The Traveler approached the cracked, crumbling remains of the portal slowly, his injured leg dragging across the black sand as he lurched ever closer. Despite the relentless bolts of pain lancing down his femur and settling in his knee, he couldn’t help but laugh. For three years he had searched this world for a way home, only to find it in the sea battered ruins he had so quickly disregarded in the moments shortly after his unwilling arrival. If he’d only looked closer, spent but a moment of his time investigating the towering remains, he would have seen the traversal runes carved on the inside of the archway and been on his way in half an instant. His impatience had been his undoing then, just as it had so many times in the past.
Yet now, given all he had experienced, he was not so sure he would wish that corrected past upon himself. To do so would be to lose all he had learned here, and all he now brought home with him. The only thing he thought he might change would be seeing that last feint from his adversary here for what it was, thereby saving himself the hurt leg. Not that it mattered in the end. The Weeping Monk was dead, his corpse likely being nibbled upon by the fish and crabs of the sea, while he was on his way home with a leg that would heal quickly in the capable hands of his village’s menders. All he had to do now was wait for low tide.
He sat upon a small bluff where the ferns met the sand and bided his time. This place was beautiful, he saw that now. The way the mist snaked through the sea stacks, how the waves so reliably rose and fell upon the shore. The great green forests that made him so fearful upon his arrival no longer held horror in their shadows. It had been those shadows that had saved him from the Monk on more than one occasion, and he now saw in them a refuge rather than a place to fear. The bright sun, golden heat, and open plains of his home could not be further from the dim light, gentle cool, and dense woods of this world, and he realized now how sorely he would miss those once-confounding features. This place had introduced him to a different side of himself, a side he was sure to rely upon in whatever battles awaited him on the other side of the portal. He had to remember that. Though this portion of his journey was ending, the real fight still lay ahead. The man who’d sent him here had earned himself three years of peace to build his power through this banishment and would be more formidable now than ever before.
Yet even in this disadvantage there was strength. He would never be expecting the return of the enemy he believed he had banished. And in the time since, he would most certainly have made new foes along his unending quest for dominance – foes that would become allies to the returning Traveler.
Soon, the sea receded, and the wave-softened stairs to the base of the portal emerged from the water. Slowly, he climbed them, careful not to slip and fall on the algae that clung to the slick rocks below his feet. Standing in the open space of the archway, he took a moment to smell the sea and feel its spray on his face one last time. Gulls called in the distance as he whispered the words of the traversal incantation, as if wishing him a safe journey. He smiled at their courtesy as the magic surged forth from the ancient ruins, suffusing him, lifting him, pulling him home…
And in a flash, it was as though he’d never been there at all.
Selected from Annex K-8869H.
Song List
0:00 Fables – DEX 1200
5:31 Other Options – Hanna Lindgren
9:11 Dunes – Valante
12:00 Entering – Harbors & Oceans
14:01 Interstice of Sound – Dex 1200
25:07 Sonzai – Valante
28:35 Edge of Ocean Reefs – Hanna Lindgren
32:23 Harmonic Light – Amber Glow
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