Step after step, the Whispering flew past the three wanderers. From time to time, the cry of birds could be heard. Short breaths of exhaustion and silence filled the trail of wood.
Then... plains stretched as far as the eye could see.
By the time they reached them, it was already daytime. Far off in the distance, two lone mountains were visible. They were taller than any man-made building; they even came close to reaching the heavens.
They had a name for some reason.
Aureth's Crown.
The former king was no myth, barely even a legend. So why were the sole mountains of this world named after him?
It's simple, really: he named them after himself.
During his reign, he possessed the ability to make things vanish. No one knew how he did it, or where those things went, until someone walked to the Crown. A short walk from Graven Keep would answer the question.
Everything that vanished by his power ended there.
Before his birth, it was rumoured that the mountains were half their current size. But as Aureth grew older, so did the mountains.
In his life, the king didn't possess that many things to grow a mountain. And so, upon reaching his position as king, he became something that left the people of his kingdom very confused.
He became the kingdom's trashman.
Every Saturday, they shipped every piece of trash and junk to his court. Day after day, week after week, year after year, he cleansed the kingdom of its wrongdoings and trash.
As his Crown grew and grew, people began to fear that it would actually reach the heavens. For whatever reason, a common belief was that people would start speaking in different tongues. Yet that never happened, because Aureth never reached the heavens.
Because his Crown was made out of trash.
As Eve, Elyon and Vigil kept walking, the Crown came closer and closer. That's when Elyon stopped.
"Let's grab our thicker clothes."
And so, the three of them put on their longer and warmer clothes: thick coats made of dried cow skin, with sheep fluff around their necks and wrists. Each coat was coloured slightly differently.
Eve's was a rather reddish colour.
Elyon's had a hint of yellow.
And Vigil's was almost green.
Every coat matched its wearer.
After a while, the sky began to cry flakes of snow. The ground beneath them crunched at every step. And yet again, the Crown got a bit closer.
Yet something didn't arrive.
Something so common in colder regions that it was almost like the air itself.
It was the cold.
Even though it was snowing, there was no coldness. It felt pleasantly warm. Yet it kept snowing, and the snow on the ground didn't melt in the slightest.
"What the hell is this?" Eve was the first to speak as she took off her coat.
"I'm not sure, but I guess we took them for nothing," Elyon said, doing the same.
Both of them threw their coats in the snow, then waited for Vigil to do the same.
"Aren't you sweating in that?" Elyon asked Vigil.
"I don't sweat," replied Vigil.
"Right..."
"Also, this coat is quite comfortable." As Vigil spoke, one of his crows landed on his shoulder.
"Why did you only bring one of your crows here? I thought you would take them all with you," asked Elyon.
"No need; Aureth's Citadel is not big enough to fit them all."
"And how do you know that? Have you already been there?"
Vigil remained quiet for a while.
"They would also grow hungry, since they won't have anything to eat in this white land."
Elyon looked at Vigil... He had dodged the question, for whatever reason.
This made Eve ask something as well. "Do you guys think Aureth has something to do with this place having no cold?"
"Most definitely," replied Elyon.
"Aureth stole the winter and moved it somewhere else," said Vigil.
"What?"
Vigil was done, and so he started walking again. Eve could only think what a general weirdo Vigil was. Yet this weirdo scared her, and the same could be said about the idiot next to her. No, rather, she just hated them both.
Eve sighed and kept walking, following Vigil, while Elyon lagged behind.
The Crown was approaching steadily; who knew what they would find there? Yet instead of trash, something appeared that could not be called trash.
Houses, tall walls and rubble scattered about.
Someone had made their home inside the trash of the former king.
As the three of them got closer, they saw something that shouldn't exist in winter. Plants protruded from the soil and bloomed in the white desert: corn, wheat, tomatoes, fruits and flowers.
A lone woman exited one of the houses; she yawned and stretched lazily.
She was ready to water the plants and begin her day.
Yet in the distance, she saw three people walking towards her estate.
"Hmm?"
The three of them looked at her. She seemed to be in her thirties, with dark, cropped hair that ended above her ears, bangs, and dark, striking eyes.
As they got closer, she began to walk towards them as well, waving happily.
Elyon was the only one who waved back.
Once the four of them faced each other, the woman was the first to speak.
"Hello there, how can I help the three of you?"
Elyon was the first to respond. "Hello, ma'am, we are just passing by. We are headed towards Aureth's Citadel."
"Oh? And what do you three intend to do there?"
"We want to have an audience with the former king," Eve said.
The woman looked at Eve. "Well, that will be hard for you three. But no worries, come. I'll give you each a cup of something cold to drink, since it's so hot today."
The woman turned around to walk back towards her house. "I never got your names."
"I am Elyon, she is Eve, and he is Vigil. What is your name, ma'am?"
"Eve, hmm... right, sorry for spacing out. My name is Joan of Arc."