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In the long silence, nothing was said when Ethan piped up from behind his teammates. "Uuhhhmm I have another question-..."
Alexander immediately snapped the branch he was pushing out the way.
Feathers turned back to look over their shoulder, narrowing their eyes suspiciously.
The wind weaved through the trees carrying the sweet ocean breeze on the air, cooling the tropical humidity of an otherwise hot day.
"How much further do we have to walk? Couldn't they drop us in closer?" Ethan huffed, barely lifting his leg over another exposed root that threatened unsuspecting ankles.
"A lot further and even longer if we keep this pace." Alexander huffed back. "Just keep reading the mission brief. You only have yourself to blame for pulling an all-nighter on a mission night."
With only a few hours, The Soaring Horizon trekked deeper into the thicket to reach the basin's foothill and their first milestone.
The path was straight forward until this point with most of Varethyn covered in a tangled forest. Containing a large variety of biomes across the many segregated landmasses, all of which sat on top of thick basalt platforms that rose from the ocean. Some islands connect between each other by large leaning columns, brought back down by their own sheer weight, but not all of the pillars reach other islands, instead making sturdy pathways from the high shores down to ocean tide.
Accommodating the uneven fitting of the ground, trees and shrubbery stood on stilted roots to reach more soil and nutrition in never-ending competition on the forest floor.
The plant's adaptation hadn't allowed much room for large creatures to roam in the forests, most optimized for silent flexibility and weaving between the foliage or sheer strength to break through.
This is where the party's first stretch of path shone through.
Occasional unfriendly creatures made their presence known, birds dropping heavy rocks or the nyipping of viperwolves that caught on to their scent, but as long as they were on the outside of the basin, this was not the animal behavior they needed to pay attention to.
The closer to the wall, the more sparse both plants and animals became as the landscape changed. Abandoning the uneven grounds to a rapidly increasing slope as a result from years of landslides during the slow expansion. Large trees offering their shade were replaced with thick foliage of shrubs, ferns, and creeping vines, fortifying the ground and deterring most any prey species with no place to hide.
The basin is where the real hard work would begin.
Originally, the basin was formed by volcanic activity, building up the walls and gaining most of the height that remains to this day. But without being discovered, The Architect had begun to make its home in the cooling volcanic region where it remained undetected for the next 10 thousand years.
In those 10 thousand years, lava tubes became the tunnels to a den The Architect had made its home, draining out all the water collected and building up the vast network of the dead city's labyrinth.
But this is where the information that the adventurer's guild obtained begins to run vague. While they don't know the methods that the architect uses, it is known that the beast has an interwoven network informing them where potential food is, traced through the entire city.
Spanning across a 26 kilometer diameter from one ridge peak to the other, this distance is only estimated due to a gradual expansion. The cause for this is another mystery for the adventurer's guild of The Architect's doing.