An unexpected scenery
The following text (1612 words) is the draft of a scene from my dragon fantasy novel I'm currently working on. It's a scene I thought that could stand on its own and wanted to publish it here to let others get a glimpse of it.
The Grey Mountains were still at least a day's march away, but were already clearly visible on the horizon. Torin regretted that he had to say goodbye to Kheem yesterday, because the journey had been much more fun with the two of them. On the other hand, he also realised that he could only go to his destination alone. Either way, he would be on his own for the last part of his journey.
All of a sudden Torin noticed a creeping stench in the air, which slowly grew stronger and stronger the further he went. He couldn't tell where the strange smell was coming from, but it reminded him a bit of ... rotten eggs?
He continued on his way when he passed a slope that opened up to the right of the path. A gust of wind from that direction almost took his breath away and made him feel nauseous. The fact that his senses were a little sharper than those of a normal human was no longer considered an advantage at that moment. However, after a short moment to collect himself, he became curious and walked towards the slope. At the bottom of the slope, he saw several small fountains of steam coming out of the ground. Next to them was a large circular hole in which something was moving, but he could not make out what it was from a distance.
The ground around these steam fountains looked clayey and was covered with white-yellow stains. Even though the ground seemed dead to Torin, as nothing grew there, not moss and not a blade of grass, he could feel the power that was here in the earth. He had never seen anything like it before. Was that sulphur? He had heard of it, but he had never seen it himself. And certainly not smelled it. In the backlight of the sun, he could also make out a small, shimmering stream that was also slightly steaming. The source of this stream seemed to be a small pond, but it was a little further away from the steam fountains.
The next gust of wind that suddenly blew up the slope from below, was so pungent that Torin immediately felt sick. Instinctively, he turned his head away from the edge of the slope. He fell to his knees, and began to retch. He felt the burning stomach acid in his throat and then he threw up the rest of his lunch on the grass in front of him. After a short pause he felt a little better. With disappointment he looked at the remains of bread and dried meat. Mixed with the green moss berries he had picked up along the way, the result was a rather colourful impression on the ground. Good thing he still had enough food with him. For a brief moment that lasted no longer than the blink of an eye, he considered picking up the pieces of meat again, it seemed a shame to waste them, but his stomach signalled an immediate objection.
Still, he wanted to take a closer look at this strange phenomenon. He took a cloth from his pack and tied it around his head, covering his mouth and nose. He also took an empty waterskin, perhaps to fill it up at the stream. Then he cautiously climbed down the slope. It actually didn't smell so bad down here. The problem seemed to be the clouds of steam that the wind blew away. He would try to stay away from them.
The first thing he wanted to do was go to the big hole, but after a few steps a burning pain went through his feet, despite his leather sandals. “Ow! What in Aalu's name...” he cried, jumping up in surprise and running quickly back to the edge of the slope. Then he held his hand carefully on the ground and he could feel the heat. The closer he got to the hole, the hotter the ground became. After a while, however, he was sure that the ground was not hot enough to burn his feet. It was the surprise at this phenomenon that had hit him so hard at first.
He walked cautiously, checking the ground with his hand every few steps to see how intense the heat really was. As he slowly approached the hole, he saw that someone had put up a sign. The wood was already badly weathered and a little crooked. There was no text on the sign, but there was a red cross at the bottom and what looked like a caricature of a skull above it.
Torin felt a shiver run down his spine. He understood the warning, but continued to approach the hole very slowly. He did not go to the edge, but stopped three paces away when he realised what was moving in there.
The whole bottom of the hole was boiling, bubbling and billowing away. It looked like hot, liquid mud, with large bubbles rising and bursting at the surface. Small splashes of mud gathered at the edge of the hole. Torin took another step back, he didn't want to get hit by those splashes. He knew that if anyone fell into this pit, they would never come out alive. Nevertheless, he stood there for a while, watching this fascinating spectacle of nature. It was new to him that the earth element also had such deadly traps in its repertoire.
Then, with careful steps, he moved away from the mud hole and headed towards the spring. The small oval pool was about ten steps across. The water was clear and he could see small stones and grains of sand swirling around the bottom in the centre of the pool. The water here seemed to come straight from the ground. On one side, the water flowed over the edge and meandered away into the stream. The edge of the pond shimmered with different colours of blue and green, as if some minerals had been deposited here.
Torin held his fingertips in the water and pulled his hand back. The water was hot too! He slowly put his hand back in and found that the water was not so hot that he would burn himself. Then he put both hands together, took some water, blew twice and tried a sip. The water tasted a little metallic, but it was drinkable. Then he took out his waterskin and filled it with the water.
He wondered if he should dare to jump in. He hadn't had a bath in a while and after several days of wandering, his muscles would certainly thank him for a little bit of relaxation. With a quick decision, he stripped off his clothes, put his shirt and trousers on his shoes and slowly climbed into the pool. Now that he was barefoot, he could feel that the ground under the water was also very hot, especially where his toes dug into the gravel. There were individual stone slabs on the sloping bank of the pool. He sat down on one that was so deep that he was up to his shoulders in water. How soothing and relaxing it was. Leaning back, he closed his eyes and enjoyed the moment. All he could hear was the rippling of the stream and the hissing of the steam fountains.
Suddenly the ground began to vibrate slightly. Torin opened his eyes and looked around. The spring in the middle of the pond seemed to be bubbling a little more than before and more water was flowing over the edge into the stream. Torin stood up carefully and started to walk slowly back to the bank when the vibration suddenly became so strong that he slipped on a stone slab and fell sideways into the water. He jumped up as quickly as he could and crawled up the bank on all fours. In the middle of the pool, the current was so strong that a round bell of water formed above the surface. Torin reached the bank, hastily grabbed his clothes and ran away from the pool at the last moment, when suddenly a huge fountain of water shot into the air from the centre of the pool. He turned around and took a few more steps backwards as water and smaller stones splashed down beside him. He stopped at a safe distance and watched the spectacle with his mouth hanging open. The water fountain stayed active for a while before it slowly died down and the spring calmed down again.
He would not go swimming there a second time, he thought to himself. He put his shoes and clothes back on, walked to the slope where his pack lay and climbed back up. There was one more thing he would do here. He took his knife and an empty pouch, which had contained some provisions earlier, and climbed down again, this time he went towards the steam fountains. Even though it still smelled awful, Torin seemed to be getting used to it.
He still checked the ground carefully, but everything seemed safe. He went straight to one of the very yellow glowing spots, got down on his knees and scraped some of the yellow sulphur off the ground. After a while he had scraped up half a handful and used the blade of his knife to stuff it into the pouch. He didn't want to touch it with his fingers. Who knew, maybe he could use it for something.
Then he walked back up the slope, took one last look down at the surreal landscape and continued on his way, enjoying the fact that the smell was fading.
This work by Marc Riese is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
