Following Suticat’s swaying tail, we continued heading east. The dense presence of magical energy made the jungle vegetation flourish. The region we were entering here was overgrown with distractingly colourful undergrowth, and although it should be mostly harmless, the low visibility made me nervous. The jungle had already shown a few drastic changes here and there, so I wasn’t confident enough to overly rely on past knowledge. Though the past seven years felt like another world and being back here finally gave me a relaxing sensation, it was exactly this emotion that made me so unsettled. I wasn’t sure if it was due to lack of sleep or some new magical affect, but it unsettled me.

As I was focused analysing the surrounding vegetation and observing for signs of animals or monsters, I noticed Suticat suddenly sit down in front of a tree root and turn back to look at me. A thick screen of foliage masked any danger that could possibly lie ahead. Wondering what the problem was, I gently pried apart some branches to observe what was beyond and-

-Emptiness… there was a giant patch of nothing. No vegetation, no animals, and solving my brief confusion, no ground…

A giant chasm stood in our way. Feeling glad at my cautiousness, I gently backed up-

THUMP!

I made a grab for the tree next to me as I felt an unexpected force hit my shoulder. Reeling a bit, I managed to finally steady myself as I felt someone grab my shoulders and pull me back. I let out a giant sigh as I finally landed back on firm ground. I had noticed bits of rock and soil crumble and fall into the gap, but there had been no sound from it hitting the bottom floor yet. There would be no coming back from falling and no saving grace unlike last time.

Feeling both mildly annoyed at nearly dying and grateful at being potentially saved, I turned around and…saw something unexpected. Shiara having been indivertibly mentally labelled as the clumsy one had surprisingly been the one to grab me whilst Sarratina was lying backwards on the litterfall. Now that I thought about it, she never was really clumsy…so why did I believe that she was clumsy…rather maybe a bit inattentive sometimes. Giving up the convoy of thoughts, I concluded that my brain must have begun dulling due to excessive overuse. Sorry Shiara.

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“Thanks Shiara, but Sarra, what was that?” Sarra wasn’t normally very clumsy or inattentive either. Maybe the journey was beginning to take its toll on us. Sarra finally poked her head back out of the leaf litter. 1*

“Sorry about that…I was too focused on looking at the ground, following your steps and not tripping that I didn’t notice that we stopped.”

“…” “So why the sudden stop?”

“Look for yourselves.” I parted the branches again as the pair stuck their heads forwards.

“Hmm?”

“There’s nothing to see- Oh….”

“Don’t tell me-“

“-There’s no ground!” The pair looked back towards me with astonished faces. “Hey, why didn’t you mention this earlier-“ I avoided looking at Shiara’s interrogatory eyes. I didn’t want to show the confusion I was in myself.

“-She didn’t know. Right?”

“…Yeah.”

“Hang on, hasn’t Vixen been here before?”

“…Yeah, this wasn’t here last time. It’s quite close to the village here so I would know.”

“WHAT?! SO are you saying this formed in the seven or so years since you last came here?! It’s nearly as wide as some of trees are tall, not to mention that I can’t see how far on it goes north south.” I trembled a bit under Shiara’s intense gaze and questioning. This was blunder on my part even though I had no way of knowing beforehand, and now my previous planning was all messed up. I needed some time to rethink my plans.

“Maybe we could still cross it with the help of vines and some tall trees?”

“What? You strong enough to knock some down? Or do you plan on jumping across with some vines? Cause if that’s so, I’m out.”

“Hey, I’m just putting some ideas out there. There’s no point complaining about the situation right now, so we may as well find some solutions.”

“Oh then maybe we should find some monster’s to ride across-“

“QUIET! Please, we are all stressed so can you two just shut it and let me think.” Now that the two were silent, I quickly finalised the rest of my plans. The most viable option would be to go around it whilst looking for potential pathways across it. Going south would be the plan due to two major reasons. Heading north could lead us to be too close to the village and we stood no chance against most of the monsters lurking around it. The other reason was that the river had seemed unaffected and normal before which meant that the chasm likely did not reach the river. Though going north would be a more direct route, potentially even faster by one or two days, going south was the safer and better option here.

“Let's follow the chasm south. Sarratina, pay attention and don’t focus just on the ground.” I signalled to Suticat to lead the way and quickly followed behind him.

“Why-“ ”-Cause the river we crossed before seemed relatively normal. Hopefully that means the chasm doesn’t reach it and worst comes to worst, we can go around it at the river and continue to head East.”

“Sorry to ask just like Shiara-“ “-HEY!” “-but shouldn’t we move away from the chasm? If we stay next to it we have to be careful not to fall into it and we could also get trapped by monsters here easily?”

“That’s true, but if we move further away, we won’t know when it isn’t there anymore with all this dense jungle growth. Besides, if my past knowledge still stands true, the only things we need to watch out for are the Toxic-fireflies and Bellowers. They don’t tend to corner prey.” Hearing my reply, Sarratina stopped questioning and the three of us fell back into a rhythmic brisk pace. What I failed to mention was that they were both many times more dangerous than Night-hogs or Vampiric-bats. *2