Land of Silence

It is said,

     That in ancient times the immortal's had dozens of strongholds deep underground, many below the Eternal Plains. A silent land that stretched over nearly a third of the continent, from the edge of the mountains of the Pacific Rim of Fire all the way to the Eastern Sea. No one had ever confirmed the fable, but there was hardly a need now as the great ocean fields of tall grass were home to little more than but a few scattered towns along the last road and some remote villages near the Dark Forest which bordered the Southern Lands where mankind dwelt.

     Under the shadow Cirrus and Snow Dome beyond it, where the last memories of an ancient evil survived trapped in the Columns Ice Fields, telling the tale of a frozen wasteland of death the mountain range once was and for the most part still was; a dangerous place of the undeath and beasts no one lived to describe, there stooped a creature nearly invisible amidst the tall grass beside a large boulder, gazing at the passage out  of the mountains.

     Hidden under the shadow of the boulder the would be predator remained motionless, crouched in silence for hours, contemplating how to deal with the tiny shadow of an unknown entity coming down out of the mountains along the broken rubble of the ancient road that lead through to the sea on the other side. Nothing had come out of the passage for a hundred years, ever since the ochre expanse that covered the skies in the decimation glow.

     Ever since that day, there had always been a watcher present in the vale below the forlorn road that lead up into the darkness of the mountains. It was easy to hunt down anything that ever made it onto the plains, though it had been years since the last pilgrim had wondered down out of the shadows, the land was flat, windy and dry. The ancient broken stone road was the only visible anomaly in the southern grasslands, though beside it ran the new road, one comprised of trampled earth and dust, for some strange reason or a magical other, the grass had not grown over the path the destitute had carved when making their way into the  Eastern Realms.