The Challenge~
Tobias Buchanan
Apalachee, Tallu
Whitmoon, 4417
The forest thinned as they reached the foothills of Appalachee. Malatchee ran ahead, keeping the same steady pace he’d set as soon as they broke camp that morning. Tobias ran after him, not in the mystical spirit running the black drink brought, but with the fall of bucs on solid earth, and the burn of legs and lungs.
They had traveled together for days, fording rivers at their most treacherous spots, scaling the sheer purple walls of a gorge carved by a river long since gone, and hacking through blackberry brambles so thick they would’ve made formidable castle walls. The cold numbed his hands and face, but compared to the frigid weather that gripped the Redmist Mountains this time of year, a Talluan winter was naught to w
