My Second Life Is A Heroic Power Fantasy - Chapter 176

When Eleanor reached the next fork a few moments later, she followed Jaang’faz’s advice and took the furthest right path. It curved steeply downwards and to the left, and in places was at a sharp enough angle that she nearly lost her footing and tumbled headlong down the slopes. After a few hundred feet the path straightened and leveled out, and she saw the shine of sunlight at the end of one of the path. A faint breeze drifted in from the entrance, and flickered gently through the fur on the ends of her ears and nose. She stood there for a short moment, taking in the feeling, before opening her eyes again and heading for the exit.

As she drew closer and closer, the light brightened until she was having to squint and cover her eyes against the sunlight pouring in. When she finally stepped out of the cavern opening and into the open air, her eyes finally adjusted, and she could see further out in the distance below her.

Perhaps half a mile, near the base of the mountain, something smoldered, sending fat columns of grey smoke into the sky. It looked as though an entire field had been set ablaze. As she stood there, still more gnolls trickled up past her in groups of twos and threes, many of them wheezing and struggling up the steep slope, large patches of their fur burned away. It was a pitiful sight, and one that made her stomach turn. While she resented everything that had been done to her, the sight of so many suffering creatures limping to safety like this made her wonder for a moment if the majority of those coming to attack them were really any better.

She picked her way down the mountainside, weaving her way through the fleeing soldiers, pausing on several occasions to grab ahold of a tree to keep herself from sliding down the mountainside. Each step she took, the burning site in the distance grew closer, until she finally made it far enough down the mountainside that the trees of the forest near the base blocked it from view.

Once inside the forest, the sounds of clinking armor and groans of the wounded gave way to the rustling of wind through leaves, and the chatter of birdsong. Once left in relative isolation with her own thoughts as she walked slowly between the trees, she found herself more than a little uneasy.

Her first escape attempt had been so challenging, so time consuming, so much more… authentic, in a sense. It is what she actually expected an escape to feel like. This time felt… uncomfortably easy. As soon as she snaps out of the illusion, she is freed the same day by another suddenly present relative of the chieftain she’s never met before who has a strangely vested moral interest in helping her?

She stopped beneath a tree, and looked up at the sunlight flickering through the canopy above. As she watched, a multi-colored bird flitted from one branch to the next before alighting and warbling gently. It was a red-crested bluebird. Her favorite from the days when she would sit out under the boughs of the willows during breaks at the academy. She listened to it sing for several long moments, its birdsong taking her back to her studies and the time spent learning everything she could about magic.

There was only one problem- The red-crested bluebird didn’t exist naturally. In fact, it didn’t actually exist at all. It was a simulacru created by one of the conjuration professors oof the academy, and could be found nowhere else outside of the school grounds. The only way it could be here, now, in this moment, is if it was being pulled from her memories.

She had to hand it to Rawgh’faz. This time felt even more real than the last.