Into the Abyss

The fox was apparently normal color, as far as he could see in the dark, but it was outlined in an orange aura, which seemed to fluctuate as the fox ran. This was really quite puzzling, why hadn’t he noticed this in the day, surely there were small animals out in the day time. Besides why would animals glow in the dark? Certainly, there could be no evolutionary benefit that Tom could think of. He let the fox run off, and rose to a higher altitude.

He pondered for some time over the nature of glow in the dark animals, but came to no real conclusions. Occasionally he spotted other glowing lights, mostly orange, but once in a while, a few other colors showed up. Knowing what they were however, and not wanting to scare the poor animals any more than absolutely necessary, Tom didn’t swoop down for a closer look at any of the animals; he simply flew on.

The night wore on. Tom just kept flying leisurely along, his wings didn’t seem to tire a bit. Eventually the dawn came over the horizon bringing new life to the world. Tom had always enjoyed dawn, true, normally the only time he ever saw it was when he had to get up for school, and he hated it then, but on those rare occasions when he was somehow up and around at dawn and not tired, he really enjoyed it. There was a refreshing feeling to it, a sense of putting ones troubles behind, and forging on anew. This morning was no different; Tom put yesterday’s frustrations behind and vowed today would be different.

Tom focused his eyes on the ground below him to see if he could detect any animals, and if they glowed during the day as well. As his eyes adjusted, Tom was surprised to note that he could see the ground as easily as if he were standing on it, instead of flying hundreds of feet above. It didn’t take much looking until he found a ground squirrel. He slowed and circled, staring down at it, however he stayed well out of its sight range. Sure enough, if he concentrated on it, he could detect a dim orange light around the squirrel. Definitely puzzling, why didn’t the humans glow like the animals? Or did they; he’d never really looked, next time he saw one he would take a closer look. Tom shifted his sight a little as he circled and noticed the small tree near the squirrel. Only because he was concentrating on seeing glows, did he notice that the tree looked a little blurry. Tom focused his eyes and concentration on it. It seemed as if he could almost detect a slight greenish glow to the tree, and in fact to most of the plants around. If he stretched it he could say that all the plants glowed faintly.

Plant glow seemed to be much weaker than animal glow, and normally he wouldn’t have even noticed it if he hadn’t concentrated. Last night he hadn’t noticed it, but he hadn’t noticed animal glow in the light before either. Perhaps the plant glows were so faint they couldn’t be discerned against even the low level of night light without concentration, much as the stronger animal lights couldn’t be seen without mild concentration in the daylight. Of course, the other thing was that he was a couple of hundred feet in the air, and there were probably limits to even his vision.

About noon, or so, as Tom judged by the position of the sun above him, Tom spotted a mountain range on the horizon. After a few more moments of scanning the horizon, he was able to make out a small dot at the base of the mountains. Judging by his eyesight’s range he guessed the dot, which he soon resolved as a tower with walls around it, to be about sixty miles away. At this point he began to think about his upcoming encounter with humans. In all likelihood they would be scared shitless again. He decided he had better just steel himself to that fact.

After a few minutes of pondering however, he realized that scared humans were likely to do something foolish, like attack him. If, as they usually did in the novels, they had bows, crossbows, and ballistae, it could make his approach slightly difficult. After the dragon, he wasn’t too scared of little arrows and bolts, but nonetheless, it would still probably be painful, and annoying. Glancing around, he came up with a solution to the problem; if he engineered his approach so that he came from the direction of the sun, they would be less likely to see him until the last moment, and if he came in fast, he could be there before they could act. Tom climbed higher in the sky, and over, so that he could hide in the sun.

It took him about another hour and a half, he guessed, to get within what he felt was a safe distance from the tower. From there he could see everything quite clearly. The fortress was a large tower, about seven stories, surrounded by large stone walls. Inside the courtyard area were many smaller buildings and people wandering around with errands. For the most part it was similar to Lenamare’s, except smaller, and judging from the people in the courtyard, probably not a school.