What could he do?! Zan panicked.

The hallway was empty, but that meant nothing. Someone could walk into the hall from a room or stairwell or, heck, even magically teleport for all he knew.

Which was the thing which got him. Zan knew nothing about the world.

He didn’t know how this place worked; he didn’t know the history of the order he pledged his life to; and he didn’t know about war or politics or even life! And yet! Here he was, in the middle of a place, possibly a palace, which the Screen Master told him was within enemy territory. The Woodland Expanse for crying out loud!

Remembering his experiences in this place, and previous blasts of anxiety, Zan walked down the hallway, knowing he had to do something instead of standing around like a tree. Holding his breathing at a steady rate, Zan attempted to calm himself into being nothing more than a fixture. Like he belonged.

He walked down the hallway, paying careful attention to the doors and whether they opened or if sound came from behind them. Pressing his ear up against each door he passed, Zan discerned what was happening behind each door. He was not spying, an activity he would have been right to do considering the war. What Zan was doing, rather, was searching for Luxley.

If no other reason than to get him into his room so his tutor could have her way…

And for him to leap into his portal after giving him the horn.

Calling out gently, Zan whisper-shouted, “Luxley, Luxley — Luxley!”

This attitude he repeated down the whole hallway, then the other end.

Thinking he had run his luck, Zan panicked. Showing him the error of his way, though, was fate and the will of the gods. A door opened and Luxley came out, a foul smell following him. “Whoa, my buddy from another mutha; what are you doing here?”

Zan darted over and embraced Luxley for a bro-hug, though the bodily smell emerging from his new friend was highly off-putting. Rifling his nose, Zan had to take a step back. “I came here to give you this,” Zan said, pulling out his honeycomb horn.

Explaining how the horn worked, Zan cautioned against getting the item ‘too dry,’ not that the Screen Masters had told him what such dryness exactly entailed.

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“So, I can talk to you anytime I want?” Luxley asked, wide-eyed, wonderful.

“I think so. Within reason,” Zan said, thinking of the Backroads and how Luxley wouldn’t, in all probability, be able to talk to him then.

“So cool…” Luxley said, wide-eyed still.

“Your tutor is here. I met her,” Zan said, not knowing what he should say.

“Oh, crap. Sorry… probably scared the crap out of you, huh?”

“Yeah, a little, mate. I don’t even know why I’m here, risking myself like this. It’s all weird and confusing.”

“Welcome to life, buddy. It’s weird and confusing for everyone our age. In fact, it was so weird for me, I had to have a good old ‘meditation sit’ where I really ‘spanked’ my ignorance, if you catch my drift…”

“No. Sorry,” Zan stated.

“Ah! I will have to enlighten you. Later, though, Mister I-Don’t-Know-Pleasure-Slang. I will get my lesson done. I’m sure you want to head home, huh? You’ll have to wait until after my lesson, I’m afraid. I always have my lessons in my room. I don’t imagine you want to jump through that portal of yours with her watching,” Luxley laughed.

Zan shook his head. On the way back to Luxley’s room, though, he suddenly asked, “Wait. Is there another place to study?”

“I guess we could go to the library… yeah. The library. Don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner. I’ll do that and you can slip away.”

Entering his room, Luxley had a brief exchange with the tutor. Some back and forth later and with a disgruntled nigh-like sound, the tutor packed up her many books and notebooks, and they headed to the library.

On the way out — the tutor not even noticing Zan, for she was so flustered — Luxley motioned for Zan to slip inside his room. As swift as a cat chasing a mouse, Zan did exactly that and rushed inside. Alone at last, the voices of the tutor and youth growing fainter the further away they got, Zan raised himself onto the bed and slip through the portal into the Backroads.

Zan took his time in retracing his steps through the Backroads.

Safe from the prying spies of the castle, or wherever Luxley lived, content to be by himself, Zan took his time in wandering back to the command center.

Once back, Zan knew the war campaign would resume. Jiehong would return from his venture, and if nothing else, their participation in the war would transition from war-fighting to tactical elements regarding the Old Tongue. They had to find a translator. Everything else was secondary; no individual battle against the invading automotrons would be so important as re-building the defensive network Mac told them about.

It was not as if Zan now disliked Jiehong.

Whatever their recent tensions, they would overcome them. In time.

It was more Zan did not want to handle his friend’s constant snarky words. His sharp tongue, his penchant for drama…

Then the war, of course. Always the war.

As surreal as the Backroads were, they were peaceful. Strange happenings with unexpected pathways aside.

Remembering the Screen Master’s words, Zan did not linger. He would like to stay and plot his life, but he couldn’t, for if the Wardens were being true, and there was no reason for them to be untrue, bad things had the potential to happen if he lingered too long here.

Zan stepped through the light. Any whispers he heard at the back of his mind vanished, and he was back in the White Chamber.