In the days after losing Fred, Juna rarely said a word to any one of them. She walked beside them as they continued their journey through the vast darkness of this domain, but she kept to herself almost always.

Everyone knew of what happened. Some understood her feelings while others gave off the impression that they couldn’t understand how she could be so sad over a dog.

After another long day of walking, she found herself in a bout of crying as they gathered around a fire. Kiran heard her weeping from afar.

The sound of a stone being kicked caused him to look over his shoulder. Laphy stood up from another campfire several meters away from theirs.

“Will you ever stop crying?” Laphy stomped over towards Juna who looked up towards him. “We’ve had enough of your incessant crying already.”

“Laphy.” When Rinas spoke, it got Laphy’s attention. While their body still faced Juna, their head twisted over towards where Rinas stood.

“What?”

“Leave her alone.”

“Aren’t you sick of her wailing?”

“We all have our own ways of grieving.”

“She’s drawing unneeded attention to us. Her cries can be heard for hundreds of miles away.” He returned his gaze towards Juna shaking his head. “What’s your problem anyways? It was just a dog.”

“Just leave me alone,” she said.

“What, just so you can return to crying? Some of us would like to rest a little during our stops and we can’t if you keep crying.”

Aini came up to him trying to draw him away. However, as she grasped onto his wrist, he pulled it away harshly. He puffed his chest and stormed away back to the campfire he had been seated at moments ago.

It was unfortunate that Aini’s much kinder demeanor didn’t rub off her husband. If anything he was getting worse the longer he had known him.

Silvy eyed him from across the campfire as she sat on the ground. “How is it that a familiar like him doesn’t get kicked out of the coalition for treating a fellow member that way?”

“A lot of people look up to Laphy due to some history he has with the coalition that I don’t know all that much about,” Kiran said. “I guess that has bought him a lot of goodwill that most others would likely ever receive.”

“He’s nothing but trouble,” Lar muttered aloud. “Someone like him is likely to end up being more of a liability in the future and he arguably already has been. Just look at how he’s treating Juna in front of everyone and practically nobody is doing or saying anything.”

That includes us, doesn’t it?

Kiran stood up deciding to check on Juna to change that. She had her back against a tattered cart’s wheel. She looked up at him briefly as he came to sit by her.

“Oh, hey,” she said.

“You need me to get you anything? I didn’t see you eat with everyone else earlier so I figured you might be hungry.”

“I guess, yeah. I am a little hungry.”

Kiran went and grabbed her some still-warm stew that had been made earlier and grabbed a fresh waterskin. When he dropped it off to her, all she did was stare into the liquid in the bowl. She eventually got a spoonful of stew and swallowed it down.

She swallowed and tears began to form in her eyes. “I wanted to thank you for the other day.” She rubbed her eyes angrily most likely upset that she couldn’t keep herself from tearing up constantly. “You didn’t have to do that for me.”

“Whenever you need help Juna, I’m always here to lend out a hand. You’ve given me yours plenty of times. It’s the least I can do.”

That made her happy. But she was still ultimately sad considering the loss of her companion. “I’m sorry that I’ve been a bit of a nuisance lately.”

“You’re not a nuisance.”

“I’m not? Laphy seems to disagree and I’ve seen the way others look at me. They hate me.”

“Nobody hates you. People are just on edge and nervous due to everything that has been happening recently. And frankly, if you ask me, whatever Laphy thinks about you is irrelevant.”

“It still hurts.”

A part of him wanted Rinas to just kick his sorry butt out of the coalition and be done with it. But for whatever reason, that was just not something being entertained whatsoever. Is this familiar really all that special? He thought it might be a lot better had they never broken him free from captivity all that time ago. Although that would mean Aini would’ve been locked away. How she could tolerate staying with him baffled him in some ways.

When she finished eating the stew and drank a bit of water, he took the bowl and stood up. “Why don’t you come join us all over at the fire? It’s a little lonely over here, don’t you think?”

She nervously smiled. “I suppose I can join you.”

They both headed over towards the fire. Lar scooted over a bit allowing Juna to have enough space to sit between them all. As for Silvy, she kept laying down with her head propped up on a bulky bag that she carried along during their journey towards the east.

“Isn’t it so much better here?” he said sitting down with Juna to his left. “This fire is nice and warm. You also get to have the three of us to keep you company.”

What Juna needed was her friends now more than ever. Being alone during the days after an important loss was far from ideal. At the same time, he wanted to give her enough space, but perhaps that was a mistake. There was such a thing as giving someone too much space during times like these.

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So instead of her being forced to think about dark things in that noggin of hers all alone, he began to tell her stories of his time out in the vast wasteland that existed outside of Liall since he hadn’t told her many of those stories.

“There was this one time,” he said with her full attention along with the others around the fire, “when this creature began to stalk Lar and I. I never did get a good look at the creature. I just knew it was out there waiting for the right moment to kill us as we slept. For several days we wandered with barely any sleep when suddenly a storm arrived covering us in a torrential rain. I thought that if we were going to lose this creature, now was the time. As it kept raining, we encountered a giant beast that appeared recently slain. Lar suggested we mask our scent by spending a night inside of it. So we crawled inside of its still fresh corpse while it kept raining and stayed there for a short while until it was over.”

Juna’s eyes widened. “You really rested in a corpse?” She shook just thinking about how gross of an experience that would be. It was a lot worse than you can ever imagine.

Lar grunted a little. “Trust me. We had no choice and that creature did in fact mask our scent from that creature that had been following us for days. Neither of us sensed its presence after spending half a day in that beast. Although we had to find a water source and spend all day in it to try to wash the stench off our body.”

“So that’s what you two were up to before we crossed paths,” Silvy said as she still lay on her back. “No wonder you smelled so bad when we encountered each other for the same time.”

You’re not entirely wrong. “You missed out Silvy. You would’ve liked staying in it with us I think.”

“I, uh, don’t think so. Actually, I’m quite certain I wouldn’t have liked it. I’d even go so far as to say that I would never willingly crawl into a large corpse even if it means losing whatever danger was following me.”

“It wasn’t that bad, was it Lar?”

His companion shrugged.

Juna appeared distracted by his wild tails from an era forever gone. He was glad about that seeing her being more at peace right now than earlier. “What other strange things did you come across while out there?”

He sighed trying to recall the variety of things they came across in their long journey to reach Liall. “There was this strange creature we found ourselves up against this one time. It had the body of a man with a crow’s head. We had a lot of fun defeating that creature.”

“We? If I recall I did all of the heavy lifting during that fight.”

“Come now Lar. It wasn’t like I did nothing that entire time. I did kill all of those crows that were assisting them. Let’s not forget that crucial detail.”

Juna smiled a bit. “I always wondered what might exist out there. It doesn’t exactly sound very nice which is about how I thought it would be.”

Liall really was the only real place to be in the fifth domain. Everywhere else was, simply put, in ruin. And with that fog out there, living out there was nonviable for the mass majority of life.

Unfortunately due to Liall’s destruction, there was nothing to go back to in the fifth domain. It was all in ruin and tattered beyond repair. Such thoughts were always upsetting to think about.

In the meantime, he continued to keep Juna’s mind busy with more talks of his journeys. She eventually fell asleep peacefully by Silvy who also slept. Lar ended up falling asleep with her head in his lap for some reason. He sighed realizing that he might wake her up by trying to lift her head so he could lay down on his side.

He carefully moved her head off of him so that he could reposition himself and rest up before they were to keep traveling for hours on end. He ended up passing out shortly thereafter and woke up hours later.

More days of walking occurred with everyone becoming more and more worn out from it. They were headed towards a city that Lucias dwelled in. Reaching him, however, was proving to take longer than he would’ve preferred from the time they left that depraved city.

With the amount of walking he had to do though, his feet had gotten somewhat used to all the walking. But he could tell his boots were starting to get noticeably worse ensuring that he’d either need to get work done to them or find some new ones soon.

While they all traveled together across the barren dry landscape, a winged creature appeared over ahead of them. They landed near Rinas who walked a bit ahead of him.

“I am happy to announce that my master Lucias eagerly awaits you all,” Halmond pronounced to them after having left a day before to inform his master of their approach. “I know this journey has taken longer than you all might’ve liked, but I promise that what you await will make it all worth it.”

I sure hope that’s true. For all I know we’re all walking to our doom. Lady Meredith sure made it sound like he ought to avoid Lucias at all costs. But he was willing to entertain the possibility that she was not entirely correct in this.

“How much further are we?” Abigail asked.

“Several more days on foot,” Halmond said.

She made a disgruntled noise with her mouth.

“I realize you all are desperate for a break. But you need not worry. You’re all almost there.”

“We better be.”

If anyone could present their frustrated thoughts towards the matter, Abigail was the one to do it. Luckily, he was used to long journeys at this point. What was another one to someone like him? At least these conditions were a bit more favorable than the ones he had to deal with at the beginning of his new life.

For the next several days, their journey continued. While he wondered whether today, tomorrow, or the day after would grant them sight of the city where Lucias resided, he began to see light far off in the horizon signaling that they were almost there at long last.

Faint orbs of light appeared in different places. It was still far enough away, that he couldn’t make out any city or town of sorts. But as their day of travel carried on, the light sources became more noticeable and numerous in number.

A place filled with life did in fact exist. And all they had to do was reach it.

We’re almost there. Finally.

Everyone felt a bit relieved, especially Abigail who was ready to humiliate herself by having him or someone else carry her to spare her feet from any further pain. She always complained about her feet and how much they hurt the most out of their entire group. He was fairly certain that if given the chance, she would stay off her feet for the rest of her life. I can’t blame her either.

However, she managed well enough to force herself to walk with everyone else knowing that they were nearly there.

A road began to appear. It wasn’t much of a road as time had done its way to cover its foundation. It had been lain many many years ago and appeared rarely used anymore. There were so few people in this domain, that even roads outside of a city or town would rarely be utilized as people stayed within them out of fear of what may exist out in the overwhelming darkness.

As they began to increasingly near what looked like a sizably occupied city, he could begin to make out its walls and see figures atop them wielding spears and bows. They acknowledged their arrival by waving towards them. It was at least a good sign to see that they weren’t hostile. If anything they appeared eager for visitors. We’ll have to be on our best behavior lest we earn their ire. As long as we can avoid making enemies out of them, we should be fine.

The gates at the front began to open. On the inside, the interior of the city gave way exposing the numerous buildings within. He could not see all that much inside quite yet, but it appeared fairly well maintained.

Kiran didn’t know what all he might encounter within this place, but he was eager to go inside and find out who this Lucias person was since they were apparently so eager to speak with them. Were they a wretched being that Lady Meredith warned him about, or were they the opposite? Kiran knew that there was only one way to find out.