I would like to apologize to all of you for a horrendous technical error on my part. Chapter 4 is, in fact, chapter 5. So please, read the real chapter 4 but submit your reviews under chapter 5, if you don't mind. This may explain how the gang inexplicably showed up at Minavre. Thank you, and please forgive my mistake.
It was midday, and the sun was scorching. Tea was hot and very thirsty, explaining that she had gotten far less sun in the tree-dense Riverwood. She also became a bit aggravated upon spending the entirety of last night and this morning with Joey and Tristan, who were wearing on her nerves.
"Do they ever shut up?" Tea demanded quietly of Yugi as they walked down the street. Her feet hurt from the rough pavement. Yugi would have lent her his shoes (for their feet were the same size), but he didn't have any. The cobbler's store was far too expensive for his family, so he and his siblings had had to develop a thick layer of callous since childhood.
"No," Yugi replied, speaking from experience. "Tea, I know that you're used to hanging out with all of your female friends, but we're just a bunch of guys, so you're going to have to get used to the way we handle things. Not to mention the fact that we're human, too."
"I'll be fine," Tea sighed. "But can we stop for a bit?"
"Sure. Guys, wait up! Let's stop for lunch!" Yugi yelled ahead to the others, who were currently engaged in some sort of off-beat can-can.
The gang sat down in a circle beside the highway and opened up the bag filled to the brim with edible mushrooms. Making a fire, Yugi, Joey, and Tristan roasted theirs on sticks. Instead of eating with them, Tea dug her feet into the ground and closed her eyes.
"Dude, what's she doing?" Tristan asked. He waved his hand in front of her eyes, as if wondering if she was really asleep.
"She's eating, Tristan, just like the rest of us," Yugi answered matter-of-factly. He opened up one of the water-filled coconuts, took a sip, and then poured a bit of it at Tea's feet. "She's a forest fairy, so this is how she eats and drinks."
Tea opened her eyes after a few minutes and extracted her feet from the muddy water she was sitting in. Yugi caught a glimpse of something like roots disappear into her soles. "I don't understand why anyone would want to eat through their mouths," she said, looking at them with disgust.
"Well, I don't understand why anyone would wanna eat t'rough their feet, but we all got issues, right?" Joey said, feeling a bit annoyed. He took a giant bite of mushroom. "I mean, what else are mouths good for?" he asked, spraying them with partially pulverized food.
Tea grimaced. "How about talking?" She shook her head. "Scratch that. You do enough of it already."
"Maybe that's 'cause you don't do enough, Tea," Tristan interjected. He was trying to keep the peace; he didn't want to have to travel another four or five days with these bickering idiots. "Come on, tell us about yourself. Your home… your family?"
"Phytarim don't have families," Tea responded shortly, "and our only home is the forest."
"What about your two friends?" Yugi asked cheerfully. "And I'm sure you had a childhood, right?"
"Why does everyone want to talk about me?" Tea demanded. "I don't want to have this conversation. Can't you understand…?" A tear welled in her eye. "Can't you understand that I don't want to talk about my family or my friends or my childhood?"
"Not unless you tell us first," Joey said quietly.
Tea paused for a while. Her lip quivered, and the tear that she had tried so hard to hold back rebelliously rolled down her cheek. "When I was a child," she began, "the forest… it was different. Instead of being ruled by our queen, the humans tried to rule us themselves. King Aknamkanon, as you called him, gave us rules and boundaries that we could never have followed.
"My friends and I did what they had to. It was dark, very dark, I remember… this huge shadow had covered the moon. But we had to cross the forbidden river to pay homage to the tree spirits. If we didn't pay homage to them, they wouldn't let us live in their woods anymore, because the forest really belongs to them.
"But the king… he had done something evil to the lower plants. He had given them wills of their own or something… and they betrayed us. They captured me and my friends and kept us in the prison under the Borl Komoran—the Great Tree—until King Atem came into power. He let us rule ourselves, not like his father… but it was so dark down there. I never thought I would see the sun again."
Tea began to shake with sobs and covered her face. "So I wanted to come out here with you—you humans—so that I could save my forest from the darkness of that cloud and the poison in the river. But… how am I supposed to rely on humans' help when I don't understand you at all?"
Yugi touched her hand with the utmost gentleness. "I guess you're just going to have to deal with us, Tea," he said, smiling briefly. "Everything's going to be all right. I'm sure that King Atem will find a way to fix this."
"I d-don't want Mai and Serenity to feel the way that I did," Tea whispered. "I want everyone to be in the light."
"We gotta stick together, Tea. We aren't gonna be able ta do this without each other," Joey encouraged. "So don't worry 'bout your friends, 'cause Joey Wheeler's on da case!"
"So am I," Tristan said.
Yugi nodded. "Me too."
Tea wiped her face and smiled. "I guess you guys are all right."
Four days later, the gang arrived at the gates of Minavre, soiled, bedraggled, and exhausted. Nevertheless, they hadn't starved thanks to Yugi's expertise on edible plants and fungi.
"Dude, this place is crazy!" Tristan exclaimed, shielding his eyes from the sun as he looked on at the dazzling city walls and the palace tower that rose high above all of the other buildings. "Who'd want to live here? I'd go blind in a day!"
"D'ya think they'd mind if, y'know… we like, took a piece o' their walls or something?" Joey asked, scratching his nose shiftily. The others glared at him, and he decided to let the issue slide.
"Do you think they have dirt?" Tea asked suddenly. "I mean, everything looks so… clean."
"It's no use standing around here," Yugi said. "Come on, let's go!" They ran up to the gates of the city and saw a pendant-sized circular indentation with an eye-shaped rune on it. Yugi took his mother's necklace out of his pocket and saw the same rune on it, only backwards. "Well, here goes."
He reached forward and put the necklace into the slot. Then, as if by instinct, he turned it one hundred and eighty degrees counterclockwise. The gate seemed to disintegrate before their eyes, and Yugi quickly snatched his necklace back.
The castle had seemed beyond magnificent at first glance, but inside the magical, sparkling walls, it was a completely different picture. The town was gray, dusty, and covered in spider webs and ivy. It looked as though no one had lived there for years. Windows were broken, store signs were torn down, and scraps of tattered fabric blew in the eerie breeze, which rolled a thick, low-lying fog before their feet.
"What happened?" Joey asked.
Yugi turned behind them. The gate had reappeared. "I think someone made this place look different from the outside," he mused. "I think that some magician didn't want anyone to know what Minavre really looked like, and he didn't expect anyone else to come in. I mean, from the outside, this place looks pretty formidable, right? Who'd try to attack it? I bet all of the real citizens of Minavre have been dead for a while."
"A magician?" Tristan asked. "A real magician? That can't be right; I thought all of the magicians in Ishravitas worked directly for the royal family."
"Maybe that's not true. Maybe one of them has escaped the control of the king and is running loose out there," Yugi said. He stopped. "He could be the one causing this famine!"
"But if this magician is powerful enough to conquer Minavre, what chance do we stand against him?" Tea asked.
Joey nodded. "She's right, Yug'. If King Atem and his royal court couldn't stop him…"
"We can't think like that," Yugi said determinedly. "We can't give up just because things are looking down. We just have to remember what we're fighting for."
Yugi fearlessly began to walk toward the castle, all the while remembering the beloved brother and sister that he had already lost. This was no time for despondency. This was a time for action.
