“I don’t know what a caldera is.” Addie pointed out. A small soul shard slotted back into place as she remembered one of her morning lessons with Christena from years ago. The thought came unbidden, a natural process of her soul healing, “A plateau is a flat piece of land on top of a mountain range,” she remembered.
Nettal shook her head, “That’s pretty much right, but it doesn’t count when there’s taller mountains surrounding us like this. We’re in a caldera, more likely. That’s why the mountains slope all around us like a giant bowl!” Nettal exclaimed, certain she was correct.
Addie didn’t know enough about mountains to say if Nettal was right or not. She’d never heard of a caldera before. Ultimately, it didn’t matter, she shook her head to dispel any lingering arguments she might have over it. No need to be pedantic over vocabulary, or so she could see Christena saying.
Nettal must have agreed, since she once again asked her earlier, more important question, “But what should we do now?” She asked, a frown on her face. “I don’t see the cave with the Furrians, at least.”
Addie was stumped. She’d never been teleported to a random mountain range before. She’d never even seen a mountain in real life until this week! The most she knew about them before was from fiction or her morning lessons. Even if she had known a lot about mountains, she still didn’t know how to get home without some kind of landmark or familiar ground, and this mountain range was anything but familiar.
She sighed. “I don’t know.” But she did have at least one idea.
Addie looked hopefully over to her first and most loyal companion. Squishy glanced back up at her, sensing her intent focus on his scaly form. “Can’t you guide us home?” He had done it once before, after all.
Her heart dropped as he shook his head, ‘no,’ too disappointed with himself to give a verbal reply. It almost didn’t feel real. Addie had such a hard time coming to terms with the fact that they didn’t know how to get home, that she didn’t know how to process what she was feeling exactly.
Standing there in the cold snow, Addie just thought about how much effort they had put into escaping the Furrians. How much effort they had put into escaping from the stupid fog. At that time, she had such a strong goal: to get home. But now that goal seemed to be fraying at the edges as she desperately tried to keep it from tearing. Her mind kept wanting to wander back to getting home, only to butt up against an immovable wall— not knowing how. Not for the first time, Addie mentally hit herself for forgetting Sen’s blue ribbon. After this was over, she would never ever forget it ever again.
A biting wind dusted against her cheek, kicking up small bits of powdery snow on the ground. They were back to where they started, lost in a cold winterland, needing to find shelter before nightfall, and colder winds, came. At least she could see the beautiful mountains surrounding them. The entire caldera lacked any and all plant life— meaning Addie could see the mountains in all their stark majesty.
Nettal placed her hand over Addie’s, gripping her hand firmly. “I know what to do.”
Hope reignited in Addie’s heart at those words. Maybe her older cousin had some ideas— being older always seemed to help with that sort of thing.
“If we don’t know where to go, we just have to figure it out!” Nettal exclaimed, her hands on her hips as if she had come up with some kind of profound observation.
Addie just tried not to sigh. But her next words actually made more sense than Addie expected.
“Maps are used for figuring out where to go. If we had a map, we could definitely get home.” Nettal smirked.
“That’s so smart!” Addie just about shouted, though she managed to hold herself back enough to not cause more snow to fall in the distance.
Her heart lept at Nettal’s idea, as a few pieces seemed to mentally click together. She called upon her soul, summoning the magic book. It had somehow known they were close to the Ennulic ruins from before.
“Can you show us a map of all known Ennulic ruins?” Addie asked, hoping it could do so.
Sure enough, the pages flapped rapidly as the book opened. The pages quit turning, and across the open face of the book, a detailed map started to fill in— as if Addie was watching an invisible artist quickly fill in the details.
The girls stepped forward a bit to get closer to the book, but Addie realized they were being a bit silly. She commanded the book to float closer to them. It easily did so, and then both girls huddled together to examine the map.
There were four demarcated areas on the map labelled, “Ennulic Ruins”. One for the north, south, east, and west— each named accordingly.
More importantly, Addie could see an image of the mountain range the girls were in, with the northern Ennulic ruins they had already explored being placed almost right in the middle of the mountain range. That much information gave Addie a bit of context for their location.
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Nettal spoke up, drawing Addie out of her focus on the book, “I don’t see any swamps on this map at all.”
Addie furrowed her brow, that couldn’t be right. She also scanned the entirety of the map, looking for any indication of a swamp. She saw symbols for forests, grasslands, and even a few beaches. The top portion of the map was almost completely covered in various snowy mountain ranges. What the map didn’t have was any indication there was a swamp nearby.
“Can you move more south?” Addie asked the book. “Show us more on the map than just the places with the ruins?”
The book didn’t react.
Addie scratched her head. She noticed that her fingers were really starting to get cold, so she had Ember come out and sit in her hands to help warm them up. Her warmth seeped into Addie, comfortingly soul-deep.
Perhaps in reaction to seeing Addie trying to warm up, Nettal’s eyes flashed green for a moment. Her red cheeks quickly became pale again, seemingly ‘healing’ herself from the cold.
“Well, even if your book doesn’t have a full map, that wasn’t what I wanted to suggest anyway. Let’s find a town! With people! They should have some bigger maps.” Nettal explained, crossing her arms with a smug look.
Addie looked back at her floating book, trying to read the map. Nettal scooched a bit closer, too— close enough that Addie could feel her warmth.
The book showed a map with the ruins in each cardinal direction and the landscape surrounding each. But, Addie couldn’t see any markings that showed where people might be. They were in luck, though. The moment Addie thought about wanting to see ‘people’, a big symbol drew itself into the map.
“Look, here!” Addie pointed to the spot on the page, “It looks like a castle!”
Addie had never seen a real-life castle before, only read about and seen drawings of them. The thought of exploring a real castle filled her with excitement.
“Addie, look. It’s right smack in the middle from each of the ruins.” Nettal said.
Addie reexamined the map. Nettal was right. It seemed that the placement of the castle was equally distant between each of the ruin sites, making it look like the center of a diamond— each corner of the diamond representing one of the ennulic ruins.
“Do you think there will be people there?” Nettal asked uneasily.
“Well, it doesn’t say ‘ruin’ like the other four spots. So that’s a good thing. Probably.” Addie said.
“Probably?” Nettal repeated.
“Probably.” Addie nodded her head.
“Well, we’ve got nothing better to do. Let’s go!” Addie declared.
Nettal just rolled her eyes. “You’re always the same, aren’t you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” Nettal said innocently.
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
Trudging through the knee-high snow in the ‘caldera’, as Nettal called it, was way worse than Addie would have thought. She had to keep a flame going nearby at all times just so she wouldn’t freeze to death. And, even though she was at least wearing shoes now, snow kept tickling against her legs and falling into the top part of her shoes— making her ankles scratchy and cold. She had to shake her legs out a whole bunch just to get the snow off, only for it to come back moments later.
At least the girls knew they were going the right way. Addie’s soul book helpfully placed markers for the girls, showing where they were and what direction they were moving in. Right now, their markers were pointed at the castle-looking picture.
The bad news was their marker hardly moved at all. If Addie didn’t know better, she’d say they weren’t going forward at all. Worse, the Binary was already behind the surrounding mountain peaks, the wind blowing against the girls in the most unpleasant way.
“Addie, I’m cold,” Nettal said.
Addie hadn’t really been paying too much attention to Nettal, since she was so focused on trying to keep moving. When she looked up at Nettal’s words, she saw that her lips were blue and that her whole body was shivering.
“Healing isn’t really helping anymore.” Nettal clarified.
Addie wasn’t sure what to do, seeing Nettal look so sad and cold. But she did want to help her.
“Perhaps we should stop for the night. With the Binary setting, we will only be getting colder.” Squishy didn’t look too cold, but then again he was part dragon, probably.
Taking her eyes off Nettal, Addie scanned the surroundings. Glancing behind them, she could see a long knee-high trail through the snow, showing their progress for the day. They looked to be in the middle of the caldera, with absolutely nothing around except snow.
“What if we make a snow fort!” Addie said, excited by the idea. They could use it for shelter and get warm inside, too! Addie always loved making snow forts.
Nettal didn’t seem to like that idea, though, since she just stared at Addie with wide eyes, her lower lip shivering from the cold. “I’m too cold,” Nettal suppressed a shiver, “To move.” She finished haltingly.
“Okay, let’s warm up in Realmspace. Then, when my magic runs out, we’ll make a snow fort for the night.”
Nettal rapidly nodded her head in agreement.
Together, Addie and Squishy pulled on their souls, expanding them with rapidly growing magic. They spent a good few minutes building it up so that they could have much time to warm up in Realmspace.
After they released their magic, the total darkness of Realmspace greeted all of them. For Addie, the darkness felt like a comforting and familiar embrace. She knew Nettal didn’t like it, though, so she quickly had Ember come out. Her feathers naturally had flames coming off them, making her a great source of light.
Nettal sat down on the hard Realmstone, and then she curled up into a ball, shivering. Addie had managed to stay warm, for the most part, but looking down at her ankles, they were red and raw from the snow rubbing against them. Addie took off her poncho and shook it out to get all the snow off. It only sorta worked, and the poncho was a bit damp near the bottom, but it was made of some kind of wool-like fabric— which Addie knew meant it would keep you warm even when it was wet. She draped her poncho over Nettal to help her warm up faster. Addie didn’t need it right now, anyway.
Lotty walked up behind Nettal, his thin legs also shivering from the cold. He lay down next to Nettal’s back, sort of curving around her. That seemed to make Nettal feel warmer since her shivers slowly stopped after that.
“Come here, you squishy cat.” Addie scooped Squishy up from underneath. Then, she sat down on the ground next to Nettal, putting Squishy in her lap. He was nice and warm. He easily settled down, resting his chin against Addie’s crossed legs.