SCHOOL IS ALMOST OUT
SO IF THERE ARE NOT MORE UPDATES THAN USUAL, THEN…
I don't know. Happy (late) summer solstice!
Plutonium-240- Thanks! And I should be updating much more with summer here.
Reyanna Pov
"Never mind." Kim says after a somewhat awkward pause. "Who wants to play a game after we clear up?"
"Oh! I will!" Zoeya bursts out immediately.
"I'll play." Toby says.
"I'll join." Martyn adds.
"Rythian?" Zoeya asks hopefully, looking at her lover.
My brother shakes his head. "Sorry, Zoeya, but I have some things to figure out…"
Zoeya looks dejected for a moment, and I feel bad for her. Rythian is almost never one for games and fun, unlike Zoeya.
"I'll play too, then." I say to cheer her up.
"Yay!" The red-headed Netherborn cheers.
"I'll jump in then, I guess." Lomadia says. "Anyone else?"
Teep shakes his head mutely, as usual, but Lomadia looks hurt when Xephos does the same and leaves the room.
There's a moment of silence after Xephos closes the door, then Ridge announces he'll be talking to the head Templar.
"I'll be looking around for some old friends." Honeydew says with a touch of nostalgia.
"I need to talk with Minty, sorry." Sjin says.
"After we help clear the table." Minty adds as she starts gathering up her dishes. Others follow her lead, adding in their reasons for going. Lomadia picks up Xephos' dishes with a small sigh, so small I hardly noticed it.
I realize with a small start that I haven't seen Lomadia and Xephos act normally together since we came to-no, since the beginning of the battle with Israphel. I wonder what is going on, but decide it's not my business.
Finally, only Duncan joins the game out of all the others.
"Apples to Apples!" Kim nearly shouts, bringing out the box.
"That's so awesome! I love that game! I'm going to win!" Zoeya blabs.
"Don't count on that!" Martyn says with a smirk.
"Please, I'm going to win! We all know it!" Toby argues. I just start sorting cards.
"Are you okay? You're being really quiet." Lomadia's voice makes me jump and nearly scatter the cards onto the floor.
"Just…" I trail off briefly. How to explain it? Everything going on that she didn't know about?"
No, don't burden her with your problems. She has her own life to deal with!
"Tired. And sore, too, I guess." I say lamely.
"You don't have to play with us." The owl lover says, but I shake my head. "I'm fine."
No, you're not. Lomadia's body language seems to say, but she just neatens the piles.
I sit between Toby and Kim. Besides Kim is Lalna, then Lomadia, Zoeya, and finally Martyn is on Toby's other side.
I zone out a minute as Martyn deals the cards and pulls out a green card.
"Stiff!" He exclaims.
Toby sniggers but I try to ignore him as I check my cards.
Horses, Wither skeleton, Stone, Budder, Magma cubes, Crafting table, Beacon.
I ponder for a minute, and then decide on just tossing out a random card. Goodbye, crafting table.
My new card is Owls.
Better save that for a good one where Lomadia is judging!
Martyn gathers all the entries and reads them out.
"Bed, carpet, crafting table, leather, axe, and pistons." He says.
"Well, that round kinda sucked…" Toby said.
Martyn frowned and pushed several cards to the side.
"I say pistons." He declares.
"Yes!" Kim says.
"Come on, Martyn, how did bed lose?" Toby protested. Zoeya just laughed. Lomadia smiled.
Kim grabbed a green card.
"Tasteless!" She says.
I decide on Stone, because stone's boring.
I suck at this game. Oh, well.
My new card is pool. Shame Nilesy's not playing…
Toby looks like he's planning something, because he's chewing his lip and trying not to grin.
"Hay, lapis lazuli, goggles, Israphel, stone and clay."
"WHO CALLED LAPIS TASTELESS?!" Martyn yells.
"Goggles are not tasteless!" Lalna argues to no one in particular.
"Well, Martyn, it SoTotally wasn't me! I was judge!" Kim declares with a smirk and I nearly laugh out loud as I realize that she just gave Toby away.
"TOBY!" Martyn yells.
"Hay is disgusting, so hay wins. Don't ask how I know!" Kim decides, stopping the arguement.
"I told you I would win!" Martyn crows as he scoops up his green card. Toby replies by sticking out his tongue. I roll my eyes.
Guys are so immature sometimes.
"Tiresome!" The Sapling prince calls out the next adjective.
I look at my terrible cards and hand over Wither skeleton before picking a new one.
Wait, I didn't know that there was a panda card!
Well at least my cards were starting to look up.
"Wither skeleton, Ghasts, Cave spider, boats, coal, and birch trees."
"Don't insult my trees!" Martyn said.
"Sorry!" Kim squeaked.
"Boats! I hate boats, they break so easily." Martyn says.
"Ha!" Lomadia says, organizing the cards yet again. "The next green apple card is… Stupid!"
Well so much for using the owls card!
I put out Magma cubes.
I grab a new card, bats, and then Lomadia's reading the cards aloud.
"Cow, Zombie Pigman, redstone, shovel, Magma cubes and gravel. Hmm…"The owl lover trails off, looking at the cards for a long while.
"It was close, but Magma cubes wins. They always jump into lava pools."
I raise my eyebrows, mildly surprised. "Mine."
"But they don't burn…" Zoeya says, and then stops.
I put the "Stupid" card off to the side and pick a new one.
"Entertaining." I say.
I wait for a minute as everyone puts their cards into the pile, and then read them out.
"Pressure plate, Golems, potion, portal, bedrock and jukebox." I pretend to check the green card again, sarcastically. "I thought there was a difference between 'Entertaining' and 'Good for Pranks…"
There are a few laughs and I look the cards over again.
"… Pressur- I'm cut off by the door swinging open. Nilesy stumbles in, followed by two young Templars about my age.
"Ridge got a message of sorts- we need to go now!" The pool man exclaims, out of breath.
Lomadia and Martyn are on their feet in an instant. I grab some cards and push them into the box, then close the lid. Zoeya pushes it into her alchemical bag and it disappears.
"He said something about timing, portals, distance, I can't reme-" Nilesy gets cut off by one of the Templars, a blonde guy about my age.
"He said that you need to arrive at the portal before a certain date or it will be destroyed." He breaks in. Nilesy looks grateful, so I ignore the rude-ish interruption.
"Is everyone else back yet?" Lalna asks. "Lots of them left our wing after lunch."
"Honeydew the dwarf, the mage and the dinosaur all came back." The other Templar informs us.
"Sjin and Minty never left, just went to their room. Sips went to the training room." Kim ticks off on her fingers. "Ridge, Rythian, Honeydew and Teep are all here as well."
Lomadia's face went pale. "Where's Xephos gone?"
The Templars shift uneasily. "We don't know." The other one, a reddish-brown haired guy maybe 19 or 20, said.
"He said something about needing to relax and think about remembering, or remember his thoughts or something…" Nilesy said.
I thought I saw Lomadia mouth something under her breath, probably an Idiot!, but all she said was; "I know where he'll be. Don't worry; I'll get his butt down here."
She dashes out the door and I hear her taking stairs two at a time.
"Gather your stuff." Lalna says and I automatically leave for my room, remembering the mask drying under the open window. The blonde Templar stops me for a moment.
"Do you need any help gathering your stuff?"
It takes me a second to answer because, suddenly talking directly to him and seeing him up close, I feel like I've seen him somewhere before, or maybe a close relative.
"I'm fine, thanks." I say. "Toby might need help."
"Why me?" Toby pauses halfway out the door, giving me a confused look.
"Because I've seen you trying to clean up your tent twice so far this trip, Toby." I say with what's almost a deadpan voice.
Toby laughs. "Fair enough." He says, imitating Rythian's deeper voice and accent.
"Not the time." I say through my teeth as I leave. I have no patience for jokes at the moment.
In my room, I stuff the now-stiff and dry mask into my bag and swipe paper scraps off of the little desk, then race downstairs to the meeting place.
The only one there was Ridge, surprisingly. Looking around, I could only guess that the others were taking longer to gather up.
"Reyanna, look at this for a minute?" Ridge asks me, pulling out what looks like an old map.
I walk over, curious.
On the map I can see the taiga with the giant crater, plains, hills, villages, and a distinctive square of desert surrounded by grey walls- the Stronghold.
"So we're right here…" Ridge said, pointing to the large grey rectangle by the desert.
I nod, taking in the furthest corners of the map in better detail. In the top right corner, a strange compound in the shape of one of those compass things maps have- but Ridge was pointing below that, to a normal desert bordering the Wall.
"So we have to start out as soon as possible, and then go south along the Wall until it peters out, and continue southwest until we get through the desert and to this mountain by the seaside. The reason why we need to leave now is because the desert's unpredictable at this time of year and it's further to travel than I remembered…"
He breaks off as Honeydew, Martyn, Sjin and Minty pile into the room. He hands the map to me and goes to talk to them, probably about how fast the others are coming.
I study the map again, taking in the shape of the real desert where it goes below the Wall. It starts off like a half-oval cut off by the Wall and grows much wider and then splits into two, like helmet that has a half-moon symbol on top.
And the thing is; I recognize it. I know that desert.
And there's only one town in it, but the map is from a bird's eye view and so you can barely see the valley-encased village.
A valley named for its famous and beautiful crop.
I swallow, hard, and try to calculate how far we can travel before night falls as I hand the map back to Ridge, who's explaining the whole trip again.
"We'll have to try traveling during the night and resting at that one village during the hours just after dawn to lunch, and set off then so we can get to the portal before nightfall." The Aetherborn says, interrupting my thoughts.
Well, this is going to be interesting…
And awkward, and angry, tense, hateful, dangerous…
Rythian, Zoeya, Teep, Martyn, Toby, okay everyone else suddenly piles in at once and I lose my train of thought. Ridge sighs and starts to explain again.
To my surprise, Rythian doesn't recognize the desert on the map. Of course, he's been gone for a decade longer than I have, so that would make sense. I guess.
I worry over whether or not to tell them about the desert and the town, that I know people there. That it's our birth place and my adoptive mother is (hopefully) still there? That everyone there hates the name Enderborn and anyone who bears it with a burning passion? Or that they even refuse to use science?
Ha, that would freak out Lalna.
But even though I know that I should tell them, that I should help the group in any way possible, I can't bring myself to open my suddenly dry mouth and give them the truth.
So instead I stand and listen silently as Ridge repeats the plan a final time, to everyone this time, and we set off from the Stronghold.
But nothing can stop my guilt and horror as I see the desert loom in front of us and I realize almost too late that it's the day of the cursed storm.