Altered Destiny

Ch. 24

Ingressus looked around. It couldn't be that this was the cave. The one in the vision had been set into a hillside, meanwhile these boulders were freestanding. The vision's cave had also been a good deal larger, big enough for a person to live in in relative comfort. Surely even six centuries couldn't make an entire hill disappear. And the boulders didn't have the parallel ridges that were distinctive of Supporospikes. No, whatever had changed Voltar's priorities had to be something else. As Ingressus had learned, Voltar wasn't omniscient. It knew what it or its wielders had witnessed, and maybe had the occasional insight beyond that. Magic was rarely easily definable. But whatever had changed, odds were it involved something Ingressus had seen or somewhere he had been in the past few hours

Ingressus looked back down at the staff. "What are you trying to tell me?"

Voltar did not answer. Ingressus sat back, his gaze idly wandering the alcove he sheltered in. If this wasn't the place Voltar had wanted him to find, then what could've changed its mind? What could it suddenly consider more important? The staff still felt just as... content? Satisfied? Hopeful? As it had since he had come to Voltaria, if not more so. It could sense its home soil, and even if its people were still lost to it, Voltar still recognized the place they were supposed to be.

Ingressus's gaze wandered past a patch of dirt near the back of the alcove, but then he re-focused. Something about it... it was different from the rest. It was subtle, but...

Ingressus scooted over to look more closely. The dirt there was unusually smoothed-out, as though someone had dug it up, then tried to pat it down again. Ingressus was reminded of when he used to help Kittrian with her garden: this was what the dirt would look like when she transplanted something and patted the earth down around it. But what kind of plant could grow somewhere like this, deprived of sunlight and rainwater? None that Ingressus knew of. Maybe someone had buried something.

His curiosity piqued, Ingressus dispelled Voltar again and dug his fingers into the dirt. He had only clawed away a thin layer of dirt before the color changed, the dirt becoming tinged with a dull, ashy gray. Ingressus lifted a hand to his face, pulling down his mask to sniff at the substance. It was ash. Someone had built a fire here– a small one, judging by the size of the smoothed-over dirt– then buried the ashes.

The presence of the ash itself wasn't too strange. Maybe a traveler had been caught in the rain, like Ingressus was, and sheltered in this alcove and decided to cook themselves a meal while they waited. Or maybe someone had been caught out at night and sheltered here. No, what was strange was the way the fire had been buried. It wasn't just a few handfuls of dirt, casually thrown on top to smother the embers. The ashes had been mixed with dirt, then thrown into a hole and buried with clear intent to hide that it had ever been there. Ingressus would never have even noticed it if he hadn't been sheltering in this alcove, too, and even then he had almost missed it. Whoever had been here had clearly wanted to stay hidden, and clearly knew how to. The boulders hid the fire from view from nearly every angle, and no one would see the remains unless they had been right on top of them. It was exactly what Ingressus would've done...

Ingressus went still. The idea he didn't quite dare to consider tugged at his mind, nudging at his thoughts like Dusk when the cat wanted attention. But– no, it couldn't be, what were the odds? Out of everywhere in Ardonia, even everywhere within a reasonable distance from the Barrier Mountains– what were the odds that it was a Voltaris who had made this fire? Yes, he wanted it to be, but what were the odds? The one time he ever left Ataraxia, and there happened to be a supply run or an attack party or something else passing by the very same place he was? Astronomical. There were so many other explanations: the Defiant Legion, a lost wanderer who wanted to avoid them– it was just because he wanted it to be his clan, that didn't mean it was true—