The ruins were a grim sight, houses charred or rotten, some destroyed beyond recognition, others maintaining their shape.
The House of the Village chief seemed to be in the best condition, as it was made of stone bricks, instead of wood and clay like the rest.
Calen didn't really want to stop, but after few hours of non-stop walking he needed a break, and the stone structure looked somewhat safe.
Calen cautiously approached the dilapidated wooden door and slowly pushed them open, revealing the dark and silent interior.
He carefully stepped inside closing the door behind him, holding up the lantern containing the divine flame to illuminate the darkness.
'Is using a sacred relic as a lamp considered sacrilegious?' he mused to himself.
The house looked more or less normal, if not for the rotten furniture and copious amaonts of dust. It didn't seem like the inhabitants left I hurry or were attacked, everything was on it's place and untouched.
'Weird.' he thought.
If the apocalypse started unannounced and instantly, why was everything normal? Weren't they attacked? Why didn't they run from the disaster?
The house was two stories tall and strangely opulent for a building standing in the middle of nowhere.
Calen was supposed to be resting, but a quick search of the house wasn't going to tire him too much, and who knows, he might discover something important.
'let's do it room by room.'
He started with the living room, if the building wasn't empty during the disaster it was most likely that the would have been there.
It looked like any rich person's living room, just worn down by centuries of neglect.
There were a few large sofas and coffe tables strewn about the room, the walls adorned with various hunting trophies, all grotesque and rotten.
Aside from the creepy atmosphere everything seemed to be in order... Well, almost everything. In the far left corner of the room there was a strange gray ball, far too large to be ignored.
Calen cautiously approached the strange object, an carefully studied it. It's surface similar to silk, but less glossy and fuzzier, and the strands making up the material were varied in size.
'It can't be... can it?'
He took out his sword and split the ball in half in one swif motion, revealing it's insides. Before him laid a dissected corpse of one of the little gray creatures curled up into a fetal position.
What's worse, it's body was attached to a thin string that moved the moment he opened the cocoon.
He followed it with his eyes up to the ceiling, and realised that the ceiling wasn't gray like he initially assumed, it was in fact covered in a thick layer of web.
'Silk-like substance, cocooned pray, webs... fuck.'
He quickly turned around to run away but it was too late, four pairs of glistening red eyes were staring at him from the darkness.
The figure was humanoid, but it only made it appear even more monstrous, it's human torso covered in coarse, black hair.
Where there were supposed to be arms there were only stumps, in their stead six giant spider-like appendages protruded from the shoulder blades, each ending with an approximation of a human hand.
It's legs were blackened from the calf down, with two fearsome talons instead of feet.
Worst of all was the face, grey flesh had covered over its previous eyes, upon which four new arachnid pairs have grown.
It's nose was ripped off, leaving only two large vertical slits. The jaw was dislocated and split in two, making way for two large fangs, dripping with venom.
The monster stared at him for a while unmoving and only when it attacked he realised that the spell keeping him hidden has worn off.
It crossed the distance between them in a split second while remaining completely silent.
It's heavy spider-arms fell like a guillotine clashing with Calen's raised sword and steel scraped against chitin, neither of them willing to give in.
Finally the abomination let go and jumped back, resuming it's silent observation for an opening.
'It's smart... but also weaker than I expected.'
The problem was that with the amount of web and wooden furniture in the building he couldn't risk using the divine flame.
Even if it wouldn't harm him, he would announce his location to every living being in the radius of several miles, and he would rather avoid that.
The creature attacked once more - it punched, kicked and slashed, but because it was only a bit stronger than an average adult Calen easily deflected all of it's strikes.
He even managed to nick it's arms a few times but he failed to inflict any substantial damage, so they were still in a stalemate.
He knew the beast was getting impatient, it's attacks were becoming more frequent and less calculated.
It wasn't accustomed to prolonged fights, it was an ambusher specialising in taking down opponents in one strike.
As he was pondering his strategy the beast suddenly shot at him with one of its hands outstretched, he sidestepped with a pirouette and in one motion cut off the arm cleanly at the joint.
The creature lost its balance and fell to the ground, not wanting to waste the chance Calen jumped and stabbed the monster in the back, putting his whole weight behind the strike.
The sword travelled through the it's entire body and got stuck in the floorboards, effectively pinning the creature to the ground.
It trashed and spasmed, but it couldn't get itself free, he had succeeded in trapping the monster, now he had to decide what to do with it.
'I can't take the sword out without releasing, so beheading is out of question. It would be nice to strengthen the flame but it doesn't seem feasible since everything in here is flammable.'
He would have done the same thing he did to Koravel, but invading the body of another with the flame was a battle of wills, he succeeded only because the former Archmage wanted to die.
He would need to actually burn it from the inside out to achieve a similar effect, and he very much didn't want to plunge his hand into the mutants guts.
As he was pondering how to kill the abomination his eyes were drawn to the sword impaling it.
'I wonder if it would work...'
Calen grabbed the hilt of the sword and focused, soon a soft radiance spread across the blade. The monster grew still for a moment, then started thrashing again,much more violently than before and a terrifying scream left it's throat.
It wasn't quite human, but it was undeniable that the thing was a person once. Smoke rised from it's skin and chitin, smouldering burn marks were appearing all over it.
Soon enough, the wailing stopped and all that was left was a scorched shell of the mutant.
'Good to know I can empower weapons without destroying them.'
Looking at the pitiful corpse of the former human he remembered a phrase repeated by the priests of the Sun God.
"May the flame cleanse your soul." he whispered.
He freed his sword and sheathed it, the fight didn't last long, but he needed to shorten his exploration of the building to make it back to the safehouse before dusk.
During his quick search of the house he made a couple interesting discoveries, for one the bedroom was in a much better state than the rest of the residence, it seemed the monster actually used to sleep there.
The second thing he found was the door to the basement, the frame inscribed with a chain of runes, shining with a still active enchantment.
He would have loved to go inside and discover the truth behind the weird creature that inhabited the building, but he had neither time nor materials to break the spell.
He allowed himself twenty minutes of rest, then he restored the illusion and ventured into the ashen plains once more.
The sun was still high, but it was well past noon, he realised there was no chance they would make it back before dusk, they would have to spend the night in the dilapidated manor.
Before he started planning his route back however, he needed to get his companions and to do that he had to choose them first. So as he slowly made his way towards Asharil he considered his options.
He had three sigils, which meant three potential comrades. With the number being so low he had to choose people with a wide array of skills, so they could be prepared for any possible situation.
Ideally he wanted a fighter, a mage and a healer with the skills in survival, lore, warding, rune knowledge, alchemy and battle tactics between them.
For the fighter the choice was rather obvious - even though he didn't always see eye to eye with Cassian, he was still his friend, no matter how hard the fool tried to deny it.
They trained under the same swordsman - Cassian's father, and the capitan of the city guard, so he knew that he was quite well versed in tactics.
When they were younger in a rare moment of honesty the guy admitted he was interested in survival. There was simply no better person for this position.
The mage was also very easy to decide on, who else but his childhood friend and the other apprentice of Archmage Alarion.
Isara's magic wasn't as powerful as his, but she was quite a bit better with runes, and as a result completely outshined him in terms of warding spells.
While choosing the first two had been easy, the healer proved to be more of a challenge. He knew a few skilled medics, but none well enough to entrust his life to them.
Most of them were old people, completely unfit for this kind of journey.
He remembered that Cassian mentioned a young alchemist who was taking care of his sick father the last time they've seen each other.
The girls name was Elira, and she was the granddaughter of the town's best healer and potion maker.
He has met her on few occasions while running errands for his master, but he didn't know her very well. From the small talk the exchanged she left and impression of a shy but kind girl.
Normally he wouldn't have considered her, but she has spent quite a lot of time with Cassian recently and from what Calen could tell he was quite taken with the young alchemist.
He knew that his brutish friend was a great judge of character so if he was fine with the girl, Calen was too.
The additional advantage to this choice was that she was currently living with Cassian on account of taking care of his father, which meant he could cut down his time inside the barrier by quite a lot.
Time he could use to to go to his house and grab anything he needed.
Unlike people, inanimate objects weren't frozen in place while in stasis, their state didn't change but they could be freely moved around and out of the barrier.
If he was smart about his path, he could potentially gather provisions for a week or two and any survival essentials.
'I always hated planning ahead.'
This time he didn't have much of a choice, so he started making a mental map of his route.
'Considering my position I will enter the city through the southern gate which will put me in the commercial district. That's good, I can work with that.'
He could grab anything he needed from the marketplace on his way to the residential district, then make his way to Cassian's house as he lived close to the barrier between districts.
There he would tag both his friend and Elira with displacment siglis, and take Cassian's weapon if he can find it.
Then he could go home, take his stuff and attach sigil to Isara.
Since the Archmage and his apprentices all lived in the same building, he could also try to go through his master's things and see if there's anything useful.
After all that is done he would make his way to the northern gate, exit the city and activate the beacon. The area in the immediate vicinity of the city would be most likely safe, since wild beasts avoid powerful spells by instinct.
He wasn't sure if it was true for the mutated abominations, but from what he observed none of the creatures approached the city.
He would quickly bring his companions up to speed, answer any possible questions.
Then they would walk around the perimeter of Asharil back to the southern gate, and begin the arduous journey back to the house of the spider-person.
He was already quite close to the gate, it would only take him a few more minutes to reach the city, but as he approached he became quite nervous.
How was he supposed to explain the end of the world he didn't understand himself? Would the people he chose be mad at him for dragging them into this mess? What if they refuse to work with him?
'Get yourself together.'
He shook his head. It wasn't time for doubts, it was do or die, quite literally in his case.
He had to be quick about his actions, if linger in one place for too long he would become caught up in the spell once more.
Koravel told him the barrier would slow him down, but he didn't know by how much. The effect couldn't be too overwhelming, since the old man estimated he could come back before dusk.
As he was quietly finalising his plan, he has finally reached the city gate.
The passage was quite large, but it looked small surrounded by two magnificent guard towers embedded in the tall city walls.
Asharil's defences were second only to the ones in the Capital, and their size was only a part of the reason why.
Every brick comprising the city walls was inscribed with a myriad of strange runes that came together as a whole to create a powerful defensive array.
Supposedly both the structure and the enchantments it contained were much older than the Sun Kingdom, just like half of the other buildings in the city.
When Caleb was done admiring his surroundings he took a deep breath and stepped inside the city
He was home.