Book One – Chapter 8

As he sought distance from the crater in the days that followed the Vicha confrontation, Yves’s mind, occasionally shaken from its numbness, returned to the behemoth. A creature capable of swallowing sea creatures and ships whole, it had embodied a living dungeon, a mountain brimming with treasures. In eras long past, it could have overwhelmed entire armies or seasoned adventuring parties. The witch, in the haste of the storm and the short time it took for her barthar to catch up, could not have scavenged every item strewn across the expansive path from the lighthouse to the crater. It was impossible for the familiar to zig-zag back and forth from one end of the wading mountain mass to the other. Most likely, they had randomly picked up whatever they stumbled across, and still they had gathered 21 items. Considering that the sled was filled to the brim, they might have even left some things behind.

The thought made Yves mad. Hundreds of artefacts must lay littered across the path between the lighthouse and the crater – an insurmountable trove of precious treasures and unique weapons just waiting for the next dumb-luck-idiot to stumbled upon. It was an infuriating waste.

Over the past eight years, Yves had crawled through dungeons, swamps and forests. He had braved battles with beasts, sprites, and giants, brushing death left and right, to maybe eventually find one singular item — which more often than not turned out shit painted gold, not even worth enough to end up in the Chest of Useless Artefacts. And now, he could have collected more than he had amassed in his entire lifetime and probably ever would by doing fucking nothing, by simply walking up and down the plateau. He could have gathered everything. He could have taken everything back to the lighthouse for proper examination. He might have found something that would have aided him in travel or with all his other issues —

But he had left, incapacitated and drained, incapable of action. He could not even walk properly. He felt that the Jabarrah was the only thing that kept his body from collapsing. But the Jabarrah was no healer. With each passing day, Yves’ body and eyesight deteriorated further, the latter a regression again aggravated after shifting back from the Mirror Dimension.