Ancient World: Part 2

A light flutter of wet leaves drifting down through the cracks in the land was the only sound the daytime transition made.  Where the trees stood up, thick trunks of ash-grey, the land drifted apart farther, revealing them to stretch deeper down than up, disappearing deep into the darkness.  The young man could only stare in silence, jaw hanging, as he caught sight of the cobbled stone walls that made up the sides of the moving pieces of land, soil resting on top for the first few feet.

The island of land his camp rested on drifted for the day, moving farther away from the glowing tree.  At times he saw windows on the sides of some islands, or doors, yet no stairs down, no lights or signs of inhabitants.  At dusk, the land moved back together, nestling around the tall trunks of the trees.  It was as if it had never happened, besides the position of the trees, the forest floor was as bland as ever.  He would need a shovel, he reasoned.  Jumping down, would leave him with no way back up that he could see, and his backpack was not equipped to solve the problem in any other way.  He also did not happen to have a shovel.  In the dark, he made his way back to the tree, pushing against it with pendant in hand.

Dawn light seeped into the cave, empty as it had been when he had found it.  A weeks travel was ahead of him, then a shopping trip, then another weeks hike back through the wilderness to find the place.  Treasure hunting was turning out to be more boring than he had anticipated.  But there was the magical land beyond the portal.  Mysteries and forces beyond human knowledge.  Some of the explorers thought the ruins and portals had to do with aliens or demons.  There were certainly tales of feral beasts and magical creatures that had been spotted in the areas around and beyond the portals.  Others tied legends of wizards of ancient past to the portals, citing their opening as some mystic veil lifting that had once protected the treasure inside from thieves.  There were more theories around, but the young man had been struck by something that rang of truth in these.  The fact that there were, as he had heard it, piles of gold, magic swords, and glory to be had in the ruins was the more pressing matter in his mind.  The way that the treasures got to those places was just another way that let his fancy wander back to the idea of being rich.  Such things, as well as what pleasures to spend the expected riches on, were what occupied his mind on the way back.

He was lost in thought about where to buy a house when he crested the hill above the port city of Rowenton.  Its docks stretched the ten miles around the half-moon cove that housed hundreds of ships, from fishing skiffs to warships.  Dotted around the cove were the various taverns, brothels, and fish markets that came with being a port town.  There were the market districts further in, large stone stores and bright crimson tents that covered a majority of the rest of the city.  At one tip of the bay, situated farthest from the youth's vantage point was the castle that sat watching over the residents.  It looked permanently dilapidated, though the defenses had never been bested by pirates or bandits when every decade or so some crazed group would see the wealth of the markets and descend upon the city.  It was in this town, in one of the shabbier taverns around the bay, the Black Seagull, that the young man had procured his necklace and the stories of treasure.  It was in that same tavern that he would truly begin his journey.