With the lakes boiled away, there was nothing to incubate or spread the poisons which had once mired the south of the region. The crystals spread unopposed, rising from the ash like pearls on the sand.
Stealth is not the way of a Fire Monk, but I did not attract attention to myself. Even half feral, the crystalians were rigid and predictable. I avoided their patrols and circled the cliff. I might have found better passage through the crags from which they emerged, but I had no wish to be trapped.
Climbing the cliff was difficult without tools but not impossible. The plateau had cracked and split. Pieces had fallen from it and provided new paths. Scaling the rock wall with only my bare hands, I thought of my family again, if only to envy my second daughter's spirit steed. There were times when the stone gave way and times when I grew almost too weary to hold on. Yet I did not perish. By nightfall, I had reached the top of Liurna's isolated southern cliffs.
Here too, all was covered in ash and crystal. In fact, the crystal was staggering. So much of it was new-grown rather than exposed from beneath the ground. Yet, it was not the crystal which caught my eye.
A brilliant full moon hung overhead, far too low on the horizon. Beams of azure light streamed from it like a halo. They were like the pillars of gold which had once fallen from the Erdtree. Some power from beyond touched this land.
I quickly regained my wits and hid among half-melted ruins. I unwrapped some of the hard preserved bread we were eating at the Academy. It was better than you might think and as rich as a large meal.
As I washed it down, I felt as if something was watching me intently. I held my mace at ready and grasped fire in my hand. Around the ruin I crept. Yet there was nothing. Indeed, there was an eerie lack of crystalians on this plain of growing crystals. Had these new growths pushed them down to the lakebed? Or was it…?
The crystals grew larger toward the center of the plateau. There was a large ruin there, and the crystals were using the walls to reach tremendous height. If they kept growing, they would encase the whole structure. That was the source of the spread, then.
There was nowhere to hide crossing the great field between ruins, so I steeled myself and strode through the ash.