Two days. Two agonizingly slow, nervewracking days, Leon had ridden eastward from the last Varent watchtower, deeper into the increasingly desolate and hostile Wilderlands.
The faint track his former escort, Borin, had pointed out had dwindled from a barely discernible path to mere suggestions of passage: a broken branch here, a patch of slightly less rocky ground there.
His horse, aptly named 'Plodder' in Leon's mind, seemed to sense the growing menace of their surroundings, its ears constantly swiveling, its breath coming in nervous snorts. Leon himself was a bundle of frayed nerves, his senses heightened to an almost painful degree. Every shadow seemed to hide a lurking predator, every gust of wind carried a whispered threat.
The landscape had become a twisted parody of nature. The trees were skeletal, their bark a sickly grey, their branches contorted into grotesque shapes as if writhing in silent agony. The ground was a patchwork of cracked earth, sharp stones, and a coarse, thorny scrub that tore at his worn trousers and Plodder's legs.
There was no birdsong, no sign of normal wildlife. Only an oppressive, unnatural silence that pressed down on him, broken occasionally by the distant, unsettling howl of something he fervently hoped he would never meet.
He had been meticulously rationing his meager supplies. The biscuits were nearly gone, each bite a chore that scraped his throat. The dried meat was a distant memory. His waterskin was dangerously low, and the streams he'd encountered in this forsaken land looked oily and unwholesome.
He'd tried boiling some water over a tiny, smoky fire the previous night, a small act of defiance against the filth of this world, but the process was timeconsuming, and the resulting water still tasted metallic and wrong.
His innate desire for cleanliness, for order, was being brutally assaulted by the pervasive grime and decay of the Wilderlands. He felt constantly dirty, his skin crawling, his clothes stiff with sweat and dust.
On the evening of the second day, as the sun began to bleed a bruised purple and orange across the western sky, casting long, distorted shadows, they reached a place that could only be the border of the Blighted Marches. The change was palpable. The already desolate landscape seemed to take on an even more sinister aspect.
The air grew colder, carrying a faint, acrid scent that reminded Leon of burnt chemicals and decay a smell that resonated unpleasantly with his memories of industrial accidents on Earth. The ground sloped downwards into a vast, mistshrouded basin, a colossal wound in the earth, from which rose jagged black crags and the skeletal silhouettes of what might once have been a forest.
This was it. The place his father had sent him to die. The 'fiefdom' that was to be his grave.
His Varent escort, the two grimfaced guards who had accompanied him from the castle, had long since departed, leaving him at the edge of the Wilderlands with a curt farewell and a shared look that spoke volumes of their belief in his imminent demise. Now, he was truly, utterly alone. Plodder, sensing the shift in atmosphere, whinnied nervously, shuffling its feet, reluctant to move forward.
"I know, boy," Leon murmured, patting the horse's dusty neck, his own heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his ribs. "I don't like it either."
He dismounted, his legs stiff and sore from days in the saddle. He scanned the terrifying panorama before him, his engineer's mind automatically trying to analyze, to assess, but finding little to offer comfort. This was not a problem that could be solved with equations or blueprints. This was raw, primal survival.
He knew he couldn't stay here, exposed on the lip of the basin. He needed shelter, water, and a defensible position, however rudimentary. With a deep breath, steeling his resolve, he tugged on Plodder's reins and began the descent into the Blighted Marches.
The ground was treacherous, a loose scree of shale and broken rock that threatened to send them tumbling with every step. The mist that clung to the basin floor was cold and damp, smelling faintly of sulfur and something else, something vaguely metallic and unsettling. It swirled around them, reducing visibility to a few dozen feet, adding to the sense of claustrophobia and dread.
As they descended, Leon noticed the vegetation, or what passed for it. Twisted, thorny vines snaked across the ground, their leaves a bruised, unhealthy purple. Fungi, in bizarre and lurid colors, sprouted from decaying tree stumps and oozed a phosphorescent slime. The air was heavy, making each breath feel like an effort. He could almost taste the despair that the watchtower captain had spoken of, a palpable miasma that sought to crush his spirit.
He pressed on, driven by a stubborn refusal to give in. He had to find shelter before full darkness fell. The thought of spending a night exposed in this monstrous landscape was terrifying.
He scanned his surroundings, looking for any feature that might offer some protection; an overhang, a cave, even a dense thicket of thorny vines, though the latter seemed more a trap than a refuge.
After what felt like an eternity of cautious, nervewracking descent, he spotted it: a dark crack in a rock face, partially obscured by a curtain of the universal purple vines. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing. With a surge of desperate energy, he pulled Plodder towards it.
He used his sword, clumsy as he was with it, to hack away at the tough, thorny vines, his hands quickly becoming scratched and bloody. The effort left him winded, his lungs burning from the acrid air. Finally, he cleared an opening large enough to lead Plodder into the narrow space beyond.
The crack opened into a small, shallow cave, no more than ten feet deep and perhaps fifteen feet wide. It was damp and smelled of mildew and something else, something musky and animalistic.
The floor was uneven rock, but it was dry, and, most importantly, it offered concealment and some protection from the elements, and perhaps from whatever creatures roamed the Marches at night.
He tied Plodder to a sturdylooking rock outcrop near the cave entrance, though the poor beast seemed too terrified to even think of wandering off. He then set about trying to make the cave marginally more habitable.
He cleared away some of the loose stones, creating a slightly flatter area where he could lay his bedroll. He gathered a few handfuls of the dry, dead leaves and twigs he could find just outside the cave, hoping to make a small fire, more for psychological comfort than for warmth, as the air in the Marches was already unnervingly clammy.
His tinderbox, thankfully, was still functional. After several frustrating attempts, his hands trembling with cold and exhaustion, he managed to coax a tiny flame to life. It was a pitiful thing, casting flickering, distorted shadows on the cave walls, but it was fire, a small beacon of defiance against the encroaching darkness.
He ate the last of his biscuits, the dry crumbs catching in his throat. His waterskin was now empty. The need for water was becoming acute. He knew he couldn't last long without it. Tomorrow, finding a source of water, however tainted, would have to be his absolute priority.
As night fell, the Blighted Marches came alive with sound. Unearthly screeches, guttural growls, and a strange, chittering sound that seemed to come from all directions at once, echoed through the mistfilled basin.
Leon sat huddled by his tiny fire, the sword clutched in his lap, every muscle tense, his heart pounding. Plodder whinnied in terror, its eyes wide and rolling. Leon spoke to the horse in low, soothing tones, as much to calm himself as the animal.
Sleep was impossible. He dozed fitfully, jolting awake at every new, terrifying sound. He imagined monstrous shapes moving in the swirling mist just beyond the cave entrance, their eyes glinting in the darkness.
He thought of his mother, her gentle smile, her stories of a hidden sanctuary. He clutched the small glass bottle in his pocket, its faint, rhythmic pulse a tiny, almost imperceptible comfort in the overwhelming terror of his situation.
He was an engineer. He was used to solving problems with logic, with reason, with carefully calculated designs. But this… this was different. This was a primal struggle for survival in a world that seemed actively hostile to life itself.
The knowledge he possessed from his past life his understanding of physics, of materials science, of sanitation and infrastructure seemed utterly useless in the face of this monstrous reality.
Or was it? As he sat there, shivering with cold and fear, a thought began to form in his mind. Survival wasn't just about fighting. It was about adapting, about using whatever resources were available, however meager. It was about observation, analysis, and innovation. Even here, in this blighted hellscape, there had to be rules, patterns. If he could understand them, perhaps he could find a way.
He thought about water. The captain had said the land was cursed. But even cursed lands sometimes had hidden springs, or ways to collect condensation. He thought about shelter.
The cave was a start, but it was exposed. Could he fortify it? Create a more defensible position? He thought about food. The land seemed barren, but were there edible plants, however strange? Or small, less threatening creatures, he might be able to trap?
These were desperate thoughts, born of fear and exhaustion, but they were also the first stirrings of his engineering mind reasserting itself, refusing to succumb to despair. He was Kaelen Park. He was Leon Varent. He was an exile, abandoned in a wasteland. But he was also a builder, a problemsolver. And he would not die here. Not if he could help it.
The first night in the Blighted Marches was a terrifying ordeal, a descent into a primal fear he had never known. But as the first, sickly grey light of dawn began to filter through the mist, Leon was still alive.
Exhausted, terrified, but alive. And with the dawn came a renewed, if fragile, determination. He had survived the first night. Now, he had to survive the first day. And then the next. One step at a time. One problem at a time. That was the engineering way. And perhaps, just perhaps, it would be enough to keep him alive in this forsaken land.