Jaded Woods: Creekside Path
The creek was long, curved, and flat. The forest, once they’d reached the point where the trees didn’t let any sunlight at all through, didn’t change much. The only visible source of sunlight, at the moment, came from the center of the creek, which was for the most part unshrouded by the trees. The terrain, however, did start to change slightly. It was gradual, but the ground slowly started to slope upwards. The creek, too, grew faster and the occasional rapids could be seen.
The green sand, which continued to blanket the ground, became coarser and more gravel-like as they continued.
Eventually, after a few hours of bickering as to what they’d do when they reached the creek’s end, Chumi was treated to the hilarious sight of Piper walking directly into a green wall that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. She let out a squawk of surprise as she fell back into the creek, and shot a burst of water in the general direction of the wall.
“You ok, Pip?” He said, once he stopped laughing enough to get the words out.
“Yeah, I’m, um, fine,” she said, face red, looking at the thing she’d run into. The wall, it seemed, stretched far above the trees. Piper, already in the water, waded to the center of the creek. The creek’s head seemed to be here, and the water was flowing out of a very small crack in the green expanse. The wall itself was mostly smooth, and looked to be made of the same green stone the gravel that covered the floor was made from. The spot where her blast of magic had hit was gouged, far deeper than it would have been if it had hit any sort of stone she could think of. There was still water dripping from it, carrying a sort of sandy sludge with it.
“Chumi, what do you think this thing is?” she asked, touching the wall with her hand. It was grainy and rough, almost as though it was made from the sand, rather than the sand being made from it.
“Some sort of cliff? Can’t say I can think of any cliffs this smooth, though...”
“Maybe a wall of some sort?”
“Let’s follow it and find out!”
Chumi reached into his bag, and pulled out a lantern. A quick spark, and warm red light shone from it, lighting the deep, dark forest.
The creek abandoned, they followed the sandstone cliffs edge. The map, bound to her own perception, simply marked the structure as the forest’s edge, calling it Jaded Wall. The cliff was as unnaturally straight as it was smooth.
Barrier Cliffs
An hour of following it through the forest later, and they encountered what looked like the walls’ natural counterpart. A tall cliff, whose very presence caused for there to be no neighboring trees to obscure the sunlight. So tall, in fact, that they couldn’t actually see the top of it. What they could see, however, was something shiny, blue, and slightly sparkly. Piper’s heart started to race in excitement at the sight- That couldn’t be what she thought it was, could it? It was hard to tell, the sun was hiding behind the cliff itself.
“Chumi, are those gems up there...”
“I think they are. Can you cut me a spot for the ladder?”
A few measurements later, and she gouged out a hole near where the glimmering rocks were. Chumi threw up a rope, tipped with a strong hook, with many little rungs to the sides. When it landed within the hole she cut and found purchase, he gave it a few tugs, and offered her the rope. Piper began climbing.
Just as she thought! The glimmering gemstones in the deep green sandstone were none other than perfect, raw, un-used orbs! Deposits of them were very rare, and highly sought after. Just the amount she could see from here would leave them rich and wealthy beyond anything they’d ever had before.
“They’re orbs! I’m gonna cut some out! Be ready to catch them!” She called out to Chumi, who fiddled with his bag for a moment, then pulled out a large net. While Orbs couldn’t be broken until they were enchanted and then exhausted, it wouldn’t do for them to fly all over the place.
The net was spread out on the ground, so Piper pulled out her wand once more, and started blasting the gems out of the sandstone. It was really fortunate that the stone was so weak.
Before long, there was a massive hole in the side of the cliff, and still hundreds of clusters of the little fist-sized gems. She’d really hit the motherlode! Her arms were getting tired from holding on to the rope ladder, though, so it was about time to climb down.
The net below was absolutely stuffed with orbs- They’d never be able to take this many with them, even with magic on their side. Even then, you could only compress orbs within other orbs so many times before the spells started to become unstable. A rush of water later, and the sandy slush that had come down with the orbs was cleaned away. Chumi got to work magically compressing some of the loot, and Piper sat down, watching him work. Chumi really was quite the masterful enchanter, with a few tricks, he could compress a whole second layer before compression instability started to become an issue. As it was, despite his prowess, they could only take sixteen of them, not including the orbs used to store the others.
They both looked at the compression orb once he was done, watching the tiny ones below its translucent surface spin.
“Even if we just took this one home, we could afford to live comfortably for the rest of our lives,” Chumi said.
“Yeah, but...” Piper frowned.
“We’d never be hungry or anything, we could even open our own business,” Chumi reasoned.
“We won’t go down in history that way,” Piper said, with a sort of finality to it that didn’t actually close the topic.
“Right, we’d have to really take home a lot of these if we were to make history,” Chumi agreed.
“How would we, though? There’s no way we can carry that many, you know the rules about carrying around more than one top-level compressed orb,” She said.
“I mean, if we got a cart, maybe...” Chumi proposed.
“What would pull it? This forest’s far too thick for a centaur to make its way through, even if we’d brought one,” Piper shook her head.
“We could pull it ourselves,” Chumi said, obviously joking. Obviously. Piper ignored it just in case.
“You know,” Piper said, thoughtfully, “they did do that thing over in Palimalou, where they found some strong, stupid Paliise, and got them to handle the agriculture. Saved them a lot of money, not having to ship workers over,”
“What are you proposing?” Chumi asked.
“I’m saying, if we were to find some... Whatever savages live around here, mystify them into thinking we’re gods or something, we could have an entire mining operation handling all these orbs for us, and we wouldn’t even need to do anything,” Piper said, somewhat pleased with herself for thinking of it.
“I mean, there’s no guarantee that they’d fall for it, though,” Chumi said.
“Well, yeah, but we can just have anyone smart enough to figure that out either elevated to a management position or executed as an example,” Piper said.
“Right, good idea. I think they did something similar in the Pali Pals Tomato Company, and they were very successful,” Chumi reinforced.
“Okay! That’s that settles it, then. We’ll leave the net here, give me a moment,” Piper pulled out the map, and touched the spot they were on, the only place not called Jade Something, with her wand. A little blue dot appeared there, marked Orb Mining Facility.
“We just need to find ourselves some savages, and we’ll be good to go,” Piper said. She also went over and released the grappling ladder from the cliff face, and handed it to Chumi. Chumi stored it, and the compressed orb as well. They looked around, trying not to forget anything, and decided there wasn’t anything they needed. They looked at the now-soaked cliff face, and followed it once more.
