Forward Scout

The one dead stood there looking around at first. With his first task done he needed another to work towards. The sun slowly moved closer to the top of the forest to the west as he thought. Without knowledge of what he'd face, where he'd go, or what he'd do, there was no simple answer to what he needed. So the obvious answer was to scout and get a look at the world to see what he needed. If he picked a direction to travel in he could spend the remainder of the day and then work through the night on scouting out the area. Once he got more acquainted with his surroundings, he'd be much more capable of figuring out what tasks were required.

Glancing around at his options, he had to take the measure of which direction would be most suitable for travel and scouting. To the south are the marshland and rivers. While that showed potential for fishing, animals, and having open visibility to survey the land, it'd be slow to pass through as the wet soft ground would be hard to travel on. Any objects collected or clothing gained would weigh the one dead down and reduce his mobility. Then there was the fact that if he came under attack there'd be little to no cover and retreat would be virtually impossible.

To the north are the mountains. They hold the potential for caves and places to hide in case of an attack and favor small to one-man units as opposed to larger groups. Since he never tires the one dead would have an easy time moving through the terrain, but the amount of climbing and descending makes for slow progress. While not an actual problem for the one dead, it is a problem for most creatures. If the purpose is to scout out the dangers and normalities of the world, it would be better to seek out more commonly used areas so as to see what he would more often encounter. They would also be the hardest to scout as he couldn't just walk up to a mountain and take a look. They were far enough in the distance that it'd take a journey just to reach the base and start to climb.

That leaves the forests to the east and west. They would hold the widest range of resources and creatures to scout out. Forests can slow progress mildly and pose a problem for large battalions trying to move together, but smaller groups and individual units would have little to no problems. This poses the risk of bandits and ambushes though as it's a much easier path to travel. Retreat and hiding would be an option, even if not as easy as jumping down the mountain, it would be way easier than trying to run or hide in the marshes. While this would be the best option for resources and speed, it's the one most likely to encounter combatants. These two would also be the closest to scout.

It became the one dead's new task to evaluate these options and choose the best one. The first place to start would be getting a closer look at the forests since they're close enough to get to both of them before the light fully leaves the sky. So onward the one dead marched to start his task.

Getting down the rubble was easier than one would have thought. Over time the place had mostly become overgrown and consumed by the land. It was little more than an overly lumpy and steep hill at this point. With all the time that the one dead spent looking at and shifting rubble, he became very experienced at being able to tell what was loose and what was tightly in place, making it simple to navigate a path down. Deadset on his task, he took in the landscape with a cold and analyzing gaze. It was still a few hours before the sun would fully sink behind the tops of the trees and dusk would set in, so he wanted to make the most of this time.

Walking west toward the forest the one dead made note of all the smaller hills and lumps in the ground. Some were large enough to seem like they might have been smaller buildings, farther away from the main one, and others were small, almost like large ruts in the ground. They dotted the landscape and made traveling harder.

Getting used to walking and being upright instead of climbing and crawling was slow going as the one dead's foot got caught on yet another small hill as he tried to step over. This time however something came loose and a large chunk of dirt came up with his foot. Looking over after his stumble he saw fragments of bone and metal. Looking closer he shifted through the dirt for a minute before coming to recognize small bits of chainmail and a larger lump of metal that might have been part of a sword. All of the metal was small rusted pieces, and the bones were little more than shards. If he wasn't intimately familiar with how bones break down he wouldn't have even known they were there. None of it was usable but it was now much clearer what all the hills and dips were.

The one dead thought about looking through a few more mounds to search for any salvageable equipment but the state of the first body told him that this site was much too old for anything to still be useful to anyone but scholars. He pushed the dirt back over to roughly remake the mound as it originally had been. After that he continued his march toward the forest, unaware of the new trail of bone dust floating after him.

Not long before the one dead reached the outer edge of the forest, an unnatural fog seemed to rise slowly over the hills. Though no cooling mist was felt, he carried on and used this as a means to obscure himself as he scouted closer to the forest. Thin trees, barely coming into the right to be called trees, were abundant and the underbrush grew thick here. Almost like a natural barrier had been made at the edge of the forest to keep things out.

Following the edge southward, and peering past the wall of vegetation as best he could, it was hard to tell what was on the other side. More growth obviously but older and more natural than what was found here at the edge. No sounds of creatures or signs of game trails either. The late sun passing through the leaves turned the area on the other side a dark, vibrant, green that seemed to glow and infuse the forest with a sense of magic. Trees twisted with dark bark, moss growing and hanging off the limbs, while flowers that seemed dull in color grew sparsely over the ground. The air and light from the sun made it seem like the air between the trees had more life and energy than the foliage growing in it. Whatever lay in the forest, it was sure to be rich in life and steeped in magic.

As the one dead surveyed the forest and what might lurk within, he continued south until the ground started to get soft and hard to move. This marked the start of the marshes and he made his way east toward the other forest while surveying the open lands to the south. Most of the rivers swirled and created small islands and pathways, but all of it looked damp and unstable. There was no doubt in his mind that if he were to go this way he'd end up trudging through waist-deep mud for most of the journey. The occasional bird could be seen stalking the rivers and shallows, looking for fish or bugs to eat, but other than that and the occasional scrappy tree there wasn't much to be seen past the fog that kept rising and getting thicker.

As the fog seemed to roll in thicker and denser, the purple glow of the one dead's eyes became like projected beams from a hooded lantern. Soon all around him was white and purple. Knowing this could be dangerous he tried to orient himself north and march toward the ruins at the center. If he could climb up above the fog there was a chance he could see how thick it was and which direction it was moving. Putting the marshland to his back and walking a path that seemed to get solid and rocky he made his way north. A slow march in the fog, since he wasn't too sure of his direction, but soon he felt the start of an incline. If this was the main hill or just one of the smaller ones he didn't know, but any elevation had a chance of rising him up into thinner fog and allow him to see where he was. That was until he spotted the outline in the fog of someone marching ahead of him.