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The road meanders away from the lesser tower, following the gentle curves of the earth like a man's careful hand tracing the bosom of his lover. Age and distance have brought with it the wear of time and the rot of neglect, leaving the winding path in a truly sorry state. Roots of young trees barely of an age with you recklessly crack the old pavestones as they swell from the soil, their tendrils reaching deep into the earth. What once was a smooth stone path that connected the eastern and western halve of the Dragon Kingdoms for those who carried the goods that came to her ports was now overgrown and disorderly, barely recognizable as a road.
Over the course of your slow descent from the crest overlooking the Pillars of Minos into the hills that roll out from the shadow of the Baltean Mountains, the road becomes less and less of a tangle of stone and roots as the forest gives way to grasslands. Here the road remains more or less intact, with grass only weakly peaking out through the gaps between the pavestones and the occasional crack born of fouling from weather and age.
Here more than anywhere on your trip, you can see the ravages of the Third Blight and the breaking of the Dragon Kingdoms upon the Humelands.
The mountains leading into your homeland had always been a wild place outside of the Elvenhome. The smallfolk among the Humes kept their distance from the Children, if not out of fear of the Rods and the Rings, then out of concern that one of the faery girls would seduce their sons away from their family and village. The great lords among the Humes held no fear, but a respect for your people's territory that warned away their citizens from settling too close. A good neighbor is one who keeps their nose away from their neighbor's business, and their dogs off their neighbor's lawn - that was how Alfheim treated with the Dragon Kings, and how your home continued to treat with its neighbors today.
Here, though, had once been the Heartlands of the Dragon Kingdoms. Lygos, known as Troja in that age, had not been the Harbor at the Heart of the World, through which all goods that flowed East and West came to rest for a time. Rather, it was a small fishing village, the safe harbor where smaller ships would stop over in during the journey to the Latic Penisula.
Paintings by Feofan - the current Eldest in Alfheim who represents the fine arts - depicting this land at the height of the Dragon Kingdoms hang on the walls of the Gymnasium. They do not show an empty grassland speckled with the occasional pile of rocks where once stood a windmill or the farmhouses of those who kept this land. In those days, this road would have been lined with stands every dozen miles or so, selling fresh produce to the procession of caravanners who came and went from the Dragonkeep. The farmhouses would stand in small clusters of around twelve, and the windmills would slowly turn, grinding grain into flour.
The Third Blight brought to those people a terrible end.
