That pond...

Onibugi "I even wonder what those children they make really are..." He shakes his head.
"And you disappeared after that..."
There is no doubt that his mental health has worsened a lot and in his case, it was after that particular event. "Until we reached an island. We don't even know how we managed to get there, probably 'luck', if it can be called that. There was so much mist around it that a ship wouldn't notice it until hitting against it, but luckily it wasn't our case. The island itself was very big and not too different from every other we'd seen before, in look. The rotting vegetation was thick, blackened, flaccid. The others kept complaining it was freezingly silent in there... ye, it was freezing, but it wasn't silent at all." He shivers. "We proceeded through that disgusting jungle and seen how there was no living dead, it was only to assume that no person nor animal had inhabited that place. Not even a single insect, maybe ever."
He stands up, wrapping his arms around himself and walking a little, while recalling. "But we found some tracks that a person could have found shelter there, at some point. The others thought it could be the necromancer, but there was nothing edible in that island, not even a berry, not a single drop of water."
His nervousness increases a lot. "As we reached... the centre of the island, we f... found..." Trembling voice.

Onibugi "No food, no drinks, no sex. So how do they get kids? That's not natural, there was something totally wrong in there." Using past tense about Amlim, cough cough.
"It was not your fault... I was 400 years old, sometimes you also have to care and think about yourself, not always the others. I don't blame you, I never blamed you."
He takes a few deep breathes. "We found... t... the pond..." He shivers and starts to feel just so sick. "The vegetation was so thick it created a dome... it was dark in there, even under the sunlight. A... and the air... the stench... it has never gone away, it's still here, I can't... can't get rid of it no matter what." He shivers once more. "The pond... there wasn't water inside. I don't know what it was... a green-brown mud... just looking at it... it made me wish to never be born." He shuts his eyes. "And that sound... it came from there... from that pond... there is something inside, something alive... something..." Not even he knows how that could terrify him so deeply, he is one who usually doesn't show fear not even under torture.
"We found a compass near the pond. It was on the ground, close to the 'water'. Something that surely didn't get there on it's own. After we left that place to search what else the island could hide, we found the wreckage of a fishing boat, on a different side of the shore from where we docked. Also... near there was a fish, flopping in the sand, stuck. A carnivorous fish typical of those areas... and it was dead... at that point, we could only make a conclusion: there was no Great Necromancer. It all... came from that putrid pond..."

Onibugi "It's true... finding food is hard here... but it's not that they would share their knowledge and help the others. Ani, they did everything for themselves."
He slowly calms down when Bin intervenes, but he had been pretty much like that for centuries. "Our theory is that a stranded fisherman from some close island had been unlucky enough to end up there. As he desperately searched the island for water and food, he must have found that pound... and somehow got in contact with its water. Maybe he slipped in it, that's how he lost the compass. Then... he has probably ran away in horror and tried to swim away from that cursed place, unaware of the infection. He soon got attacked by the carnivorous fishes and... nature just did its course..." Fish after fish, until it reached the auriold.
"I don't know... no magic worked on that island, even compasses went crazy near there. Maybe you would manage to do better than us, though. If you aren't capable of stopping that plague, then nobody can."
He covers his face again. "What could we do at that point... go back and tell the survivors that the plague was indeed just an obscene part of this world? That such a thing exists and the Gods didn't do anything to remove it? Or maybe that they created it themselves, leaving it there like a trap, waiting for that one unfortunate soul? We couldn't do that... it was our own burden only. So... we just... took an head from a corpse, out s deer tusk on it and returned to the people, saying that the Great Necromancer was killed, but that it didn't make the plague disappear. They didn't even care. They were happy... they were satisfied to think that the responsible of so much horror had received his rightful punishment..."
He remains silent for some moments. "Appa... the truth though... is that I didn't contact you just to tell you all this. I need to ask you a favour."

Onibugi It's a big contrast between the point of view of Amlim and the Empire. In their ways, they both are right and wrong at the same time and neither is really evil.
"Be very careful if you go there... if even a drop of that water gets out of that pond, the consequences will be... devastating... B... but be careful About what's inside the pond too... I think it is dangerous, it can't not be..." He shudders.
"Take my son away from here... save him from all this, let him see the sun and the green in his life... please..."

Onibugi "It's not easy to find, it's on no map... probably nobody knows about it, but maybe my self of your time can help you to find it. He only has to let Guardian LiMu in. He is a deity, he can learn what his future self knows."
He nods and the little boy appears in his arms. He looks at the baby with a sad and soft expression. "I won't be able to protect him for much longer here. He will be much better with you." He hands the baby to Bin and as soon as he takes him, Bin wakes up in his room, with the baby in his arms.