Book One: Fate
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CHAPTER TWO: The World Beyond
A firmly placed foot onto the blackened floor echoed like the sound of a deep drum all around him. Taking a few more steps forward at a quicker pace, everything seemed to boom with the echo. He was not even sure if he had moved; the floor, the walls (if there even was any) all seemed to be pure black. Movement was indeterminable. Tylor found his way to his eyes and rubbed them with small clenched fists, but it did not help, as pure black still surrounded him. He could not see his hands, feet or even the end of his own nose. He was lost.
“Hello?” He said in his small, weak, child’s voice.
He paced back and forth, round and round, hands feebly outstretched to get bearings. Kneeling to the floor his naked hand felt a black surface. It was like stone, cold to the touch. Standing back up, the area seemed to cloud like thick fog was leaking in through a hole in the darkness, flooding the room. Tylor began to panic, his heart was racing and anxiety was kicking in. His mind created pictures of monsters, evil things, reaching from the darkness hiding in the fog and bone like hands stretching for him.
“No!” he cried.
He ran, panting deeply, with eyes firmly closed and hands shielding his face. The fog rubbed against his body, like it was trying to hold him back. And then, he was in someone’s arms. Tylor kicked and screamed, began to cry, and tried, with futile strikes, to fight off his attacker.
“Tylor! Calm down, dear. It’s alright now,” a woman said.
Slowly, his young face looked up as a hand moved across his face, brushing his hair gently before cleaning the tears from his eyes. His mother stood before him. He felt so happy. Her gentle young face had a smile on it as she ruffled his hair. She had warned him not to leave Samilo at night, but he did not listen.
“Maybe, once he was eight years old,” she had said.
Standing tall, his mother picked him up and embraced him in a cuddle as she turned to walk back into Samilo. He looked up at her face, her auburn eyes were looking forward, the smile was still across her small mouth and her soft blond hair caught the light from a torch on the Samilo gate. As she carried him into the village, he looked back over her shoulder to the darkness he had just escaped from.
“Why did you leave the village and go outside, dear? I told you not to,” she said softly.
Tylor sniffed and explained he was looking for his father. He heard him leave the house and wanted to follow him. She shook her head back and forth and explained that his work was important and sometimes he had to leave at night to get there on time. In the distance, in the darkness he had ran from, he suddenly noticed two figures. One was like a shadow and the other was solid and looked powerful. He gasped as he realized it was his father.
“Look mother! It’s dad! Look!” Tylor said, struggling in her hands.
She kept walking.
“He’s very busy, dear. He has to leave at night sometimes, I told you… I told you…”
The shadow attacked his father and struck him down in front of him. Tylor screamed out for his mother to look, but she kept on walking. They had already past the Samilo gates and they had begun to close, with a loud echoing creak. He began to kick and scream again, fighting against his mother.
She dropped him to the floor.
Tylor landed, on bended knee, on the cold floor. He looked round to find himself alone again. He stood up to his full height, his muscles tense and his features older. He dashed for the closing gates and jumped back out into the darkness, the image of his teenage body now consumed by the black shadows. In the distance the shadow stood over his father, dark sword in hand, with it raised high above them, ready to strike. Tylor stood up and began to run towards them, but they would not get closer. Samilo was gone now, no longer in the background, darkness and fog surrounded him with only the distant image of his father fighting still visible. He shouted out, across the dark void but they could not hear him. The shadow sword reached its peak and came down on his father in a fast slashing motion. Tylor fell to his knees as he watched his father’s body fall and stop moving. The shadow then turned to him, the sword outstretched, with blood dripping from the tip. Then there came a whisper, a whisper in the back of his mind, a soft female voice talking to him.
Do not grieve, move on. All will be as it should. Follow her to learn more and in time the truth will be revealed to you.
Everything was dark again. Cold and alone, Tylor still on his knees, cried out for his father, but no one answered.
Tylor awoke to the sight of Old Man Copper’s roof starring back at him. The dead, dirty, wooden girders full of rot were peeling away at the edges. The sun shined brightly through the small window above his head and illuminated the whole room. Placing a hand on his sweaty, wet, forehead, he sighed. Like he had told Joel, he was having trouble sleeping peacefully, but what he had just dreamt was different to anything he had grown used to. He felt his eyes with his finger. Pulling it back to give his sight time to focus, he saw small drops of clear water on them.
I’m, crying? He thought to himself. That dream, it seemed so real but it can not be. When I was a kid I never went out alone, mother did not even live with us when I was that age. Besides, my father is a trader not a swordsman, it’s almost laughable… so why, why am I crying?
Using his bed sheet to finish wiping his eyes, he now looked down to the floor beside him to find that Joel’s bed was empty. His sheets were still wildly strewn across bits of the floor, but that was to be expected. Joel was no early bird, which meant he must have slept in, again. He had other things to think about now, not his imagination giving him nightmares. He had to get ready for the trip to Wrathe, where his father would hopefully be.
Although it was just a stupid dream, he felt he had to get a move on, he felt as if he had to hurry. Tylor collapsed back down on his bed, shaking his head. He had let that dream get to him. He was not a child anymore, dreams did not mean anything and monsters were not real.
He laughed out loud.
After clearing up Joel’s sheets and getting washed up, Tylor got dressed into a fresh shirt from his satchel and then ventured downstairs to try and find Joel (who was most likely on his third course of breakfast and was enjoying hassling Old Man Copper).
The bar area directly down the stairs had a different feel to it during the day, nothing like how it had felt when they had found it the evening before. The large fire was still just a bunch of blackened, burnt, kindling and brilliant sun light illuminated every corner of the room. Beams of light hit the variety of wine bottle kept in racks behind the bar, causing reflected multicolored light to be spread across the varnished wood surfaces creating a collage of color.
Joel sat, with creased clothes put hurriedly on, eating healthfully with a spoon in hand, tucking into something which smelt like porridge. He looked round to see Tylor and tried to say something that might have been “Good morning!”, but his stuffed mouth made it sound more like someone choking.
“You know, I grabbed a few more clothes from my home. They’re in my satchel, you did not need to wear the same ones,” Tylor said, sitting down next to his young friend.
His friend shrugged with indifference and went back to his meal. Tylor leaned over the wooden bar and looked towards the kitchen. Steam was coming from it and he could hear the cluttering of cutlery coming from the area beyond. That probably meant that was where Old Man Copper was. He needed to clear some things up before he and Joel left for Wrathe, such as why he did not hear or feel the storm that savaged Samilo.
“Oh, Tylor,” Joel said, edging a bit closer to him and then whispered, “Did you see her?”
Tylor asked who he meant. Joel explained that there was a woman lodging upstairs too and that he bumped into her that morning. He had a big smile on his face as he said it. Tylor laughed and shook his head.
Joel’s eyes narrowed as he spoke in a more sarcastic tone, “See any nice girls in your dreams, then?”
He laughed again and looked away. It looked like Joel had thought he was just being funny last night. Now that he had mentioned it, yes, he did hear that same soft female voice. He shivered as he thought about it. That gentle voice had a certain coldness and mystery about it. His hand traced cracks in the old wooden bar before him. His mind was wandering to that dream again, that strong, vivid, dream. Nothing the past couple of days had made sense to him. Flicking his finger at torn sections of the wood, he twirled the jagged splinters around his fingers. There really was not any point thinking about it, what could he do anyway? Concentrating on helping Samilo and finding his father would be a more efficient way of spending his time, rather than looking for meaning in dreams or playing with bits of wood. He sat up straighter and stopped moving his hands across the wood.
“Joel, once I’ve spoken to Copper we’re going to head straight to Wrathe. This is still only the half way mark, so I don’t want to leave it too late before we get on our way,” Tylor spoke in a strict, commanding, tone.
Without a word (because his mouth was still crammed full of food), Joel nodded in agreement. Behind them both, the old stairs up to the rooms creaked with the pressure of feet pressing on them. Joel nudged Tylor again to get his attention. He turned fully around on his stool and watched as a youthful woman appeared.
She looked quite young, which made sense of why Joel would like her. She had neatly combed dark brown hair which reached her shoulders in length and a small fringe which almost hid her eyes. Over her thin frame, she wore a leather padded breastplate with chain mail below, with a mixture of chain and leather coverings over her legs. It seemed like a lot of protection to wear in the area, so she might have been with the Wrathe militia. It was possible she was sent to check on Samilo after the storm. The woman walked round the base of the stairs and towards them. She sat down two stools across from Tylor, which was directly next to the door leading to Coppers kitchen. She looked forward over the bar and began tapping at it with her hand, seemingly impatient about something.
“Excuse me,” said Tylor, grabbing the girl’s attention. “Are you a member of the militia from Wrathe?”
She laughed. He was not sure why. Turning to face Tylor fully and brushing her fringe partly out of the way of her view, her light green eyes met with his.
“No, I am not part of the militia, I’m not even a knight,” she replied.
He apologized for bothering her and returned to his previous seating position, facing directly forward, looking across the bar. She had an accent he did not recognize, which meant she had to be from the main land. It was odd she would wear so much armor and not be from the militia, but she was specific in reply; she was not militia or a knight.
The militia of Wrathe was something he knew somewhat about. In a town predominantly used for trading and such, some form of crime prevention was required. Because of such, many years ago a, supposed, honest few were picked to start the militia. Tylor’s father had once said they received the support of the main land knights and that triggered militia factions to pop up all over the kingdom wanting to be as ‘liberated’ as the islanders were. Knights, on the other hand, he had never seen outside of pictures in story books he was shown as a child. Although he had never seen the scale of cities on the main land, before learning of knights, he had always assumed militia just guarded them too. The knights in the stories he had been shown were always hero’s, fighting off monsters and saving princesses from distress. Maybe the term ‘knight’ was used on the main land instead of militia.
Copper emerged from the steam filled kitchen and sat before the two boys on the opposite side of the bar. Before Tylor got a chance to say anything, the old man told them that he now believed them about the savage storm. He went on to say that during the night, after the boys had retired to bed, a party of men from Samilo stopped on their way to Wrathe (where they hoped to request relief support). They took some supplies and continued on their travels, torches in hand as the only form of light so late at night. They refused to wait till daylight.
“I still need to go to Wrathe to see if my father is there, but thank you for letting us know,” Tylor said gratefully.
The young woman who had sat across from Tylor had moved without a word, she was now standing directly behind him and Joel. She cleared her throat to get their attention, startling them both slightly.
“If you two are heading to Wrathe, can I request a guide? I would have traveled with those people last night, but I was already asleep by the time they arrived.”
Tylor could feel his cheeks begin to turn red. Joel could not speak and had a large, nervous, smile on his face. Tylor tripped over his words as he agreed to the woman unconditionally.
“Good. I’ll go pack up my things and we can leave. I won’t be long, about fifteen minutes, alright?”
He nodded as she turned away and walked back up the old noisy stairs. He turned back round to see Copper produce some water in a glass and a small wooden bowl filled with bubbling hot porridge. With a smirk on his old face, he returned to the kitchen. Tylor had never been like that in front of a woman before and looking back on what just happened only made if worse, his reaction had been quite embarrassing. His embarrassment did not seem to stem from the girl talking to him directly, more from a feeling of déjà vu and a strong sense that he felt he should know her, but that was impossible, he would remember such a person. He looked back to Joel who was giggling to himself, Tylor scoffed in embarrassment before turning his attention to eating his piping hot breakfast.
Something about what the young woman had said did not make sense. He decided he would need to know more about how she got Copper’s place before they set out. It was odd she wanted to come as far as Copper’s then turn straight back round and head back towards the port in Wrathe.
“I’ll go collect our things,” Joel said, as he sat up and headed up the stairs.
Ten minutes had past. Tylor had now finished his meal and was ready to leave with Joel. They stood at the bar waiting for their new companion to join them. Time was drawing on, it was already mid morning. They had to make good time on the rest of their journey if they wanted to reach Wrathe before nightfall. There was only one main road between Copper’s and Wrathe, so that meant, if his father did leave the town to return to Samilo, chances are they would meet him on the way.
Another five minutes past until the woman reappeared from upstairs. She did not have any form of back pack or satchel with her, which Tylor thought was odd. She walked past them to the door, and began opening it slowly. From outside, a soft gust of wind blew in and circulated round the bar area, it was a refreshing feeling.
Copper re-emerged from his kitchen once more, too bid them farewell. Tylor said he would try to earn the money to pay for the night when they returned but Copper shook his head and said he owed his father a thing or two, so it was free. Thanking him and saying goodbye, Tylor, Joel and the woman left the inn. Closing the door firmly behind them and stepping out into the waiting countryside they checked their things.
It was another beautiful day, there was a slight breeze but the glorious sun was shining once again. The rampant green scenery around them glowed with reflected sun light and a group of small butterflies swooped around plants and trees flying in tight formation through flora and fauna. It was odd that two days of good weather should directly follow such a savage storm, but it was a welcomed change. The island was at its best during the hot weather. It was perfect for farming and children loved playing in the orchards. It was picture perfect almost all year round, but this was exceptional. It was what made it such a lovely place to live, that, and the people.
It was the best example of a peaceful self serving community striving to make things better for everyone in the whole kingdom. Zan had always said it was something the people of the main land could learn from, but they did not believe the needs of the many out weighed the needs of the few over there and greed guided the course of men across the North Sea.
“So, which way is Wrathe?” the woman asked abruptly.
If she came from Wrathe, it was very odd she did not know of the main road which ran straight from Samilo to Coppers then from there straight onto Wrathe. Tylor had to ask.
“This dirt road,” he said, pointing ahead of them. “This leads all the way to Wrathe. If you came from there, didn’t you know about that already?”
A small smile appeared on her face.
“I got lost on the way here, my own fault for not following the path, I guess,” she explained, “I got distracted and wandered off it quite early on and only stumbled upon this inn by luck. Anyway, since we are going the same way we may as well travel together, right?”
She started to follow the path, turning back only to say her name; Karen Warren. They joined her quick pace without any chance to tell her their own names and began their journey along the dusty road to Wrathe.
As they walked speedily along the path, Joel could not help but notice that nothing they passed had been effected by the storm at Samilo either. Grass on either side of the road was untouched, swaying gently in the breeze; nothing had been up torn or spread wildly around. All the trees stood tall with all their green foliage still intact and had not been thrown around like a child’s toy. It was comforting and shocking at the same time. He had been awake during the storm, he knew what it had been like and he had felt it, he saw the fear. Nothing which could do so much damage could be limited to just Samilo’s half of the island. Storms move do they not? They travel with the wind or something like that. The more he thought about it, the more he became confused. He could not remember the storm calming down, he remembered it starting, causing the destruction and then simply stopping.
After Tylor had fallen asleep last night at Coppers, he had thought about it. Samilo was a ruin now and so many people had died because of that storm but now, elsewhere on the island and even at Samilo the next day, it was a glorious warm day. It did not add up. However, there was no point thinking about it now.
His pace had slowed to a crawl while he pondered on his thoughts and he had trailed behind the others slightly. He looked at Karen Warren. She seemed nice enough. She was very attractive. If she really was from the main land, it was the first person from there that he had ever seen. The island was part of the main land’s kingdom but very few people from Samilo, apart from the traders, had went to or even seen someone from the main land. Samilo was a closed off self preserving community, as you grew up there you either became a farmer, fisherman or a trader. The traders were the only people who spoke with people from the main land and because they can meet in Wrathe there never was a good reason to travel across the sea. Joel was not sure if Tylor had been to the main land with his father, he knew that was where his mother moved to when Tylor was still young and that he had been saving money to go visit her alone, but he may have gone with his father when he was younger.
“Tylor,” Joel whispered, after catching up with them again. “Have you ever been to the main land?”
Tylor took slower steps as he listened. It was an odd thing for the kid to suddenly ask. He looked over to Karen and realized what must have got him thinking about the main land. He knew Joel had never been, but had always been interested. The idea of being a farmer or fisherman never did sit well with either of them.
“No, I’ve never been. I’ve been saving too, but only my father and mother have visited it.”
In his studies when he was younger, Tylor had read about the main land. He knew the island was part of the Atra kingdom and its king was King Leonard Nega. He could probably quote some of the royal families’ history. He knew the capital was called Tentra too. He knew that because that was where his mother now lived. Most of his father’s childhood stories revolved around the main land too, but they were just fiction. Truth be known, as far as people, customs, cultures, rules, economics and such went, he knew nothing about the main land.
He looked back over to Karen who was looking off into the distance, towards the sea. The sun’s bright light made the water almost see through. Small tadpoles and fish swam low on the sea bed, trying to hide from the piercing beams. She was either enjoying the scenery, or was bored.
“Karen, you’re from the main land, aren’t you?” he asked.
She turned too look at him. Her hair was drifting in the soft breeze obscuring her vision, causing her to bat it out the way with her hand again.
“Yes I am, from a city called Noctern,” she replied.
Tylor nodded. Of course he had never heard of it, but she had confirmed she was from the main land. She did not seem like she wanted to be very talkative with them, but he was curious now about how the main land’s ways differed to their own. He decided he would endeavor to find out more before the group parted ways.
They had traveled for a few hours now. The heat had not subsided and was still as warm and pleasant as it was when they left Coppers. The warmth was making it a chore to travel, but they could not afford to stop for any great length of time. It was already into the afternoon. Joel stopped them as they walked, explaining he had to have a drink or he would collapse from a mixture of exhaustion, dehydration and fatigue (he loved exaggerating). Of course, the sea water was salted and could not be drunk, but for the past hour or so the island side of the road they were following ran along side a small, fresh water, stream. The stream trickled down from the hills where rain water collected and would eventually run all the way down into the sea. The point in the stream they walked along was well away from the sea, which made it safe for it to be drunk.
Walking off the road, Joel headed a few meters away to a wide point of the stream, next to some large dark green bushes for shade. It was quite large at this point, as opposed to further down the road where it seemed to get compressed by the land. Sitting almost one meter in width this was one of the larger points of the whole stream. Karen walked a bit further down the road and took shelter under a tree. Judging by the amount of armor she was wearing, it was no surprise she was fatigued too. Tylor went over to join her.
Dipping his naked feet into the stream, Joel threw his boots back onto the bank behind him, and sighed to himself. He did not want to appear so tired in front of Tylor, but he really was exhausted. Leaving his feet relaxing in the cool liquid, he sat on the bank looking off at the hills in the distance and let out another long sigh.
“Hey!” he heard Tylor shout out, “we’re not stopping for a swim, take a drink and let’s go.”
He waved lazily and nodded in response. As he scooped some of the water up into his hand, a noise in the bushes next to him made him turn and stare. From the bushes emerged a panting animal. Lurking in the shadow it lay down a few feet away from Joel and began licking at the cool water. It was an Inem pup. He could tell it was young; its thin brown coat had only just fully formed. Back in Samilo the adult Inem were hunted for meat, but the young were always left to grow and unlike their older counterparts, were harmless. Just to be careful, Joel did not want to irritate the pup incase there were any adults around and quickly began placing his boots on as quietly as he possibly could.
Tylor was facing the road ahead, trying to work out how far they still had to travel until they reached Wrathe. His hand was placed above his eyes trying to shield out the immense rays of the sun. Meanwhile, Karen sat under a tree, still tired and sweaty, looking in no particular direction. She took a passing glance at Tylor. He was busy counting on his finger trying to work out how many miles they had still to travel. She then looked over to where Joel was.
“Tylor, quick!” she shouted, leaping to her feet.
He spun round and looked to Karen as she stood up and darted towards Joel and an Inem pup sat near him. Joel had been startled by her shouting and jumped to his feet. Looking to the pup, it now faced them. Its teeth were showing and it was making a low growling sound.
“Karen, wait!” Tylor shouted back, to no avail.
As Karen reached Joel the pup, startled and scared, leapt for him. Karen pushed Joel out the way and struck the pup with her other free hand. The young pup spun in the air and flew backwards into the bushes, yelping loudly. Losing his footing, Joel swung his arms out in front of him, stumbled backwards, and fell into the stream with a large splash.
As he caught up with them both, he ran to the bushes to check on what had happened to the Inem pup. Within the undergrowth he could see the corpse of the pup. A large slash traveled the course of its neck. Fresh warm blood was flooding out, staining the grass around it. He thought Karen had knocked it back, but she had somehow killed it.
Looking back to her and to the hand she had used to knock the pup, he was shocked to see a bloodied dagger the length of her wrist hanging from her hand with its blade pointing out from the bottom of her fist. As Tylor reached for Joel to help him out of the water, she cleaned the blade in the stream. The blood on it dripped into the cool water and slowly vanished. From round her ankle she detached a sheath for the dagger, which Tylor had never noticed before, and placed it in. She then attached the holster to the base of her waist on her belt in a horizontal position. It was no wonder he had never noticed it before, she had kept it hidden.
“Sorry if the dagger shocked you. I did not want to scare you, so I kept it hidden,” she said, nervously. “The main land requires you to carry some form of defense when you travel as it can be…dangerous.”
Tylor tried to explain that the Inem was just a pup and that it was just startled, but she shrugged at this. Joel sneezed and shivered hard. Even in the heat, the stream was still cold and they could not allow him to walk on in drenched clothes.
“We’re going to have to make camp until Joel gets dried up, which probably means spending the whole night out here,” Tylor sighed.
Moving slightly down stream, in case any adult Inem came looking for its young, the group set up camp under a large tree a few feet from the path. Karen had begun collecting logs and was being as quiet as ever. Tylor had made a make shift bed for Joel to lie in and dry off, his wet clothes were suspended on some rope between branches on the tree. After he would just have to wear some more of the spare clothes Tylor had packed in the satchel. Since they definitely were not going to reach Wrathe that day, they accepted that they now had to spend the night outside.
Joel was naked and lay on his stomach, wrapped in a large blanket, watching the other two, bored. He also seemed quite annoyed at what Karen had done, but had probably forgiven her, as he undressed himself nearby to her. Tylor decided to ignore his friend’s attempts to grab her attention before he lay down. Joel could shed all traces of embarrassment, if a girl was involved. Returning with some wood, Karen set them down within some stones, ready for a camp fire once night was upon them. It was getting quite late now and it was already a lot cooler.
The warm day had turned to cold evening a lot faster than it had seemed to the three companions. Joel still lay in his make shift bed, shivering, while the other two sat on logs.
“We should get the fire going, anyone know how to do that thing with two rocks?” Tylor asked sheepishly.
Karen smirked and reached into her pocket. She revealed a small amber crystal sphere, which seemed to glow. Pointing it to the logs, she spoke out the word “Fire”. As soon as she said it, the amber sphere lit up. Within it a small growing flame appeared, it started flipping and twisting, hitting off the edges of the sphere like it was performing an exotic dance. The logs on the floor suddenly ignited into a healthy flame, warm embers pulled away from its peak and disappeared into the night sky.
“What was…?” Tylor asked before trailing off, shocked.
He felt quite scared. He had never seen anything like what Karen was able to do with that strange sphere. Joel seemed both mesmerized and scared at the same time. Karen looked at them both with a questioning look.
“What?” she questioned. “Haven’t you seen a magical sphere before?”
Oh, say it like it’s an everyday thing, Tylor said to himself, magical spheres? This is the kind of thing my father would tell me about in his stories, the power to use magic, cast fire or ice from peoples own hands but he never said anything about spheres. I never knew Karen had this ability.
Awestruck, Tylor could only shake his head. Karen smiled and tossed the sphere to him. Landing in his hands, Tylor dropped it quickly. He expected it to still burn with the same flame he had seen within it, but it was ice cold now. Slowly, he bent down and picked up the amber sphere. Once in his hand he looked into it and saw the large dancing flame from before, but now it was small and almost not visible and sat still, within the center of the sphere.
“I don’t believe it, you really haven’t,” Karen laughed to herself, “didn’t anyone ever teach you this, Tylor?”
Tylor looked to the floor. Was this common place on the main land? Was he supposed to be embarrassed? He had never seen anything like this his entire life. Joel asked to see the sphere too, so it was passed to him.
“Are you some kind of magician Karen? Like out of Tylor’s dad’s stories?” he asked with great intrigue.
She smiled again (it was the most amused either of them had seen her). She explained, the magical spheres could be used be anyone and did not require the user to have any latent magical abilities. She took the sphere back from Joel and placed it back in her pocket. Carrying on the explanation, she stated that by commanding a single word (usually the element of the sphere) it would cast its power in the direction it is pointed in. Travelers used it in the same manner for starting fires. Continuing, she explained that people with magical ability produce the spheres, and in some places they were considered a valuable trading commodity. The power stored within each sphere was not eternal and would eventually die out, thus its owner would need to buy another, hence the economical implications of creating such spheres. Tylor and Joel were amazed. They could never have imagined that sort of thing existed on the main land. Nothing of its nature had ever come to Samilo.
Time went on and it was now late into the night. The shock of Karen’s usage of a magical sphere had already gone. Joel was sound asleep. It was an odd occurrence for him to be the first asleep. Karen and Tylor had spent a lot of time talking. It was odd, but she seemed more interested in his life and only really answered simple things about the main land when questioned. He thought back to when she attacked the Inem and to earlier that same evening, she had said his name twice. Retracing events since they had met at Coppers, Tylor could not remember ever introducing himself and Joel to her, though it was possible she had overheard them talking while they traveled. Back at the old man’s he had felt no reason to introduce them, as if it was not needed, as if Karen already knew them regardless of hearing them call each other by name or not. It was a strange feeling.
“Karen, how did you know my name before? Joel and I never told you them,” he said, watching her reaction closely.
She was quite startled by his question but quickly replied that Copper had told her. He was content with that answer, but something still did not sit right. He would have believed her easier if she had said she had over heard them talking. Maybe it was just the events over the last few days that now had him seeing things that were not there, but he could not shake the feeling that Karen was holding things back.
“So, what brings you to the island? It sounds like there a lot more to do on the main land,” he said, attempting to learn more from her.
Laughing again, she asked what made the main land sound so good. He explained that he had never been, but had always been interested about what went on over there. Mumbling slightly, he then admitted he knew next to nothing about the main land.
“After your reaction to the sphere I guessed that much, but you’ve never heard of any of the important things happening on the main land? What about the civil war between the factions of Noctern? The liberation of Tillsen?” she continued questioning, getting the same blank response every time.
He could not help but think that he should have been writing all the names and locations down because, as of yet, they meant nothing to him. They may have been mentioned in his study books, but certainly to no great extent and in no amount of detail. He smiled sheepishly as Karen sighed at him.
It was then that he realized she had yet again dodged another question about herself and turned it into something about him. Despite that, he was interested in what she had to say about the main land, even if it was not exact details about her.
The island was his world. It was all he had ever known, all he had needed. However, now he had seen and heard of the glorious and interesting things going on in the main land. People could control magical spheres, there were wars and there were liberations of places. It was on a scale unfathomable by him or Joel. He suddenly felt a deep yearning to see the place over the sea, the world beyond his small island. Books were simply not enough for him. They told so little about the things he cared about and could not let him truly appreciate the wonders that waited over the North Sea.
He longed for the knowledge and experience Karen had, of the world beyond his own.
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