

The blanket shifted again. A curved tail emerged, its tip glowing blue-black in the darkness. Then came a small brown head with bright markings around its eyes and leaf-like tufts rising above its ears.

Tajan lowered the crystal she had raised. “That is an armoured blushing bluerat.”

“It was touching my leg.”

“A grievous crime.”

The creature backed out of the bedding. Its spine was covered in rough blue fur hardened into overlapping plates by a glossy secretion. It held one of Alster’s grain cakes between its forepaws.

“It stole my supper.”

“It found your supper,” Drue said. “You left it beside your head.”

The bluerat’s luminous tail flicked. Three beetles darted towards the glow and dropped neatly into a tiny pit concealed beneath woven grass.

Anderix’s eyepiece clicked into focus. “It constructed a trap.”

“Intelligent little creatures,” Alster said, his fear already surrendering to fascination. He crouched at a cautious distance. “The hardened fur protects the back, while the secretion on the tail attracts prey. The colouring usually depends upon diet.”

“Excellent,” Blena said. “Your intruder is clever, armoured and covered in gland secretions. Invite it back to bed.”

The bluerat stuffed the grain cake into its mouth and vanished beneath the brush.

Alster carefully examined his bedding before climbing back inside.

“If you scream again,” Tajan murmured, “we are leaving you for the volcano.”

“I did not scream.”

From the darkness, Drue reproduced the sound with impressive accuracy.

Even Kaelen laughed.

The following day, the mountain announced itself before they could see it. Steam hissed from cracks in the earth. Mud bubbled beneath curtains of fern, filling the air with a sharp mineral smell. Ruodoon rumbled at irregular intervals, each vibration travelling through the soles of their boots and into their bones.

The track became a climb over damp stone and twisted roots. Moss though worthy beast, could go no farther, so they secured the gulather in a sheltered hollow with water and enough feed for several days. Drue left Dasher nearby, though the griffon eyed the mountain with her feathers raised.

“She does not like it,” Drue said.

“Neither do I,” Blena replied. “I simply have fewer feathers with which to express myself.”

Alster stopped beside a cluster of red-veined leaves. Hidden beneath them was a single pale flower with tightly curled petals.

A Mernt blossom. Rare, delicate and extraordinarily useful for indigestion.

He glanced back at the others. Tajan was already watching him.

Alster straightened and continued walking as if he had seen nothing at all. When the others turned away, he slipped the blossom into his specimen pouch. There was no reason to mention it. They had become strangely judgemental about perfectly responsible plant collecting.

The tower remained invisible until they were almost beneath it.

Vines and broad-leafed creepers concealed its black stone walls against the side of Ruodoon. It stood upon a narrow ledge halfway up the volcano, the upper half shattered away as though struck by some ancient force. Broken walls and exposed stairs reached into the open sky.

“That,” Kaelen said softly, “was not built by the people who live here now.”

They crossed the ledge and entered through a split in the stone. Inside, the ruin was unnaturally cool. The walls were dark and smooth beneath the dust, their joints so precise that Anderix could not fit the point of a tool between them.

The floor trembled.

Once.

Then again.

Ruodoon’s energy moved through the tower like a slow, buried pulse.

At the centre of the chamber stood a pedestal holding a dull, clouded crystal.

Outside, the volcano gave a tremendous rumble. Steam shrieked from the jungle below. The crystal flashed, and a figure appeared in the air above it.

They all held their breath.

It was Kahleen.

Thy Quest: Strength in Difference
The journey to Ruodoon reveals that each hero contributes different knowledge, skills and perspectives to the group. Identify two moments when a character’s unique background or abilities help the expedition. Explain why the group is stronger because its members are different.