83rd of Season of Fire, 57th year of the 32nd cycle
Four weeks had passed since Newt got separated from his teammates. He had taken to ditation at the strangest of tis, in the strangest of places. The fourth realm area of the Valley of the Lost was no longer a danger zone to him.
He slept, ate, and ditated without a care in the world, often right next to his kills, relying on his ever-growing danger sense to warn him in ti, to snap him out of sleep or ditation. It happened once, and after killing the offending spiketail, which had stumbled into Newt’s hunting zone, he went back to ditate on that newfound insight.
Even though everything was a realm above him, Newt considered himself the apex predator of the area he was currently in. He even figured out how to hunt helmheads. The solution was stupid in its simplicity. If he approached them from the front, he would appear like a safe zone to them, and the valley’s beguiling effect had no effect when they saw the source of their unease.
In the weeks of training, his danger sense had grown sharper, sharp enough to notice a swirl in the air. As the myst flowed, it carried sothing in it, the true danger. Whatever the energy or substance were, they sohow absorbed whatever it was that made danger dangerous and projected it through a counterpart.
Newt understood little of the underlying chanics, but the trip proved fruitful. While he failed to find more geysers, he had eleven cores tied up inside his sleeve. And more importantly, he had noticed another odd pattern three days ago. The myst swirled, true, but there was a sharp angle in an otherwise smooth flow, a break towards the periphery of the zone. It was impossible to see, but the minute distortion in the particles which shifted danger revealed the crack in the trap.
Newt had been following the imperfection ever since he had noticed it, and for half a day he had encountered no islands of “safety” in his ever-expanding sea of “danger”. He was almost certain that ant he had sohow navigated his way back into the third layer, which in turn probably ant he was close to the exit.
Suddenly, an overpowering feeling of imminent doom flooded his mind. Death awaited ahead, and taking one more step spelled his demise. He smirked, wondering what the exit felt like to others who hadn’t honed their sense of danger to the sa point he had.
He took a step forward, and the myst parted. Newt just looked up at the clear blue sky he had not even known he had been missing, when the back of his head tingled.
He ducked as a hand flashed above his head.
“You little rascal!” Greenbow shouted. “We were worried sick about you! Why are you shirtless?”
Newt looked at his eldest sister and bowed respectfully, his shirt off his shoulders and dangling around his waist, doubling as a sack.
“Greetings, First. I’m sorry to have bothered you. How is the rest of my team doing? Did they safely exit the Valley of the Lost?”
The woman folded her arms, pushing her muscular breasts up, her frown deep, her gaze glued to Newt’s eyes.
“They are fine.” She scrutinized him; she could obviously tell sothing had changed about Newt’s bearing. He stood taller, more confident, but she didn’t know what gave him the confidence. She saw nothing to justify the change. Her youngest brother was still as scrawny as ever, his ager muscles like those of a malnourished child.
“What happened? How’d you get out?”
“It’s a long story.”
“We’ve got ti. A ship is waiting for us at the harbor, and once we reach it, we have a lot of sailing before we return.”
What can I share? How does equivalent exchange apply with brothers and sisters under the sa master? How do I evaluate the worth of the information? Will she get angry if I ask for paynt or if I don’t tell her anything? Will knowing hurt her future progress?
A dozen questions assailed Newt’s mind, but he filtered them by priority almost imdiately.
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“First, please forgive , but I have to discuss what I have learned with Master first and ask her what I can share. If I can tell you everything without threatening your future progress, I will do so over dinner once we’re back, but if there are matters which might harm you, I’m sorry, but I won’t reveal them.”
mbers of chivalric orders as old as Greenbow had their own sense of honor. She should offer him sothing she believed to have the equivalent worth of the information he gave her.
Greenbow pushed her chest higher, clearly insulted by the idea that soone at the lower realm believed they had information she would find valuable or detrintal to her progress, but she let out a breath and shook her head.
“Fine.” She spat out in a tone that ant, ‘Silly kid.’ “I guess it’s better if you play things safe rather than carelessly spill whatever you think is so important. Can you at least tell how you got separated from your team?”
Newt considered the question and nodded. There should be no harm, or revelations one should reach on their own, in the way he stumbled into the fourth realm area.
“I was inside the geyser, gathering mysterium crystals…”
***
Gatemaster Greenthorn opened his eyes and stood. He stretched his back out of habit, centuries redundant, and stepped off his porch. His lips curled upward in a barely perceptible smile as he headed towards the order champions’ residences. He kept away from the palaces and large, clear plots of land, preferring to walk through dense foliage, hidden from the eyes of the masses. Even the eighth realm masters stood no chance at seeing him if he didn’t want to be seen, but sotis, simple solutions yielded the best results.
He reached a cabin in the jungle, much like his own, but built in an even more archaic style, with a roof of bark covered in dirt, mushrooms, and herbs. The ceiling was low; the bounty growing atop the house accessible to mortals with stools or short ladders, not that mortals had seen the building in thousands of years.
He politely stood in front of the door and revealed a fraction of his aura to make his presence known. The old woman inside turned her head towards the door, and Greenthorn took it as an invitation to speak.
“Master, your ward cos bearing news. May I enter your abode?”
“Co in, Thorn. It’s been years since we last spoke privately.”
Greenthorn opened the small door and stooped to enter, taking a step before sitting cross-legged on a mat woven out of pleasantly slling dry herbs.
“What is it? You didn’t talk to during that solar flare, rely issued orders, so what could be so important now for you to suddenly recall you have a master?”
“Don’t be harsh, Master. You were present during that incident, there was nothing I had to inform you of, but sothing else has happened. Sothing extraordinary, and the person involved is the sa one from the solstice incident.”
“Oh?” Greenthorn’s last living master said, waiting for him to continue, her ancient eyes droopy, as if she was ready for a nap.
“The person in question got separated from his fellows in the Valley of the Lost. His teammates had a compass and found their way easily, but he wandered the myst for three weeks before finding the exit on his own.”
The old woman’s sleepy eyes shot open, her pupils going wide.
“How did he do it? Did he make a compass?”
Greenthorn shook his head. “He started hunting saurians in the fog of the fourth realm, stalking and tracking them from beyond the range of his normal perception.”
“The only way he could do that is through precognition and using the valley’s distinct nature to navigate it.” She stared into the distance, Greenthorn giving her the ti to reach her own conclusions. “Yes. That’s certainly possible at my realm. Maybe even as low as the seventh. But the seventh has the minimal required purity of mana, which would allow the mind to construct a possible future based on the assorted inputs from the ambient energy.”
“The Heroic Tales of Steelraptor claims Steelraptor had developed an ability to perceive danger at the fourth realm.” Greenthorn offered, but the old woman shot him a stern gaze. “But I don’t think that’s what has happened here.”
What he believed was even more preposterous, and based only on myths and legends. He had no trouble sharing that with a sixth realm mageknight as a re speculation, but saying nonsense before his master felt shaful.
It’s been centuries since I surpassed Master, and I still feel like this. I need to ditate on it later.
The old woman waited expectantly, and Greenthorn forced himself to speak.
“He might be a reincarnation or may have experienced so other form of knowledge transfer from an ancient grandmaster or exalt. His master told that during the sumr solstice incident he was in a trance-like state, feeling nothing, living through a vision about slaying the mbers of the Blood Cult.
“Furthermore, when he first awoke, I spoke with him, and he told he was a dragon fighting monsters. I didn’t pry, but I ran a background check on him. He hails from a clan that declined while searching for a mythical dragon’s core. Maybe they found sothing ages ago, and it rged into their bloodline, only manifesting in him; maybe he was blessed by the dragon or sothing.”
Greenthorn shrunk under his master’s cold stare, realizing he was rambling.
Is it really in human nature to set their relationships in stone? I thought I was beyond mortality, and yet, here I am…
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