vncnus Chapter 40 The Curse of the Island
Chapter 40 The Curse of the Island
The lord of the North awoke before dawn.
Arthur sat opposite him, watching his eyes change from cloudy to clear.
He looked down at his hands, then at the mottled stone walls of the post station, and finally fixed his gaze on Arthur's face.
His voice was like sandpaper scraping dry wood, "How long have I been asleep?"
"Three days."
The lord tried to stand up, but his legs gave way and he sat back down. Kai handed him a water pouch, and he took two gulps, choking and coughing.
"There's more than one of those things." He wiped his mouth with his sleeve.
"You've already written it down."
"How much did I write?"
"Just seven words."
The Northern Lord closed his eyes, his fingers unconsciously clenching on his knees.
"I wrote seven characters, and then my fingers stopped on their own. A chill seeped into my fingertips, down the back of my hand, over my wrist, down my forearm, and all the way up."
The process was very slow, so slow that I could clearly feel it moving forward inch by inch.
He opened his eyes: "The places it passed through—fingers, palms, wrists—are still there, but they've become some kind of passageways."
The coldness flowed between them, like water flowing through a riverbed.
The chill within Arthur's body trembled slightly.
"What did you see?"
The Northern Lord looked at the sky outside the door, which was gradually brightening.
"I see a line that runs from the east coast to the west coast, across the entire island." He drew a horizontal line on the ground with his finger.
"The stone is a point on this line. My men found it while tracking Pickett's scouts. They felt along this line inch by inch, from east to west."
Kay frowned: "What are the Picketts looking for?"
"Find the breakpoints on the line." The lord's finger poked at several locations on the horizontal line.
"This line should have been continuous, with the gray mist between the stones connecting to each other, forming a complete network underground."
But in several places it broke; the gray mist dissipated where it reached, and couldn't be reconnected.
Gawain sat up straight: "Where did it break off?"
The lord's finger stopped slightly west of the middle of the horizontal line: "Here."
"Southwest of Camelot, about a day's drive away, lies a wasteland with pebbles and moss on the surface and granite underneath."
My grandfather built a watchtower there, but it's long been abandoned. Pickett scouts stayed in that area the longest.
He withdrew his finger: "But they can't find that break point because a break point isn't something you can see."
The break point was a force surging upwards from deep underground, dispersing the gray fog.
Arthur caught a word, and it surged up.
The gray mist flowed inward toward the pure black core, while the force surging upward from the ground flowed outward.
These two forces clash at that break point.
"Morgan told me before we left that there are things that lie dormant on the British Isles, like seeds deep in the permafrost."
When a seed germinates, the surroundings become cold, the kind of cold that feels like death.
Arthur stood up: "The gray fog is what seeps out when the seeds sprout; the Picketts are looking for the seeds."
They wanted to dig it out or put it back in before it fully sprouted.
The Northern Lord stared at him: "How did you know?"
"There is a pure black core inside the stone. The gray mist is suppressing it and protecting it. The gray mist is like a shell, and the core is the seed, but now the shell is getting thinner."
Lancelot spoke for the first time: "The rate at which it thins?"
Three days ago, the gray mist in that rock in the wilderness was flowing so slowly that it was almost invisible.
Yesterday at noon, the flow rate of the six stones in the castle was visibly noticeable, but last night, the flow rate of the stone at the post station increased by another 20%.
Lancelot nodded, took the sword from his knees, and hung it at his waist.
Arthur stepped out of the post station. The morning light shone on the broken cobblestones of the ancient Roman road. He walked north along the ancient road for about a hundred steps, and his dragon eyes opened.
The gray-white plumes of smoke from Hadrian's Wall were thicker than yesterday; the number of stones remained the same, but the thickness of each column had changed.
The gray fog was seeping out at an accelerated rate, like a steamer with its seal loosening.
The dotted line running through Britain is becoming clearer.
The previously intermittent gray fog began to converge, and at several points where it had completely broken off, very faint wisps of fog drifted past, trying to reach the next stone.
The Northern Lord is right, this is a line.
A line that was once whole, then broke, and is now gradually healing.
The break in the middle of that line is the abandoned watchtower southwest of Camelot.
The gray fog there wasn't seeping outwards; it was dispersed by the force surging up from underground.
The seed is there; all the gray mist of the stones grows from that seed, and all the pure black kernels are its extensions.
Arthur withdrew his dragon eyes, walked back to the post station, mounted his horse, and said, "We must get back to Camelot before nightfall."
Horse hooves shattered the morning light, and the caravan sped south.
Arthur rode at the very front, and the Dragon Power River unfolded in its entirety. Every tree, every field, and every farmhouse along the way appeared clearly in his perception.
The soil is moistening, the old oak trees are awakening, and the breath of spring is coming from the south.
But the coldness was also growing stronger and more pronounced; the closer the chill got to Camelot, the clearer its shape became.
It points southwest, towards the break point drawn by the Northern Lord.
As the sun began to set, the walls of Camelot rose above the horizon.
The city gate chains rattled, and Bedivere stood in the archway, his silver prosthetic arm resting on the hilt of his sword. He glanced at the gate and then stepped aside.
"Morgan is in the throne room."
Arthur dismounted and tossed the reins to a soldier. "The lord of the North needs food and a bed. Meet in the Round Table Hall in an hour."
He strode across the courtyard and corridors and pushed open the doors to the throne room.
Morgan stood before the round table, wearing a dark blue robe, her long silver hair tied in a high bun, and a black thorn crown placed neatly on her forehead.
Her icy blue eyes gleamed almost transparently in the candlelight, and a map of the entire territory of Britain lay spread out before her.
"Half a day earlier than I expected," Morgan said.
"A kind of stone containing gray mist is spreading." Arthur walked to the table, tracing his finger from the east coast to the west coast.
"One piece of wilderness, six pieces of northern castle, and one piece of post station."
The flow of the gray fog accelerated, and the stones began to connect with each other, gradually forming a line that stretched across the island.
The line breaks southwest of Camelot; the Picts are also looking there, searching for the seed.
Morgan paused for a moment, then asked, "Do you know what a 'seed' is?"
"have no idea."
Morgan extended his long, slender fingers and pressed them against the center of the map. A faint wisp of icy blue magic seeped from his fingertips and spread outwards along the parchment's texture.
The magic passed through mountains, rivers, forests, and castles, and the flow of the earth's veins appeared in the form of faint light.
The entire map lit up.
The ley lines of Britain are like an upside-down tree, with its roots in the north, in the frozen wastelands north of Hadrian's Wall, the oldest part of the ley lines.
The tree trunk extends from north to south, branching out into countless twigs that cover the entire island.
The canopy is in the south, in Camelot.
But Morgan's fingertips illuminated a structure never before seen.
Between the root and the crown, there is a "vein" that runs east to west.
It does not belong to the earth's vein system, does not flow with magic, and does not transport water.
It's like an old scar, stretching from the east coast to the west coast, cutting Britain's landscape in two.
Right in the center of the scar, southwest of Camelot, there is a hole.
The magic flowed to that location and disappeared immediately, jumping from one end to the other without any transition in between.
Like a hole burned through parchment, light shines through the hole, which itself is empty.
"The curse of the island," Morgan said, her voice soft, but each word sounded like ice cracking.
"It has many layers. The outermost layer is the end of the Age of Gods. Britain is the last remnant of the Age of Gods. The whole island is the last isolated island in the mysterious tide of planetary decline."
The departure of the gods was already destined.
King Uther, the father, was "the last king imbued with mystery by the island," and after his death, the mystery faded many times faster.
Her finger moved back, towards the north: "One layer inwards, is the island's own will."
Britain has lived in the Age of Gods for too long; it refuses to accept the end of the Age of Gods, and the result of this stubborn struggle is…
Morgan's finger paused on the old scar that ran across the island:
"Votigeng, Votigeng the Humble King, the White Dragon of Britain."
He is the embodiment of the island's own will; the island's desire to eliminate humanity and return to the age of gods took form in him.
"Yose did not defeat Vortigern; he merely suppressed the white dragon back into the depths of the island, but in doing so, he exhausted his entire lifespan."
As long as the island itself remains "unwilling to end," the White Dragon can never be killed.
Arthur placed his hand on the hilt of the Sword in the Stone: "Is there a way?"
Morgan raised her icy blue eyes and looked straight at him:
"You are the Red Dragon, and the Red Dragon's mission is to defeat the White Dragon, to change the island's will from unwillingness to acceptance, to truly kill the old era, and to truly begin the new era."
Her fingertips fell back into that hole:
"This is where Vortigern is now. He is not dead; he is sleeping in the deepest part of the island."
Each time he turned over, a layer of gray mist seeped out; those stones were the nodes where the gray mist condensed. The thicker the gray mist, the more fully awake he became.
"The seed the Picts found was the awakening point of Vortigern. They are the oldest tribe on the island and know what the full awakening of the white dragon means."
They were looking for evidence that the white dragon was breaking free of its seal.
"Right beneath that abandoned watchtower southwest of Camelot, the rising power from the ground is the breath of Vortigern."
The dissipation of the gray mist indicates that the seal can no longer suppress him.
"How much longer?" Arthur asked.
"It could take half a month, or it could take a month."
Arthur fell silent.
The candlelight flickered on the round table, and the old scar on the map shone and faded in the light and shadow, like a slowly pulsating blood vessel.
"Have you seen him?" Arthur asked.
Morgan's fingers curled slightly.
"I am the true inheritor of the island's power. After my father's death, the island's memories will flow into my dreams."
I have dreamt of every version of Voodoo's awakening: the red dragon defeats the white dragon, the white dragon devours the red dragon, they both suffer heavy losses, and they perish together.
"In one version, is there a version where the curse is broken?"
Morgan did not answer.
Silence itself is the answer.
Arthur nodded: "Then I'll be first."
Morgan's pupils contracted almost imperceptibly.
"What are you going to do?"
"Sever it, sever the root of the island's unwillingness to end, and deprive the white dragon of its reason for existence."
"That means..."
"It's like bringing the Age of Gods to a true end, making Britain no longer an isolated island, and allowing it to move forward with the rest of the planet."