Ilia's look is sullen as she leads you from the fire, though not half as dismayed as the expression on the elder that you leave behind. You leave the village, following a well-worn track that leads down to an area sheltered from the cold north winds by the hills and the sparse woodland.
You smell the pungent rot of the blight long before you can see it, and hear it even sooner, though only when you see the thick, swirling cloud of flies that hangs over the fields do you figure out the source of the high, relentless buzz. Ilia hesitates at the edge of the corruption, clutching at her necklace for comfort. You have to pull your cloak up over your nose to get closer, but even still your throat burns and your eyes water. Fat, black flies hit your face.
The colours are inverted: the crops and hedgerows reduced to brown stumps while the soil is bile green, with the consistency of cream cheese. Where you stand, a few feet from the edge of the corruption, the soil is healthy and brown, a transition far too sudden to be natural.
"This is where you saw the shadows?"
Ilia shakes her head and points out across the fields to the epicenter of the blight. You figured as much.
"Looks like a standard mark of corruption," you choke out. "Area of effect, maybe half a mile radius. Standard... standard stuff. Should just be a case of erasing the mark. Right... uh... here goes..."
A tentative step forward and your foot sinks deep into the soft soil, dragged down with wet slurps of escaping swamp gas. In a moment, you're up to your knee. You try to pull free but your leg might as well be set in stone for all the good it does you. Your free leg scrapes deep grooves in the grass.
Ilia's arms slide under your armpits. Your combined effort wrenches you free, though not your boot which is swallowed up by the fettid earth. "Mother protect us," Ilia gasps as the two of you land on your backs. "They said wizards were supposed to be smart. What was your plan, to walk across?"
The corruption penetrates deeper into the topsoil than you thought. You reconsider your approach. From the air perhaps? You don't like the look of the air traffic, but at least birds don't have much in the way of a sense of smell.
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