Chapter 45:
The Long Way,
Part 1
Our journey started with a slow-paced track since we had become a group now consisting of more than ten people all walking, including children who made us walk slower than we had wished for. Not that I minded or anything, since I wasn't in a hurry for anything at the moment. Following the emperor had changed my initial plan, a plan I didn't truly have to begin with.
All I knew was that I was looking for something—something I didn't know what it was. But frankly, I was feeling better at the moment, walking beside this young girl who had left her companions and was sticking close to me after our conversation ended a while ago. Neither of us had said anything, yet she was still walking beside me, and for some reason, I felt a deep sense of satisfaction and happiness with that silent companionship.
It was late afternoon when we started traveling, so now the sun was setting, casting long, distorted shadows of the trees across the forest floor. The light was bleeding out of the sky, shifting the world from the harsh green of day to the muted, mysterious indigo of dusk. I was wondering if we were going to continue traveling during the night in this dense, unpredictable forest. The reason we had initially camped at the clearing we left was to stay the night there, but after what happened to Julian, the emperor decided that we had to abandon that location.
I had the feeling that it was not safe, and during our departure, the emperor had told me about the vision Julian had and what he saw, although he specifically asked me not to share it with anyone. That secret knowledge, the heavy weight of the future Julian had glimpsed, settled over me, adding a layer of dread to the fading light. I glanced at Julian, who walked with his usual silence, wondering if the vision still haunted his mind or if he had simply sealed it away.
Strange as it may sound, I didn't feel tired from walking most of the day, nor did I feel the lingering fatigue from the previous fight with the assassins. All those events—the fight, the revelations, and now this long trek—had happened in a single day, a day that felt like a week had passed. And as it appeared, this struggle was only starting, with no end in sight on the horizon. The muscles in my legs and shoulders felt energized, a sensation I couldn't logically attribute to a normal human's endurance, yet I felt robust, ready for more. The forest air, cool and damp now, carried the scent of pine and rich earth, a smell that was becoming familiar, almost home-like, in this strange new reality.
"What are you thinking about?" Amran asked me. Even though I heard her clearly, I didn't answer her immediately. My gaze had drifted up to the thinning canopy of the trees, watching the last sliver of orange disappear. This brief delay in my response made her think I hadn't heard what she said, and she repeated the question once more, her voice carrying a soft note of playful impatience.
I looked at her, smiling—I don't know why—and said, "I was wondering if we are going to continue traveling at night or camp somewhere tonight, and also if it's safe to camp in this forest at night." As soon as I said the last part, I regretted it. The last thing I wanted was to worry this little girl or scare her. I had no idea about her situation or what brought her here, except what their leader said when they were introducing themselves—that they were refugees from some conflict. To voice my own concerns about danger felt reckless, a careless breach of the calm atmosphere we had built. I watched her face, searching for a shadow of fear, but her expression remained curious and steady.
I didn't know how to take back what had already come out of my mouth. I tried to backtrack, stammering an attempt at reassurance. "I... I mean... Don't worry, I believe... I know that we can handle it if anything happens... not that anything will happen." My words were a jumbled mess, my typical overthinking crashing into my need to maintain a calm facade. I felt a flush creep up my neck, annoyed at my sudden inability to speak coherently.
I paused, forcing myself to take a deep, slow breath of the cooling air.
An unexpected laugh grasped my attention while I was still struggling to find the right words. Julian, who had been silently walking beside us the whole time and hadn't even answered when we tried to include him in our conversation, was now laughing. It wasn't a loud, booming sound, but a quiet, almost musical chuckle that seemed to come from a place of genuine amusement, a sound entirely at odds with the blankness he usually presented to the world.
This was the first time that any significant reaction had come from the boy. I thought he was my age since he didn't answer when I asked him how old he was, even though I myself didn't know the answer to that question either. Seizing the chance to escape the awkward situation I had put myself in, I turned to him and asked, now hoping that since he laughed, he would at least engage in conversation with us. "Was that really funny?"
Apparently, he was amused by my stuttering because he was still smiling. That smile really suited his pale face more than the empty look he had before. It made him look less like a haunted boy and more like a normal person our age. He looked at Amran and then back at me, his eyes holding a sparkle of mischief I hadn't seen before. "She's not scared. On the contrary, she's enjoying your flusteredness." I looked at Amran to my other side, and she was indeed trying very hard to suppress her laughter, her shoulders shaking slightly. The sight of them both finding humor in my panic brought a genuine, easy grin to my face. I turned back to Julian and said, "Well, I'm glad that I have been an amusement for both of you."
I didn't want to ask anything at the moment, afraid that it might change his mood. It was good and enough at the moment that he was laughing and smiling. It felt like a minor victory in a world full of grim losses. I took a moment to observe him more closely. He was thin, slight, and his movements were economical, but there was a coiled tension about him, like a wire drawn too tight. His eyes, though now bright with mirth, still held that distant, knowing look, suggesting he saw more than he let on, perhaps even more than he wanted to. I wondered what it was like to carry the burden of a prophetic vision. Did he feel a constant pressure to steer the events around him?
At that time, Luke, who was ahead of us all—although no one had explicitly or told me anything, I guessed he was acting as our scout—came running back. He was a sturdy young man, with a focused intensity that made him seem like a capable warrior. He stopped in front of the emperor and whispered something to him, his voice too low to carry over the ambient sounds of our movement. Our group was not large, and there was no specific formation we took while traveling since most of us were civilians without any military background. We were a loose, vulnerable clump of people.
I was the closest to the emperor, while the captain was in front of him, and the rest were behind me. Still, I was not able to hear anything and couldn't figure out anything from the emperor's expressions either. His face, etched with lines of worry that the setting sun only highlighted, remained stoic, revealing nothing of Luke's message. But I didn't wait for a long time to know what was going on. The emperor turned to us, his voice cutting through the twilight hush with a grim authority. "We are almost at the edge of the forest, but unfortunately, there's a village on the edge that I was planning to spend the night in, but it's under attack by monsters. So, we need to hurry and help out."
A/N
Hello everyone,
A few more chapters and we coming to the conclusion of this volume so please don't hesitate to share with me your ideas about what do you think of this volume and what do except for the third one also