“What does it mean to be truly human? Who would have thought, me, a normal guy, who had normal dreams of finding a job and maybe a fun and loving girl; would ever come to face that question in its deepest form. It makes me cold inside. Maybe the others know I hide behind my jokes in an attempt to deny my feelings, but I fear the day is coming that I will have to stand up and be brave. Yet even with that fear, I will push it aside for Kara’s sake and keep my word with Calin.” —Jerry Jake

~Jerry~

CHAPTER ONE: THE PASS

Energy sparked as it flashed at the stone arch of one of the twelve gates. It struck like rock. Jerry only blinked and then Calin was not there anymore.

It didn’t feel right letting his friend go off alone, his fists clenched as the light on the stone disappeared. It was all he could do; he had made his choice and that had been to go with Kara to find her father and the other scientists; to protect her while Calin went off to try and save their other friend. The big question that tugged at Jerry’s heart was, if it was the right decision.

After a minute staring at the cold stone, he turned away from the gate and moved to the left. One of the Floating Caravan’s of the gypsies was hanging there, swaying gently.

It was still surprising to no end to see the strange carriages hover more than a metre off the ground with nothing touching the ground.

There was no doubt in his mind that he would never forget the things he had been seeing since they crossed over that barrier onto the continent of Sambria.

Choosing not to dwell on it, he hopped onto the caravan; it shifted slightly at his weight, but corrected a moment later. He hopped from one foothold to the next. The climb up the side wasn’t the easiest thing in the world, but he had somewhat gotten used to it in the last four days.

As he slid his foot onto one of the tinier footholds, it slipped and he gasped as he lost his balance and was about to fall off.

A pale hand darted forward and grabbed him. Within a few moments that person pulled him up onto the top of the Floating Caravan.

Jerry blew out a breath. That had been close. At first he thought it Christoff, because the grasp had been strong, but it was then that he realized it was Mictoria who had saved him from the fall, his eyes went big. The petite woman had pulled his entire weight by one arm. He was speechless. `No way...`

Yet the gypsy woman was acting as if nothing was out of place while she smiled sweetly at him and asked, “Everything well, Níser Jerry?”

His head nodded by its own, as he still stared at her. But no answers were forthcoming.

Even after days of travelling with her, he still couldn’t put a finger on what made the woman tick.

Mictoria, who barely reached his armpit in height, was one of the nomadic Floating Gypsies. But even if she was a little bit on the short side, the woman carried the air of command and authority.

She was fuzzing with her full hair, clearly a little impatient at the rate of the preparations. Her small shoulders were hidden by the thick, dark brown hair that was fashioned into ringlets. Her hand tugged at them. Underneath her hair, her silk-like white, black and blue blouse hugged her shoulders and middle tightly, but looked comfortable. It was slightly at odds with her short, mid-thigh skirt she wore that was clearly meant for mobility, though it had a small silk sarong that just brought a little extra colour to her practical skirt.

Jerry had seen her fight and he still couldn’t believe what he had seen. Not to mention the woman's head were full of back-up plans and countless tricks. It was definitely not the first time Jerry had the thought that he would hate to have her as an enemy.

Just then the woman stood up from the small bench on the front of the caravan and placed her small-heeled boot, which reached almost to her knee, on the ledge as she shouted forward. “Qeret! Get the train ready, we can't dally all night.”

Jerry looked over the circle of twelve stone arches that surrounded the clearing between the mountains and watched as the many Floating Caravans was moved to within half a metre of each other. The other gypsies, who all looked like they had not seen the sun one day in their lives with their ghostly white skin, moved with practiced ease as they grabbed hold of the carriages and connected them.

Mictoria had explained the act earlier, but Jerry still didn’t understand how, by making a connected train that the two metre tall gate of Kailuvia could transport the entire progression of Floating Caravans to a distant area on the continent. It blew his mind. Yet, still he had seen Jael drag Evany through the other gate and disappeared, and later Calin. Thinking of it all almost made his head hurt. There was no way he could ever tell anybody from back home. They would never believe him, maybe Kara... No, he thought. The scarlet haired girl had a track record of making him look silly. He just groaned.

“Agh! Calin, you better come back and be my witness to this!”

“Níser Jerry, what do you need Níser Calin be a witness for?”

Jerry jumped at Mictoria’s sudden question and his cheeks warmed as he tried to hide his embarrassment for his frustrated declaration.

“Um yeah, nothing really. Don’t mind me.”

The woman looked at him curiously, but didn’t ask anything further.

Though she did pat him on the back and said, “Níser Jerry, he is a very capable man, even if he doesn’t see it in himself yet. So, don’t you worry on him. He surprised me a couple of times already... Now, hold on tight we are about to use the Crossing of Kailuvia, and whatever you do, don’t let go until we are on the other side. I cannot tell you what awaits you if you fall off, but I have lost men to it more than once.”

Jerry gulped down hard as the woman’s eyes that had been so full of life only a moment ago turned serious with her statement. He just nodded and gripped the railing until it stung his hands, watching the woman stand up and call.

“Qeret, do it now!”

The broad shouldered gypsy at the front grabbed onto his carriage and slammed his palm with force onto the glowing stone wall in the arch of the gate.

Light flashed forward and ice enveloped Jerry as the clearing with the twelve gates disappeared. It was as if a giant force grabbed hold of him as well as his caravan, ripping them forward into the unknown. Vertigo seized him as everything spun out of control. Jerry tried to scream, but he couldn’t get his spinning body to let the sound go.

The caravan he was holding on to, lurched violently beneath him. Fear grasped him as Mictoria’s words echoed loudly in his mind. With all the strength he could muster, Jerry held on.

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Then the light was plucked from him as if it had been a sheet wrapped around him. And they were in a long basin basked in moonlight, with many valleys leading out of it.

Things settled down as fast as it had started, but there were numerous groans from all over the progression. Some of the gypsies just muttered and started correcting the carriages as Jerry still tried to control his heart beat.

“Mictoria, where are—“

“FLEE FOR YOUR LIVES!!” Boomed a voice from above the left side cliff.

Jerry jerked his head up to the sight of an armoured man standing on a wooden watch tower that looked like it had seen constant battle. There was a man there dressed in a cloak that would have hidden him expertly within his surroundings if he hadn't been waving his arms franticly with torches in each hand. Other than the moon, the only light on the watchtower was those torches casting light over the sheer rockface.

Immediately following the grave warning shout, the sound of swords withdrawing from their sheaths echoed against the walls of the ravine. One of the gypsies a little back, shouted,

“There is movement all around! Be alert!”

It was a familiar voice. One of the gypsies that had helped him and Tyas in the attack of the Igri, without that man… Jerry shuddered at the thought. He owed Ro-Kin his life.

But rather than remembering that fight, it was the sound of screams from beyond that, at the back, that demanded his attention. Even from the Floating Caravan, it was clear that the earth beneath their carriages were shaking. Rocks and loose gravel was cascading down the cliffs. As he searched for the source of the screams in the darkness, the glimmerstone lanterns offered little to what the danger was.

But then a screeching hiss filled the air as a dark shape burst through the darkness, destroying in an instant the Floating Caravan at the back of their train. The glimmerstone lanterns flung in many directions with the splintered pieces of the caravan it once resided on.

Shouts and gurgling screams deafened the next part. Jerry spun to Mictoria clasping the reigns of their caravan. The light that fell on her hands showed they were trembling, and not just a little. His heart struck a drum beat in his chest as a sudden realization dawned on him.

It was clear without a doubt that this was nothing like the Igri attack in the Valley of Blades.

This was much worse.

His voice stuttered as he asked,

“Mict… Mictoria, what is attacking us?”

The expectation that she certainly would know what was going on was squarly placed on what he had witness through their escapades in the Pillar city of Yera’s Crossing. The kindhearted Floating Gypsy had shown immense resolve in cooking up a plan to free Calin. But the next moment dashed any such hope of her constant confidence in their journey so far.

“I… I don’t know.”

Mictoria’s eyes glistened with uncertainty as she said it.

Jerry gawked at her, and opened his mouth to say something, when the cliff behind showed the ground was shaking again. His eyes shot to and fro, searching for their adversary, whatever it was.

But the large entity appeared once more just before anyone could react. The caravan that was two away from his got flung into the air as if a balloon with helium in it was let go. It spun up in the air. The gypsies that were on top of it fell from it with only one of them landing on relatively safe ground. Jerry choked in horror as two limp bodies landed next to their caravan, one of which was Ro-Kin. There was no sign of life.

Though before the shock could overtake him, the Floating Caravan, second from theirs, was also flung up into the air when the ground exploded upwards. It crashed into the ledge close to where the watchtower was and in a moment Jerry’s world stood still, as from the broken wreckage emerged Ta-Reen. The traitor gypsy that threw everthing into chaos only a day before was now free from the prison carriage.

The fires cast light on the man's scar on his cheek as it pulled tight as he looked with a fierce glare down at Mictoria. He spat onto the rocks below and ran off into the dark night.

It was then that Jerry remembered Kara and Tyas. But as he desperately glanced back into the canyon, he was met only by destruction and flames. Only half of the caravans looked to be intact, the rest was either destroyed or badly damaged. He couldn’t make out anyone he knew through the smoke.

A wooden beam suddenly fell from the sky. Jerry only had seconds to dodge the projectile, as he jumped to the side of the roof of their caravan. He slipped and almost fell off the railing as he righted himself, but still Mictoria’s head being glanced by the beam was as clear as day.

The small gypsy woman slumped and fell back, unconscious and blood streaking from her head.

Jerry wanted to rush to her aid, when a dark mass erupted from the ground and struck the back of their caravan, sending it into a fearful spin.

In holding on for dear life, the clear and familiar of voice of their rudder man, Christoff cried out in terror and abrubtly went silent.

Jerry’s breaths came in too fast as he hyperventilated through the ordeal. At least their caravan came to a halt, still mostly intact. Without waiting, Jerry jumped up and lunged towards Mictoria. Her breathing was shallow… too shallow. He nervously looked around, hoping for help to come.

But the raging fires in the night revealed that this place was a graveyard for hundreds of types of horse drawn carriages and other types all around them. It said only one thing.

They needed to get out right now.

Just before he turned, movement from below caught his attention. A gypsy man, whom Jerry recognized as Koi-la, was carrying a gypsy woman. He ran forward and jumped on what looked like a Floating Caravan that had its entire top blow off. The gypsy gently laid down the woman and went to the middle. There in the middle as the man pulled of pieces of wreckage was a large glowing crystal. The man shouted into the night and laid himself on it and it became brighter before the broken caravan lurched forward into the night.

Jerry, mustered up all his courage and grabbed the reigns.

As he did, the gravel started falling down the cliffs again as a deep rumbling sounded from the ground. But he did not wait around to find out what it was as he floored the pedal that meant forward on the Floating Caravan. It surged forward at a speed as the wind gushing past his ears drowned out most sounds, except for the screetching growls that followed theird caravan. Whatever chased after them was fast.

Though with relief it became clear that as the caravan got up to its full speed, it pulled away slowly but surely from the immensely dangerous entities that destroyed so many of the Floating Caravans. Jerry gritted his teeth as he gripped the reigns of the caravan.

Speeding forward, the right side of the small canyon gave way, revealing that they were on a plateau, in the distance down on the lowlands stood great Morning trees of the three more common colors he had come to know; green, turquoise and the lime colourded ones.

But Jerry forced his eyes forward, the pass they were one were going into tighter canyon than the previous one and the uncertainty of Christoff, cast doubt in if the more difficult turns would be possible without him at the rudder. Yet, there was no choice.

The dangerous growls in the night, made it clear he couldn’t stop. Not now.

He pressed forward on the paddle and the caravan drifted down into the canyon, immediately striking the wall to the left. Scraping sounds harassed his ears, but he endured through it, gripping the reigns all the tighter.

***

Hours passed. Yet still no sign of people came. Dust blew into his tired eyes and his hands still gripped the reigns with the same intensity it had when he had fled the scene of the attack, his knuckles were white and his fingers had long since numbed to the pain of holding on too tightly. Just follow the road, Just get away get away... Just find help...

Just. Just. J…ust

His mind wasn't clear anymore.

The only thing that drove him, that kept him awake was the idea that Mictoria might die if he stopped, if he gave up.

His clenched hands around the reigns could not open any longer, his hands molded to the leather in a painful way. But still he kept on going.

He had not slept in two days. Since before the ordeal at Yera’s Crossing.

Now that deprivation was eating at his body like a swarm of parasites. Jerry shook his head as his eyes dipped closed for the hundredth time in the last hour. Everything started looking blurry a long while ago. He didn’t know if he could trust his eyes any more. Nothing made sense.

But he needed to be alert. The caravan wasn’t handling as well. Fear gnawed at him, he had not heard a sound from their rudder man, Christoff, since they had fled. There was not even a hint of the familiar circular mechanical sweeps of the helm at the back.

Jerry was sure by now, because he had not been able to make certain maneuvers with the caravan for hours now.

Then from around a bend, lights appeared. Jerry shook his head wildly. There was no time to give in to illusions. Mictoria and Christoff needed help…

But the lights became bigger.

And bigger.

It looked like great big shining things.

Jerry did not know what.

Out of nowhere, a shout came,

“WHO GOES THERE?”

Jerry jerked his head up, and saw a big glowing tree with a structure hugging around the dark bark at least thirty meters up. Was it a Morning tree?... Jerry swayed weakly.

Everything was so blurry. Was that a man swinging down?

I am so tired…

His mouth opened up, and somehow he uttered,

“Help…Mict… needs—“

He toppled over. His eyes closed. And exhaustion claimed him.