Phew, our heroes made it to Ad’nanapart just in the nick of time! At the rate at which this once-proud city is being reclaimed by the plains, they might have found no single trace of it if they had come later. 10.000 to 12.000 years later, or so. >_>
Yeah, in the plains, the process of gradual reclamation lacks the high drama and visual appeal of an abandoned city being reclaimed by the jungle. It’s more like…well, dust starts collecting in the corners, and a couple of millennia later, you could already build a golf course on top.
But, for the time being, there’s still enough of Ad’nanapart around for our friends to ignore while they’re heading straight underground. Even if real!Ad’nanapart still holds more touristic appeal in its utterly ruined state than fake!Ad’nanapart held in pristine condition – K’ip and Si’ri know, by now, that valuables like the Annoying Haseyo wouldn’t lie around above ground when they could lie around much more comfortably in a monster-infested dungeon below ground.
Si’ri, by the way, seems to have been suddenly seized by a sense of incoming conclusion…and since she has the ability to vaguely perceive things on the other side of the fourth wall if she hold her head like THIS and squints, she might well be right. To be on the safe side, she provides an executive summary of the course of the quest and even tries to keep it non-snarky, that way she’ll already have that covered if the end of their quest is really at hand.
And yeah, I kinda skipped the scene where K’ip, Si’ri and a freshly-dispossesed Sir Gianfor made their way back out of the dungeon below fake!Ad’nanapart. The look Sir Gianfor gave K’ip after being shown the latter’s “map” was memorable and kind of funny, but not really enough to carry a whole strip. XD
More on Thurs…uh, Monday.
Actually, that’s not strictly true – I have seen one former great city that has been reclaimed by the plains, Nicopolis ad Istrum in northern Bulgaria. It was destroyed by the Avars in the 6th century, and today, except the bits that have been excavated, everything else is still buried under the plain and the full extent of the city is only visible from the air.
Oh, sure, plains DO reclaim abandoned cities…over time. What I meant was only that it’s not nearly as dramatic and quick as the jungle reclaiming a city, that’s why the jungles get better press for it. XD
Shame about Nicopolis ad Istrum, though – now the Bulgarians have only one of their three Nicopoleis left.