Map

Wind howled across the moorland, the grass being practically flattened by the strong gusts. The cold air was a blissful reminder of the fact that summer was finally over. Viktor sat behind one of the large granite statues atop the tor. It granted him just enough cover from the wind, but he still felt the chill in the air. Grey clouds covered the sky, and the threat of rain was looming on the horizon. 

Viktor flipped through his knapsack looking for the snacks he’d packed this morning. There was a small loaf of bread, neatly wrapped in fabric and tied together with string. It wasn’t a lot, but it was enough to tide him over until dinner, whenever that may have been. 

‘Ryth, do you want some lunch?’ Viktor said, looking over to where Ryth was busy picking up any small rocks that caught his attention.

Ryth didn’t answer straight away, likely unable to hear Viktor through his fur hood and the roaring wind. The dark fur coat he was wrapped in was still neatly tied with the leather tassels, the knot pulled as tight as Viktor could get it. From where Viktor was sitting, Ryth looked more like a small bear cub than a toddler, but at least he was warm. His cheeks were rosy from the cold but he fought every time Viktor had tried to put a scarf on. Apparently the mittens were fine – despite the fact that Ryth was now struggling to grip the rocks – but keeping his face warm was too much. 

‘Ryth,’ Viktor said louder, but Ryth continued to be oblivious to his attempts to get his attention. 

Viktor thought about throwing something towards Ryth’s feet, but realised that the only thing he had was the bread. Instead, he pulled himself to his feet using the rock behind him. In the few steps it took for him to reach Ryth, he noticed the feeling of static in the air. Right now the top of the tor was the last place he wanted to be. 

He crouched down behind Ryth, reaching out to drum his fingertips against Ryth’s back. With a small start Ryth turned his head to look over his shoulder at Viktor, a small gappy smile on his face. 

‘Lunch?’ Viktor asked, and when Ryth nodded enthusiastically in confirmation, Viktor scooped him up to carry him back over to where the knapsack was leaning against the granite.

Viktor sank back down to the floor, placing Ryth in his lap and keeping one arm wrapped around him. With one hand, Viktor unwrapped the bread and tore a small chunk from the corner. It was slightly stale, the crust was no longer crisp and crumbly, but instead felt tough. It took a few other smaller chunks to get to a piece soft enough for Ryth to eat. He tore the fluffy centre out and held it up for Ryth to bite. Usually he’d let Ryth take it, but considering the difficulty he was having with rocks, he didn’t stand much of a chance with a small piece of bread. 

As Ryth chewed his piece, Viktor ate a bit of the stale pieces, chewing the crusts but finding that they didn’t change shape or consistency. It squeaked between his teeth but he still swallowed the barely edible bread. It wasn’t mouldy though, so it definitely could’ve been worse. 

It continued like that for a few minutes, Viktor feeding Ryth the softer pieces, and eating the tougher parts himself. The air felt far wetter than it had before, the heavy mist beginning to roll up the tor to where they sat. Dark clouds coated the sky, the sun barely recognisable through the thick, overlapping layers of clouds. From where he was, Viktor could see the sheets of driving rain growing closer and closer. If he didn’t start to make a move now, he was going to get caught in the storm.

With one last piece of bread popped into Ryth’s mouth, Viktor wrapped up the remaining pieces and buried it in his knapsack. In one swift motion, he swung the knapsack over one shoulder and stood up, keeping Ryth secure in his other arm. 

‘Come on then, let’s go find somewhere to hide,’ Viktor said, pulling Ryth’s fur hat back into place before walking towards the centre of the tor. 

He looked around at the horizon, scanning the thick mist for any sign of shelter. In the East there was nothing but rolling moorland. In the North there was the distant light of the seaside town of Ashenport, but there was several miles of forest between him and the town. He’d come from the West, and he knew it would take at least an hour for him to get to the closest shelter that way. That left the South. The mist was too thick for him to see through, but the storm was coming from the North, so going South made the most sense. Even if he couldn’t outrun it, there was a chance it would lose some of its strength the further it came inland. 

Checking Ryth one more time, Viktor couldn’t help but smile at the way Ryth had shrunk into his coat, hiding himself from the cold air. He moved Ryth to his other arm so he could slip an arm through the other strap of the knapsack and then he began to walk South.

The grass had become sodden and slippery. Despite the fact that Viktor chose to walk diagonally down the hillside, he almost lost his footing more than once. His mind was torn between solely focusing on his footing and trying to conjure up the map of the area in his head. He knew that Ashenport was North, and there wasn’t a town or village directly South. But there also wasn’t any woodland or mountains. As far as he knew, there was just more moorland.

Before he began to doubt his choice of route, he realised that the moorlands did have some form of shelter in the form of ruins. It wouldn’t be great, especially if he wandered into a cairn or abandoned prison, but it was something. At this point he’d take a decrepit hunter’s shack over getting caught in the storm. 

The ground squelched beneath his feet as he followed the small stream of water that had formed downhill. Ryth was more than happy to let Viktor carry him, nestling himself as close as he could without Viktor needing to intervene. Viktor could hear the faint rumble of thunder, but hadn’t seen the sky flash with lightning. Either the storm was still a safe distance, or he was exaggerating just how bad the storm would be in the first place. 

Through the fog up ahead of him, he could just about see the outline of a set of ruins. The small arching structure was a dark silhouette in the drizzling rain. He picked up the pace as he felt the static in the air begin to grow.

‘Where go?’ Ryth asked as he looked around at the moorlands.

‘We’re going to those ruins,’ Viktor told him and pointed at the barely visible outline of the arched ruins. ‘We’ll be out of the rain there.’

Ryth hummed and nestled his head back into the crook of Viktor’s neck. 

Viktor trod carefully on the moors and did his best to avoid any of the deeper puddles that would almost definitely lead to him sinking more than a metre into the ground. The stream he followed curved through the moorlands.

As he got closer to the ruins, he noticed the stream split in two and curved out and around a small island. The ruins stood at the centre, pillars curved up from the ground and collected in one large circular structure. 

Small stone steps crossed the stream and created a path that led directly into the ruins. Viktor took each step slowly, shifting his weight to make sure that neither he nor Ryth would end up in the freezing stream. The rain began to grow heavier as he crossed over onto the island, and he continued to only step on the rocks just in case the island was nothing more than a mossy bog.

The stones that made up the ruin were coated with dark moss. Large cracks carved into the arched ruins and the floor was littered with the fallen stones. It definitely wasn’t the safest place to hide, and if the storm grew too severe Viktor wasn’t sure how well it would hold up.

The entrance to the ruin was half-collapsed, and it took Viktor some manoeuvring to get through the tight gap without hitting Ryth’s head off of anything. His thick coat managed to protect himself from any of the ragged stones scraping his skin, but it didn’t stop him from immediately hitting his own head as soon as he stood up on the other side.

‘Ah, fuck,’ Viktor said and rubbed his head. As soon as the words left his mouth he remembered Ryth in his arms. He looked down at the toddler who was looking at him with a small smile. ‘Do not repeat that.’ 

Ryth laughed but for once did what he was told. 

Viktor looked away from Ryth and to the ruins around him. The circular ruins seemed pretty inconspicuous at first, the walls were bare and the floor was just smoothed stone. There was a small room at the centre that was blocked off by a singular stone door. The gaps in the ruins were causing strong drafts in the outer section of the ruins, and Viktor didn’t feel a whole lot safer there than he had out on the moorlands. 

The ruins were very similar to a lot of the old burial tombs that were scattered around. It hadn’t been too long since they were put out of regular use, but the frequent storms on Aedria paired with whatever strange forces plagued the moors. 

‘You ready to do some exploring?’ Viktor asked and moved towards the door.

He grabbed the dagger from his belt just in case there was something waiting for him on the other side, and he pushed against the door. 

The stone scraped against the ground, and a small patch of purple light flooded out from the inner room. Viktor had been expecting a staircase that wound down to the tombs below. He’d been expecting to be hit with the strong smell of old dusty coffins and oil lamps, but instead there was nothing.

There was no staircase going into the earth. Instead, there was a surface that circled around the room that was littered with paper and charcoal. Each piece was completely blank, and the parchment was stained with age.

The walls above were carved into panels, the stone chiselled into even rectangles. Most of them were meaningless, just lines that created crosses on the stone. But there was one that stood out from the rest. A purple glow emanated from the centre of the panel in a small cross shape. The glow illuminated cracks in the stone that cut through the panel.

Viktor moved closer, trying to make out what the rest of the panel was through the low purple light. As he did, he realised that the panel was a map. It was almost a map of Aedria, but the shape was off around the edges. The southern peninsular didn’t stretch out as far, and the cove in the north wasn’t deep enough, but Viktor couldn’t think of any other island that had the same small crescent island above them. 

But the map wasn’t even the most interesting part, there were deep crosses carved into separate sections of the map. One was on the South-Western corner of the island, near to where Valenveil was. Another was on the South-East, where there wasn’t any land any more. The third was on the North-East that seemed to be deep in the forests around the harbour of Ashenport, but there was nothing there anyway.

The most interesting was the one in the centre of the map. The cross that was there glowed, and the purple only became brighter and brighter the more Viktor looked. 

Ryth reached his small fingers out towards the light, and Viktor moved close enough that they could both reach. Viktor traced the cross with a finger racked his brain for any explanation he could. But there was nothing. 

The light didn’t feel like anything, and nothing happened when it coated his skin. 

‘Why purple?’ Ryth asked and reached out to the light.

‘I’m not sure, honey,’ Viktor answered and stood Ryth up on the surface in front of them. 

Ryth leant against the panel, and pressed his hands to the stone. As he did, Viktor looked at the panel some more. There was a series of strange etchings above the map in a script that Viktor had never seen before. 

Viktor picked up one of the pieces of paper and a stick of charcoal. He pinned the paper over the panel with one hand and used the other to make a relief of the script. He didn’t know what it meant, but he was sure he was going to figure it out. But he definitely wouldn’t be able to stay on Aedria to do it.

‘Looks like we’re going on a trip to the mainland,’ Viktor told Ryth with a smile. 

Ryth looked up at Viktor with wide eyes and gave him a gap-toothed grin.

The rain still hammered down outside, but Viktor was more than content to wait it out.