They left the cavern just before dusk. Arai would have liked to have continued along the beach, where they could not be seen from the main road, but the terrain was too difficult, full of rocks, gullies, and promontories. So they climbed the cliffs, back up to the plateau overlooking the sea, and began making their way west, under the darkening sky.

They followed the road, which Sir Estil was certain would lead them all the way to the Long Wall, but remained out of sight, avoiding any traffic they encountered and spending much of their time in the pine forests and hedges adjacent to the highway. When the first fingers of dawn began to claw their way up out of the western horizon, they retreated into the forests again and spent the day there, sleeping. Arai was thoroughly exhausted, his sleep schedule having been totally disrupted (sleeping all day and walking all night), and even Sir Estil seemed weary by this point. They were also desperately hungry -- Shell stumbled across some wild grapes in the forest, which they ate greedily, but the grapes were small and did little to ease their hunger. Fortunately they still had the Everlasting Chalice, which provided them with an apparently infinite supply of fresh water. Sir Estil was impressed with the zemi: "I would have loved to have had one of these when I was stationed in Bloodlorn," he commented. "It gets very hot in the desert."

After eating their fill of grapes they found a quiet spot in the forest and spent most of the day sleeping under the canopy, on beds of pine needles. When Arai finally awoke, late in the evening, he found Lillandra curled up next to him, using his arm as a pillow.

There was something almost comical about this; in fact he nearly burst out laughing. He had spent two years searching for a weapon to kill this woman, to free Velon from her tyranny, and now here they were, practically cuddling.

But then his mirth died away, and he found himself contemplating her face. Lillandra was a hard, suspicious character, a cynic. She rarely smiled. When she was sleeping, though, she looked like the carefree girl she might have been, without any trace of that hardness, that cynicism. What kind of life might she have gone on to lead, if her parents had not abandoned her, if Prince Ryal had not murdered her lover and King Reemus not put her village to the torch? Arai would have liked to have known that girl. He would have liked to have met her before all these terrible things had happened to her. He would have liked to have been there for her.

He frowned at himself. His feelings towards Lillandra seemed to be growing deeper and more complicated all the time.

Though his arm had fallen asleep, he didn't want to wake her up, so he allowed her to lie there, while he continued studying her face. It was, after all, a lovely face, and it wasn't often that he got to see her like this.

She awoke on her own a few minutes later, however, and when she realized how close they were, she immediately sat up and put some distance between them. "Sorry," she mumbled.

"For what?"

"I didn't...I didn't realize we were so close," she said, brushing her long hair out of her face, in a flustered kind of way.

"I didn't realize it, either," he said carefully, "until now."

By now Shell and Sir Estil were awake as well. Yawning, the elf girl approached them. "What were you two talking about?"

"Nothing," Lillandra said quickly.

"Nothing," Arai agreed. He got up and studied the sky. "We'd better get moving."

And so, under cover of night, they continued west, avoiding Skirrish patrols and stealing food from farms and villages as necessary. Aria wasn't proud of this -- these Skirrish farmers and villagers were obviously not wealthy -- but there was only so much foraging they could do out in the countryside. He wished that he could pay them back somehow.

Shell, however, who had spent most of her life as a pickpocket in Kingsaile, was not nearly as concerned about the propriety of it: "We do what we have to do to survive," she said.

"I guess we do," Arai allowed. "But that doesn't make it right."

Sir Estil backed him up: "Stealing is wrong, of course, and totally contrary to the code of chivalry. In extreme circumstances, however..." He shrugged. "Well, the Perfect Knight knows all and judges all. It's up to him to decide whether our actions were right or wrong."

"The Perfect Knight?" Arai asked.

"That's a god, isn't it?" Shell added. "The god of the Galleans?"

"Indeed," Sir Estil said. "The Perfect Knight is the essence of knighthood, who rode out of his silver castle thousands of years ago to give the code of chivalry to the world. He commands us to combat evil, to protect the innocent, to be generous to our friends and merciful to our enemies. He protects the soldier in battle, and expects us to live our lives with honor and integrity. And his wife, the Perfect Lady, is the defender of women everywhere, though her influence is...rather more subtle."

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Shell had mentioned these gods once or twice, but this was the first time Arai had met a worshipper of this Perfect Knight. The religion seemed strange, but then, all of these eastern religions seemed strange to him.

Before they had set off Sir Estil had warned them that they had a long journey ahead of them: Helltrix was at least two hundred miles from the Long Wall. They could cover perhaps ten or fifteen miles in a night, if they walked all night, but this was a grueling pace, and it took a toll on them. And as the moon began to wane, they began to have more and more difficulty seeing where they going, which made traveling at night more difficult. They still had the Candle of Hours, but Arai was afraid the mage-light would attract too much attention.

It took them over ten days to make it to the big Skirrish camp at the base of the Long Wall -- ten days of skulking through the woods, sleeping during the day, avoiding Skirrish press gangs, and stealing supplies from local villagers. Though Arai still had no idea how they were supposed to slip through this battlefield -- Sir Estil hadn't explained his plan to them yet -- he was grateful that they had, at least, finally managed to make it to within a few miles of Galleus.

To avoid the carts and carriages, which were coming and going constantly here, they once again made their way down to the craggy seashore, where they could hide themselves beneath the cliffs, in the rough and boulder-strewn terrain. From here, they observed the scene.

Arai had spent most of his life in the company of mercenaries; war was nothing new to him. The sheer scale of this contest astounded him, however -- this war was obviously nothing like the little sieges and skirmishes he had participated in back in Arliel's Holy Empire. There were tens of thousands of troops gathered here, their tents stretching almost as far as the eye could see. These Skirrish encampments ran the whole length of the wall, but most of them were concentrated near a place Sir Estil called the Firemen's Gate, five or six miles north of the point where the Long Wall met the sea. The ground was pockmarked with craters and skeletonized trees, burned with mage-fire.

The Long Wall was a sight as well; Arai had never seen anything like it. It had been constructed out of huge white blocks, each one of which must have weighed a hundred tons; these could only have been moved by magic. Although the bottom portion of the wall was dirty and weather-stained, the blocks at the top, including the battlements, were still white. It stood at least forty or fifty feet high, and ran off into the northern horizon, slithering around hills and trails and finally vanishing into the dark-blue distance.

And above it all, storms raged: unnatural dark clouds, flashing with lightning, rumbling with thunder, hovered over the battlefields. This weather was extremely ominous; the air was thin and pregnant with danger. Every once in a while a wispy cyclone would begin to descend out of the dark wall clouds roiling over the Long Wall, only to dissipate after a few moments.

"That's the Aeromancer's doing," Sir Estil said. "If we didn't have sorcerers stationed up there to dissolve his spells, those cyclones of his would have swept us off the battlements a long time ago."

"How long did it take to build this wall?" Shell asked, staring wide-eyed at the huge structure.

"Many, many years, I imagine," the old knight said. "It's thousands of years old."

Lillandra was studying the Long Wall. "These are some interesting spells," she mused.

"There's a lot of magia running through the air," Shell remarked, closing her eyes in concentration. "It's even worse than the Haunt. Do you get a lot of monsters?"

Sir Estil shook his head. "I understand there's a lot of magia here," he agreed, "but the Aeromancer, and our own sorcerers, use so much of it that there's hardly any left over for monsters to materialize."

"Very interesting spells," Lillandra noted again, still studying the Long Wall. "Very old. Very powerful." She turned to Sir Estil. "I should warn you, though. Some of the spells built into that wall are in danger of unraveling."

"That doesn't surprise me," the knight muttered. "The Aeromancer has been trying to deconstruct the spells protecting the Wall for years, and our best sorcerers haven't been able to stop him."

"What happens if the spells fail?" Arai asked.

"Then the Long Wall fails," he said. "Draj will blow it apart, and he'll destroy Prestoris with blizzards and cyclones. Tax Noctum will be next, and eventually all of Galleus will fall." He looked at Lillandra curiously. "Can you repair the damage? Our own sorcerers haven't been able to do anything with it."

"Perhaps," she said, squinting at the great structure. "Perhaps some of it. These are very old spells, and I'm not familiar with these calculations." She glanced up at the stormy sky. "These storms, however...I could probably untangle these."

"What's your plan for getting us into Galleus?" Arai asked Sir Estil.

"Ah." The knight pointed a small bay, filled with rocks, about a mile and a half from where they stood. The Long Wall ran very close to it. "You see that bay? There's a secret tunnel on the other side that leads under the Long Wall. It's called the Hangman's Gate. The Skirrish don't know about it; we've been using it to stage sorties into Grand Skir. The problem is, that bay is very treacherous, and the Aeromancer's storms make it almost impossible to get across. The water is too rough." He turned to Lillandra. "But if you could dissolve these storms..."

"We'll need a boat," Arai pointed out.

"That won't be a problem. There's a couple of rowboats hidden near the shore; I used them to cross over myself, before I was captured. They should still be there."

Arai nodded. "What do you think, Lill? Can you get rid of these storms?"

"Not all of them," she said. "But I ought to be able to dissolve the one directly above us. We won't have much time, though. The Aeromancer will sense what I'm doing, and it may make him curious. If he finds us before we make it to Galleus...well, this secret tunnel won't be a secret for much longer."

"How much time?"

She shrugged. "It depends on how closely he's paying attention. An hour, perhaps? Maybe less."

"That's not much time," Arai said, "but I think it might be worth the risk."

"All right, then," she said, looking up at the boiling sky again. "Let's get started."