During dinner, Rai was rather quiet but both Adra and SIgmir told their own stories, trying to help his mood. Especially Adra’s story was similar in some ways, she had made mistakes when she was on her own and ended up in rather big trouble. I was grateful that she never truly explained just where and from whom we had saved her, just explaining the overall circumstances. There was no need to give him the information that, in a roundabout way, we had caused their problems with the nymphs.

We also discussed our next steps, deciding that we would rest in the gorge for the night and move on the next day. Part of me wanted to run through the night, fearing that our hunters would do so, but Sigmir and Adra talked sense into me, making me understand that it was more likely that we would end up making mistakes if we forced ourself to carry on, despite the exhaustion.

The cave was, sadly, still saturated with the smell of blood, making it unpleasant to stay inside, so we all slept outside, in the cold but clear air. At the entrance to the gorge, I tried something new, creating a wall of ice and using the concealment-rune to make it blend with the environment but sadly, it was not working as I wanted it to. Maybe, there was something more to it, or I needed more power to make it work as I wanted. In a way, what I wanted was not quite darkness-magic, more illusion-magic, not that I knew if there was a difference, after all, I would have classified mind magic as something different, but had learned that it was a composite of different elements and mastery over the different elements helped with the mind magic skill. Using that idea, it might work if I had a way to bend, or rather break, light, maybe I could get my ice magic to the point that I could create ice-lenses and prisms, allowing me to manipulate light like that. I doubted that learning light magic itself would be a possibility, not without either a good teacher or a miracle. My current magic abilities were wholly dependent on the fact that I had the affinities for them.

The night passed uneventful, we rotated guards between Sigmir, Ylva and myself, letting Adra and Rai catch extra shut-eye. Rai had trouble settling down, to the point that I offered to use my magic to put him to sleep, something he accepted. I used a combination of ice and blood-runes, trying to shift the focus of the spell from the normal comatose state into a restive trance, letting him recover without disruption from nightmares. The spell worked like, well, a charm and he slept until we woke him the next morning for breakfast.

After breakfast, it was time to move once again, so we broke camp, making sure that nothing was left behind that told of the specifics of our group. Our overall plan was still to lure our pursuers into a group of nymphs, maybe with added incentive for both parties, and fade away while both groups were under the impression that the other had attacked them first. I had little doubt that both groups would do little to question that assumption, neither side had shown great prudence in their actions, leading me to the belief that hot-headedness and aggression were the prevalent characteristics in either group.

Travelling during the day was a little more exciting, mainly because the horns we had used before to get an idea of the distance between our hunters and us were absent. Sigmir explained that absence by explaining that the hunting party had converged on the magical remnant of the spell we had used to remove out traces. They had realised that their normal approach of casting a wide net to find our tracks in case we doubled back, was useless thanks to that spell, preventing all but their best trackers to follow us. So, they simply had to follow those tracks, but that was exactly what we wanted. It didn’t really matter if they were faster than us, because, depending on our luck, we only needed to stay in front of them for the day, maybe one or two extra days, before we could slip away, bring out the popcorn and watch the show, as they clashed with a party composed of nymphs and dryads.

Shortly before nightfall, I sent out Lenore, causing Rai to be quite surprised, when, suddenly, a raven was sitting on my shoulder, without him being able to detect it’s approach. I made short introductions, not quite telling him why he had never seen her before, just telling him that she was my spirit-companion and would scout for us. He looked as if he had questions about it, but he held back, not asking them. The previous Rai would have demanded answers, annoyed that he even had to ask, that information had been withheld from him. His newfound prudence would serve him well.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

While Lenore was underway, the rest of us looked for a good spot to make camp, somewhere we could see possible attackers before they got to us, without making it obvious that we were hiding from the dryads as well. Misdirection was the buzzword of the day. Adra found a good spot, hidden between shrubbery and protected by the wind. I was against taking the risk of lighting a fire, so our camp would have to be a cold one, so every little thing counted. Sigmir and I would be alright anyway, thanks to a combination of snuggling and cold-resistance but Adra and Rai were lacking those particular advantages, or so I thought.

As we made our cold camp, Lenore came back, reporting that she had spotted a group of dryads and nymphs making camp maybe fifteen minutes of walking away from us. She did not investigate too closely, for fear of adding a wild fowl dish to their dinner-table, so she could only roughly estimate their numbers, but that rough estimation was good enough for me. She estimated that there were at least fifteen beings in that camp, but had no way to tell nymphs from dryads. In the other direction, she had seen no hint of our pursuers, so we should be in the clear, for now.

Part of me wanted to use the night to scout out the dryad camp, but I restrained myself, there was no actual point to it, beyond sating my curiosity and the risk was simply not worth the reward, so I stayed put. But in our camp, something else was going on that fed my sense of curiosity and drama, Shortly after they had laid down, Adra had grabbed Rai in an embrace, mumbling about feeling cold and apparently seeking warmth. His face lit up like a christmas tree, broadcasting a wide variety of emotions, chief among them embarrassment but also lust mixed in. Adra looked simply comfortable, she had found what she was looking for, warmth and a second blanket, making her a happy dryad.

That spectacle gave me something new to think about in my ongoing investigation of the intricacies of the basic culture on Mundus. Not so much about culture-specific traits but in a broader, possible multi-racial, sense, what made the sapients of Mundus tick. Just how did society work with truly alien beings? How did cross-species romance work, was it common, rare, maybe even forbidden? Sigmir and I were a rather bad example, our races were far too closely related to matter, in the grand scheme of things. But Rai and Adra? Far more interesting. But I should not put the cart before the horse.

But just thinking about it, on Earth, there were problems just because people had a different skin-colour or even sillier things, like religious or political beliefs. On Mundus, I had seen Nagas, had heard about Centaurs and was relatively sure that there would be even more interesting beings, like Arachne. So, how could a society work with such different beings, when Earth was split over trivialities?

My guess was, that it worked just like Earth. Beings clustered together in tribes for protection and power-projection, those tribes being as inclusive as they had to be, based on location, and those who did not fit in were ostracised. So, in a dangerous area, ‘tribes’ would be overall more inclusive, due to the simple need to include enough power to protect the tribe.

I watched the squirming of Rai and the happy smile of Adra a little longer, and realised that apparently, the close proximity to Adra had changed all negative thoughts Rai might have had, allowing him to sleep without magical aid. I counted that as a win and snuggled into Sigmir’s embrace, not caring that she had the first watch and would wake me later. Her lap was almost as physically comfortable as my bedding but far warmer. When adding in the warm and fuzzy feelings I was having in her arms, I would take a little physical discomfort any day of the week.

I had the last watch and asked Lenore to scout once more, in the dim pre-dawn twilight. She was gone for some time but when she returned, what she told me made sure that my mind was fully awake, faster than any coffee could. The Jonari had not stopped for the night and were about an hour away from us and the dryads looked as if they wanted to start their day bright and early.

To me, that meant that I started shaking people awake. It was showtime.