Our party stepped over the diamond footprints of Durin the Heavy with trepidation. Something had fought the Mad Mage along their path recently, and that something was likely dead.
We hoped that the tracks leading west would remain divergent from our southward path. There was little else to do.
The sun approached the horizon without any further developments. I had worrisome thoughts as I drifted to sleep that night: did the mad mage need to sleep? How did we see no evidence of others in the area? If Durin fought someone, were they part of a group we would need to worry about?
Orwyn wanted us to start early the next morning. I had a fitful sleep, but I was happy to oblige. Durin and the Berserker were our two biggest fears on this journey and one of them seemed to be in the area, to say nothing of whatever Durin killed. The sooner we could leave, the sooner we hoped to find ourselves in relative safety dealing with our normal environmental fears.
"We should be able to veer back to the east," Orwyn said as we started the day's hike, "The storms over the Black Desert died down overnight. Looks like Durin's tracks head west, so hopefully that keeps us further away from him."
We once again set a brisk pace, not wanting to be in the vicinity of Durin's footprints any longer than we needed to be. My feet threatened to blister from the days of hustling across the rough sand, and I stumbled over myself time and time again as the ground shifted underfoot.
Despite this, I thought we were making good progress until we got caught in our usual predicament: a storm was forming at the peak of the Blasting Mountains to the east, and another was slowly converging into a twister in the plains to our south. If we were lucky, we could cut to the southeast and avoid them both; if we were unlucky, we would be caught in a combined super-storm and would be left praying for our tents to hold together.
Orwyn made a quick decision, albeit with a grimace on his face: "We'll loop further west and avoid both storms." My anxieties lingered on Durin's footprints, but possible danger was still an improvement over immediate danger.
The storm in the plains ended up keeping pace with us, serving as a growing wall edging us away from the Black Desert. I could see Borin and Orwyn getting nervous as we were pushed further and further west. We had been lucky in the plains so far, with the only storms being minor enough that hunkering in our tents worked fine, but it could easily get much worse.
I saw a glint of light in the air followed shortly by a crash and a spout of sand ejecting from the ground. A blade of glass three feet long stuck out of the earth, launched at us all the way across the stretch of sand between us and the storm we were avoiding. It was picking up speed and strength; Orwyn had us move further west.
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The Plains of Shattered Glass were practically featureless compared to the Black Desert and that only became more clear as we moved west. It was as if the plains were actively worn down to nothing, every dune and hill and mound ground to nothing by storm after storm. Our only directions came from the sun and the storm.
By the time we set up camp that evening the Black Desert was gone from the horizon and the Blasting Mountains were rapidly shrinking. After setting up our tents we sat around a small fire in the dark, anxiously waiting for Damien to cook up a meat and potato stew.
The uncomfortable silence was broken first by Borin saying "I can't get it out of my head that we should have cut between those storms. It was risky, yeah, but now we can't even see the Desert."
"You saw what that storm ended up doing," replied Olivia, "It would have grown into us and chased us down. Maybe run us into the mountains. We've just got no luck today."
Orwyn nodded. "She's right. Our situation isn't good, but it was definitely the right decision." Damien spooned some thick, brown slop into a bowl and handed it to Orwyn. "Besides, so far the plains have been fairly kind to us. If things continue like they have been it won't be too different from using the path through the Black Desert."
"Won't navigation get harder?" I asked as I accepted my own bowl of stew. It smelled awful, but it seemed hearty enough.
"Sort of, but it doesn't really matter. If we generally head south we'll get out of the wastelands and we can figure out where to go from there."
The earth shook. The impact was minor, especially with the lack of structures around, but we all felt that brief sense of vertigo and saw our pot of stew wobble. It only lasted a few seconds. I feared asking, but did so anyways: "Is that normal?"
"No," answered Borin, "That was Durin."
"So he's still near?"
Borin shrugged. "Too close for comfort, for sure, but we don't know precisely where he is."
"And what is he doing?"
"We don't call him the mad mage because we know why he does things."
I couldn't argue with his logic. We all ended up eating our stew in silence, our eyes on the inky blackness deepening around us. We felt claustrophobia setting in as the open expanse of the plains faded to nothing as we watched for danger in the dark.
Fearful and anxious, we retired to bed with no further happenings.
The next morning found us moving much slower. It seemed no one in the party had slept well, our minds spinning on the dangers of the plains, of Durin, and of our disappearing alternatives.
We packed up our tents and gathered to head off when Drifter stepped forward and said "Turn back."
On the horizon to the south the air seemed to shimmer. The effect grew and amplified, twisting the air and the world around it in ways difficult to imagine. A stream of sand and glass flowed from the earth into that warped image, crystallizing into a ball of solid black carbon.
I felt dread settling in my bones, but I quickly realized that it was a real physical feeling. I was heavier, I was slower, and I was terrified.
We could not see him, but we could clearly see the enormous mass he was hurling at us. Durin decided to attack us.
