After making sure every fruit core and any traces of food was burnt to ash and scattered all around the rocks, they were ready to leave. Immediately after scattering the ashes, the group got up and left.
“Everyone ready?” asked Vaeludar.
They nodded their heads.
“Then let’s go,” he ordered. With that said, they picked up the bags they each were carrying and continued on their way.
During the entire morning, they descended downward from the mountain top they were at. Even though the pathway down looked easy as baking a pie, they still found it dangerous. Boulders and other large rocks had lain across the group descending on the mountainside. They didn’t see it easy to descend, but found a bunch of lose rocks that could slip and fall at any time.
They may have received help from a long dead White Knight, but they didn’t seem to have help of what lies before them. They were on their own as to how they were going to continue. They traveled this far and considered they were almost out the mountain range.
Still, they had a lot of land to travel, and they had no idea of what will come cross on their long journey. It would be a few days before anything can be for certain. For the time, it was a lot of walking and traveling on their feet across a terrain of mountains. No one, but the Griffin, can take flight.
On the mountainside, the group was coming solid land and found themselves walking amidst a ruined fortress covered by a glooming fog and three tall towers with a large torn wall built around the towers.
“What was this place supposed to be?” asked Marina.
“I don’t know,” said Vaeludar.
“This place looks like it used to be a monastery,” said Wonomi.
“How would you know that?” asked Flavius.
“I learned about ancient fortresses built in the southern swamps of Shimabellia when I was training of how to be a military trained sprinter. Ancient fortresses in the southern swamps look like what we are seeing here.”
“If such things excited in the south, why are we seeing one in the north?” asked Vaeludar.
“It is said that before the kingdom of Shimabellia was ever founded, they was a great empire that ruled the island. I would say some thousands of years before the first King of Shimabellia ever ruled. And the people constructed fortresses, like this one, as a place of worship.
“They would worship some kind of Shadow God they believed would bring an age of darkness and eternal pain and suffering. They were shadow cults that served the base of this long, dead empire now forgotten. Only ruins they left behind still remain.”
“And it would seem this was one of those fortresses, or monasteries, would be those places of worshiping this Shadow God, which I have no doubt would be none other than Lusìvar,” said Vaeludar.
“What makes you say that?” asked Galvin.
“Think about it from all the stories,” said Vaeludar. “There were a few survivors from the Second Generation of which Pangaea was still around: Valverno and the four White Knights. They taught the ancient people of how life and thrive. And, all of a sudden, they vanished.
“And then, I would guess, that would be around the time Lusìvar would take the opportunity to corrupt the minds of the early humans to forge an empire. That is the logical way I would have to guess how history could be taught.”
“Almost sounds true, but it is all theories,” said Monico. “But parts of those stories seem to be true.”
“How?” asked Marina.
“We met a White Knight,” said Monico.
“But he didn’t tell us about the past, only what’s ahead,” said Flavius.
Vaeludar gave a small grunt suddenly. “Enough talk about ancient societies. Come up with all the theories we want, only the people of the long-distant past would know that kind of knowledge now dead. We have a goal to keep in mind, and we need to continue on.”
They nodded in agreement and continued on their way down from the mountainside, leaving the foggy fortress behind them.
Soon enough, they could hear the sounds of a river rushing down from the high mountain elevation. Snow that melt from the mountaintops would have its draining water flow from the mountaintops, flow down on the mountainsides, and flow into a single stream that would turn into a large river.
Vaeludar and his company finally made their way down to the river and somehow they would have to follow it down to the place where they are going. The question was: where is the boat the White Knight’s ghost mentioned? It was nowhere in sight of them. They were going have to search for it.
Just as Vaeludar took his first step to the river, music flutes of a pipe was heard. Echoes from the distant edges of the hill, where the sounds of the river running closely to where a large trench was coming from.
Fluting and water sounds mix together sounded of a hypnotizing tone. Voices of singing of girls, sounding like Marina’s singing voice, joined with the pipe.
The music notes of a pipe and siren-like singing voices sounds had echoed in Vaeludar’s hybrid ears. Strangely enough, the music was too familiar to him.
Flavius, Wonomi, Monico, Galvin, Flarefur, and Marina were hearing the sounds as well. They were alarmed when the sounds came abroad.
“What is that? Sirens?” asked Wonomi.
“I’m the last Siren, remember?” said Marina.
Then the men and the Griffin looked at Marina, knowing she is a Siren. Sirens did have a reputation of singing and they all decided to keep their distances from her and keep close to Vaeludar.
“Vaeludar, what’s wrong?” asked Wonomi. “Is that a Siren with a flute?”
“Have you not heard what Marina said?” asked Vaeludar. “She
