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The two of them left the Idol of the Old Ones and continued their trek, making their way through another of the thin forests. Said forests seemed to reach towards the roads, their branches dangling like limbs that would take unsuspecting tresspassers to their inner woods where a light fog continued to linger outside the damning sunlight.
Lucian and Bok went through several woods like this and a few plains, each of them lacking people or becoming somewhat suspect. It was only after several hours of walking did the Knight and his large companion come across something that could be described as a piece of civilization.
It was a small hovel, burnt to the ground. The scraps from the burnt wood moved around to form crude effigies of damnation. Many of them were eight pointed, others seemed to look like humans with deforming features accented by the sharp wood.
Perhaps the forms of the Chaos Gods, Lucian reasoned. They did not linger on it for Lucian suspected that the further they traveled the worse it got.
And indeed that was the truth.
Within half of hour of walking they came across the burnt remains of villages. The effigies were everywhere, but many of them now sported the desecrated remains of those that had been caught by the advancing hordes. Tribal sacrifices to the dark gods, and clearly they were made by hands that were not beastmen. Beastmen did not commit themselves to something so articulate.
Lucian remembered back to the lore of the King of this land. Perhaps there was still Norscans running about the lands, those who were already here when Mann had sent his monster to blockade the entire island. Or the Dark Ones had created a way around it.
It did not take long after walking through these ruins of those lost to damnation that the Knight noticed the fortress at the top of a hill that overlooked all the devastation. There he could see smoke and the hint of light as the sun began to set behind them.
There were people there, civilized people. For the moment Lucian will need to restrain himself from taking care of the dead, for something told him the living were close to dead.
