RP:So Take Me With You

This is a Mage's Guild RP.

This is a Devout's Guild RP.

Part of the The God of Undeath Arc

Part of the The Serpent's Pass Arc

Summary: Following a suspicion after scouring the pages of a long forgotten book, Valrae asks for Lanlan’s help searching for the elusive Serpent’s Pass. They’re transported to a strange, seemingly out of time place, and find danger waiting there.

Part One: For Laughs

Cenril

When Valrae woke in the late morning hours, her room was hot. The doors to her balcony had been left open the night before, Cenril’s humid and salt soaked air pushing into the wide space and crouching as a very unwelcome guest. She was trapped underneath her heavy downy duvet, her legs sweating and tangled, her mouth too dry. Her first thought was of water, her second was of Lanlan.

And throughout the day, the witch had found herself letting the sounds and movements of her office come through a dissociative autopiloting filter. Her attention was pulled away from too warm marble rooms and too rigid conversations of laws and politicking. She watched the shadows of the garden from her windows, guessing the time as it slid by her in a maddening crawl, and tried to imagine what might be happening somewhere else altogether. By late evening, the Mayor had finished the most pressing tasks that crowded the top of her ever growing list. She sat behind her massive desk, hair pinned into a neat and pinching knot at the base of her skull, and listened to her assistant chatter. She was a sweet girl, really, and Valrae had hired her because her attention to detail bordered on neurosis, but her tendency toward rambling was something she’d yet to grow accustomed to. Valrae had slipped somewhere between a daydream and a wish when the idea floated into her mind, perking her shoulders and springing a falsely sweet smile to her lips. “Hey!” She chirps, causing her assistant to jump, “I need a favor…”

The sun had already been swallowed up by the sea when Valrae finally snuck out to her balcony and took to the sky on her besom. She’d bullied her poor assistant into donning a near perfect glamor of herself and in order to pretend she was taking a carriage to Xalious, scheduled to arrive back home in two days' time, while the real Mayor never left Cenril at all. Plucking on the thread that wound somewhere much closer to her own home, Valrae would follow the bond until she found Lan.

In the tower, Lanlan works, the most important riddle of his life. But this work was designed to infuriate him. He’d translate the ancient language to common, and understand it. On a hunch, he translated the same words to elven and understood it again. Only it meant something completely different. And in the language of the drow? A third interpretation. He smashed the book down upon his desk and violently drew his staff from the aether. It hovers inches above the ancient pages, ready to start the fire that would banish it from existence. Then his staff vanishes again. Normally he wouldn’t be this impatient. But he couldn’t work in peace, not when he was expecting to be interrupted.

Someone was coming for him, he could feel it. He waited for the angry knock on his door. Staring at it, willing for it to come to him. It never came. Even though he’d been anticipating it for hours, it never came. No interruption to his schizophrenic work ethic. No excuses. Suddenly he’s gone. The book too. “How am I supposed to work in that place full of corruption and lies and betrayal,” he says, taking all three along with him in the carriage. “It’s good that she didn’t come,” he says to himself, trying to persuade himself to be grateful. “That’s the point.” And he’s going to Cenril, speeding there in a carriage pulled by four handsome white horses. He arrived at his castle and tilted the brim of a hat belligerent toward the sun, stealing its last look from over the horizon.

Then he was home, at 1 Reverie Court. Crossing through the black iron gate, hovering over the path paved in red and gold carpeting over harsh gray stone. His dusty and dilapidated castle. Its cobbled stone walls and burning torches and candles greeting him with gloom. Until he crossed the threshold. He became somewhere else entirely as if it was a dream, no warning. It suddenly became a palace of wonder, accidentally grown from curiously textured coral of every color of beauty. Magelights take the form of jellyfish that gracefully billow overhead. And the path is paved in glass over a sandy beach. He takes a seat on a comfy chair in the study, its shelves nearly empty, yet magically appearing full for pride’s sake. He commits again to working. And again fails to.

He had to do it. He had to say those things to Valrae, because she was going to hold him back unless he made her hate him. And even if she knew or thought she knew he didn’t mean it, she’d know. He did it to hurt her, and wasn’t that worse? So now she wouldn’t confuse him anymore. Now he could focus on work, on what exactly those guardians did. The book remained open on the same page, and there was nothing implying that it would change. But he stares at those foreign words. She knew it was his fault anyway, that those witches died. He had one job, and he failed at it. It was just the shock of it that got to her, coupled with finding out that he let her believe she saved him when he didn’t. Good. It meant that he could work in peace. He picks up a pen. ‘Guardian number one’, he writes on a blank piece of paper. Then he gets up to leave. “It would be a waste to stay inside on such a beautiful night,” he says, forgiving himself already.

Outside and under the moonlight, he begins to feel better. He lights up a cigarette, the first one in a while. But this particular spot on the bridge that connected his castle to Cenril, it was a particular spot. The smoke dissipates gradually as he watches it, his contribution to the clouds. And then in this place of peace and mindfulness, he sees the glinting silver strand, flickering occasionally, reflecting the moonlight. If he followed it, he would go up toward the sky. It seemed strange that it would go up there, since Valrae didn’t live in a flying house. He needed to get a grip and stop thinking about her. He did the right thing, anyway. And he closes his eyes.

Then, he sees her vividly, in flashes in his mind. Almost feels her, feels the wind blowing against her face and her hair, feels her bearing down on him with speed. Such an alarming sensation, he has to open his eyes to make sure it isn't actually happening. Except...it is. "V-Valrae?" Flying toward him on a besom. Should he run? He can't move.

The flight over Cenril was a peaceful one, despite the circumstances. She’d managed to follow the thread without allowing too much of Lanlan inside of her own mind. There was a part of her, wounded still, that didn’t want to know how much of the last words he’d spoken to her were from some inner truth he’d been holding onto. She rode with only the sound of the wind snapping through her hair, the lights of Cenril glowing like fast moving, warm yellow stars and the moons at her back.

And it was short, too short. The stingy moments she’d spent alone and free as a falling star were gone too quickly. It wasn’t until she could make out the shape of the drow in the darkness, the low glowing ember at the end of his cigarette lighting up as he inhaled, that she realized there was a tempest of emotions that had been buried deep beneath the stubbornness and hope that had conceived this plan. So she slowed, leaning back gently on her broom to float down toward him like a leaf falling lazily in autumn. Valrae dismounted with accidental grace, the broom sweeping out from underneath her as her feet touched ground in a singular, fluid motion.

She stood in front of him, near enough that she’d only need to reach out to touch him, and said nothing for a heartbeat of time. Her cheeks were pink, her hair a windblown and tangled curtain that waved over her shoulders. The look on her face might have said that she was as surprised as he was to be there. She was dressed ready for an adventure, wrapped up in abnormally casual and practical lines. Soft, tan cotton breeches tucked into tall leather boots, her white tunic longsleeved and belted around her waist. She had a sturdy looking bag hung across her body and she gripped the strap tight with one hand as she regarded him in the moonlight.

“I need your help.” The witch says softly, some small and wounded thing that had no name stirring in her chest.

Lanlan’s sheer shirt flutters and ripples, receiving a gentle gust as Valrae lands. His oversized sweater mixes the dark and peaceful hues of the night sky, boasts the same enchanting glitter. But it billows, echoing the turmoil he feels inside. He is still. As much as he silently and secretly (especially to himself) wished that she would appear, he wasn’t ready.

There was too much to ask, to answer for. It all spun like a whirlwind in his head and he couldn’t pick the right thing to say. They would all be wrong. So he says nothing. Before he said it all; the worst thing he could think of, all so he would never have to be spun around and around by this feeling again. The one he loved so much it made him feel guilty, and he had to preclude himself from it. He had to. She was feeling everything too, he could tell! He hurt her. He knew she still felt it, somehow, and all she needs to do is let him have it. Let them fight again. He didn’t want to, but he knew he could.

And then suddenly he didn’t know what she was feeling at all; or thinking or saying. But his mind goes quiet as he hears himself say, “Then let’s go.”

She didn’t know what he might say. It felt like a lifetime spun around them before he answered. The heat of the night, the roll of heavy, salty ocean air over her face, all of it with the background music of the drum of her wildly beating heart. But then it stopped. “Then let’s go.” He says, as if it were simple. As if just saying so was all the magic needed to make it be true, and suddenly it was. Valrae takes a step forward, reaching out to touch his hand.

Her magic sprang forward easily, lingering on the air like laughter as skin met cloth. “Hold on then,” She answers, as it shifts the scene around them. The stone bridge melts away, running like paint down a canvas and bleeding into the star studded night. For a moment, it was as if they were standing amid the heavens, close enough to reach out and touch the hot burning bodies of the stars. The sensation was unsettling, as if they’d been knocked out of time, and the witch could feel her stomach pitching as she grappled with the magic. Whispers fell from her lips, soft as prayers and almost lyrical in their foreign nature, as she guided them just as she’d read only two nights prior. Sweat beaded like a diadem of glistening crystals over her golden brow, her eyes intense and swirling with the aether that filled her as she looked through Lanlan. Her hair lifted, the curling ends of it snapping behind her as if moved by unseen and unfelt wind.

And then they were somewhere new. A small grotto, high above Selen Island, with only the soft sounds of dripping water and the quiet jungle night outside of the dark mouth of the cave. Valrae swayed, letting go of Lan’s hand as she stumbled back. Her calf bumps against the raised edge of the sanguine pool, her hand reaching out to steady herself as the magic leaves her. She didn’t vomit, but she almost wished she could.

Part Two: For Luck

Sanguine Pool

Rounding the ledge, one would find a shallow cave, chipped by hand from the rock in the manner of a grotto. In its center lies a circular, raised pool carved from the same bedrock as the cave itself. The figures carved to its sides depict a strange scene— five beings hunting a sixth across land and sea, brandishing a variety of weapons. The sixth is wearing a cape of serpents. The final carving in the set is a horrifying image, the serpent-caped being amid a throng of creatures representing all the varieties of life in Hollow, all screaming in agony as their flesh falls away. Beyond this scene, the stone is blank, a single tiny rune —a knot, unravelling— etched in the middle. What strange and occult significance this place holds, who can tell? If one would glance into the pool, there’d be seen a thick, sanguine liquid, moving in a gentle anticlockwise swirl.

Lanlan’s hand meets hers as he prepares to embark. He wore gloves, as always, but he could feel the pressure of her fingers and the warmth of her skin. She feels real. As if he might not know if she wasn’t. It’s somewhat reassuring, to think that they could perhaps suspend their strife for…whatever reason. If it needed to be world-saving then suddenly he was glad it was in danger. He follows her instruction, and holds tight to her, ready to ride on her magical besom wherever it would take them. But that isn’t what happens.

“What are you doing?” he cries as the stonework seems to melt away around them. In a panic, he crowds her, inching back before the floor falls and him with it. And then they exist in the infinite, floating there. “Valrae…!” He says as it all falls away, clinging to her hand and clothes, clambering around her as if she might be the only thing keeping him from falling into forever and nothing. She was too focused to hear his voice, or maybe it was too distorted by the great magic flowing out of her. “Valrae!” He cries to her, hoping to gain her attention. She’s serene. He sees it with a look. And she calms him too, with her composure and control.

He leaves her to her spell then, beginning to enjoy the experience. Greedily taking it in while she does the work of creating it. He thinks himself brave as he stretches away from her, unfolding both of their arms until it’s only fingers that keep them connected. But he wouldn’t lose her hand. Not until they’re somewhere else.

For a moment, he feels blessed, enhanced, exuberant. His heart pumping with excitement as he takes a few wondering steps toward an edge. Suddenly, the thrill turns on him, forcing him to his knees as his stomach is gripped and clenched. He purges over the edge of the high rock. When it’s over, he lingers for a few extra moments just in case, before drowning his shame in rosewater. Swish, spit, swish, swallow. Gradually, he finds his feet again. “I wasn’t ready!” He explains, silently promising them both he would do better the next time.

He forms a soft conclusion, peering over the side of the high place she brought them to. “I’m not sure…” he says as if its a game of some kind. “But we’re still in Cenril aren’t we? Some place in Cenril I’ve never been.” But that was hardly the important part. It was the pool. Or the cave. Or both. He didn’t venture too close to either on principle, but bent over the lip of the red water. Maybe he could guess its depth and…chemistry. “What is this place?”

Lanlan’s initial fear, and then release, was lost to Valrae behind the magic. It had been as if she were outside of herself, standing somewhere very high above them both and watching them move through time like two motes of dust floating on a hazy golden sunbeam. Slipping back into herself had been unsettling. She looked away as he emptied the contents of his stomach outside of the mouth of the cave and felt sympathy sickness clenching in her own belly.

“Sorry,” She answers weakly, swiping at the dampness over her brow with the back of her hand as she leaned against the raised edge of the pool. “I didn’t know.” She offers honestly, without really expanding. There had been a part of her that doubted she’d even be able to pull it off, really. The witch had considered dropping them in the channel between Cenril and Rynvale a very real possibility but it wasn’t one she would tell Lanlan. He’d probably never forgive her for gambling with him that way, even if she could easily remedy it with her broom.

“Selen Island.” She answers, watching him stand again. Her knees were still weak. They felt loose and as firm as the pudding treats Khitti sold at her bakery, so she only followed him with her dark eyes as he moved to inspect the swirling water of the pool. “I’ve only been here once,” She says after a long stretch of silence, finally pushing off of the edge of the pool. “But that’s where the magic took us, so something must be here… Some opening…?” Her sentence tapered off in the lilting tone of a question, rather than a statement.

Moving more quickly now, Valrae reaches into her bag and returns with a pendulum in her hand. The pointed unakite stone hung from a thin silver chain, dotted with muddy reds and mossy greens. She held it aloft and spoke another incantation. The magic found her again, though this time what she called down was more subtle than what she’d used to bring them here. It hummed through the air as gentle as a moth's wings, dusky and searching. While her arm held still, the unakite circled at the end of its chain, spinning wildly toward the pool itself. Valrae followed it, her steps slow and sure, until she was holding it near to the center of the ever moving, blood red water. The quiet stretched out between them and thinned as the witch held her breath. She doesn’t look toward Lan when she speaks again. “The way is here.”

And then she’s climbing, her boots scraping against the uneven stone of the sanguine pool. She balanced carefully, one arm out beside her and the other still holding the pendulum infront of her. It had begun to spin more quickly, as if in hungry anticipation, a blur of red and green in perpetual motion.

Lanlan accepts her apology silently. He’d rather move beyond and forget it happened as quickly as possible. “I’m fine, don’t worry,” he says curtly. But the idea that she didn’t know, causes a twinge or a pang in him. “You didn’t…well.” He huffs and buries it. They were fine now and that’s the important thing, not whatever might have happened. As bad as it may have been.

“Selen Island,” he echoes, staring into the pool. Eventually the depths shift out of focus and he can only see the surface, and the countenance that lies just under it, between nothing and imagination. He dabs his lip a little, smudging the residual moisture onto the stone. Then he’s waiting. Not idly, though. The answers are all there in his mind. They’re flighty, timid things, and he can’t grasp them before they’re chased away by a wild ‘what if’. He rises back to his feet as she speaks again.

“I think you took us here, Valrae,” he says, nearly absent of emotion. He was still considering what it meant to suddenly become at this place. And then he realizes his tone and tries to correct it. “And you’re right it’s exactly where we need to be. I know it.” He inches closer to her to stand at her side and see what she sees. He couldn’t see anything, but he knew something was there. Or, he knew that she did, which was the same.

Her little rock was nothing he could understand, but he can see it guiding her as she guides him. He knew better than to doubt her, now. Once again, as during the spell that brought them here, she is focused. And he commits too. The soft humming seems to attune his senses to his surroundings. If there was a path here, it was hidden. “Then it must’ve been here for a long time,” he says, believing that if this was connected to everything they’ve been learning, then it could’ve been here for ages. Clinging to this clue, he starts jabbing the dirt with his cane, prodding it for secrets hidden by time. It brings him to the arching walls of the grotto, plastered with moss and vines. There’s a jagged streak of lines on the stone ceiling, above where a length of dangling vine hangs loose under its own weight.

He pulls it the rest of the way down. Instantly he’s in doubt that it was a crack that was hiding at all. The grooves seem too intentional, they have too much potential. He quickly begins to pull and scrape at various sections of growth. It's slow and tedious work, but each clump he yanks away gradually reveals more and more. Not only are the grooves intentional, they must've been painstaking. The first part he clears away is definitely a depiction of a person's hand, and though the outline is rough, it's nevertheless impressive.

Valrae watches as Lanlan moves to the wall, pulling down the foliage that hid whatever he seemed to be searching for behind it. She’s bewildered for a moment, wondering if the magic she’d used on them both might have muddled with his mind as well, until the image he’d seen before her is revealed.

Carved artfully, and confusingly to the witch, was the symbol of a great serpent. It was coiled in the form of a triquetra, a diamond bright jewel the size of a baby’s fist seemingly locked in its open jaws. Six stars, each holding six points but for the one atop the triquetra which was an eight pointed star, circled it.

But Valrae’s wayfinding spell was still heavy on the humid thick air, beating in her blood like a ritual drum that demanded her attention. Her eyes are pulled away from the mysterious artwork just as the jewel begins to glow, the light growing until it was as bright as a lightning strike. What happened next was confusing, the room seemed to spin around them. It began melting away from them like before, when they stood together on the bridge, fading into itself as the sanguine pool swirled urgently at her feet. Only Lanlan remained painted in clear lines, and the witch focused on him as she turned her back to the pool now. He’d somehow been drawn closer to her, until he stood before her. Valrae reaches out for him, taking hold of his gloved hand again. And then she falls. Her hair whipped around them like a curtain of soft spun sunlight as she fell, dragging him with her.

Water surrounded them then. The witch held tight to Lanlan’s hand, watching with dissociative awe as he floated above her, close but somehow impossibly faraway. Her hair lifted around her as her lungs ached and she floated down and down… Until she was above him now. Reality shifted around them, the world turned on its head and righted itself again. It was disorienting even in the endless darkness of what might be a watery grave. Valrae kicked out, gripping tight to Lanlan’s hand as she pulled them both up to what she hoped was a surface. Her chest screamed for air, her body ached. She thought she might have damned them both just as she broke the surface of the water and took her first gasping breath of cool, smoky night air.

Even in the darkness, it was clear they'd found a new destination.

Part Three: For the Unknown

Along the Serpent's Pass

Lanlan’s more than proud of himself for uncovering this secret message in the grotto, even if he has no idea what the full picture presents yet. He backs away to get a better look and turns to Valrae. “Look,” he says, inviting her to share in the wonder and curiosity. But something’s happening. She’s uncovered more than just a picture of a clue, she’s found the way. It’s like she can’t even see him. He’s by her side in seconds. “What’s happening?” He shouts to her, hand jostling her shoulder. Now the light from the grotto casts a light like the sun against them, casting impossible shadows that stretch limitlessly into a bright white space. For a moment he’s wondered if he’s suddenly become blind, that the intense light radiating from the grotto’s secret message has blinded his light sensitive eyes and now silhouettes are all he sees. But he sees Valrae clearly enough on the side of him.

And then, before the magic takes her alone, she grabs him and they disappear into the pool together. It surrounds and engulfs them, and again it feels like he can’t lose her. He mustn’t. If he did, he’d be untethered from reality and float alone into the unknown.

Only at the end, where the rapid transition and warbling infinity empties them into a salty sea does he nearly forget to hold her hand. Not that he would let go, but that he doesn’t need to hold it on purpose anymore, he just does. And there’s only one brief moment of panic when he’s seemingly born again into a new place that’s underwater, and that isn’t clear. As he opens his mouth to test his speech, only a garbled bloom of jiggling air bubbles comes out. At least it shows the way to the surface.

Valrae drags him up, and he breaches a moment after her and sputters. It’s such a strange feeling, like being torn apart and put back together, that for a few seconds he isn’t sure what’s happening. He has to take a few seconds to become acquainted with where they are now. He knew it was an ocean, because it was salty. But he needs to take a moment to understand consciously that this was strange. “We were just standing on a cliff,” he says, reminding himself, but also confirming with her. “Now we’re in the sea?” When she would confirm this, it would center him. “We need to find land.”

Valrae could hear the crashing of waves nearby, muffled as the water surged around her ears again, and she kicked out towards it. She was still holding tight to Lanlan’s gloved hand, afraid to lose him now in the unfamiliar sea that magic had placed them in. It wasn’t long before they neared a wide outcrop of nearly smooth rock shelf. She pulled herself up with the practice and grace of a woman who had spent her life enjoying Cenril’s shores, turning around on her knees quickly to offer a hand out to Lanlan. Whether she helped him or not, her next motion was to pull the bag over her shoulders and place it to the side on the rock. She sent a silent prayer of thanks to the gods, grateful now that she’d had the foresight to enchant it and protect the contents from the drenching it might have received otherwise. Then she was twisting the tangled curls of her hair, gathering them up to wring the salty water out of them. “That was…” She didn’t finish, her heart still beating too quickly and her breathing erratic.

The witch pulled her legs from beneath herself, laying back on the rock so that her face was turned up to the night sky. It took too long for her to notice the strangeness of it as she lay blinking in the darkness. “Lan…” She says his name softly, whispering as if speaking too loudly would send the heavens spilling down around them. If he were to look up, he’d see it too. The moons that hung high in the sky were wrong. Arh'Nuk was there, a smaller thumbnail bleached of its former red light. Vaalane was full and bright, the wide face of the moon silver and white and too wide, sitting on a blanket of burning stars much closer than the witch had ever witnessed in her lifetime.

Valrae leans up on her elbows, her wet hair clinging to her cheeks and neck, and curses. “I lost the pendulum,” She says, the moment the realization dawns on her. The witch sits up again, patting at her soaked clothing with desperate and futile hope. She found nothing. “Damn it.” She hisses, pushing at her hair angrily. In the silvery dark, she could just see the shore line. Sand and rock, not dissimilar to Selen’s shore, but the grove beyond it was dark and quiet. There were no lights of her Coven’s village wavering through the tangled mangroves, no sounds of life, human or otherwise, reaching out above the crashing of the waves. The scene was hauntingly familiar and eerily still, a pervasive sense of loneliness creeping up around them. Val turns her face away, looking toward Lanlan with wide eyes. She says nothing.

Lanlan follows her through the moderate waters, keeping up at first. But the waves grow taller and the water thicker as his breath becomes short and his muscles grow weak. He opts to take a working rest; only swimming casually. The darkened foam capped dunes rise and Valrae disappears completely. The swelling recedes again and she appears, only smaller. It happens a few times as the gap between them grows, and he catches up only when she’s already touched land and climbed on top of it. Finally he reaches it too, and greedily takes her hand as he clambers up and rolls back down flat onto his back. “The moons,” he says between breaths, acknowledging her. Something wasn’t right, but he didn’t know what it meant. All he wanted to do was look at them, it was so close to doing nothing, which was what he really wanted to do. Nothing, and catch his breath. Even when she laments the loss of her pendulum, all he does is offer a long blink of condolence. He didn’t know the significance anyway. One thing at a time.

His rest ends when she lands her lingering gaze on him. It asked a question more poignant than any spoken one, but he resisted it for an impressive moment. “Help me up,” he says, lobbing his open hand up toward her. He still does most of the heavy lifting. He rubs his eyes clean of any lingering droplets hanging off his eyelashes, and gets a clear look at the shoreline across from them. In his mind, he can almost recall the geography he thinks, but whatever part of it is missing precludes him from actually commanding the knowledge. “I’m not sure if I’ve ever been here before?” He looks to either side of them. They might be able to walk to the forested part of the grove. Reluctantly, he comes to his feet, leaving behind an impressive saltwater shadow. In a quick motion, he curls his fingers in a particular pattern, turns his hands up, and flicks them out again toward the sea. The ocean that he is harboring is suddenly sprayed out and back from whence it came, leaving him suddenly dry and clean. “I can do you too if you want,” he offers, like it was no big deal.

Then he would take a meandering path toward the inner part of the cove. The walkable part of the cliffside tapered, and then tapered some more until it was pushing them back into the ocean. Eventually they had not much more than a foot of space, and he had to flatten his back against the rough rock wall. “It’s better than swimming isn’t it?” It might not be better than magic, but he didn’t feel like it, and didn’t think he needed it, and didn’t feel up to it right now. His progress was slow, but consistent, until he curled around a bumped-out boulder that caused him to suddenly face an incoming wave. He closes his eyes and turns his head away from it and toward Valrae, having no other wits to defend himself with but this. It crashes just under him and he isn’t swept away, but he dried himself off too early. From there, it’s almost easy. A particularly daring mangrove shrub opts to approach this steep cliff face, and comes even near enough that Lanlan can bound to it with a little effort. The lattice work of their roots grow so close together, that it’s nothing to go from tree to tree. “I used to do this when I was younger,” he says, in case she noticed that he might be enjoying himself a little bit. “But there wasn’t water underneath me and it was–” gravity interrupts him when it slips his foot over a smooth and moistened tendril, and he’s forced to slam his weight back into the trunk to avoid dunking himself. “Wasn’t wet like this.” Should no further surprises occur to them, they’ll make it to a stable ground soon.

She had helped him upright wordlessly and continued her wide eyed stare. It was easier to watch him than contemplate their surroundings. So she watched him clear his eyes and magic away the water that was clinging to him as if she were studying a particularly interesting passage in a book. The moonlight was silver and white, illuminating his hair like starlight in its sudden dryness. She didn’t understand the expression he wore and wondered if hers had been the same when she’d taken in the scene before them. The witch didn’t answer when he offered the spell out to her because she didn’t hear it. She watched as his lips moved to form the words but they did not reach her. It didn’t seem to matter though, he was moving away from her shortly after.

Valrae followed at a slower pace. She’d thrown her bag around herself again and kept her hands busy with braiding her wet hair back from her face. They said nothing for a while. The strange silence of their surroundings reached out from the twisting shadows with long fingers, beaten back only by the sound of waves pulling at the beach and crashing against the rock, the occasional scuffle of boots. When Lanlan breaks it with a question, the witch only tilts her head and replies softly, “We might have used my broom.” They were close enough now that it wouldn’t have been worth the effort of pulling it from her bag. Still, she might have regretted it when a wave threatened to pull them from the rock they had been clinging to and she found herself drenched again. She follows him over the gnarled, tangled mangrove on less sure feet. Her movements are more careful and less daring. Twice she nearly loses her footing and tumbles in the dark water waiting below. Valrae pauses when he speaks again, her golden brow winging in surprise. “Did you?” She asks curiously. She waits until he’s regained his footing before she poses her next question. “What, if not water, was beneath you?”

The sturdier ground they reached was a stingy bit of pebbled sand between the continuing tangle of the mangrove. It continued westward down what she assumed was an island, a short beach that separated the ocean from a sheer rise of dark, chipped stone. High above it the blue and black shadows of a forest loomed. Without the pendulum, Valrae would have to find a new way to divine the next part of their path. The strange world around them seemed to hold its breath in anticipation of their next steps. She tilted her face upward again, the face of Vaalane bright and close enough that the witch felt she might only need to raise her hands out to grasp it. She might have told Lan then that she had felt a little lost. A little smaller than when she’d left the manor. But there was a chasm between them, a line cut through them with harsh words. Instead, she reaches into her bag and begins to search. When her hand returns, she’s holding a long, crooked rod of willow. It was bent in an L shape, the handle smooth and carved with imagery of leaping rabbits. She holds it out in front of herself and waits. It does nothing for a long while. Slowly, it begins swinging back and forth in her unmoving hand. It sways long, toward the narrow strip of beach between rock, and Valrae begins walking again. She stops only once to see if Lanlan follows behind her.

Lanlan was briefly walking in the steps of someone from another time. A boy to whom tree branches were roads and cobblestone paths were strange. But that boy was gone. “Actually, I don’t remember,” Lanlan says, burying him again. He hoped that once they landed on the beach their direction would be obvious. It wasn’t. What’s more puzzling is the strange sense of deja vu he has. It inspires the sense of a dream almost remembered. There was some sense of foreboding in the silence. Despite all the natural creation, he thought he could sense some intelligent yet unknowable intent to their surroundings. He patiently absorbs the scene, guiding his eyes in a wide arcing circle. “Do you feel that?” he asks, whispering and not knowing why. He didn’t know what ‘that’ was, but he wanted to know if there was anything to his thoughts. His eyes land on her again to get the full impression of her perspective. Soon after, she’s beginning to move, taking the lead from a crooked stick. He’s not. When she looks back, he’s still in the same place, a confusing blender of chopped up emotions painting his face. “I don’t know if I want to go that way,” he says. Going that way meant putting a lot of things, potentially even his life, in her hands.

She hadn’t believed him when he told her that he didn’t remember. She hadn’t pushed him either. She wondered if there had been a time he might have told her, perhaps before the night she’d shown him and Kasyr the silver cord that bound them. Then again, maybe not. The dowsing rod swayed gently in her hand. The wood had already warmed to her hand. She could feel the delicate, carefully carved dips that formed rabbits under her fingertips. She pressed a nail into the shape of one of the long ears as she regarded Lanlan over her shoulder. She’d stopped in a deep pool of shadow, the silvery light of the moon blotted out by the towering and chipped rise of the cliff. The damp, tangled mess of her braid hung like pale woven moonlight down her back as she regarded him beneath dark lashes. Her expression was unusually guarded, her lips a carefully drawn line and her eyes dark as the green shadows that surrounded them in the unfamiliar grove. When she turns to face him the willow wand in her hand swings wildly. “Why not?” She asks carefully, her free hand fisting until her knuckles turned white on the wide leather strap of her bag.

Lanlan was unconsciously getting ready for a fight without even intending to. What if there would be one? He needed to be prepared for that, didn't he? Somehow, it added an extra edge to everything he did. Even just standing there. Even just seeing her with his dimly glowing eyes. Even being silent. No. Especially being silent. Of course, if there was a pleasant reason for choosing another way, he wouldn’t have a problem saying it. Was she silently fighting him too? He didn’t know, and he didn’t know how to respond yet. “I don’t know what’s over there. It could be dangerous.” He tries to sound as bland as possible. Though even sounding like a coward would be preferable than the truth here, he thought. “Maybe we should try to get on top of that cliff. Get a better idea of where we are.”

Valrae regards him in her quiet way. The silence spins between them from one heartbeat to the next. “It could be dangerous on the cliff.” She counters. She steps toward him again, the sand clinging to her wet boots and leaving messy prints of her feet, confused as she steps over her already taken path and traces them back to the drow. “Maybe we could follow the willow rod and the magic, like we have been?” She offers, as if it were obvious. Her tone was careful still, polite in a thin and stretched way. The ocean continued to beat against the sand, the only sound between them in the strangely silent place as she waited for his answer. Her mask almost slipped, a thousand words tangled in her throat that seemed unable to pass to her lips.

Lanlan knew that whatever their tones were, if they were amiable or pleasant or cordial or tactful, they were also clashing. And he could feel an edge to her now too. “It could be.” He seemed to have more to add, like it didn’t matter that one might be just as dangerous as the other. But he didn’t actually have a point. Not one he could make without being honest. And that was out of the question. He didn’t want to appear fidgety and nervous, so he was still. His mind was fidgeting though, as he rifled through his options. He knew he only had two, which at this point meant he only had one. He thought he had gotten rid of her the last time they met; in a brutal and painful finish. It hurt them both. Somehow, he owed her for proving him wrong. Owed her his silence. “Yeah. Maybe you’re right and we should trust the magic.” Trust the magic? He couldn’t tell if that was a reasonable thing to suggest, or the most outlandish. So he catches up to her and walks on, pretending he wasn’t fighting her at all. Occasionally, he would set his eyes on her willow rod, observing the way it moved, changed course. Though he tried to be subtle...

Valrae had not expected him to agree so easily. In fact, she had prepared herself for another pointless argument. She was still waiting for it, back soldier straight and hands still clenched tight as she turned to walk down the beach again. The witch stole glances at him as they walked, watching him from the corner of her eye instead of the wand that swayed gently in her hand when he thought he might notice. The sensation of being out of step settled around her as they journeyed ahead in the quiet, their footfall loud and unsettling without the symphony of life that should have come from the tangled trees above them now. There was no wind, no soft call of night owls or even a buzz of cicada wings. Nothing stirred, save the two of them as they picked across the pebbled beach. It should have unsettled her, it should have tugged at the corners of her mind until aroused enough curiosity for her to voice it, but instead what troubled her most was the silence that came from Lanlan. It wounded her in a way his words had not, though she didn’t know why. When she could take it no more, she stopped again, turning on her heels in the sand to face him. “I’m sorry.” She says abruptly.

Lanlan seems not to notice Valrae’s intermittent babysitting, seeming to earnestly be trusting a stick to bend his destiny. But with a turn of his finger and the weight of a leaf, he’d gradually alter their course to the one he believed in. At least they weren’t fighting. Or she wasn’t anyway, he was apparently still trying to ‘win’. The stranger thing is the silence. The stillness. It was like they were wandering through a still-life painting. It reminded him a little of being underground, where the air was stagnant and windless and everything was trying not to be noticed, either in ambush or in hiding. This was like the silence in the presence of an apex predator. Then Valrae suddenly stops and he knows his game is up. Already, bilious words of contention multiply like a vermin swarm in his throat. But she apologizes and he chokes. The willow branch twists toward another direction as he balks.

He can’t be prepared for this conversation, though he knows he should’ve been. All he can do is stall for time. “Are you?”

She doesn’t notice as the willow wand shifts back to its true direction, unaware of Lanlan’s stubborn meddling as she regards him with wide, dark eyes. Her face was painted in lines of contrition, her lips bowed into a frown that appeared as pouting more than she might have liked. Words rose but could not pass the tangled web of confusion that crowded her throat. Her hands drop to her side, her shoulders rising up in a defeated shrug. “I am!” She says, her voice pitching high and too loud in the otherwise absolute silence. “I’m horribly, terribly, gut wrenchingly sorry.” She tosses the wand toward the sand, her suddenly free hand pushing at her still damp hair. “I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you sooner. I’m sorry that you’re angry with me. I’m sorry for whatever other reason you might have conjured up to make me into some traitorous villain in your mind.” Valrae drops her hand again, her eyes sliding away from him. She wasn’t sorry that she’d done it. She wouldn’t lie. When her dark gaze finds him again she crosses her arms around herself protectively. “I don’t know what you want from me. I was trying to… I just wanted…” Frustration makes her tongue clumsy.

Lanlan steps back warily and looks left and right reflexively. Of course there was no audience to play to, no spectacle to spin around. His looks falls reluctantly back on her and he realizes that pained look was all for him. He'll just stay quiet, even when she gets loud. "Okay," he whispers, almost pleads, after she shreds the stillness. She seems to mean it, but it doesn't make him feel better. She seems tortured? By him. He doesn't want this and he stretches out his fingers and raises them so slightly to let her know she doesn't have to go on, willing her to let it end. "Okay," he pleads again, looking away from her just to get a reprieve from the vivid anguish he sees in her. "I know." But he didn't know how hurt by him she was, by his feelings, and he was learning too slowly. His eyes settle back on her so he can say at least with his eyes that he gets it, even if he was just beginning to. What do people say to someone who's sorry? She's about done, she's almost said it all. But of course, the thing she should truly be sorry for, is somehow forgotten. Or he imagined it? After all that, she ends up attacking him anyway.

"Oh! In my own mind? In my own mind." His face hardens up into jagged stone and he immediately dips into that loosely stoppered vial of poison he holds forever in his hand, recovering aggressively against her and taking back the step he retreated a moment ago. And just before he spits the venom in her eyes, he deflates. "I don't think you're a villain," he says as his face softens. "Valrae. That's not what I think. But you," he says almost jabbing her in the shoulder with a finger. Then he drops his hand. No, not like that. Frustration normally sharpens his tongue, but this felt different. "Fine I'll just ask, after all you know better, you know your magic better than anyone." He could stop; he could just stop and ask nothing. Or even ask something easy that would let this skate past. "I know you just wanted to save that...him. But did you know that I was going to wake up again?" He was asking now, and he couldn't take his eyes off her. Nor her off him, he wouldn't tolerate it. "Or did you pick me because...you didn't know."

Her sudden fight nearly died when he only whispered. She knew he wanted her to stop, to lower her voice. She could see it on his face. It was an unfamiliar look. It felt like seeing a stranger in a dream, like looking at someone you knew but couldn’t place. His hand lifted to stop her but the words had already poured out of her mouth, running away from her like water through her hands. They were both on unfamiliar ground now, her caught in a fit of dramatics and him accepting it from her in kind. She watches his face shutter away at her defensive finale and can feel her heart tipping over the edge to plummet down to her stomach. Valrae held her breath as she waited for the jagged words to follow. Words aimed at her like weapons as he’d done before. When none came she felt almost breathless.

She hadn’t been afraid when she’d used unknown magic to get them to the top of Selen Island. She hadn’t been afraid when she had pulled them both down into the water or when they’d emerged in the sea. But the witch was afraid now. Valrae watched him with long, dark eyes. Her mouth was parted slightly, the breath she’d been holding out exiting on a shaking sigh. When it finally leaves him, she struggles with it for a moment. Not because of what she might answer but because of what he must think of her to have asked it. The look that crossed her then might have suggested he’d slapped her. Her head moves back, as if he’d landed a physical blow, and her lips were bowing into a pouting line again.

The quiet devours the night again. It stretches out between them, reaching with gnarled hands as it threatens to swallow them up and carry them down. When she breaks it, she whispers. “I did not know.” But she continued, her arms still crossed around herself. “Do you remember what it was like?” She waits only a heartbeat for an answer. “Do you remember what that black nightmare was like? The hunger it felt, could you feel it? I could. I could feel it and I knew that we were losing. I knew that we were dying. It wasn’t contained, Lan,” When she says his name it falls from her lips like a pleading prayer. “There were three of us there, right there underneath it, and I…” Khitti had already been knocked back, surrounded by her own magic and something else. Kanna had been sent clear across the lab. “It was Tessa, me… and you.” She pauses again, dropping her arms in a helpless gesture as her eyes begged him to understand. “It couldn’t go back, it could only go forward. If Kasyr lived, we would live too. I chose you and I didn’t know but I hoped.”

Lanlan has only the version of events that he clings to, ignoring the context. The one where he’s trying to find his own way out, and Valrae blocks off his exit and sacrifices him to what she obviously thought to be ‘the greater good’. But she didn’t know he was going to escape, nobody did except him. “You thought everyone was going to die? Hmm. So did I.” He never lingered too long in this memory, but he does now, to see again. “But you chose me to…Why didn’t you ever say?” But he knew why, it was obvious. It was a terrible decision to have to make, and nobody should ever know that she made it and chose him of all people. The controversy.

“That’s not what I thought happened,” he admits, while withholding some crucial piece. As a small consolation, he walks past to pick her willow branch off the ground and hand it back to her. Assuming she would take its guidance once more, he would follow her without adulterating her methods like he was moments prior. He couldn’t. Now that he knew what she knew, his thoughts were occupied with untangling this mess; how does he move past it? How do they? There was no admitting that he intended to survive alone, so her reality became the only reality.

He has to break the silence, and he talks quickly, reciting the speech he wrote in his own head. “Valrae I see what you did and I recognize how difficult it must’ve been and maybe I haven’t been a bargain since then and maybe you even have…buyer’s remorse? Haha…” This is not what he does. “So I’m sorry too.”

Valrae watches with dark, guarded eyes as Lanlan works through her answer. She can see him reliving the night, as she did, and pick apart the pieces. Refit them to her perspective. She doesn’t answer his question. She didn’t need to. He would arrive at his own conclusions and she would let him. She accepts the willow wand with a halfhearted smile, deflating and dropping her hands for a moment. She wondered if that might be it. If that might be all it could take to expel whatever poison grew and festered between them, resurfacing every time they had a petty argument or didn’t see eye to eye. She could hope against hope, and Valrae had been known to place her bets on lost causes, but something told her this would not be the last time they stood at odds.

They begin walking again, following the gentle sway of her willow wand. She holds it too tightly, her nails pressing tiny half moons into the smooth wood. The witch pauses, a moment of confusion crossing her face as it seemed to suddenly lead them in a new direction than where they had been heading before she’d stopped them… She opened her mouth, looking toward Lanlan to ask if he’d noticed, but felt reluctant to break the easier quiet they’d fallen into. She marches on.

But then he breaks it for her. She doesn’t stop walking this time, her boots pressing steadily forward in the damp sand, but she turns her face toward him as he speaks. He surprises her again. Her brow wings up as a short laugh escapes her. “No.” She answers simply. The steady pace continues. The thin line of rocky beach curves around the rocky face of a sheer cliff, opening up to a silent bay drenched in silver moonlight and deep pools of dusky blue shadows. “I don’t regret it.” She adds softly, finally. “I would never regret it. I don’t care that we argue sometimes.” The witch pauses as she skirts a large rock, “Sometimes I just wish you trusted me.”

Lanlan wonders if they’ve found out how to take their friend-ship on clearer waters and avoid the rougher ones now, or if the next storm is waiting just a day away or a week or a month. It’ll be the storm they invite onboard, he knows. But he can feign optimism. Walking once again into the unknown, led by a twig that’s somehow been enchanted to guide them, but Lanlan doesn’t question it anymore, doesn’t control it. The mystery was the hardest thing to overcome; because what if he was putting his life in the hand of wind’s whimsy? And yet he had to trust it. He can’t think this hard about it, he would get a wrinkle. Even when the twig is taking them very clearly in a different direction, and he knows the reason is very easily definable, he seems not to notice, looking straight ahead, even when straight suddenly becomes a much different direction than it was before. He looks serene. When he asks what he asks and she says ‘no’ she doesn’t regret their closeness, it’s a little easier. But Valrae wants a lot. “You tricked me and kept secrets,” he reminded her. Was it really so unreasonable, though, if all he ever wanted was to sometimes get the benefit of the doubt? “I can try,” he says, with great effort. It wasn’t what she wanted to hear, he knew, but the weight of that commitment was already a burden as soon as it left his lips. The path she was leading was near to water, which is something he’s had enough of in the past few hours. “I’ll try but if I get wet again, that’s it. I’m counting it as a betrayal.”

“I did not.” She says, her voice pitching high with offense. It tempers quickly though, fading like morning mist to her unsureness. “Or… I hadn’t meant to. That wasn’t the goal. Tricking you, I mean. I have secrets, Lan, but we all do.” This was said in a manner that clearly suggested he was being wholly unreasonable. The tone she took when her eyes rolled slightly and her nose twitched. Perhaps she was being pedantic. Yes, everyone had secrets. Some were small, like guiltily reading copper novels filled with weak willed women who were rescued by overbearing and controlling men. Or buying too many sweets from a street cart when they were alone and eating them all in bed. Or perhaps a habitual desire to cheat at chess. Some secrets were larger though. Some involved other people and other lives. Valrae was well versed in trafficking all manner of secrets when she believed she was justified.

The witch laughed as they headed farther into the bay and away from the ocean. “That isn’t fair! What if it rains?”

The willow wand seemed to be directing them inland. It wove them through the shadows of the forest. It was thick with underbrush and untamed wilderness, no well trodden paths to be found amid the dappled and pale light of the moons. The land beneath them sloped steadily upward and as they climbed the silence grew as they left behind the crashing waves.

It began as a steady beat, so low that at first Valrae might have mistaken it for her heart. Before long, the sound grew and became a musical rhythm. Her feet stalled, her boot caught between the earth and a straggly bit of unknown vine that twisted like a serpent beneath a thorny bush. She cursed and pulled herself free. “Do you hear that?” She asks Lanlan, whispering suddenly. Before long, it was accompanied by a rattling sound that was unmistakably heading nearer. “What is that?” She whispers again, reaching toward her belt for the ashwand waiting there. The rattling sound continued to grow louder, accompanied with the sound of snapping branches. Before long, it was just overhead. As Valrae squinted over the horizon of the steep hill, an arrow slipped through the night and landed with a hollow thud against the tree just behind them.

“I keep secrets too,” he says, as if that was something he needed to confess. “And if I know something or do something that might affect you then I’ll tell you, okay? And maybe next time you take my soul in your hands and mash it into the shape of whatever you need it to be at the time, you’ll tell me too.” He tries to at least sound respectful, but he felt like he was pleading for something that should be free.

Lanlan looked thoughtfully up at the skies. She had a point, it could rain and there might be nothing she can do to keep herself from betraying him. “Then you’ll have to change the weather, Valrae, that’s all.”

But they went into the jungle next, and began continuing uphill. And his steps started getting shorter and his breaths longer. Sometimes he would stop. “I don’t know when the last time I saw one of these growing wild,” he says, referencing a massive fungal growth growing off the bark of a birch tree. And he slips a knife out of his sleeve and cuts some chunks of it off. Sometimes they would come across something rare, or something common, and he would stop and comment and catch his breath before they continue on, and maybe she wouldn’t know he was struggling.

Next she stops before him. “I hear it,” he says, knowing as well as her how profound it must be. The first artificial sounds since coming here, that haven’t been from him or her. And they were wise to think it must herald danger. There’s another windy sound, cutting through the air and getting louder, quickly. The arrow thuds against a tree behind them, by chance. That first shot was too close; it could’ve just as easily hit one of them. Or was it a warning?

He spins and moves behind a tree, grabbing Valrae’s hand and pulling her toward him if she doesn’t have the same instinct. He spots the arrow in the tree, and studies the angle of its landing and imagines a trajectory. Then he closes his eyes, and somewhere in front of them, another Lanlan appears wearing loud colors and starts walking up the hill. An arrow passes through him from somewhere, and he alters his course slightly. The next one comes straight at him, and he sees it as it punches through his head.

The real one opens his eyes again and gasps from the shock, like he just dreamt his own death. “They’re scattered all the way up to the top of the hill,” he says urgently. “But I don’t think they could see us if we put these on.” He slides one hand up a sleeve and pulls out a small box containing his gris-gris talisman, and puts it on.

Then he resumes his trek, continuing up the hill in a parallel path to his punctured illusion, until he sees a skeleton. It’s clear why they didn’t see it before. It was wearing nature, interwoven with its bones were leafy vines, hinting perhaps at the eternity it spent standing stoically warding against threats that never came, until now. Lanlan stands blatantly in front of the guardsman with its next arrow nocked and its bow string taut. A wand flies to Lanlan’s fingers and he whips it with a delicate flourish. Three bubbles of force spin from tiny sparkly marbles, gathering energy until they’re more like bowling balls, and then they crash into this skeleton, casting parts of it all over in a wide circle. It's gone.

Valrae had taken on a look that was a little smug, like a cat who was particularly proud of the bird they’d left at its owners feet, as he’d agreed that he also had his own secrets. It vanished slowly as he continued and was replaced with something more thoughtful. She wanted to argue more, to tell him that isn’t quite what she’d done or how she’d ment for things to happen. But what did the particulars matter? What mattered, she decided, was that this was how he’d made him feel. So she doesn’t reply. She doesn’t laugh at him suggesting it was as simple as making a wish to change the weather. Instead she turns it over and over in her mind as they walk, as he pauses to pick apart something interesting in the dark and pretend that he did not need to catch his breath, as she pretends to not know his small secret.

The arrow causes a small sound of alarm to escape her as she turns her head to regard it. A second one follows as Lanlan yanks her behind it with him. The witch nearly trips on the same vine that had caught her before and she turns the air blue in her annoyance. Her curses die in her throat as the second drow appears. Something akin to jealousy and impress sprung bittersweetly in her throat as she watched the illusion make its way fearlessly up the hill, impervious to the volley of arrows. While Valrae was adept in the finicky art of illusions, she’d needed witch’s tools and time to create and sustain them more often than not. Lan’s mastery of them was something she envied and admired. “They what?” She replies angrily, watching as he produces his gris-gris talisman.

It took her two heartbeats to produce her own from her bag, with the help of a spell and her wand, and she pulled it over her head quickly before following Lanlan’s path. It didn’t take her long to see what he’d seen. Animated skeletons. They were covered in the island, as if they had remained dormant until now with only the island to devour them, and they were armed with rusted and ruined weapons.

The witch wastes little time following Lanlan’s lead as bones and moss scatter about. She aims her wand and murmurs a spell that leaves the remaining undead archer’s bow strings snapping apart uselessly with loud popping sounds. As they continued to attack the only visible target, Lanlan’s illusioned double, Valrae fired another spell from the ashwand. The dotted moonlight seeped from its pools on the forest floor, surrounding two of the skeletons nearest her and bathing them in holy light. Their jaws unhinged as they screamed silently, the ember light of their hollowed eye sockets burning out as they returned to blackened and empty bones that rattled down the side of the hill.

Just as Valrae lifted her wand again the ground beneath them shook. The earth groaned loudly around them. As it continued to pitch, she stumbled forward. Trees were uprooted, the sound mournful as the ancient forest ripped asunder and opened up like gaping and hungry jaws. Rock and dirt tumbled and crashed loudly as the mouth of the island opened wider and wider, threatening to take both Valrae and Lanlan into its depths.

Lanlan checks on Valrae to see if she noticed him doing that impressive spell, and how amazed is she, but instead, he sees her pulling the aura of the moon from a lake to assail a different skeleton. The very dead being seems to suffer as the essence of its unlife seems to be burnt with Valane’s own aura. It was a much more elegant and technical way to deal with the skeleton than simply crushing it with force magic. “I didn’t know we were showing off,” he mutters as she walks past.

Well beyond them, two more skeletons are firing their arrows at the duplicate, who at Lanlan’s command rushes forward to stand between them. As the two skeletons realign their bows, it seems like they’re about to fire, in a pattern that would hopefully end with them knocking each others heads off. Instead the earth rumbles and shakes, and Lanlan can’t possibly know what’s coming out of it. But he snatches Valrae by the hand and starts to run, and then slips his wand back into his sleeve. He clutches his drow insignia, hidden on the backside of gold and ruby amulet, and activates its levitation magic to carry himself and Valrae both into a jump that would fail to end.

Whatever was happening, it was happening to the ground, and that’s where the danger was. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as specific to them as he thought. As the dirt falls away in a small area, the integrity of the rest of the place seems to be unpinned. The walls keep sliding down, the hole widens, until even the roots of massive trees have nothing to latch onto. They topple one after another as the hungry earth churns. The former peace and quiet of this place is shattered by the snapping of branches, the ruffling of a million trees, the crashing of rock and wood.

They both float peacefully in the turmoil several feet off the ground. Lanlan is not yet able to consider letting go of her as the danger seems to persist, until he suddenly and violently pushes Valrae away from him and they sail away from each other like two canoes on a placid lake. A second later, a massive bough of branches and leaves cuts the now open space between them like a giant butcher’s cleaver, and tilts into the abyss below.

Lanlan takes a breath, as they seem to be in the clear. But as the giant tree that menaced them plunges into the depths, the massive tangle of roots that were once entangled with the ground, are flung upwards and for a brief moment, the tree is vertical again. It flings a storm of dirt and plant life upward, and Lanlan closes his eyes and shields his face from the swarm of debris, and seems to be weathering it. When he opens them again, he’s intact, but cluttered. He starts to move toward Valrae again, assuming she’s still floating nearby, but is somewhat weighed down by a loosely hanging vine hanging over his shoulder and looped around an ankle. As he starts to push it over his head, it suddenly grows taut as the tree pulls it into the abyss, and him along with it.

Continued in The Cost of Bravery.