50 – The Last Mana Well

The hike to the final mana well took Jonny uphill. Very uphill. Getting Igrette up here would be a task. But on the bright side, there were no trees. They just kind of stopped growing after a little while. He didn’t really know why. It was like there was an elevation line where they just refused to grow past. Only a few saplings dared cross the line, while all the older, taller trees grew much further down.

No trees meant fewer obstacles and more visibility. It was also dangerous, because that meant that predators could see them from far away, but the most worrisome roaming predators were the winter wolves, and Igrette said they were likely still in the territory of the pack they had wiped out. The leader of that pack had been very powerful, and the whole group was strong enough they could have patrolled miles and miles around. The utter lack of evidence of wolf activity in the time since they left the first mana well lent credence to this theory.

Along with the lack of trees, it also became rockier and rockier as he went further up. This didn’t change a lot for him, but it was something interesting to note. He bet it might have been a problem if there wasn’t so much snow around, but as it was, the only rocks large enough to be obstacles were ones he could easily go around.

He paused occasionally to check his bearing, and make sure he was still going the right way. Igrette had said directly behind her as she leaned against the rock wall of their snow bank, and he wanted to make sure he wasn’t climbing up hundreds to thousands of feet when she was actually pointing somewhere more downhill. But, matter how he looked at it, he was going in roughly the right direction, so he trudged on.

After nearly two hours, he finally sensed it, and for what felt like the millionth time, he was slightly in awe of how well-honed Igrette’s mana sense was. Logically, he knew that he should have been able to sense this much sooner. It wasn’t like there was suddenly more mana right here than there had been ten steps earlier. It was just at this point that he finally noticed the mana well’s effects, while Igrette could feel them from all the way back at their camp.

He was slightly off course, but that was mostly because he had chosen his route for ease of travel, rather than directness. The mana well was not too far away from where he was, and now that he could finally sense where it was, he was able to adjust and pick his way closer.

As with the previous mana wells, he slowed his pace, stopping periodically to make sure he wasn’t missing anything important. The lack of trees made it easier to see that he was alone, and the periodic large boulders gave him plenty of places to hide if something did show up.

Nothing ever did, though. He made it almost all the way to the mana well without incident, only stopping when the ancient structure was in sight. This stone ring was much less intact than any others he had seen. It was practically just a cracked stone table and some rubble. There were only two things that looked like they might have been the original pillars in their original places, but the rest were in pieces on the ground.

It was set on top of a small hill, and the far side looked like it was a pretty steep drop down at least a couple hundred feet. Not a full cliff, but it wasn’t something Jonny would want to climb without equipment.

The mana well was unoccupied. It was also stronger than the one they had been at before. Not close to as powerful as the one in the cave, but it was a big step up. And even as he waited an entire hour, nothing showed up to claim it.

No way, he thought. There’s no way it’s actually unoccupied.

That would be too good to be true. This mana well was far too exposed for nothing to have claimed it. Whatever lived here was just out at the moment. So he waited even longer. He found a snug spot hidden in the shadow of a large boulder nearby that had a smooth route back downhill in case he needed to book it, and just sat there.

Another hour passed, then another, and another, and Jonny was starting to wonder if he had somehow gotten incredibly lucky. It was already past noon and nothing had shown up. He thought about maybe leaving, and coming back at night to see if something would be there then. He didn’t want Igrette to worry if he was gone for too long, which she no doubt was by this point, if she was awake.

Fifteen more minutes, he told himself.

He had no way to measure time accurately, but he knew how to count, and started counting up to sixty fifteen times. He had wanted to count up to however many seconds fifteen minutes was, but math was really never his strong suit, so he went with the easier route.

About halfway through the tenth minute, he finally heard something else moving nearby. He huddled closer to his boulder as the sound of scrapping and tapping got closer and closer, until finally, something crested the hill behind the mana well.

Two enormous, pitch-black, curved horns attached to a head barely half their size poked up first. The mountain goat stayed there for a few seconds, observing the mana well with a blank side-eye for a few seconds before hopping the rest of the way up. It sniffed around the edges of the ruined stones for a minute or so, and once it was satisfied that its resting place had not been disturbed, it returned to the center and laid down for a nap.

Jonny watched silently, waiting for more to appear, but they never did. It was just the one. Jonny couldn’t believe his eyes, so he waited even longer, but even then, nothing emerged to join it.

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That wasn’t to say that the lone mountain goat wasn’t imposing. It wasn’t that large, physically, but in this world, that only meant that it had some kind of magical ability that made up for it, and he was willing to bet that its horns were related.

The goat also looked experienced. It was alive and whole, but he could see streaks along its flank, scars where fur no longer grew, and one of its horns had a chip in the front. This was not a young goat. It had been around for a while, and it had survived a lot. Even if it was alone, that didn’t mean it was an easy target.