At the mention of the Marching Mountains, many people probably automatically equated them with "Sharpfang Aivykorlasagran's lair" or a "forbidden zone," leaving few willing to risk venturing into this borderland between Calimshan and Tethyr.
Yet in truth, amid this narrow, forest-choked wilderness of mountains lived not only scattered Orc and Ogre tribes, but also humans who had hidden themselves away here with flames of ideals burning in their hearts.
The reason they had endured for nearly twenty years without being wiped out by the various Pasha regimes might have had something to do with the long-lost splendor of more than ten centuries ago—the Glorious Auspice, Helmnassal.
After Aivykorlasagran and Shoon IV had joined forces to slaughter him, and Shoon IV had carried away all his treasures, the ruins left behind by that battle had gradually been forgotten.
Gravely wounded, Aivykorlasagran had remained there, licking her wounds while gathering the local Orcs and Ogres to hunt food for her and harass Shoon's regime.
But that state of affairs lasted only until Xiaen VII died.
Having successfully taken her revenge, Aivykorlasagran felt that the ruins of that Silver Dragon's lair no longer suited her status as "Shoon's Dragonqueen." Thus, in the central reaches of the Marching Mountains, she launched massive construction efforts and rebuilt a lair even more majestic than the Glorious Auspice had once been, moving away from this "place of shame"—
The place where she had defeated Helmnassal, only to be schemed against by Shoon IV and left barely clinging to life.
Now, nearly a thousand years later, this place had instead become a refuge for "rebels" attempting to escape the Pashas' enslavement.
The slanting sun hung low, about to sink beneath the horizon, and only faint sunlight spilled into the ancient cavern.
Even so, within the complex caves, one