“Slow,” Kade said, one of his hands coming to rest reassuringly on Florian’s back. “Don’t force it.”
A long, low whimper made its way from Florian’s chest as he breathed.
“What the fuck was that?” he asked, his voice raspy and painful. Everything from his lungs through his throat into his mouth, nose, and eyes, all stung like a whip.
“I’m not sure,” Kade sighed, rubbing Florian’s back. “Some kind of elemental creature. When you got pulled in, it... Stood up, somehow? I’ve never seen anything like it. It had… limbs, I guess. Something in it glowed when it moved, and when I stabbed it, that’s when it fell apart.”
“Those are things that exist?” Florian croaked, shaking his head.
“I guess so,” Kade replied.
“If I had known that,” Florian said, managing to grin weakly up at Kade, “I would have been more careful.”
Kade’s worried expression softened, and gently he patted Florian’s back a few times. “Be careful anyway.”
Florian nodded, and after a few minutes of catching his breath, the world stopped spinning so quickly, and Kade helped him stagger to his feet. The lamp post looked totally undisturbed, its dim light unchanged; but the circle of water around it was gone, leaving behind only dark, damp earth slightly indented in a circle around it.
“Dry,” he groaned, touching his backpack with one hand; and with a glimmering burst of magic, all the moisture was shunted out of the cloth and fell to the ground at his feet with a splash. Gratefully, he shouldered the dry backpack—lugging around wet equipment would have made this all the more miserable.
“Think you can still walk?” Kade asked him, holding Florian by the arm as he regained his balance. He nodded, frowning—his legs felt like jelly beneath him, but he could walk it off.
“Yeah,” he said, and slowly Kade let go of him, as if testing whether he could truly support his own weight. Florian’s knees wobbled, but he stayed standing. “Let’s just go slow.”
“Sure,” Kade replied, a small smile on his face. He seemed to sense Florian’s unwillingness to rest—Florian thought that he might protest, but the words never came. “No rush.”
Slowly, they made their way through the swamp once more, following the path set out by the lamps. After a few minutes of walking, Florian felt more sure-footed as he had hoped he would, but he didn’t try to speed up much at all—the last thing he needed was to rush headlong into some other kind of danger now that he was already tired and sore. More than anything he hoped that they would find the witch soon, then they could rest.
After about fifteen minutes of walking quietly, the next lamp post came into view. Kade lightly touched Florian’s shoulder and said softly in his ear, “I think there’s one around that lamp too.”
Florian squinted, not quite able to tell, but distantly he thought that he saw the same dull glint around the lamp post. Drawing closer only confirmed their suspicion. This time they stayed a good distance away from it, observing the direction it pointed and giving it a wide berth as they headed that way.
The next several lamp posts were all the same: surrounded by small moats of dull water that must have all been similar watery monsters. But if they didn’t get close, the creatures didn’t seem to notice them at all, so they continued on their meandering way without any more conflict.
They walked for what felt like hours with no change, the landscape around them remaining largely the same with no further hints as to what to expect, other than the many identical lamp posts. Florian was starting to worry that maybe it was all some sort of ruse after all, when a faint glimmer of light in the distance seemed brighter than the lamps they had previously seen.
“What is that?” he muttered, frowning as he caught sight of it in the distance. Kade had spotted it too, flashes of light obscured by the many trees, but it was clearly something much larger than a single lamp post.
“I don’t know,” Kade said quietly, lifting his hand to the hilt of his sword. “Be careful.”
Florian nodded, and they trudged through the muddy earth toward it. The ground beneath them had gotten even wetter as the day wore on, and now no remnants of the jungle biome remained. Now, they were well and truly walking through a swamp.
As they pushed through the last of the dense trees, the scene became more clear ahead. Something of a path opened up, one lamp post on either side. Hovering in the air—right in the middle of the path—was a softly glowing sigil: a circle filled with intricate swirls and symbols made of a purple-tinged light. Florian stopped short when he saw it, startled and uncertain.
“What the hell is that?” he said. Kade stopped a few steps ahead of him, looking at it more closely, though still keeping a distance of about ten feet.
“A ward,” he said, sounding utterly unfazed. “We must be close now.”
“A ward? Is that what they normally look like?” Florian repeated, the confusion obvious in his voice.
“I think so. I’ve only seen one before. They’re pretty uncommon, now,” Kade remarked, glancing back at him. “They’re... a magical defense, I suppose. The wolf kingdom has one. They’re made with old magic. They last a while, but need to be topped up every so often, so... Not many are left. There’s just one on the northern border to keep sea monsters from coming ashore.”
“Sea monsters?” Florian said, flabbergasted. He gave his head a strong shake:thatwas hardly the most important topic at hand. “I mean—okay, so it’s a protective thing. The witch must have put it here, right?”
“Yes,” Kade said, glancing back at it. The symbol was unmoving, a glowing sentinel motionless in the air. “The question is, how do we pass it?”
Florian took a cautious step closer to Kade and considered it closely, but he didn’t recognize any of the symbols within the ward. Jerah hadn’t said anything about something like this, but maybe Tatiana had mentioned wards in the long list of things that she’d gone over with him after his coronation—he could vaguely remember sitting across from her, perhaps in the library or one of the studies, but the details were lost to him.
“Don’t touch it,” Kade warned, holding his hand out to keep Florian from getting any closer. “There’s no telling what it might do to intruders.”
