Chapter 62: Dancing with the Stars

  EYSSA POV

  The moment she set foot on the new land, Eyssa gained another level.

  That wasn’t particularly surprising to her. It had been difficult enough to reach level five while staying close to her community, but now that the journey had taken her and the others into lands they had never even glimpsed – much less imagined – she was advancing rapidly. Already at level nine, she knew that if she gained even a few more, she would return as the highest-level youth of her age.

  Some part of her didn’t really want to go back, though. Not because she disliked her clan – not at all – but because Eyssa wasn’t like most of her kind. None of the elves on this journey were, really. That was why this group had been chosen: a band willing to go far beyond the safe havens her people had clung to for generations.

  She let out a deep sigh and rest her spear across both shoulders, loosely draping her arms over the shaft.

  This place was different… and not just because it was new scenery. The ground beneath her feet felt unexpectedly firm, as if the very earth here were made of something else. The sensations around her were overwhelming: familiar scents of grass and leaves mingled with a strange bitterness in the air – much like the water itself, which had tasted oddly bitter.

  She shivered slightly as a cool breeze sent a chill through her.

  The low hill allowed her to look out across the landscape and see more hills in the distance, all covered with strange trees. She had never seen trees quite like these before. Though they had an eerie, disquieting appearance, she didn’t get the same sense of danger or unwelcomeness she had felt in the Pale Marsh.

  The trunks were bent and twisted, but not in a way that made them look sickly or disfigured. Most of the trees grew farther down, hidden by the thick foliage, but here at the crest of the first hill, a few rose high enough above the odd mist for her to glimpse their trunks.

  They were smooth and flowing – more like water being poured than something solid forced into an uncomfortable shape. The leaves were healthy and green, spread out in hand-shaped clusters. Small buds lined many of the branches, each one a pale yellow.

  It was strange and different from the plants she knew, but to Eyssa, that only made them more lovely.

  To her, anything different – anything beyond what she had known all her life – had its own kind of beauty.

  Eyssa shivered again and flicked her tail. Her [Horizon Bearer] class gave her the endurance to handle the elements far better than many of her companions, but the damp cloth she wore somehow made the cold worse. She knew by now the others had likely set up some stones to dry themselves. Now that she had seen the path ahead, she supposed she should rejoin them.

  Her ear twitched as she sensed someone climbing the hill behind her. It was an elf, coming from the direction where the others had stayed behind, so she didn’t bother turning around.

  “In all my previous lives, I have never gone this far,” Kelas said as he came up beside her, squinting as he also stared down into the small valley filled with trees.

  It had been quite a climb up from the beach where they’d landed, and the more delicate Aravel was breathing heavily… despite his class almost certainly granting him the same kind of endurance bonus that Eyssa’s gave her.

  “It’s even farther from your people than they are from our mountain camps during the Roaring Waters season,” Eyssa said evenly, trying to offer Kelas some small measure of welcome.

  She didn’t actually dislike the Aravel, but something in the way he looked at her – and at her friends – made her want to keep her distance. She also wasn’t sure what to make of his attitude. He seemed far more open and friendly than she would expect from someone whose people shut their women away.

  The thought of someone trying to keep her in a shelter instead of letting her wander terrified Eyssa… and she wasn’t afraid to admit that was what truly frightened her.

  So, she kept her distance.

  Kelas, oblivious to her thoughts, gave an ear tilt to the other explorer. “Yes, but we would have to pass through the Lurking Rot… what you called the Pale Marsh. You were lucky to have been so cautious and not attracted a Lurker. Going around that would take nearly a tenday.”

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  Eyssa narrowed her eyes at the other elf, and with an easy, smooth motion she swung her spear from her shoulders, grasped it in both hands, and lightly prodded Kelas in the stomach with the butt of the weapon.

  “You know so much about the area, yet your [Horizon Bearer] class is so low.” Eyssa snorted as Kelas stumbled back slightly, his tail flicking in an annoyed, half-threatening low sweep. “Tastka was right. You know things but have not earned them. Away from the lands full of mana, you are weak.”

  Kelas spread his hands out, attempting to look nonthreatening. “If you are angry about the boat, I am sorry. I’ve never made one this life, and have no skills for it, and never made one that large.”

  The sigh of exasperation that slipped from Eyssa was loud and frustrated. She thumped the ground with the butt of her spear, then gestured with her tail. “No, I’m not angry about that. We got to land before it sank. That’s all that matters. Follow me.”

  She didn’t wait for him, but the younger elf heard Kelas hurry after her when she turned and walked down the slope, away from and out of sight of the camp below. She walked toward the strange trees and mist, stopping just short of where the gentle tendrils of moisture licked upward toward the crown of the small hill. Several trees loomed ahead, their trunks now clearly visible even through the obscuring coverage.

  “Where are we going?” Kelas asked warily, moving up alongside Eyssa when she slowed down, then came to a stop.

  She glanced at the sky, noting how far the sun had already started to veer to the side. Night would arrive soon, she knew. “Right here. We wait.”

  The other elf looked confused when she turned to him, and she once again prodded him with her spear. This time, she was mostly doing it to watch him squirm. “Tastka says you have all the memories of your parents and their parents before them. That this is where you have the knowledge of the land around your people. Yet you, who have the [Horizon Bearer] class, have never gone beyond them?”

  Kelas scrunched up his nose. “Beyond them are the Barren Lands. Little mana, where we grow weak. What is there for us?” He paused. “And how would Tastka know that?”

  The thought that she didn’t dislike Kelas was rapidly being revised. Eyssa’s irritation rose with the way he was acting now that his competence from his homeland was unavailable.

  “Everything!” Eyssa hissed, her tail actually slapping the ground in emphasis. She passed her spear to her tail, letting it wrap clumsily around so she could spread her arms wide at the forest below. “This! Something you would never see! Dangers and strangeness and things no elf alive has seen!”

  Not technically true because the Sylen passed through here, but that didn’t diminish her point.

  “You took a class that was offered by your Menu – your System as you call it – and did nothing with it! A class that called for you to go beyond, to learn and see new things!” Eyssa turned to Kelas with her ears tilting downward. “Because it makes you weaker? Because you’re scared? All of us have felt fear on this journey, but we do it anyway. There is too much in life to stay still!”

  Ears drooping, Kelas sighed, “My people are very… cautious about moving too far from the veil…”

  “As are mine!” Eyssa interrupted! “Yet they know what my class needs. This System granted it to me, and who are we to deny what it says?” She pointed the other direction, toward the others, then passed her spear back into her hand. “All of them understand that. My sister understands it, and you’ve seen how strange she is.”

  A soft huff, and Eyssa swung the spear around to lightly tap Kelas on the chest with the tip. “When I learned you were another [Horizon Bearer], I hoped for a Path-Brother. You do your class an insult.”

  The Aravel elf stared at Eyssa for a long stretch of silence, puzzled at the Calen’s vehemence over this. He took a deep breath. “I do have the urge to wander and see things… but what is there to see in the Barren Lands? More hills. Grass. Trees. What is it you find so alluring? What are you even looking for? When will you know you have found it?”

  Even though Eyssa didn’t know that last word he used, the context let her grasp the meaning. She grunted, took a breath of her own to calm herself, and reminded herself that at least she now had a name for what she had devoted her life to following.

  Not her class. Not her urge for wandering. The System that allowed her to go so far, and to experience it to the fullest.

  “My sister has told us that we are close,” Eyssa stated firmly. “I believe her. She is… strange, but I think she does more than see and use the System. I think… she speaks to it. Somehow.”

  Light was now fading rapidly. Night would be upon them soon, and this close to a strange forest it would be dangerous away from the others. Kelas knew this, as well, and glanced back toward the camp.

  “Wait.” Eyssa’s words were calmer, yet still said with confidence. “You need to understand. She said we were nearing our goal. She once said we were looking for a forest ‘where the trees embrace one another and dance with the stars.’ I believe her.”

  The term faith had not quite entered the lexicon of the Calen elves. They knew it, they could feel it… but the word itself did not exist. Eyssa found her explanation falling apart, feeling clumsy even to herself.

  Kelas looked dubiously at Eyssa, then down toward the mist-covered trees that formed twisted, lengthening shadows in the dimming light. “I don’t think trees dance.”

  Whether she knew the word for it or not, Eyssa had faith. She’d been told this was the right place, and she believed it to be so. She ignored the increasingly incredulous looks that Kelas gave her, all while the stars lit up in the sky above, and night fell.

  She heard his gasp.

  Then she watched as the small buds on the trees blossomed into flowers, each one flickering with Lumen, lighting up the forest with sparkles of their own.

  She watched as the trees groaned and shifted, a slow play of swaying leaves and forest, the sparkling flowers mingling with the mist to make an undulating lake of sparkling motes of light.

  “We are almost there. Will you bear on to see more like this… or hide in your veil?”

  The Green Tender