NOVEL NEXT Chapter 225: Ash?
“I see, so those devils have emerged again from the portal and you want to dyke them in before they manage to regain ground again. All without the help of your overpowered friends because they are hopefully dealing with whatever is happening on the other side of the portal.” The woman reiterates what Veanya and I have been explaining to their team. We did leave away some parts of course.
“Pretty much.” Veanya nods.
“Hmm… I believe there are things you aren’t telling us. But besides that, we don’t have much reason to doubt your description of the urgency of the matter so we will help. That’s why we were here in the first place.” She then looks to the healer who healed my hand. “Babe, could you send the guild a message to speed up our advance in the direction of the camp?”
“I already was typing it out, Kimmy.” Patrick nods with a smile.
“Is there anything else you need from us?” Kim turns her attention back to Veanya and myself.
Veanya shakes her head. “No, not really, if the guild can spread the information around that would save us a lot of time warning the others so we can go back to help where it matters.”
“Then we should probably get back.” I nod at the party of adventurers and turn around towards Veanya’s horse to mount up on it again. But before I can put my foot in the stirrup, Kim calls back to me.
“Hey, can I have your username so we can communicate if it’s necessary?”
“Uh, sure.” I turn back and nod. “Can you give me yours, I’ll send a message so you can add me from that.”
“Sure thing. It’s KimLikesChocolate.”
I snicker a little but Kim keeps looking at me with a dead serious look on her face. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have laughed, I like chocolate too.”
“As should everyone.” Kim nods while I type a short message to her. Once I press send Kim gives me another nod. “Got it. CaptainSam.” To return the joke she snickers as well after reading out my nickname. It’s only fair of course.
“Now that that’s all arranged, we should wish you some happy hunting.” Veanya says to the group as she walks with me to her horse.
“You too, see you on the battlefield.” Patrick waves us off, followed by the rest of his group as we ascend back through the tree cover and back to the skies above.
“Isn’t it too much of an issue that they saw us fly on a horse though?” I comment as I remember our efforts of hiding the fact our horses could fly earlier this day.
“I think that worry mostly flew out of the window the moment our friends got nabbed by the portal…” Veanya replies.
“Fair enough.” I take a deep breath and close my eyes for a moment after which I grab my bow in hand ready for another fight. “Ami… please be safe.”
-On the other side of the portal moments after the incident-
Warm liquid touching my mouth shocks me awake, by the taste it only took me a fraction of a moment to realize it was blood. As I open my eyes and stare at the sky above me, the only thing I see is dark gray clouds of ash. I roll over so I can right myself a bit more easily with my armor on which in itself is easier said than done as I’m sinking in just a bit in the ground below me. When I turn around and manage to touch the ground with my hands its obvious to see why. The ground beneath me is only made up of a very porous black material.
“What’s this? Ash?”
“Volcanic sand.” I can hear Sid reply to me from my right. When I look at him he is slowly getting up himself. “Looks like we are on the plains near an inactive volcano.”
A couple of drops of blood hit the top of my gauntlet, staining the white armor red. “Where’s Gamma?” I look around but I don’t immediately see her and it’s not made easier because of the lack of light in the area with only a distant red glow giving us some kind of contrast against the dark ground. Even my cat-like eyes aren’t helping me much in this place.
“I don’t know.” Sid replies. “I just got up myself.” He grabs his hammer that's lying in the sand next to him and then walks over to me to help me up.
However I manage to get up on my own strength.
“She can’t be that far. The two of us landed close enough to each other.”
“Do you know what happened?” I channel mana into my sword to light it up so we can at least see a bit more. “I think I hit my head against something so I didn’t really know what was going on.” With my free hand I touch my head to find the wound that was bleeding but from the looks of it that already healed back up again.
“I think the portal swallowed us while we weren’t looking. Which means we are probably on the other side of said portal.” Sid replies.
“I don’t see any portal anymore… At least not nearby.”
“It closed on us the moment I flew out.”
“So we are stuck…”
“Seems like it. But let’s find Gamma first before we start to theorize any further. She’s a lot less tough than us.”
That’s when an idea pops to mind thanks to Sid’s comment. “And she weighs a lot less too…” I look around again, putting my head on a swivel. “Where did you say the portal was?”
“Ah.” Sid nods, immediately knowing what I’m implying. “I landed head first so that means we came from that direction.” He points to one side.
“Meaning Gamma probably flew out in that direction.” I point to the opposite side. “Let’s see where she landed.”
“If you want to you can look from the sky, it will go faster that way.”
I nod and take off into the sky so I at least get a little bit of a birds eye view of the surrounding area. That said, in the darkness it’s not easy to really spot much anyway, my light helping a lot less than I hoped it would. It seems that the light I’m exuding is being smothered by whatever power is at work here.
That being said, I do find something about seventy meters ahead, two steps in a very dark burgundy stone leading to a small platform against which the slumped figure of Gamma is laying, motionless.
“Sid, I got her!” I call back to him but when I turn back around it’s already hard to see him, even though I know where he is.
“I’ll come to you.”
I obviously don’t wait on Sid to land on the sand next to her. It seems like she hit the stone pretty badly. She’s bleeding from a couple of cuts and from what I can tell she’s also broken her arm. But at least she’s alive. I start channeling my healing magic into her which seems to work but also a lot less effective than what I wish it to be. Rather than being its normal blue color, right now my healing spell is more of a pure white too. It only takes a moment for it to click why exactly that’s the case. “Right… technically my healing magic comes from the moon…” I look up at the dark skies above. “Mustn’t be much of a moon here.”
“How is she doing, Amicia?” Sid comes sit down next to me. To my surprise he sounds a little bit out of breath.
“She’s hurt pretty badly… How about you? You sound like you’ve run a marathon.”
Sid nods. “The sand isn’t that easy to run in… But yes. This is not normal. It seems like I can’t draw from as much power as I usually can. Aren’t you affected?”
“Well… My healing magic isn’t really working as much as I want, my light isn’t shining as bright either, but apart from that…” I concentrate for a while, purely thinking about my body, but I don’t sense any kind of exhaustion or tiredness, if anything I feel stronger than usual. “I feel pretty strong to be honest.”
“And mentally?”
I take a deep breath while I keep channeling my healing spell into my fellow catgirl. “Could be worse. I’m just happy that Sam isn’t here too.”
Sid gives me an understanding nod. “Luckily they were standing pretty far from us otherwise they would probably be trapped in here with us too.”
“Do you think this is where they are from?” I nod to the side.
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Sid replies. “Or it’s one of the worlds they have killed. Or some lost forgotten world. In any case, it’s not a friendly place to be and I’m surprised they haven’t attacked us yet.”
I look back down at Gamma. “Let’s just count ourselves lucky that they didn’t…”