The Academy: Location 3

A night had come and gone and Nyota still had not finished her quest. She knew now where she was headed and where the quest would end. She was still unsure what part of the stone she was looking for, but she knew that knowledge would come in due time, just as the rainbow had shown itself and the ribbons of gold had glittered for her. The apprentice looked to the Earth, to nature, to help solve the riddle. Without it, she would have agonized for days over which locations to travel through.

When the sun broke over Wolfrange, Nyota heeded the Elemental’s call once more. She’d finish it today, and find the shard along the broken, bloody canyon. The apprentice did not know if her friend had finished his quest, or even if he was looking for the same thing she was. She had not seen him since the Elementals had called and at once, she yearned for his comfort. The sooner she finished, the sooner she could seek him out, so as soon as daylight peeked above the snow-capped mountains, Nyota left the Wolves.

The third part of the riddle had not been difficult to decipher, even without the whispers which drew her greedily towards Ersatz. Glory without sword? It could only mean the spies, who garnered success with their words and secrets. Sometimes, the wounds given in Ersatz were deeper and more lasting than the ones given in Blitzkreig, and this would be the less-than-ideal conditions the riddle referred to. The land was shrouded in darkness, and rarely did good come out of it. Nyota had spent her time as an ambassador trying to undo the mayhem the spies created. It was ironic, then, that the Elementals would call her to the place she worked against, to the mystery she had been appointed to unravel.

Ersatz was not far from Wolfrange, but she had never been there. Her steps were not tentative, but they were not as wild and needy as her journey through the Reef and Range had been. The land was covered in thin, spiny, dark trees and Nyota slipped through them soundlessly. Several times, she caught glimpses of the spies, moving shiftily through Ersatz’s grasp, but she said nothing to them. The place – even more than the Glade – gave her the creeps and she didn’t loiter there long. Only long enough to barely explore the frostbitten shadows, to wade through the tendrils of freezing mist and fog which kept the spies and their words concealed.

Satisfied that she had completed the third part of the Quest, Nyota exited Ersatz as quickly as she had entered it, grateful that the Elementals had led her there. She now knew what the ambassadors were truly up against, what Wolfrange’s spies endured in their journey to a most unusual kind of glory. The fog which blanketed Ersatz stretched out for quite some time into the borderlands and Nyota moved hastily through it.

Last… last would be Supraya, the bloody canyon. She’d seek out the rock which could fall and find the shard. As she moved towards Supraya, another unknown land, she weighed her options as to which piece of the shard would be waiting there. “I made ocean and flame equal, but I am only one of these,” the Elementals had said, and her journey to Supraya would reveal the answer to the last part of the riddle.

level one scholar, earth III