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‘The hell is he doing?’ Jonny thinks to himself.

His boss had told him to follow the kid to make sure he got out safely or got to wherever he was going safe in case he chickened out and went back to the city, but why’s he going this way?

Jonny uses hand signs to ask Timothy, the paladin, what they should do about the kid. He stares blankly for a bit before responding, with how much Jonny usually dislikes Timothy, he’s still starting to worry about him as he’s been really distant since this morning. Timothy snaps out of it and signs back to just wait.

“Hmm...” The kid’s muttering to himself, “I wonder where these actually lead, I mean these...” His talking gets too quiet to hear, Jonny wants to move in closer as he’s getting pretty impatient and wants to hear, but Timothy responds by signing no.

They continue following him, Jonny is getting even more impatient, he’s getting way too close. Jonny gets ready to jump out again, not paying attention to Timothy silently protesting, but right as he’s about to cross the trees, Timothy quietly sprints to Jonny and stops him.

Jonny doesn’t use signs this time, he instead leans in and angrily whispers, “Why the hell are you stopping me?” Jonny turns to better show that he’s pretty agitated, “Regardless, you should be getting back to Cecillian, this seems to be my issue now.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure but,” Timothy stares blankly at the kid and responds, “He’s different.”

Jonny just looks back at Timothy and says, “What?”

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Salnys sighs, he’s been walking for a while, and he still hasn’t seen anything. The markings on the trees vanished a bit ago and he was relying purely on the height of the vegetation now. He had been walking in a straight line regardless. There are some noises around him along with the wildlife noises, mostly leaves rustling.

Ahead he believes he sees something, it almost looks like a clearing with something in it. He continues on, the wildlife getting quieter, but the forest is getting louder as the plant life gets thicker as he gets closer, some of the plant life having fruits and different berries. As he enters the clearing, he’s hit with an assault of different smells and colors, potions being lined up on shelves, all in order of the rainbow, others that don’t match separated onto different shelves and tables, everything is scattered but still has some semblance of order to it.

On the other side of the clearing, there’s a small fenced-off area. It has a variety of plants of many different colors, though it’s mostly green and blue. There are small bugs crawling on the leaves of some of them, the bugs usually matching the color of the plant allowing them to blend in pretty well. The plants are also mostly arranged in order by shades and color, except for one part of the garden which is fenced off from the rest and looks much more chaotic.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Salnys progressed into the clearing, and he now also sees a small house. Now, despite its size, the house still looks fantastic, the entirety of it being constructed of brick and mortar, with a tiled roof. There are 2 windows on the front of the house with flowers in pots visible on the windowsills. There are some other plants scattered across the clearing, but the grass looks like it’s cut to be kept short.

He continues into the clearing; he approaches one of the tables with some potions on it. He reaches out to grab a brown potion, it’s held in a gallon jug with writing on it that says, “hit harder”.

Salnys hears a bush near him make a lot of noise and jumps, pulling his hand away from the jug, “Do NOT touch that jug,” He hears a voice yell, Salnys recognizes it as Jonny’s, “That stuff is really expensive to make, and I’m not even sure if your body would handle it.”

Salnys looks over at Jonny, bewildered, “How long have you been watching me?”

Jonny moved his focus from the potion Salnys was about to touch, and responds, “Since you separated from the group a few hours ago,” He starts walking over to the potions, “Cecillian told me to follow you until I was sure you’re somewhere safe, or you got back to the group.”

Both Salnys and Jonny are there in silence for a while, only accompanied by the faint sounds of wildlife, and the colliding of bottles, jugs, and various ingredients. Salnys gets bored after a bit and decides to ask something that was bugging him.”

“If he noticed when I split from the group, why didn’t he stop me?” Salnys asks while watching Jonny rearrange some potions and ingredients.

“Not sure, it’s probably something about the excitement or stress of being at school.” Jonny responds, he doesn’t take his eyes off of what he’s working on as he does.

“Oh, that’s cool I guess,” Salnys shifts in place uncomfortably, “Do you have anywhere I could sit or...”

"I’m not really prepared for visitors you know,” Jonny decides to break his focus on his work to shoot a glance back at Salnys, and for the first time since he’s met him, actually shoots a mean glance; Salnys feels even more uncomfortable and shifts in place even more now. Jonny continues by saying, "Though I do have some extra chairs, courtesy of one of my friends. Feel free to take a seat.” Jonny points over to a chair that looks like a vertical log with part of the front and inside of the log removed so that it has armrests and a backrest, it doesn’t look like it would be too comfortable, but it would do.

Salnys sits down in the seat and waits for a bit longer, at this point the sun’s getting pretty low in the sky, Jonny finishes cleaning up and sorting one of the tables and looks at it proudly with his hands resting on his hips. He turns back around and looks at Salnys, he thinks for a moment before sighing.

“The sun’s getting pretty low, and I should report back to Cecillian,” Jonny remarks, “I won’t be able to get you anywhere safe within daylight, and I don’t want to be hauling you around the woods at night. I’m going to keep you here for the night considering it does have some basic defenses against monsters and animals, though just in case,” Jonny quickly jogs over to the cottage, runs inside, and comes out with a small orb, “This is a spell focus for the magic missile spell, just dump mana into it and it’ll work. Please give it back once I come back and you’re done with it, this was pretty pricy.”

Salnys gets ready to thank Jonny for letting him stay here, and the focus, but he doesn’t get the chance to as Jonny runs back off into the woods. Once Salnys can’t hear Jonny running anymore, he gets up and stretches. Like hell he’s going to just wait here for the night, he’s got a city to go to.