He doesn’t respond. Instead, he eyes my pack, which remains over my shoulder, and walks over to me. When he tries to grab at it, I pull back.
“What are doing?” I say as I push his arm away.
“I just want to make sure that you have it, and see what else you’ve got. I ran out of food days ago and have been scrounging for what I could. You sure took your sweet time getting here.”
“Fine,” I respond, feeling somewhat guilty now that I know that my seven-day wait above Kalepo meant him nearly starving to death.
I remove the animal-skin pouch before handing him the rest.
“Take whatever you want, but I keep this until I find Eliana.”
“I can live with that,” he says, “but could you do me a favor and try to make your requests with a little less condescension, your highness. Most people down here won’t care who you are, and those who do… well, you’ll want to avoid them.”
Although his tone is starting to get under my skin, I ignore it and focus more on trying to ground myself in this strange land I now find myself in.
“What exactly is this place?” I ask.
“I don’t know, but those of us unlucky enough to find ourselves here are stuck whether we like it or not.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“If you don’t know, then I’d rather not be the one to explain it to you. The people at Sanctuary can do that just fine.”
“Explain what?”
“Listen, I’m tired, and we don’t have the time for me to give you a history lesson. We need to get down to the lower plains by nightfall so that we can prepare a safe place to rest while there’s still light. The way I figure it, there’s barely enough food in here for us to make it to Sanctuary, and the less time we spend talking, the more I can focus on keeping us safe so that you can get your answers and I can get what I came for.”
“And that is—”
“Nothing you need to worry about,” he interrupts.
With that, our conversation ends. He returns my pack to me, and I promptly place the pouch back inside and tie it shut. Once I look up again, he is already heading further down the hill. I run to catch up.
“My name is Kaela,” I tell him, thinking that maybe I’ll be able to get him to warm up and act a little less unpleasant, but the look he returns to me suggests that it’s not going to work.
“I know, I just don’t care,” he says dryly.
“Well what should I call you?” I persist.
“Whatever you want to,” he responds, with less attitude this time. “All you need to know about me is that I’m a survivor.”
“I’ve met the Necromancer and now the Survivor,” I say frustrated. “Does anyone have a real name down here?”
The faint traces of a grin form on the corners of his mouth in response to my discouraged cry, but if he thinks he can stifle me with just a few harsh words, he’s mistaken. I’m going to eventually get through to him.
“You can call me Wade,” he says, surprising me.
“Is that your name?” I ask a bit unsure since I’ve never heard of anyone going by anything even remotely like that.
“No, but I’ve always liked the sound of it.”
We walk in silence for a while after that until we eventually break through the fog. What I see then is something I had not expected. Light. Not all around me, but in the distance,
pouring in through a hole in the mist almost like a waterfall.
The area beneath it is filled with all sorts of creatures, some of them so gigantic that they seem frightening even from afar. Other creatures in the regions outside of the light’s border seem drawn toward it, heading in its direction. That is not to say that the land beyond the pillar of light is completely dark. Rather, the light from the pillar reflects back off of the mist, creating an orange and red aura reminiscent of clouds floating around a setting sun.
I stop in complete awe of the extraordinary world that has been hidden from me for so long.