Shole slowed down a little to ride side by side with Kage.
Sephria led the way, their horses packed with new provisions, as well medical supplies for Kage's arm and any other injuries - which was a little uncomfortable to think about, the fact that they were expecting it - the five of them were making their way through the Nhi’ilatt’s northern exit, though they were still far enough in where the trees were enormous, providing plenty of room to ride between.
"Kage, can I ask you about - well, the worlds? And everything?" Kage broke from her thoughts, looking up to Shole’s question. He had such a child-like expression on her face she couldn't help but smile, just like a child begging for a bedtime story.
"Sure."
He beamed. "Okay so, what do you mean by watching other worlds? Did you go there in person? I mean, how did it work?"
"Well, I was there, they just couldn't see me. I was like a ghost."
"So you never got to interact? Or eat the food?"
"Well, no, we aren't supposed to. I'd be lying if I said I didn't cheat a little bit though. Especially when I was younger, I would just go off on my own, to wherever I wanted." The topic was painful, but somehow it felt good to talk about it openly like this.
"I guess, it would be like my dream. Traveling the world, meeting people and seeing things, trying every different food...imagine that on different worlds!" He stared up into space, like he could already see it.
"Some of them are good, some of them not so much."
"Right, of course."
"So what's the strangest one?" Artlem said.
Kage jumped, not realizing he'd been listening.
"Well, that depends," she thought about it for a second. "There was this one, it was this whispery, water world. It's so hard to describe in words but...people were these wispy clouds? They had the shape of a person, it was just clothes on a bunch of swirling air. Everything there looked like it was covered in this strange film, it reflected the light in such a strange way. It created these colorful patterns that swirled as the mist changed. And all the ground was covered in a thin layer of water, which of course they never had to walk in because they weren't, well, solid."
She looked around. Artlem, Shole, as well as Bard and Sephria who had apparently drawn closer as well, were listening wide-eyed. Should she have said that? Maybe she should have started off with something a little less strange...
"How did they...grab things?" The question came from Sephria, and this time surprisingly, it didn't sound hostile, but genuinely curious.
"Their hands, or what was there instead of hands, kind of swirled around things. It would wrap around things, like a snake."
"Did they speak?" Artlem asked.
"They did! It sounded like a loud whisper, if you know what I mean."
“And you could understand it?”
“Well, my people have very good memories. It makes it easy to learn new languages. Besides, many of the worlds speak a variation of a common language.”
"Do all the worlds have people?" Bard asked.
"Well, we only watched the ones with people. There are worlds that don't, but we never go to them. And the misty world was an exception, a lot of them have regular humans, or at least some form of humans."
"Some form?"
"Like - well, like you, or Sephria." Kage said. “People that look similar to a regular human, but with some major or minor differences. Wings, horns, more eyes, ears or limbs, that kind of thing. But a lot of humans."
"Like you? Because you look human, but-" Artlem trailed off.
"Well, I am mostly human," Kage said, trying to choose the right words. This was more of a sensitive topic for her. “My mom was human from another world, my father was Mythsian, but he had some human blood in him. That's usually how it goes when a Mythsian falls for a human, they already had some human blood in them. The result was me,” she said, bitterness seeping in to her voice. “Not human enough to be human, not Mythsian enough to be anything but a bastard of the race.”
Her head shot up. She hadn’t meant for that last part to come out, and now they were looking at her with different degrees of concern in their expressions. “I mean, it was a bit of a mess, that’s all.”
“Sorry, didn’t mean to pry,” Artlem said.
“No, it’s nothing,” Kage said.
A silence fell over the group, but it wasn’t long before Sephria broke it.
“We’re coming up on the edge of Nhi’ilatt. There’s a small space in between our forest and Vescent, only a couple miles. The trees of our forest won’t grow any closer.”
“If the soldiers anticipated us coming this way, there could be an ambush,” Artlem said. “Shole, can you check?”
“Will do,” Shole said, pulling out one of his pens from his satchel. He formed a circle with his thumb and index finger on his left hand and brushed a calligriphic with his right.
“Vision,” he explained to Kage, “to see through the trees.”
He peered through his fingers like a spyglass, turning his head as he surveyed a landscape the rest of them couldn’t see.
“There’s no one- wait! Over to the West!” he dropped his hand from his head. “About six of them. They’re a fair bit in the distance; they’re likely expecting us to go around the Vescent from that direction.”
“Think we can get by without them seeing?”
“I think so, if we keep east as soon as we cross the border and run for the forest.”
“Either way, I can’t imagine they’ll follow us in,” Sephria said.
“You never know,” Bard said gruffly, “they might be more scared of their commanders than the forest. We need to be ready for anything.”
“Right. Ready for anything,” Artlem muttered, as if just to himself.
“Alright, let’s go. We’re going left, staying behind the tree line until we can make a break for it. Then we cut straight north, through Vescent.”
Kage gave a nod, as did the rest of the group.
They followed the edge of the forest for a while, until Shole checked again and could no longer see the soldiers.
Tension hung in the air as Sephria led them out of the woods into the space between the two forests.
Kage kept looking around, as if expecting enemies to jump out from the ground. The eeriness of the area did nothing to quell the tension. Not only did no trees grow here, it seemed the grass itself was reluctant to come up. The space was left a dirty brown-green color, with no sign of foliage larger than a weed. It was such a strange sight to see this patch of land between the vibrant jungle of Nhi’ilatt and Vescent up ahead, which, at least from here, looked like a normal, healthy grove. Bushes, flowers, and all manner of foliage poked out between the trees, but it was as if those plants were as afraid of the outside world as it was of them: not one of them grew beyond some undetectable barrier.
“Okay, let’s do this,” Artlem said, setting his shoulders back as he took the lead. The four of them followed, sending their horses into a gallop across the clearing.
It wasn’t long before they reached the other end, the trees Vescent looming ominously over them as they rode across the border. They disappeared into the trees as if the forest had swallowed them up.
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