“Hey,” David says, “have you guys noticed that the Fasuru in the city seems to have disappeared.”

“Yeah,” Lathia agrees, “they’ve been gone for weeks now. Funny thing though, I only just noticed a few days ago.”

I nod as I realize something. “That’s true. Before, I became a Laen I once used second sight while walking on the street and it was crawling with Fasurus, I even saw one in my house once but now I don’t see them anymore.”

“You saw a Fasuru in your house?” Drew asks surprised.

“Yeah, in my kitchen.”

“It was probably hungry. “ Daniel says jokingly. “You should have cooked something for it.”

“Daniel! Have some pity for the poor thing, do you want it to get poisoned?” Lathia says.

“Hey,” I protest. “I’m a good cook.”

“Right,” she says disbelievingly. "Even if you are, there's no way you're as good as Drew."

“Do you think the Fasurus disappearance has anything to do with the serial killings?” Emma asks.

“It would make sense,” I say, remembering the terrifying aura I had felt that night. “Especially if they felt that…aura. That thing could kill.”

“What aura?” Drew asks.

I hesitate for a moment before telling them about that night, making sure to exclude everything having to do with Tahku. They briefly fall silent at my words. For a few seconds, the only sound I hear is the sound of the crackling fire. Drew is the first to break the silence.

“They’re planning something.”

“No kidding,” David says.

“Do you think they’re planning to attack the Metorium again?”

My ears perk up at the word ‘again’. “They’ve attacked the Metorium before?”

“Yeah. Three years ago. And it ended with the Eldest banishing the five strongest remaining Fasurus and hundreds more.” David explains. “Only idiots would try to do the same again.” The reverence in David’s voice is quite obvious.

The Eldest. Just how powerful is he? “Why didn’t he kill them?”

“Huh?”

“You said he banished the Fasurus, why didn’t he kill them?”

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“Fasurus can’t be killed,” Emma answers this time.

“Why?”

“They’re soul beings. And souls are immortal.”

“Wait do we have souls?”

“Duh,” Lathia says, rolling her eyes.

“But wait, doesn’t this mean there is an afterlife?”

“There is.”

For some reason, I could feel myself getting excited by the thought. There is life after death. This is the kind of knowledge that could shake the world. Death doesn’t end with life and the Laen know this, which means they are my best chance of knowing what the afterlife is like.

“What is the afterlife like?”

“We don’t know.”

“Why?” I ask somehow confused. They know the soul is immortal and they can probably see souls with second sight, after all the Fasurus are souls and second sight can see them, so why couldn’t they talk to dead souls or something? It didn’t make much sense to me.

“Because,” Drew says with a strange expression, “Death does not allow human souls to remain after death.”

Death does not allow human souls to remain after death? That sentence confuses me a bit, while also spurring my imagination. I open my mouth to ask something when Drew interrupts.

“Can we change topics, I don’t like talking about death.”

It is then that I notice the slightly awkward mood that had fallen over the group. I nod and close my mouth, swallowing my questions. The atmosphere dissipates over time and some hours later we are all lying on the ground, looking at the stars and talking about random things. Daniel had spread some blankets on the ground so that we wouldn’t dirty our clothes too much.

At a point, I just stop talking. Choosing instead to just keep quiet and listen to their conversations. I close my eyes and somehow I feel peaceful. Choosing to come here was a good idea, I think as I begin to look forward to the coming days. After an unknown period of time, I drift off to sleep under the light of the stars.

* * * * * *

“Ian, wake up.” A persistent voice begins to shake the world of dreams around me. I resist, not wanting to wake. “Ian, I know you can hear me so get up.”

The voice has been disturbing me for close to a minute now. “Leave me alone,” I murmur groggily.

“Look, I’m tired of trying to wake you, if you don’t get up I am going to slap you really hard.”

“But why on earth do I have to wake up this early?” I protest.

“Because we have a lot to do and we need to get up early so get up.”

I groan and mutter some meaningless crap but in the end, I sit up and force my eyes open. I am greeted by Drew’s grinning face. I blink and look around slowly. It is a bit bright but the sun isn’t up yet. I look around and realize I had fallen asleep outside. As well as the rest of the group. I can see Lathia to my left and Daniel, David, and Emma to my right. I am about to look away when something pops into my head. I turn to look at David, Daniel, and Emma again, a puzzled frown on my face.

“Ignore them,” Drew says noticing the direction of my gaze. He then jerks his thumb behind him. “Go and take a shower while I wake up the others. And take your clothes so you can change in there too.”

I look where he pointed, a bit puzzled. I remember Lathia saying we would need to go back home to take a shower but now Drew is directing me to a small strange-looking building that wasn’t there yesterday. In the end, I do as he says and go to the building. I walk into the building and am surprised to find myself in a fairly modern shower. I quickly get over my surprise and take a shower.

I get out feeling refreshed. Outside, three more of the showers have appeared and the only people I can see are Drew and Lathia. “I thought you said we would have to go back home to take our showers,” I say to Lathia, running my hand through my wet hair.

Drew answers. “That’s what we did last year but I wanted things to be different this year so I got a couple of friends to build these. Portable bathrooms.”

I nod before thinking of something. “Wait, were these in your bag the entire time?”

He nods.

“Okay,” I say. By this point, things like this rarely surprise me anymore. Soon, the rest come out and after packing up the tents and everything else, we begin to move. Finally, Drew explains to me what is going on.

“Okay, so first of all, you should know that here magic interferes with the physical rules in some places to create some crazy effect. So, whenever we come here we mostly just visit these places. We limit it to one per trip though.”

“Yeah,” Lathia says. “The first time we came here we visited Sideways Cliff. Gravity acts sideways on the cliff so you can literally walk up it.”

“And last year we visited the Breathable River, you can breathe underwater when in the river,” Drew adds.

“Wait,” I say, “who named these places?”

Everyone turns to look at Drew who puts on a smug smile. “You want to know where I got my incredible naming skills, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” I say sarcastically, “you have some top-notch naming skills. I can't help but imagine the wonderful names you're going to give your kids.”

We talk as we walk and the morning slowly turns to afternoon. At some point, I think that, if not for the way magic has improved my body, I would have long collapsed from exhaustion. “When are we going to start the training?” I ask Drew after some time.

“When we stop for the day. A few hours from now.”

Time passes and slowly our conversations trickle to a stop. Still, it doesn’t feel awkward, quite the opposite in fact.

Sometime in the late afternoon, Drew comes to a stop. “Let’s stop here for today.” We nod and set up our tents. I collapse inside one as I finally begin to feel tired. I had not felt it much during the walk, but now that I finally have a chance to relax my feet begins to ache. And the ache slowly spreads, dragging my body down into the depths of exhaustion.