Chapter 15: 15 – Idrulia

Ruith’s mana rushed into the vine like an unstoppable flood. The mana contained within once again reacted and rushed towards his, but this time he was fully prepared.

The two opposing forces met, and became locked in a standstill. Ruith’s mana was trying to surround and manipulate the plants’ mana, while the plant was trying to force him out. His head started to throb with a dull pain.

‘Shit, this is harder than I thought!’

Slowly but surely, the plants’ mana gave less and less resistance. After a few minutes it had become completely submissive to Ruith. 

Ruith sighed in exasperation, it was almost like a battle of the mind even though plants did not have a brain. 

“I assume you succeeded?” Vaeri questioned while walking closer to him.

“Yeah, I should be able to try and move these vines now.”

The end of each vine was about ten feet from the doorway, so he would need to move them a bit more than that. Ruith attempted to manipulate it with his mana and the mana contained within this vine.

‘This entire system is far too big for me to take control of it completely, I’ll have to make do with this much.’

He used all of the mana he had access to, forcing the single vine to ‘un-grow’ in a way. It barely moved. A few inches at most.

‘I mean, it shouldn’t take too long I guess? We have enough food to last a few weeks if we ration,’ Ruith thought. Yes these vines were huge, but he didn’t expect it to be that hard.

“Vaeri, it’s gonna take at least a week to move them enough to where we can escape.”

***

Eight days later, Ruith had finally moved the vine enough to at least see the light of the outside. 

‘Almost there…just a few more hours!’

He had just filled his mana core to its limit once again, continuing to pour it into the vine. He had been repeating this for so long now that he would have been driven crazy if it wasn’t for Vaeri offering some conversation. Well, they didn’t really speak to each other that much.

The two only had about a day's worth of food and water left in their packs, so Ruith could only hope they would find something to eat outside.

Five more hours passed, the evening light pouring in through the windows on the ceiling. Ruith had moved the vine enough to peek outside. The large doors that had likely been there were completely ripped off, their broken pieces lying abandoned on the ground.

A wide path led away from the cathedral, but everything was blocked by large trees. They would have to actually be out there in order to truly see the landscape.

‘Alright, this should be the last time.’

Ruith’s mana once again surged into the vine, and he forced it to retreat. There was now enough space for him and Vaeri to just barely squeeze through. 

The boy fell back onto the ground, sweat covering his body and dark eyebags on his face. He worked tirelessly these past eight days, hardly getting a few hours of rest each day.

“It’s done then?” Vaeri asked, walking over.

“Yes, finally we can get out of this place…”

“Let’s not waste any time then, get up and let’s go.”

‘Can’t you see I’m tired? We could’ve stayed here for a bit longer.’ Ruith groaned, but didn’t say anything. He struggled back onto his feet and motioned for Vaeri to go through the opening.

She easily squeezed through thanks to her slim body. Ruith however, had to bend down and scrape his body against the stone and vine to get through.

For a moment, he got stuck.

“Uh, some help?” Ruith looked at Vaeri, who rolled her eyes and grabbed his arm.

She yanked him towards her and he burst through, almost falling to the cracked stone beneath his feet.

Now they had finally escaped the cathedral, and began to look around.

They were standing on a small and cracked stone platform in front of where the doors used to be. Weeds grew through the cracks and dirt covered most of it.

All around them rose tall trees, all of them at least a hundred feet in height. They had vines hanging from them, and Ruith could see a few small animals skittering around on the branches.

A stone path led from the bottom of the short stairway that led up to the huge building. It was cracked and sunken into the ground after possibly hundreds of years.

Massive roots weaved and twisted through the forest, sometimes going underground and then rising back up a few hundred feet away.

Ruith turned around, looking back at the cathedral. The outside was in far worse condition than the inside, large chunks of stone missing from its surface. He looked to the outside of the vines that had blocked the doorway, and noticed deep gashes made in their surfaces.

Some of the cuts dug at least half a foot down, and other parts were scorched as if someone had tried to burn them away.

‘What kind of power did the being that did this have…’ Ruith wondered to himself. 

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Vaeri wasn’t even able to leave a scratch on the surface of this, yet whoever or whatever made these gashes had gotten so far.

‘And for the plant to have resisted these attacks, it must be even more monstrously powerful!’

Ruith hoped that this really was just the vines of some plant, and not actually something intelligent that could attack him and Vaeri.

He turned back to the girl, who was still surveying the area around them. Ruith didn’t want to waste any more time here, eager to find out exactly where they were.

“Vaeri, let’s go now. Might as well follow the path.”

She nodded in agreement and the two of them began walking towards the path. However, Ruith noticed something on the ground in the middle of the platform.

“Hold on,” Ruith said. 

He bent down, looking at what he had seen. There were a few letters carved into the stone, but the rest were covered in a layer of dirt and weeds. Ruith used his boot to kick the dirt away, revealing what it said.

Holy Cathedral of Bastion Idrulia

“Vaeri! Look,” Ruith pointed at the words. “Bastion Idrulia! This must be where we are!”

“Bastion Idrulia…I’ve heard it before!” Vaeri closed her eyes for a moment. “Ah, now I remember. I looked through some documents in my father’s office, one of which mentioned this. The names of the Fallen Bastions are kept private for whatever reason, but Idrulia was the Bastion to the east of ours…”

“So, are we able to get back to the Bastion from here? And how long ago was this one destroyed?”

“Well, we should be able to get back. However, the journey would be insanely dangerous. The Bastion is located around 500 miles away from us, and we would be going through wilderness that nobody has crossed in hundreds of years. Who knows the horrors that could have made it their home there…” Vaeri trailed off for a moment, but spoke again. “And Bastion Idrulia was destroyed about 200 years ago.”

Ruith drifted into thought. 500 miles was a very long distance to travel on foot, especially since there was no predetermined route they could take. Plus he was certain they would need to be much more powerful in order to fight whatever beasts and Voidborne lurked throughout that area.

“Well, let’s worry about all that later. First, let’s explore this place,,” Ruith had excitement but also fear in his voice. A Bastion that nobody had seen in hundreds of years, and they would be the first to view it in all that time.

‘Wait, then who made those gashes in the vines? A Voidborne I suppose?’ The boy decided to simply hope that that creature was nowhere near them.

Ruith and Vaeri set off along the path, following it to what was hopefully the annihilated city.

It was quite a peaceful walk, birds chirping and little animals rustling around in the grass. It felt as if there was no danger around. Ruith almost completely let his guard down, but glancing at Vaeri’s tense posture he caught himself and stayed vigilant.

However, there were no surprises awaiting them. After trekking through the forest for ten minutes, the trees thinned and they came out onto a stone platform. It turned out they had been on top of a large hill, and this place was overlooking the entire Bastion Idrulia.

Ruith stepped forward to the edge of the platform, the railing had long since broken down.

He let out a breath, his eyes widening.

Continuing on for miles and miles was the fallen city, previously majestic buildings turned into nothing more than rubble. Some still stood, fractures running through their structure and chunks missing from their walls.

Everything was either covered in moss or vines, and large trees grew out of shattered roads.

In the center of Bastion Idrulia stood a tall, circular tower that reached hundreds of feet into the air. On top there was railing, suggesting that someone would have stood all the way up there at one point. Vines grew all up its surface, but they could not hide the large cracks on its surface. Ruith had no idea how it had not crumbled yet.

He could see three walls of the Bastion rising into the sky from this vantage point; it appeared as if they were right next to the one he couldn’t see. 

The walls of this Bastion were shorter and whiter in color than those of the Bastion he and Vaeri came from, but they had not fared any better than the rest of the city.

Entire sections spanning hundreds of feet had collapsed from the walls, the rubble crushing houses and buildings underneath it. Green moss and large vines covered the walls almost entirely. There were even some roots that seemed to have shot straight through the white stone before dipping underground.

‘It’s beautiful in a weird way.’ Ruith thought to himself. Nature had completely reclaimed this place, though tens of thousands of humans had died to achieve that.

Ruith looked over to Vaeri, who was still looking at the scene with her mouth slightly open, completely awestruck.

They continued observing the Fallen Bastion for a while longer. However, the sun was beginning to set and they didn’t really want to be out in the open at night.

“Ruith, look there.”

She was holding a finger out, pointing at something down in the ruins. Ruith squinted his eyes, trying to see what she was trying to show him. 

He finally saw it. A hint of movement gave its position away. He looked harder, luckily breaking through to the red core stage had improved his eyesight a bit.

Several humanoid forms were moving through one of the destroyed streets, though Ruith could not make out any further details.

“Humans, you think? But that shouldn’t be possible…” Ruith muttered to Vaeri.

“No idea. I think we should get a closer look though, in case it really is other humans.”

Ruith agreed with her, and they left behind the gorgeous view to continue down on the broken path.

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