The miraculous journey ended with a poof as Victor reappeared a few meters above the ground and plummeted onto a soft patch of grass. He lay there for a while, too sore to move. He rolled over and groaned. “Don’t say it: I’m not doing that again!” He tried to laugh, but ended up coughing and whining. The first thing on his mind was to check his hands and feet, and to his satisfaction all of him was still in once piece. He wondered if the others were as lucky.
The earthy scent of flowers and trees was prominent, and the sweet trickle of a stream nearby, where the water was cool and crystal clear; it slivered like a silver ribbon through a fragrant meadow, a light wooden bridge arched over it, and the gentle breeze whistled through the tree-tops.
Still in a small agony, Victor crawled forwards and searched for Sam or one of the others, but other than the bridge there was no sign that anyone was nearby. He noticed that the bridge connected to a path through the grass, and following it a short distance he came to a peculiar little village.
The houses were round or oblong-shaped and were crafted from some kind of pale clay, but the doors were made of wood, as were the fences that surrounded their gardens and pastures that housed large red-skinned animals with short trunks. Their ‘cattle’ was quite ugly to Victor’s eye.
The people of the village were similar to regular humans. Their skin was tanned, and they watched Victor silently with almond-shaped eyes, until at last a man came forth and spoke in Netherian: “Hekaje decha! zí u! Urar na Silver! Welcome friend! He who is fair of skin! And companion of Silver!”
Victor understood his words well, and they spoke for a while in Netherian. The old Villager’s name was Archa, and he explained that word had come from another settlement nearby of Silver’s return. “But how do you know Silver when he last came here eight hundred years ago?”
“Yes, that would seem a long time for you, perhaps, but the years fare differently upon our kind.” He called for another Netherian to come forth, a more adolescent-seeming figure with bright eyes. “This is Koba. He will guide you to your friends.”
Koba walked in front of Victor for a long way but spoke little until they reached a forest of tall trees. Passing underneath was like walking into a land of shadow, as the canopy was so thick that very little light passed through. But the ground was flat and clear and the trunks of the trees twisted and turned in amazing ways. There were lights shining from some of the trunks, flickering like candles. “This is Ash Ingel,” said Koba. “The people here are the keepers of the forest. Have you noticed that the leaves do not fall here? You would say that like us the trees are eternal.”
“Is everything here without end?” Victor asked.
“Not everything. Long ago my people and many like us discovered the sacred water that nourished us against the turning of time; this we showed to your friend Silver. But there are others far from here who live and die with the passing of the seasons, and other’s whose minds cannot bear the tolling of eternity.”
The air became lighter, as if the forest itself glowed with a savoury blue tinge, and they approached a ridge and followed a spiralling stair down to a pond of glittering cobalt. The surrounding trees were dressed in coats of ferns. A large mossy stone protruded from the glowing water, and its colour was a deep crimson red. A thin steady stream of water trickled not from above, but it seemed to be rising from the stone and floating gently into the air. Victor had never seen anything like it.
“That rock is composed of a substance that we call Alkahest,” Koba explained. “It feeds the sacred water. If I remember correctly, Silver once said that Alkahest did not exist in your world. Is that why you have come?”
“Yes,” Victor replied. “And no. Times in our world have fallen ill for us. We have returned to complete Mr. Silver’s quest.”
They followed a wide path away from the pond and found a village much like the last one set between three ginormous trees that acted as corner points for the wooden wall that guarded it. Cautious eyes gazed from the wall as Victor passed under it and made for the large circular hall that was the town-centre. Inside, near the hearth, was Mr. Silver and the others, among several native men and women.
Sam’s eyes lit up as he entered. “Victor, thank god you’re okay!”
Silver leaned over the table and looked up with a shadow in his wintery eyes. “You are late to the party, young Victor! Don’t fret; you didn’t miss much. So far we have re-established our relationship with the locals and are discussing a battle strategy.”
“Battle strategy? I don’t understand. Shouldn’t we be safe here?”
Silver nodded. “Well, part of the reason we left was indeed to run away, but also to pick a battleground more advantageous to us. Did you think Elizabeth was truly done with us just yet? She desires The Truth just as we do, and fears that once we have it we could use that power to destroy her. Back home she had the entire world out to get us, but here in The Nether there is only her and Astrid against the eight of us. Talek here has described a host of monsters that lurks on the outskirts of the forest, and he believes that should Elizabeth rally them, then they will attack us. We need to be ready.”
Talek, the village elder, promised that the walls of the forest city had never been breached in a thousand years; but neither had a host so large stormed them, nor an enemy so cunning.
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