Silence. Total and utter silence. The feeling of nothingness and of proximity to an impenetrable wall. The feeling of the ground flying up to meet him. He blinked and it was snowing. Isaac reeled from the teleportation and staggered. He felt like he had been disconnected from the endless ocean of dark mana and then reconnected to it in another area. His vision swam as his entire being tried to realign with existence.

Lenna grabbed Isaac's shoulder and opposing elbow to start leading him out of the teleportation circle. "Isaac? Isaac are you alright?" She asked worriedly.

"Yeah, yes, I just need a moment." He rasped out and willed himself to stabilize.

"The teleportation seemed smooth enough." Lenna told the magically inclined guard that had approached without Isaac noticing. He hadn't made an attempt to hide his presence; it was just that Isaac was recoiling too harshly to be properly aware of his surroundings.

"Many have hard time." The guard explained. " It pass soon." His accent was thick and he seemed to like taking out all of the little words that made the language sound smooth.

"What causes it?" Lenna wondered.

"Too precise awareness." Isaac answered for him. "I felt the edge of reality." He continued with his eyes closed as he tried to center himself. "The sudden disconnect and reconnect to mana itself was what really did it, I think."

"There are plenty of sorcerers who can teleport completely fine." Lenna replied and looked to the guard for confirmation.

The guard nodded. "Yes. I going say, we not know."

Isaac opened his eyes and started trying to blink his vision back to normal. He was already feeling steadier on his feet. He felt like what he was experiencing was something like a horrible case of mana vertigo. The guard and Lenna just watched over Isaac for a moment until he finished stabilizing and straightened. "Okay, I'm good." Isaac told them. He wasn't quite completely back to normal but he was close enough.

"Good." The guard said and then nodded towards Lenna and left to return to his post.

Isaac looked around while Lenna continued eyeing him to make sure that he was actually alright. Everything around them was wet stone and light snowfall that melted on contact with it. Cobblestone roads, buildings, walls, and lampposts were everywhere. Not magically conjured stone either, but naturally mined and stacked stone. The air was thinner and the air was cold. The entire town around them was muted grays. It took Isaac a moment to realize that it was not just the lighting but everything the people were wearing and every decoration was bled dry of color. Lenna's unapologetically bold purple armor was what really tipped him off to that fact.

"I feel like we just fell into a monochrome painting." Isaac told her.

"The grays are far more similar here than anywhere else we've been." Lenna agreed. "Is gray not normal?"

"It is… but not like this." Isaac replied. "Usually something retains its color. Almost everyone here is blonde but they are leaning more towards platinum than yellow. The few brunettes that I can see even have some gray mixed in."

"It's the stone dust." An aged male voice came from a dozen feet away from them. There was a man sitting in the crook of a nearby building with a blanket over his lap. He looked worn down in every manner of the word. Aged, tired, worn out, thin, balding, completely gray haired, a beard that looked like it was cut with a sharp stone, half a dozen layers of tattered clothes over top of one another, everything about the man screamed 'beggar'.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

"Mines?" Isaac wondered.

The old man nodded. "Quartz and occasional gold and silver." He explained.

Isaac walked over to the man and leaned against the wall a comfortable distance away from him. "You don't have the same accent as the guard." Isaac commented. Lenna joined him against the wall a moment later. At the very least, the edge of the roof of the building would keep the snow off of them.

"I'm from central." He replied. "Thought I knew best an' left the family farm to strike it rich in Nualt."

"Does that happen often here?" Isaac wondered.

The man shrugged. "It happened to me, once, pretty early on. I shoulda left but I got greedy. Now I sit here an' wait for my end or somebody to take pity on me." The man truly looked dead inside to the point where Isaac knew that he was not being facetious.

"But why stay here?" Isaac asked. "Why not at least head down the mountain to where it's warmer?"

"I made my bed, might as well lay in it." The old man replied. The entire time, the old man hadn't even looked at Isaac. His gaze just stayed focused on nothing at all.

"Well gramps," Isaac began and tossed a gold coin onto the old man's lap. "thanks for the information. Get yourself something warm to eat." Isaac told him and shoved off the wall. "Lenna, we need cloaks compatible with this weather."

Lenna nodded. "Agreed." She replied. "And then we should find a guide. The maps stop at the bottom of the mountain."

"Headin' to see the elves?" The old man asked.

Isaac nodded. "Yes."

"Get an elvish guide." The old man told them. "Anythin' else is asking for death. The forest is hungry for human, lightfoot, and dwarf."

"Thanks." Isaac told him. "We'll do that."

The old man grabbed the coin from his lap and started rubbing it with his thumb while he nodded. When he didn't say anything else, Isaac and Lenna nodded to him and then headed off into the light snowfall to find a place that sold self-drying cloaks. That was the only way they were going to be able to hike down the mountain during the end of winter. As the snow on the sides of the mountain range melted, everything would be in a permanent state of soaked. That was even ignoring any late snowfall or rain that was going to ensure that there wasn't a single dry patch in the entire region.

Isaac and Lenna got strange looks from the locals. They weren't directly hostile but it was clear that none of the locals wanted anything to do with them. Even the few that helped get them to where they needed to go seemed to want to leave as soon as possible. Isaac even noticed a few of them only stopped when they noticed the double platinum tags hanging from the duo. The young woman who was running the tailor they were directed to gave them one look and instantly knew why they were there. Isaac was also entirely sure that she up-charged them to the high heavens. The self drying enchantment was one of the easier ones to put on fabric because as the fabric bent it would just alter the efficiency of the enchantment and increase or decrease the rate of self-cleaning and self-drying. Even so, she charged the eight hundred gold for Lenna's undyed one and nine hundred and ninety for Isaac's black one.

"That was borderline robbery." Lenna commented as soon as they had left the store. "She even refused to haggle."

Isaac was frowning. "I know." He replied. "But we didn't have much of a choice." He shook his head. "Should we check in with the Adventurers' Guild next? They might have a lead on a guide."

Lenna nodded. "And they will have warm food. You look cold."

"This place sucks the heat from my bones." Isaac grumbled. Isaac took a step and appeared five feet in front of a person that had been walking their way. "I'm looking for the Adventurers' Guild." Isaac told the woman who wrinkled her nose at him. Isaac's eyes turned death flame black and she almost tripped as she unconsciously took a step back. His eyes went back to normal. "It was a simple question." He told her flatly. "There was no reason for you to give me that look."

The woman swallowed hard. "Two streets that way. Toward middle of town." She told him. "Can go now?"

Isaac nodded and then shadow-stepped back over to Lenna. "These people are worse than the gray drab of the city." He told her. "Let's go."

—

The Adventurers' Guild Hall looked like it had been imported from a warmer part of the world. Instead of gray stone it was entirely made of thick, incredibly long logs stacked on top of each other. It was built like a log cabin only it was the same size as all of the other Adventurers' Guilds that they had seen. Isaac and Lenna walked inside and were surprised at how cool it was inside the building. They had both expected the building to be heated in some way other than adventurer body heat but they had been mistaken. It was still a fair bit warmer than outside but it was anything but cozy.

The Guild Hall was mostly empty save for a few passed out adventurers in a corner and one person keeping the food warm in the kitchen, if the clattering inside was to be believed. The receptionist's desk was even empty. The entire place was dead. Just like the color in the fortress city. Isaac and Lenna had seen the tops of the walls from time to time as they moved throughout the city and it quickly became apparent that Nualt was not really a city at all. Nualt was a fortress built around a mining town built on the road that connected the Kingdom of Altia to the forest that shrouded one of the few elven kingdoms on the continent. The people there were harsh and cold just like the mountain range that they lived on and the minerals and metals that they mined. Isaac was starting to wonder exactly what kind of people ruled over such a place. For now though, he was just wondering where on Primatia the receptionist was.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.