"I sincerely wish I could join you on your quest, but my parents have asked for me to stay behind and wait for your return with my beloved Nadia," Prince Thanos says shaking Rylin and I's hands.
The three of us were standing in front of the great tree in the Elven forest that served as the entrance to the Elven city. It was shady where we were standing due to the densely packed tree branches and leaves high above our heads. Little woodland animals like rabbits and squirrels ran on branches, played around our feet, and stared curiously at us from the cover of nearby bushes.
"We will bring her back if it kills us in the process, your highness," Rylin shook the prince's hand and formally bowed, sweeping his dark blue wizard's cloak behind himself.
"And you, young lady, please do come back and visit us after you finish your mission. You are a one of a kind girl to have been able to decipher those inked marks when an elf, myself, couldn't even read the spell. You must come back to visit," the prince took a hold of my hand and gently kissed the back of it in a formal thank you, I blushed and I could have sworn Rylin's lip twitched slightly.
"Thank you for having us," I thanked him and curtsied.
Rylin and I had been given newly clothes to wear for the rest of our journey. Under his dark blue cloak Rylin wore a white riding suit with newly shined black thick-soled leather shoes.
I wore a lightweight chainmail dress that took the seamstress only an hour to make when I told her I needed something I could fight in and ride in. The chains were tinted a forest green and hung off my body, stopping just below my knees and flair out so I could move around with getting caught in the dress's millions of chains. The dress had dark green short sleeves that stopped right below my shoulders and were also made of the same shade of green chainmail. Matching green chainmail bracers reached from my wrists and stopped just below my elbows to protect my arms from any strikes from blades.
Haven and Rylin's horse were standing behind us waiting for the trip to start. They were neighing and whinnying, even prancing around impatiently. Come on let's go. I know you can hear me Hope, hurry up before we leave you both here. Haven spoke to me in her horse language. I laughed quietly to myself and the two guys looked at me as if I were insane.
"What are you laughing about?," Rylin asked me, his head cocked to the side.
"Haven's telling me we need to hurry up and get going. She's being impatient and antsy," I giggled, receiving an annoyed whinny from Haven.
"If your animals are ready to go you should be going. I'm keeping me back by speaking to you so long," Prince Thanos smiled.
Rylin and I mounted our horses and Rylin held our map in his hands. He was better at navigating since he had been trained to be a scholar and wizard for his entire life, so I agreed to let him hold the map. I still hadn't told him what I had seen in those visions, I was afraid he would give up on me if I told him I watched Nadia fall off the cliff without the attempt at trying to fight.
"Thank you again for all the marvelous gifts and information," Rylin waved as our horses trotted down the hidden road we were supposed to follow and had just found yesterday afternoon.
"You're very welcome, when you return there shall be a parade in your honor," Prince Thanos called, waving back.
A parade that had sounded nice. It would be something nice to come back from, if we live through this mission. The boy on the cliff with the black onyx wings looked dangerous. I was afraid to be the one chosen to save Nadia, a Seeker who was supposed to be able to hold her own against anyone, from a guy who obviously had more power than her.
"You look deep in thought, whatcha' lookin' at?," Rylin attempted at starting a conversation in the eerily quiet Elven forest.
"I was just wondering what we're going to find when we get to the cliff," it wasn't entirely a lie.
"I don't know what we will find, I'm just hoping we live to tell the tale," Rylin murmurs, so he too was worrying about our chances of survival, and he didn't even know who we were up against. I guess that made it scarier, though, the unknowence of what is going to go down in three days time.
"What if we can't save her, what happens then?," I asked no one in particular, Rylin answered my question though.
"I guess we would just go back to how we were before all this came up. I just hope if we fail to save her the worlds around us don't suffer our failure," Rylin frowns.
The rest of the morning we rode in silence, both of us were thinking and worrying about something that was much larger than the two of us combined. We were only two people, but we were placed with the responsibility of billions of people on all the worlds.
We stopped for lunch in a shady grove in the middle of the forest. We still had another hour or two before we exited the Elven forest. The map kept showing twists and turns that we had to slowly pick through the bushes and low branches to find the hidden paths. Normally it would have taken us only about three hours to leave the forest, but it was taking us more like six hours.
"We can camp out in the plains under the stars tonight. I did some research about what stars will show themselves to us tonight in the area we will follow. It should be a bright, star filled night," Rylin smiled at me.
He sat across from me with his legs under him, his dark blue cloak was spread out around him like a calm ocean. His teeth looked freshly brushed though he was eating. Must have been a spell he had used this morning before we left, or his teeth were naturally always clean. I had heard there were Powerholders and Elves who had a trait in their blood that kept their teeth perfectly clean and straight. I was always jealous of them, I had to brush my teeth every morning and evening if I didn't want cavities.
"Whatcha' staring at?," Rylin's smile curled into a smirk as I blushed.
"Nothing, just a wizard with fancy spells," I smirked back.
"Aw, that hit hard that I'm just a wizard," Rylin said and acted wounded, smiling when I had had started giggled.
"Well, if you're not just a wizard, what can you do that other wizards can't," I playfully taunted.
"Have you ever met another wizard in as high standing as myself," he flourished his hand.
"I've met a magician before, does that count?," I grinned and he acted hurt again.
"No, that most certainly does not count. I do, though, know some magic tricks," Rylin smirked which made me laugh even more.
"Then show them to me," I giggled.
"Very well, my lovely lady," Rylin stood up after stuffing the rest of his sandwich in his mouth.
I grinned as he walked around in a circle pattern, scuffing the grass down so it lay flat. Stepping outside the circle he clapped his hands together and then aimed them down towards the center of the two foot diameter circle. The ground inside the circle began to glow an earthy brown and the soil began to raise itself up in a column of dirt. I stared wide eyed and fascinated as Rylin concentrated all his energy on making the ground raise itself up. His eyes were closed and his straight beach blonde hair was waving back in the artificle wind the spell was creating.
His eyes flew open and his cocoa brown eyes were a much brighter brown than normal. His eyes darkened back to normal and his straight, blonde hair fell back where it was supposed to be. Resting against the tops of his ears and the back of his pale neck. He cocked his head to the side, his hair falling to one side, and smiled at me. He looked a little worn out, but at the same time he seemed happy that I was impressed.
"We better be going before we end up making out or something. You look about ready to jump me," Rylin joked.
"Ya, let's go," I blushed.
We broke up camp and put everything back on our horses' backs. We mounted our horses and were off again, following the map despite its twists and turns. It didn't surprise me that we didn't come across any bandits or thieves. The Elven forest is extremely safe when it comes to that kind of thing. The dense forest did make me wary, though. If we so much as strayed from our path we would be lost for days before an elf found us and led us to their city.
We reached the edge of the forest in a shorter amount of time than we had been expecting. It looked like the golden plains went on forever after we had started our way out into the flat plains. The shimmering plains of the Powerholder dimension are vast and almost as barren as a desert. You don't find much out here except berry bushes and deer, birds, rabbits, and foxes. Not many lizards or snakes live in the plains anymore, they're almost extinct in our dimension while they run rampant on other dimensions.
"We can camp here and watch the sun set. That way we are energized for tomorrow's leg of the journey. I've planned out where we will be at what times. I have planned that we will be at our destination by tomorrow night," Rylin told me as we set up camp for the night.
We had built a small fire in the middle of our camp that now blazed in bright oranges, yellows, and reds. Our fluffy sleeping bags were layed out on the stiff, hard ground. Haven and Rylin's horse were running in circles and nipping playfully at each other as if they were playing some form of tag. Rylin and I sat together watching the clear horizon as the bright evening sun vanished like a light from the sky.
"All the colors are so beautiful. I wish we could sit here together forever," I whispered.
Rylin sat cross-legged on his sleeping bag with me sat on his lap. He had his soft arms wrapped around me and clasped across my stomach. I was leaning back against his flat chest staring up at the twinkling stars in the dark night sky. In a straight row in the sky were millions of faint, blue stars that circled the entire sky. That same straight row of faint blue stars can be seen anywhere on our dimension's planet. It's able to be seen on any dimension with magically influence.
The only dimension the beautiful blue stars aren't able to be seen from is in the Imperfect dimension. Sure, the dimension has many Powerholders, Supernatural beings, and even animals that can speak human. But the dimension was created to be a place where magic is a fairytale, a fable Imperfects use to tell stories of far off places and epic magic duels between mages. Games and movies are made about my kind, about the vampires and werewolves, about elves and dragons. So don't be upset, Imperfect, when you look up at the sky and fail to see the faint blue circle of stars.
Rylin and I separated from each other only about half an hour after the sky had gone dark and the stars had become the night's light. Our fire still burned brightly in its makeshift fire pit in the middle of camp. We said our good-nights and I curled up in my comfortable and warm sleeping bag. Rylin had said we would reach the cliff tomorrow night. That would give us time to scope out and around the cliff. That night I fell asleep to the sounds of Rylin's soft snoring, the crackle of the fire, and our horses' soft whinnying.