Chapter 184 - The Hermit

The burning lake loomed in Zeke’s peripheral vision as he studied the small hovel a quarter of a mile away. It was far enough from the Flaming Lake itself that its owner wouldn’t be constantly inundated by the heat, toxic atmosphere, and monsters that characterized the body of water, but close enough that it was still easily accessible for the hermit.

Zeke had been on watch for two days, and in that time, he’d learned a few things. First, the atmosphere of the Flaming Lake was very similar to what they’d found in Mal’araxis. The demon realm’s air was far more toxic, but there were seeds of the same corruption in the lake’s air. Second, many of the monsters who called the area home would have been perfectly comfortable in the demon realm. And third, the hermit was, in fact an old crone who made daily pilgrimages to the lakeshore to gather various items. Rocks, plant life, or even monster remains – it didn’t seem to matter. She wasn’t picky about what she dragged back to her hut, which made the old woman’s actions that much more curious.

He had no idea what the old woman was doing, why she was doing it, or how she managed to survive the lake’s atmosphere. Zeke’s companions had confirmed that, while it wasn’t quite as bad as the demon realm itself, the lake’s surroundings were toxic enough that they couldn’t withstand it for more than a minute without adverse effects. After five, they would all lose consciousness. Even on the periphery, where the atmosphere was thinner, the rest of the group couldn’t go unaffected.

If only the shards of crystal they’d used to survive the demon realm had made it through the portal, things would have been different. But now? He’d have to confront the hermit alone, with only Pudge as backup. It was far from an ideal situation, but Zeke had no ideas on how to mitigate it.

“I guess there’s nothing left but to just do it,” he muttered, rising from his stomach, where he’d been lying in wait. As he rose, his new armor creaked and clanged; unlike the chitinous armor he’d worn before, it was made of metal. Highly magical metal, but metal all the same. And as such, it was far from quiet. Stealth had never been Zeke’s forte, but now, it seemed to have been taken completely off the table – unless, of course, he chose to discard his armor, which he was increasingly hesitant to do.

It wasn’t so much that he was afraid of a little pain, and his body was durable enough to take almost anything the Radiant Isles could dish out. But he’d spent a sizable fortune and quite a lot of time and effort on the armor. Discarding it at the first sign of inconvenience just struck him as wrong. No – he just needed to adjust, both in terms of his movements and his mentality.

Pudge rose beside him, his only companion for the day. The others remained in the tower a few miles away. They couldn’t endure the lake’s atmosphere, so bringing them along would’ve been less than useless.

“C’mon, buddy,” Zeke said, summoning his mace and starting down the slope. The vegetation was similar to what little plant life they’d found in Mal’araxis. The trees were particularly charred, with embers nestled just beneath the blackened bark. Tiny firelights danced in place of leaves, giving the area a flickering, ethereal ambiance.

Zeke ignored it as he strode toward the hermit’s hut. It was an unimpressive structure – more of a hole in a hill than an actual building – but Zeke did his best not to judge. So long as the old crone was happy, that was all that mattered. Even if everything about her life was a little creepy, at least as far as he was concerned.

He didn’t bother trying to disguise his approach, and Pudge took his cues from Zeke, padding along beside him as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Predictably, they were not unnoticed, because the old woman stepped outside of her hovel when they were around twenty feet away.

“Who goes there?” she demanded, slamming her withered and crooked staff into the steaming earth.

Zeke dismissed his mace and held up his hands, saying, “I’m not here to cause trouble.”

“You look like trouble,” the old woman muttered. As he drew closer, she pointed her staff at him, growling, “No closer.”

Zeke stopped, saying, “Fine. Fine. I’m just looking for some information is all.”

“And that?” she spat, pointing her staff at Pudge, who’d taken the opportunity to sit down and start licking his paw.

“My companion,” was Zeke’s answer. “He’s harmless.”

Pudge didn’t take that well, snorting a bit of fire from his nostrils, so Zeke amended his statement to, “Well, harmless unless you do something against us, I guess.”

“Do you have any idea what that thing is?” she asked, cocking her head to the side. Her stringy hair fell away from her face, revealing a wrinkled and pockmarked visage. She looked like a stereotypical witch, with a long, crooked nose, a bevy of warts and blemishes, and eyes tinged with a bit of madness.

“An infernal bear,” Zeke stated. “And if you’ve got a problem with Pudge, you’ve got a problem with me. I came here in peace, and I’d like your cooperation, but if you’re going to respond with hostility, I will counter that in kind.” His mace once again appeared in his hand, and the woman stumbled back, surprised by its sudden appearance.

For a few seconds, the old woman seemed to waver between retreating back into her hovel and attacking. Zeke had no idea what form her attacks might take, but he felt fairly secure in his ability to withstand them – especially because when he used his inspection skill on her, she’d read as a level nineteen named Fiona. No surname, which was strange, but Zeke didn’t give it too much thought.

Finally, the crone straightened her spine, pushed her stringy hair out of her face, and said, “Very well. I will hear your request, but first, you must tell me – how are you unaffected by the corruption in the air?”

“How are you?” Zeke countered.

“Decades of inoculation,” she stated. “Each year, I move my home a little closer to the lake. In another half century, I will be on the lakeshore.”

“Why?” Zeke asked.

“There is something I need at the heart of that lake,” Fiona said. “Something important. Something that will change everything for me.”

“What?”

“That is for me and me alone,” she stated. “Now, tell me – how are you still standing? Is it the armor? Perhaps the bear?”

“Call it a skill,” Zeke said, keeping his cards close to his chest. He didn’t want his half-demon status bandied about. His friends might’ve been understanding, but he didn’t trust the rest of the population of the Radiant Isles to follow suit. Nor did he want to end up on the wrong end of a crowd carrying proverbial pitchforks and torches.

“And can you keep it up?” she asked.

“I can.”

Fiona rubbed her bony hands together, saying, “Well, then, boy – we may have some business. You want something from me, and you seem uniquely qualified to give me something as well. Perhaps we can make a bargain?”

“That doesn’t sound suspicious at all,” Zeke muttered under his breath. Then, in a much louder voice, he said, “What kind of bargain?”

“The kind where we both get what we want,” she said, smiling broadly. She only had a couple of teeth, so the effect was wholly disturbing. Turning and gesturing toward the hovel, she added, “Come, come. Inside. I will tell you everything you need to know.”

Zeke really didn’t want to follow the old crone inside, but he still had a mission to accomplish. He needed some answers if he was going to find the moss, and there weren’t many other choices, aside from searching the area himself. Given the size of the lake, that wasn’t really an option, though. No – he needed Fiona, and she seemed to know it.

With a sigh, he followed the woman inside. As he made his way to the door, he told Pudge, “Stick around out here. If anything goes wrong, I want you to burn this whole house to a crisp. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

Zeke hoped that much was true. He’d been intending to test his resistance to Pudge’s fire, but for whatever reason, he’d yet to find the time. If it had been normal fire, he wouldn’t have even needed to test it. But it wasn’t. Rather, it was far destructive than any fire Zeke had ever seen, and so, he wondered if he could survive it.

Pudge agreed, though he wasn’t happy about being left outside. Zeke ignored the bear’s complaints and ducked into the hovel. The interior was dark and dank, with only a few candles for illumination. Otherwise, it was strangely mundane, with nothing but a chair and a pallet as furnishings. The only decoration was a framed painting depicting two beautiful girls. One was in her late teens, with flowing blonde hair and perfect skin, while the other was much younger, though just as pretty.

Fiona noticed Zeke’s attention and said, “I was quite beautiful in my youth, wasn’t I?”

That took Zeke aback. “That…that’s you?” he asked.

“The Lake of Flames is caustic,” the woman croaked. “Surviving is not thriving, and it takes its toll.”

His eyes still trained on the painting, Zeke made the connection. The woman’s state wasn’t the result of age. Instead, the corrupted atmosphere had degraded her beauty to the point where she was unrecognizable.

“Why?” he asked, turning to face her.

“Love, of course,” she said.

Zeke raised an eyebrow. “You’re going to have to be more specific than that if you want my help,” he said.

The woman sighed; it came out almost like a death rattle as she sat in the single-room hovel’s only chair. “I expected as much,” she said. “It all started when my sister was born. I loved her so much, but she was sick. The world was too much for her. We went to the Priests of Purity, but they could do nothing. She was dying, they said. I couldn’t accept it. Neither could my parents. So, they delved into other means.”

Fiona shook her head, continuing, “It would have been better if we had let her die.”

“What did you do?” Zeke asked.

“Me? Nothing,” the crone stated. “But my parents, they…t-they tried everything, and eventually, they found someone who said he could help. A simple ritual. A few sacrifices. And in return, Jacie would live.”

“Sacrifices,” Zeke repeated. He’d heard that song before. “Demons.”

“My parents didn’t know he was a warlock,” Fiona said, hanging her head. “If they had…no. They would have gone ahead with it. All they cared about was saving her. Everything else was unimportant.”

“How many?”

“S-seventeen,” Fiona answered. “Mostly street children.”

“And it was beneath Beacon, wasn’t it?” Zeke guessed. “In the sewers. A giant summoning circle.”

“H-how do you know that?” Fiona asked.

He sighed, then summoned a thin book from his spatial storage. He tossed it at Fiona’s feet. “That book details the summoning rituals,” he said. “When I left it, someone was using it to summon elementals, which they’d then kill for the experience. But I should have guessed its original purpose was more nefarious.”

“We…w-we didn’t create it,” Fiona said. “The warlock said that the circle had been there since before humans even came to the Radiant Isles.”

Zeke ran his hand through his hair and turned around. “What did you summon?” he asked.

“I didn’t see everything, but it was just a black mist,” Fiona explained. “It seeped into Jacie, and…and then, she was fine. Or that’s what we thought. During the ritual, the warlock collapsed, dead before his body hit the ground. We left him there.”

Zeke began to connect the dots, and though he had little evidence to suggest that he was right, his intuition told him that there probably weren’t that many warlocks running around in the Radiant Isles. Still, he kept it to himself and prompted Fiona to continue.

“What happened after that?” Zeke asked.

“For a few years, everything was fine,” Fiona went on. “There were hints that things were not as they seemed, though.”

“Like what?”

“Jacie knew things she shouldn’t have known,” said Fiona. “Lots of things. She’d spent most of her life up until that point in a sickbed, so…it just didn’t make sense. And then, our parents died.”

“How?”

Fiona shrugged her bony shoulders. “I don’t know,” she said, her raspy voice quiet.

Zeke could sense that she wasn’t telling him everything, so he decided to push. “Describe it,” he said.

“I’m not sure what I saw,” she said. “But…b-but I got home from the market one afternoon, and, at first, I didn’t think anyone was home. But then I heard sobbing coming from the bedroom. I followed the sound, and…and…my parents were both on the bed. Awake and shivering and staring up at the ceiling. Jacie was standing over them. I watched as she ran her hand down my mother’s body, leaving a trail of purple-and-black fire behind. I saw tears falling down my her face. She was in pain. So, so much pain. I…I ran. I knew then that something…evil had taken over my sister. Something demonic.”

“What did you do then?”

“I went to the Church of Purity and told them everything,” she said. She sniffed loudly. “B-but…but when we got to the house…they were dead, and my sister was gone.”

“And you tracked her here, right?” Zeke guessed.

“After spending almost a decade learning everything and getting stronger, yes,” Fiona admitted. “I think she’s on the island at the center of the lake, but I can’t survive there.”

“So, you’ve been slowly inoculating yourself ever since,” Zeke guessed. “Hoping that you can make it to that island.”

“Yes! But now, you’re here,” Fiona said. “And you seem completely unaffected by the corruption. Please, if you could help me find my sister, I could –”

“I think your sister is gone.”

“W-what?”

There was no easy way to explain it, so Zeke decided to be as blunt as possible. “I ran into an extremely powerful warlock a few months back,” he said. “Among other things, I found out that that mist, it was the warlock’s soul. That ritual allowed it to jump into your sister’s body.”

“B-but…”

“I don’t think it stayed there, though,” Zeke said. “If I had to guess, I would say that the warlock I ran into was the same one that killed your sister.”

“She’s not dead…she can’t be dead…”

“Even if I’m wrong, whatever came out of that ritual wasn’t your sister,” Zeke stated. “I’m sorry. I really don’t want to be the person telling you this, but you had to have already guessed.”

“T-the priests said the same thing, but I didn’t…I don’t…I can’t believe them,” she breathed.

Zeke massaged his forehead and beheld the defeated woman. She’d made mistakes aplenty, and those were just the ones she’d admitted. But did she deserve to have spent decades in pain – and that’s precisely what inoculating oneself to the lake’s toxic atmosphere entailed – just because she wanted to save her sister?

“Look,” he said. “I’ll help you, okay? I’ll head to the center of the lake, and I’ll look for your sister. But only if you can give me the information I need.”

“You will? Even though you think I’m foolish for believing she is alive?”

Zeke shrugged. “I had a sick little brother once, so I know better than most why you’ve done what you have done,” he answered.

“V-very well,” Fiona said. “Tell me what you need.”

“I’m looking for something called [Moss of Immolation],” he said. “I don’t know what it looks like. I don’t know any of its properties. I just know it’s here.”

And he only knew that much because Tucker had claimed it to be true. But he chose to trust the alchemist’s information. If he said that Zeke could find the moss in the Lake of Flames, then he believed it.

The old woman massaged her jutting chin with bony fingers. “That is not much to go on,” she said. “But…I may have a notion of where you might find this moss.”

“Where?” Zeke asked.

She shook her head. “You are not going to like it,” was her response. “But you seem the capable sort. There are many strange creatures in and around the Lake of Flames, but none so powerful as the Fireback Turtle. I have never gotten close to the monster, but the books I read before coming here spoke of a curious moss, ever aflame moss that grows on its back. I think this might be what you’re looking for.”