Page 20 of Darkening Truth
“Well, that’s a bit odd,” he says. “Come on, which way did you want to go?”
I point with my sword, “Straight on.”
“Let’s see why you want to go this way. I’ll follow you,” Zev says with a smile.
I nod and we start to carefully move through the woods, keeping an eye out for whatever broke the branch in case it wasn’t an animal and was instead something that wants to eat us. An animal couldn’t want to eat us too, I suppose, though.
We don’t see anything though, and I mean absolutely nothing that’s alive other than the plant life. There is no skittering of tiny feet trying to get away from us as we disturb them, no bigger animals, nothing. Hell, we can’t even find any bugs. The only sound coming from around us is the breeze rustling the leaves on the trees.
That’s it.
“It’s really quiet,” I mutter.
Zev nods, his grip tight on his sword, “Yeah, it is, which is not normal for a place like this. It should be teeming with life.”
“This is a dream though, could it have something to do with that?” I ask him.
Zev frowns, “It’s possible, but usually dreams take on the place that you’re dreaming about. They don’t usually leave important things like animals and life out of it.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound too promising,” I mutter.
I share a look with Zev. If something isn’t doing what it should do, then the chances are that something bad is going to happen.
At least that has always been true based on my experience.
We carry on walking, moving as quietly as we can, and as we do, I start to recognise the unofficial path that we’re walking on.
That can’t be right.
I know that I have never been here before, so it should be impossible for me to recognise it. Unless, because it’s my dream, I’m pulling memories from places that I have been before, and that’s why I recognise it?
After we’ve been walking for a few more moments, Zev crouches down, and I pause, scanning the trees around us just to be safe.
“I think this is actually a path,” Zev says, glancing up at me with surprise.
I crouch down next to him, “Oh, really?”
He nods as he starts to brush off some of the dirt and debris, and sure enough, he starts to reveal the same kind of cobblestones that made up the street that I arrived on.
“So this was a pathway or a road at some point then,” I say as I brush off some more of the debris. I love exploring, so I add with excitement, “Come on, let’s see where it leads.”
Zev grins at me as he stands up and we move forward with more speed and less caution since we haven’t actually been attacked by anything.
“Look,” I say, pointing up ahead.
“Is that a set of gates?” Zev asks, sounding as intrigued as I am, as we rush forward.
When we get there, my smile widens. The gates are absolutely ginormous, they’re covered in vines both alive and dead, but from what I can make out after I brush some of it off, it’s made from some kind of metal, and it’s pretty ornate too. The metal has been twisted into the shapes of vines and flowers, some animals that I have no name for, and right in the middle, high enough that even Zev can’t reach it. There is some sort of crest.
Calling on my air magic, I try to shift the vines that are covering it, but they won’t budge with even the strongest gusts, so I give up before the use of my magic announces our presence.
“It’s not just gates,” Zev says as he points to the side of us.
My eyes widen. How the hell did I miss that?
On either side of the gates, spreading as far as the eye can see, are massive stone walls, and as I look up, I see several guard houses spread out along the top, including one on either side of the gates.
I was so focused on the giant gates that I completely missed the guard houses. It’s a good job that they’re empty and have clearly been empty for a really long time, or I would have been shot, or eaten, or whatever it is that they do to trespassers in this realm.
