The forest is no longer as thick as it used to be. The trees are somewhat shorter, allowing sunlight to shine through in large patches. The hogs rest blissfully in the grassy dust next to us, drowsy under the afternoon sun.
Jonas and I stand up, brushing the dirt off our pants. We just had our customary meal of pork and melon, and it's time once again to mount our hogs for a long ride.
I nudge my hog on its belly with my foot, and with a displeased snort the hog slowly lifts itself up from the ground. Once it has fully stood up, I climb onto its back and reach for its reins. Then Jonas and I steer our hogs towards the road, and continue on our journey.
After about an hour of riding, I notice a cobbled stone road on my left. It is the third side road I've seen since we started. It is a short road, leading to a rotting wooden gate. To the right of the gate is a sign reading, "Mighty Oaks City Gate. No Trespassing." On the other side is a shanty guard wearing torn leather armor and wielding a golden sword. He holds his sword at an ineffective angle, and nervously shifts his weight from one leg to the other as he avoids our gaze.
That guard wouldn't stand a chance against us. We could easily pillage the whole town, but that would be cruel. They are an unfortunate town, making do with what little resources and experience they have to protect and sustain themselves. It is likely that they have been pillaged many times, which in turn makes it more difficult to protect themselves from being pillaged again. Perhaps if their city wasn't nearly as close to the roads, them would fare slightly better.
As we continue to ride, and afternoon turns to dusk, Jonas and I approach a break in the forest, where the paved road ends. The terrain becomes steep and rocky, and riding the hogs becomes significantly slower as we carefully navigate the crisscrossing paths between gradually larger boulders. Eventually the terrain becomes so steep that it is no longer practical to ride, so we climb down our hogs and guide them by the reins as we slowly hike.
It is dusk now, and the blue of the sky is rapidly fading to a starry black, as the blush of the sunset fades from the west. We have reached the mouth of a cliffside cave, and the inside is lit with torches. As we enter, their eternal glow envelopes us in a relieving warmth which slowly leeches the cold from our skin. There are a series of paired stone brick pillars leading on the walls of a tunnel into its depth, and at the far end are two large iron-framed doors with a stone engraving above it. On the engraving, it reads...
"Welcome to the Adamant Mountain Inn. We hope you GO JUMP OFF A CLIFF!"
The second part is graffiti, written over the original second half of the engraving in black.
I want to ask Jonas what he thinks of this. "Hey Jonas, do you know why there's graffiti there?"
Jonas glances at it for a moment, not caring too much about what is written. "This place has long been abandoned. Most of what's left of it has since been stolen or vandalized, including the beds. It's not a very comfortable place to sleep, but it is one of the few refuges that will protect us from the monsters of the night."
"I see." I ponder the desolation of this place, wondering who has been here since then, and why someone would write such a hostile greeting on the wall. "Is it still safe, though? I mean... are the other people who come here, and are they dangerous?"
Jonas shook his head. "I've never seen anyone here." He pulled the reins of his hog forward into the tunnel of columns. "Come on, let's get inside."
It's not a very satisfying answer, but I figure it's nearly as mysterious to him as it is to me. I tug on the reins of my hog, so that we walk with Jonas and his hog down the corridor, up to the great metal-framed pine doors, which tower over us at perhaps three times our height.
Jonas does not seem discouraged by the size of the door. He hands the reins of his hog to me, and leans the door on the left with both of his arms. Slowly, the door gives way, moaning and crackling in a deep tone, as if its structure carries the wisdom of histories past. The musty smell of old wood, met with warm air, blows out toward us. The smell reminds me all too much of the abandoned library I saw in my dream.
We walk into a large room, our boots echoing on the stone. High on the ceiling is a wooden chandelier, and on the floor is a crisscrossing pattern of stone bricks, with a strange yellow glowing rock at each vertex. It may be the Glowstone which I have heard rumors of, but I have never seen it before so I wouldn't know for certain. There is no furniture to speak of. Off of each wall, there is a great hallway with an arched ceiling, each with many doors on either side of their walls, and every so often unintelligible writing made with various colors of paint. Down the center hallway, there appears to be another great room, with the same crisscrossing floor pattern as here.
Jonas hands his hog's reins to me again, and goes behind me to close the door. Its groans propagate loudly about the room, until finally ending in a deep, reverberating thud. The sounds of the wind and chirping insects, once hardly noticeable before, are suddenly gone, giving way to a profound silence.
Jonas takes the reins from me again.
"Follow me this way."
He leads us forward through the center hallway, our footsteps and breathing seemingly saturating it with noise. Then the light of the second great room surrounds us, again showing three hallways, one on either side and one in front.
Jonas turns to walk towards the hallway on the left, and we follow him into it. I notice what sounds like the echo of distant running water to my right. It gradually grows louder until, at the second door from the end of the hallway, Jonas turns to the right and opens the door. He points at it with his hand turned over, indicating that I should look inside.
I walk a little closer, and turning to the right I see a gaping hole spanning half of the wall and a quarter of the floor, with a torrent of water gushing through it diagonally like a waterfall from an earth tilted on its side. It's hard to imagine where such water would have come from, being so deep within the mountain.
"That's the loo." Jonas says casually.