--- Kat --- (Three days Later)
After spending a day hanging out with the demon girls Kat dedicated her time to Sylvie for the most part. This involved playing board games, and usually loosing. Sometimes Callisto and Vivian would jump in as well. Of course, that was mostly on Sunday. When Monday came it was time for Sylvie to head back to school and there was only a short time in the afternoon to play. Kat and Lily spent the time Sylvie was at school testing out the storage ring… and it seemed to work?
Callisto had packed them a few lunches, Lily had finally gotten around to copying her magic books and threw them in as well. Then there was supplies for camping… but getting quality outside of the Hub seemed unlikely so all they ended up with was an old sleeping bag of Callisto's that didn't get used anymore. They'd try to keep it in one peace.
It was early Tuesday morning when Kat was summoned. She grabbed the ring and Lily said goodbye to everyone and then they were off. Sylvie didn't complain, but that was fine. Kat had sort of gotten used to the new Sylvie and she'd spent as much time as she could with the younger girl so for the moment at least she had no regrets.
Th𝓮 most uptodate nov𝑒ls are publish𝒆d on ƒreewebηoveℓ.com.
Kat could tell this summoning was from the tournament guys, and was ready when the fires surrounded her. The beautiful flames of cross-dimensional transportation engulfed her. Yet soon, they were fading away. Fleeting. They didn't last as long as they used to. It was strange. Perhaps a symptom of her newfound power? Perhaps because she'd been to this dimension so many times in the past? Subjectively not even a minute had passed while she stared at the flames and it was… a little sad.
The moment was undercut when she appeared in a small tent and tried to stand up to her full height. Puncutring the thin lining of the tent above her and causing water to cascade down on her and Lily. "Yowl!" hissed Lily as she jumped out of Kat's arms and away from the water as Kat desperately tried to push things back into place. Explore more stories at Freewebnovel
Kress was laughing at things while Nixilei and Green jumped into action, placing their hands on the walls of the tent and soon the rip in the roof was mended back together. Still, Kat was dripping wet and the tent had a bunch of water on the bottom. Kat transformed into her water form, gathered it up and then quickly pushed a bunch of the water up through the gab before it could completely seal. Leaving the area dry when she transformed back.
"Haaa… what's with the tent guys?" asked Kat "And sorry for damaging it? I think? Sorry for letting the water in at least… just… what's going on?" Lily jumped back into Kat's arms as she was speaking. Now that they were both mostly dry.
"Sorry about that," said Nixilei, ignoring the fact that Kress was still laughing in the background as Gareth looked away from him with an awkward smile on his face. "There's a city up in the mountains near here that is meant to be our meeting point. The plan was to just summon you once we were inside… but we ran into a few issues along the way,"
Kat raised an eyebrow as she waited for Nixilei to continue to answer the question when Green stepped in. "So the first issue is that we were taking a sort of back road. This is fae territory in case you're wondering so Nix and I know the area pretty well. We were taking some other quests as we went, you know, just training and doing some good deeds. Because I'm a noble here it's pretty easy to just defer payment or get it someplace where it can do good.
"Which… might have bitten is un the ass a bit. See, the small bridge for the road we're travelling along? It's gone. We're not entirely sure what happened to it, it was just a rope bridge and some bits and some of it's still there… but we don't know if it's the storm or if something destroyed it intentionally. Heck it could be straight up sabotage from the other teams… even if I don't think that's likely,"
"Right… so what's the current plan then?" asked Kat.
"Um… yeah so…" Green began hesitantly. "We've got a few options but some are tighter on time then the others. Not to presume… but we were hoping you'd be able to just fly or throw us over the gap, or something to that effect? It's definitely the fastest way and we'll be sure to be on time!"
Kat shrugged, "I'm not against it… but I'm not entirely sure if I could carry anyone through the rain. I know I CAN carry a person while flying now but I've never tested how poor weather changes that sort of thing…" just to punctuate her point several claps of thunder went off right as Kat said that causing her to pause for a bit. "That and I'm worried about getting struck by lightning. I'd be fine, but I'm really not sure if you guys would be…"
Green winced at the idea, "Yeah that's… that's not going to be good. Um… right so… waiting the storm out is an option. Or we could do the opposite, head back down the way we came and try to meet up with the main road. That bridge has all sorts of enchantments on it so it'll definitely be up… but if we're taking the proper paths? I'd expect us to be at least a day late…
"So… there's a middle ground, or rather there's two different ones I guess. The first is heading down the gorge and then back up the other side. There's no great paths down anywhere near here but we can jump. At the very least, I can jump, Gareth probably can, you'd just need to help Nixilei and Kress if it came to that.
"The other thing we can do is cut through the wilderness here. It's… not exactly safe. This place is considered a dangerous area of fae territory and it's… largely left that way because the monsters can be used for a lot of valuable things. The city is quite rich, and put up a whole bunch of enchantments to keep it safe so that's not a thing to worry about… but the stuff around it? Not so well patrolled. Especially on this side of the gorge,"
"How big is this gorge?" asked Kat knowing the group could move fairly fast if they wanted to.
"It rings a large chunk of the mountain," said Nixilei. "It wasn't made naturally. Something huge was originally sleeping around the mountain, in the long distant pass. Apparently the gorge is where its tail used to rest. It's also, allegedly, why the monsters here are so strong. Despite whatever it was not being here anymore, its mana seeped into the land and made everything stronger, more powerful. Stuff like that,"
Kat raised an eyebrow. "What are the chances that's true?"
Nixilei shrugged, "It's what everyone says and there's a decent amount of evidence to support it. The biggest one is that you can't really use magic to find out what happened here in the past, and even basic divination and scrying still has issues looking into the present around this area. Sure it could be natural… but it seems unlikely. Perhaps that's why time chose the location? They wanted to use the chance to check it out for themselves? I'm not certain if Thyme has made the attempt…"
"Isn't time a rare affinity?" asked Kat.
"It IS a rare affinity but some people have other affinities that can be used to see things and some people just have a talent for divination. Plus, while rare they are not entirely unknown when you take a historical perspective on it. There are plenty of stories… though how true they are is another matter of course,"
Kat nodded, "Right so… what do you guys prefer? I'm happy enough to fly you all across. I can fly basically forever while carrying someone now, and hey if the bridge isn't that big Lily can probably build a fake one with paper, maybe with Gareth's help?"
"Using so much mana would attract monsters," said Green. "At least the ones around here anyway. They're super sensitive to that sort of thing. We'd have to do a fair bit of fighting to build the bridge. It's why the original one here was never that strong. Getting enough people to enchant it well AND defend them all is costly and the city just doesn't care enough with their main bridge in place,"
"Right well… is it worth waiting? How long has it been raining for?" asked Kat.
Gareth shrugged and spoke up for the first time in the conversation. "About a day and a half though it wasn't anywhere near this bad when we set out. Barely a drizzle for the first few hours,"
"And storms around here?"
"Could be anything from a few moments to a few weeks," admitted Green with a sigh.