Page 42 of Bonded Ever After

I part my lips and repeat what my father said in the journal, “The Ash Realm is dangerous. Pack lots of food and water. Dress for warm weather. Do not touch the lava, the hot liquid. Eat the Lava Spiders, Iron Snails, and Lava Snakes; they will keep you alive. Do it. Drink the brown plant with water. Eat the red berries. Trade or you will die. Be respectful. Bow often. Do not hold eye contact. Do not go far from the path and trust nothing that flies in the Ash Ecosystem. It’s unlike anything you’ve experienced before.”

Callum nods. “We’ve dressed lightly.”

Our capes are stowed away at the cabin, along with our heavier layers. We’re both wearing t-shirts and the shorts we go to bed in, paired with the swords we were given for this realm.We’d both decided that having a weapon would make us feel more confident.

Callum pats my backpack. “And we have as much food and water as we can possibly carry.”

I hope the weight wouldn’t be too much. Goldarium isn’t very heavy, but Callum is carrying the entire crystal chest strapped to the outside of his backpack. It’s not a light thing to carry. And that along with all the extra food and water, well, it’s heavy.

And we have a long way to go.

He hadn’t wanted me to carry anything beyond what I needed to carry, but I’d convinced him that we needed to fill everything up with food and water, based on what we’d heard about the Ash Realm. Eating red berries, dried berries, jerky, and trail mix seems a lot better than Lava Spiders, Iron Snails, and Lava Snakes. Plus, there’s the whole brown water thing… I prefer our clean water over that, and I haven’t even tried it.

“Have we forgotten anything?”

He shakes his head. “No, we’re ready. Let’s do this.”

I take a deep breath. “Here we go.”

Callum grips my hand more tightly. “Here we go.”

We step through together, and there’s a minute where we’re disorientated, where it feels like we’re being stretched and squeezed, and then we pop out into the kind of heat that sucks your breath from your lungs and makes your face burn. I try to take a breath, and the air burns down my lungs. My eyes flash open, and I see the strangest realm I could ever imagine…

The landscape is mostly barren and filled with rolling hills. The ground is mostly black, but between the black there seems to be little rivers of pale orange that flow at a slow pace. There isn’t much in the way of plants and trees, with the exception of some squat brown trees that dot the landscape, and not much else.

It’s ugly, ugly and barren, but the miserable-looking place is nowhere near as miserable as the way I feel with the heat that scorches my flesh.How long is this realm?It can’t be too long. We won’t make it more than five or six days with the supplies we have, and there doesn’t seem to be anything to eat or drink in any direction.

Callum looks at me, his expression unreadable. “Are you sure we shouldn’t turn back?”

I hesitate. Up ahead, we might find our fathers. We might find the source of goldarium. Up ahead is filled with possibility, and behind us, with only limitations. We need to go forward. It’s what’s best for our baby.

“No, we should keep going. We can always go back. Besides, there’s brown water and lava spiders to eat if we get desperate.” I smile. He squeezes my hand tighter, then lets go.

“We should get moving. Becoming dehydrated from this heat is probably our number one worry.”

We start moving. At random, little orange rivers cross through our path. I stop and kneel beside one of them. “Do you think this is the lava my dad spoke about?”

“Yes,” he says without hesitation.

I reach out.

“He said not to touch it!”

I smirk at the concern in his face. “I wasn’t going to. I just wanted to feel above it to see if it’s really that hot.” As I draw my hand closer, I feel the heat. “Yeah, we definitely don’t want to touch this.”

We step over the lava rivers and keep going, staring out around us. The heat on my skin is almost unbearable. I can practically feel my skin becoming chapped. Never in my life have I felt heat like this. In Paradise Falls, they always kept the temperature fairly nice, and the Forest Realm and Mist Realm were on the cooler side.

I hope coming here wasn’t a mistake.

There’s movement on the landscape near us. A dark shape. I move forward slowly and see something black emerging from one of the lava rivers. It seems to unfold itself into a black shape with long legs. As it fully lifts out of the lava, I realize that it’s a spider. A spider the size of a bird.

“Look!” I say, pointing.

Callum comes to stand beside. “Whoa. We’re expected to eat those things?”

I shudder. “Only if we run out of food.”

“Let’s hope we don’t run out of food.”

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