52 - Zible - WEBNOVELS

You pass into the deep woods and a cool winter breeze sends ribbons of blue-white snow fluttering across the bare rocks. This is a sacred place, hidden from the People of the Map and once so rich with spirits that even you can still feel their lingering presence. But so much has faded and fallen into ruin since the Battle of Graves Farm. You pass menhirs and sacred trees, the tattered remnants of banners, old stone walls tumbled down into heaps. You also note signs of spiritual corrosion, as the powerful energies of this place shift out of balance without a guardian to maintain them. Dead animals that mark the lair of some minor fomor. You'd kill it, but it'd just come back. Befouled pools reveal the passing of Wyrm-spirits. You even find Cult of Fenris runes scratched in a rock, as the fallen werewolves try to claim this territory without healing it.

All this must be restored, you know. You need someone wise in the ways of the Spirit Wilds: a Child of Gaia or maybe a Hart Warden, like Clay in the days of his power. Until then, this forest is beautiful but powerless, and eventually its spiritual potency will turn rancid and this place will become a breeding ground for Banes.

It's time to find Nin. I tell Elton about Hog Throne, then we go get the wolf-born.

It's time to find Podge. I text Elton.

Where can I find Melodie Palys? I ask Elton.

I find Roscoe's van.

I visit Hobland at his compound.

I visit Lucinda at her studio.

I return to the barrows where I fought the fomor.

I return to the stretch of urban blight where I spilled out after looking for the caern. Maybe I can find something there.

I check my phone.

Between the once-sacred forests of Broad Brook and the parking lot for Big Lots and Walmart is an astoundingly ugly zone of urban blight, a smear of brick and iron that refuses to let nature reclaim it. People still squat in the old brick buildings, and twice a day the bus rumbles up to a battered stop and picks up or disgorges the wild-looking locals, but this is a kind of urban blight that only proximity to the spirit world can cause.

It's shockingly ugly, with trash in the brick alleys and rusted metal leaching toxins into the groundwater, but there's also something grand and defiant about the place. People live here. Good people, more often than not. The spirits here are good, too—some of them, at least. This was once the home of Broad Brook's Bone Gnawers and a meeting point for itinerant Silent Striders. An urban werewolf could still make his home here, and work to restore this place. The old buildings around Daphne Clear's office probably looked like this before her arrival, but you can feel how the Glass Walker has healed the built-up cityscape, working to restore the humans and the spirits within.

Right now, though, this place is a blight, a toxic wasteland—spiritually and literally. It needs healing, and you can't heal it without a Bone Gnawer or a Glass Walker. Ms. Clear has already claimed as much territory as her spiritual authority will allow, and you doubt you can entice Scarper to join you down here. So you need to find a Bone Gnawer of your own before you can start turning this scrap heap around.