Without telefs, it takes longer to travel between these mountain ranges than the last time we passed through a valley, which was right after exploring Akmetan. What took two months with the telefs, can easily take twice as long by foot. This valley is also a bit longer than the first one we passed since the ranges are all longer. I think it’s a good thing we decided against traveling up and back down the second valley since that would needlessly add eight months or more to our journey.
We passed through the ruins of an ancient town today, most likely named Zitua Ashluk, as was carved into one of the stones at an entrance to the ruined town. The most interesting feature in the ruins was another marker stone situated in the center of a stone-paved plaza. An arrow on the marker stone pointed north, and had the number 360 carved above it. Stretching north from the marker stone and the plaza was the ruin of an ancient road. When Niahla’Sen saw this, she pulled out several pieces of old parchment, and showed us a crude map. It contained two ranges of mountains, with a Z marked between them, and a line heading north. She said her father disappeared somewhere around the end of the line, but her mother never found any traces of him. I guess our search won’t actually begin until we reach the end of the road, and if it stretches 360 nura it will take us about two months at our current rate.
Not finding anything else of immediate interest in Zitua Ashluk, we continued on our way. We’re following the road heading north, which is in surprisingly good condition after centuries or millenia of disuse. The strange part is we also came across another old campsite similar to the one where we found the dragon last week. This one looks recent, so we think there might be someone living in the area. Dawn believes she can find the person or people who built the camp, but the rest of us told her not to wander off too far. We’re in a strange land, searching for a man who disappeared about three decades ago, and none of us wants to begin searching for someone else too.