The Lilliad chp 19

 "For a place called 'The Wastes', it is a little bit of a letdown." Igni looked around sadly. "I was expecting so much more."

"You had high expectations for a place called The Wastes?" Lilli frowned. "I had no frame of reference."

"I have high expectations for all of you, and I am continually disappointed."

“I don’t think it’s that bad,” Lilli said. She looked around at the expanses of sand. “I was imagining pools of lava and piles of corpses.” 

“Me too,” Igni said mournfully. 

That was too disturbing to think over, so she ignored it. 

“Please remind me why we are here,” Benk said. He kicked at a rock. “I can’t help but notice that we are- with the exception of Igni- soft fleshy people who are going to need a lot more water than is available in this environment. I advise that we do not linger.” 

“Don’t be ridiculous, I don’t need much water.” Elathor luxuriated, tail winding through smooth sand the way that Lilli might move through water. 

“Why did we listen to Lord Wintra?” Lilli prompted. 

“Because he is a good and noble man,” Alcuin said promptly.

“Because his suggestion lines up with my observations and he provided financial support for me to pursue a theory I already had,” Elathor corrected. “I had tracked the magic sustaining the plague outside of the city. The wastes are one of the possible origins.” They paused. “There would be a certain pleasing symmetry to it.”

“What do you mean by that?” Benk perked up a bit. “Symmetry?” 

“This was the epicenter of the last ktharyis plague,” Elathor said casually. “So if it were naturally occurring, it would make sense for it to have originated from here. Perhaps the plague was never truly ended, and the poor ktharyis merely lingered and languished  without prey for hundreds of years.” 

“Very sad,” Igni said unsympathetically. “Where was this plague? I do not see any signs of the devastation.” 

“Under the sand.” Elathor straightened their shoulders and extended their arms out. “Speaking of which. You may wish to cover your mouths, if you are a person who breathes through lungs.” 

“What-“ Benk got out, before Elathor lifted thousands of years of dust and compelled it to hang in the air. 

Lilli, who had learned to immediately follow instructions and not question, gave him a sympathetic look. 

Benk bent over and clutched at his throat, coughing furiously. 

He’d learn.

Lilli took a step forward before casting an uneasy glance overhead at the heavy sand hanging in the air. 

“Never mind that,” Elathor said. “It’ll be up there a few hours. Let’s go.” They padded along newly uncovered paving stones, towards some kind of courtyard. 

The old city was fascinating. It was all made of some white stone. Many of the buildings appearing to be hewn from a single stone instead of assembled with mortar. There were all sorts of odd structures to examine as Lilli followed Elathor’s purposeful strides. There was something that might have been a fountain- that may have been a plinth for a statue. 

“Where are we going?” Lorit asked, gently prodding them on track. 

“Lord Wintra did not have specifics. However, his research uncovered that at the time of the plague, the source was believed to be the misconduct of the queen.”

Elathor made an impressed little hum. “Lord Wintra knows a lot more than he should,” Elathor said. “I like this. This information is correct. The epicenter was said to be the royal palace, which is where we are going now.”

“To steal?” Lorit asked dryly.

“That is a secondary goal,” Elathor assured. “The much maligned behavior of the queen that was pinpointed as a source of the plague was her magical studies. She was famous for her work on creatures of power. A true pioneer,” they said wistfully.

There was something deeply unsettling about the reverent way Elathor talked about a woman who had possibly summoned a magical person-eating plague of winged monsters.

Lilli frowned at Elathor. But it was pointless to scold, so she didn’t waste her breath. “Do you think anything survived?” She asked. She gestured at the eerily empty city around them. “I don’t even see bones. So surely any books or other research remnants would be long gone.”

“Survived?” Elathor repeated absentmindedly. They leapt agilely up a flight of stairs. “Oh yes, I believe it survived.”