Chapter 3 - The Girl in the Tree's

The days passed. The group traveled in silence most of the time. Alina kept Emily in her sights at all times, never once letting her leave her side. Kara and Warden spoke to each other as the days went on during their journey, getting to know each other a little better. The group now stood at the foothill of the mountains. The last bit of their journey would be having to climb the tall mountains. As they approached the foot, they could see several abandoned camps left behind by other adventurers. Lucky the group had not encountered any monsters or resistance on their way to their destination. Emily looked up at the tall mountain and groaned, falling to her knees. She was exhausted and tired from all the walking. Warden poked Kara's shoulder.

"I think the kid is about to pass out," Kara nodded.

"We should rest here for now. We've got a lot of climbing to do." There was a small hint of fear in Kara's voice towards the end of his sentence.

"Is that a problem?" Warden asked.

"Not really... I have not had them... best experiences mountain climbing." He replied. Emily fell onto her back, breathing heavily. Her knees were weak. She hadn't walked this much in her life and was not used to it. She took the witch's hat off her head and held onto it. "I could say the same. Only in a more metaphorical manner," Warden trailed off, looking into the distance. He was brought back to attention when Emily fell to the ground and knelt beside her.

"Damn, are you okay?" She gave him a weakened and small nod, still breathing heavily.

"Y- Yeah... I'm... I'm fine..." She tilted her head to look at him. The higher the mountain went, the more snow there was. The group could feel the cold breeze blowing down from the peaks above. Warden sighed and picked the girl up, carrying her to one of the abandoned nearby tents. Alina walked with Warden to the tent, unbothered by the dropping temperature despite her missing sleeve and relatively thin pants. The tent Warden carried Emily too had a few sleeping bags inside. He rested Emily into one.

"Rest. We'll move out at dawn, hopefully." He told her this, unsure if she was even listening. Her eyes were already closed and she was shivering. The sun hadn't even set yet, but would soon. Alina sat down beside Emily and watched her. Warden left the tent and made his way to one for himself. Kara placed his weapons on the ground, and sat down, placing a small piece of glowing coal, which lit itself into a small bonfire. It gave off enough warmth to keep those around it from freezing. Emily could feel the cold breeze and put the hood from her cloak on and wrapped herself up in it. She slowly curled into a small ball and began to rest, snoring softly. Alina made sure Emily was comfortable and warm enough, then left a small piece of bread beside her in case she woke up. She closed the flaps to the tent and left Emily inside to rest, making her way over to the fire close by.

Night soon fell, and the only light was that from the fire Kara had put down. The sound of faint whistling coming from the trees. It was followed by the sound of something moving above them. Alina looked up with a frown, the knight adjusted his eyes searching the darkest trees for any hint of the source of the sound. Kara quickly placed down his shield with his sword over his shoulder, prepared to attack if needed. The faint whistle continued, along with the faint sound of wood being hit coming from quite high up. A disturbance in the treetops quite likely occurred. Alina kept watching, eyes narrowed glinting slightly in the night as she searched for who or what was making the noise. The two could hear a muffled conversation being had. There was only one voice through, with a brief pause before each statement. Alina started slowly and quietly making her way over to where the voice was coming from. The voice tended to bounce around from one location to another, with the sound of movement in the trees above. Alina eventually got close enough to hear the conversation.

"Yeah, I know some people are there..." Then a brief pause before continuing "How do you know? Because there was a fire there?" Another pause "No, I don't think the people who were there before would care." Alina paused and stared up through the trees, her eyes narrowing as she searched for the speaker.

After a moment, the movement and speech seemed to slow, and then stop. Though the source did continue shaking the tree limb it was on, and a moment later a slight gap appeared between the leaves, aimed down towards the ground. Another moment later commotion could be heard much closer to the ground, then, using their knees along with the lower halves of their legs to support themselves upon the limb, what could closest be described as a human hung down from the limb wearing some sort of leather armour either odd metal bits stuck on with leather straps. The person gave a small wave to Alina, in the low light not much was particularly visible aside from a vague distant look in their eyes and short, poorly kept hair of some sort of dark color contrasting their pale skin. Alina tilted her head in response, her eyes flashed in the dim light. Her white hair almost glowed in the faint moonlight, but other than that, it was fairly difficult to make out any details, what with her dark skin and clothing. The person flashed what was a possible grin, and looked up before simply asking

"What should we do...?" Again, there was a brief pause. "Really, okay... I mean, you are the smart one here." Within a few seconds, the person was on the ground. It was a girl, short in height. She approached Alina and spoke. "Could ya kindly take me to my campsite, Miss?" Alina stared at the stranger, wondering what she had been doing up in the trees, and whom she was talking to?

"Where's that?" She asked softly.

"Well at the current moment, you and your friends seem to have taken over in my absence." She spoke a rather calm tone.

"Ah, well our bad I suppose. But there's room." Alina suggested, suspicious about the girl. The girl let out a silent laugh and responded

"It's fine, all the other people who were there before are dead now anyway." She then began happily making her way back to the fire, quite bored. Alina followed her in silence. She wasn't exactly sure who this girl was. Eventually, after returning to the campsite edge, she climbed a tree and resumed hanging from a branch. Kara walked over to Alina and the girl, keeping his sword and shield to his side. The girl gave a small wave as he approached.

"So, what are you doing here?" He questioned her. The deep voice echoing under the black iron armor. The girl blinked and after a moment replied.

"Well, at this moment in time, I'm hanging from a tree branch." The knight lowered his guard a little as she spoke.

"Well yes, but what are you doing at the base of the mountain?" He asked. The girl looked at the black knight for a moment before responding.

"Well, I came with a group to go exploring for something good a while ago..." The knight nodded, as the girl continued talking.

"... but the navigator got eaten, so we were stranded out here, and everyone else died."

"Eaten?"

"Y'know. Some sort of animal or something'? I dunno, happened at night."

"That's reassuring..." he said sarcastically as the girl giggled and began swinging back and forth while upside down.

"Everyone else in the group starved to death."

"Didn't plan I guess." Said the knight.

"I haven't seen another living person in months now!" The girl replied. The knight looked back up at her in a confused expression.

"Months? The temple's location was only announced a few days ago?" The girl tilted her head, unsure of what the knight was talking about. "You know... An ancient temple, rare artifact?" The girl shook her head. The knight sighed. Maybe this girl was just traveling with people and got stuck at the base of the mountain, she wouldn't have heard of the location of the temple then. After a moment or two of silence, the knight spoke "Would you like to travel with us? There's a temple at the top of the mountain and a big reward if we bring back what's in it." The girl thought for a moment before laughing and giving the knight a nod. He nodded back in response and led the girl back towards the fire.

***

Emily's eyes fluttered open, and she could hear the sounds of people talking. Two of the voices she recognized and the other was unknown to her. She lifted her head and sat up yawning. Judging by the lighting, It wasn't even dawn yet. Emily debated whether or not to leave the tent that she was in. She didn't know the other voice out there and felt nervous by it. She eventually peaked her head outside the tent to see what was going on. She was able to make out Alina sleeping beside the fire, and the other two knights. They were talking with the other voice, but she couldn't see where it was coming from. She felt the cold breeze of the mountains above. After a short moment, she stepped out of the tent and approached the fire, sitting beside Alina. She had put her witch's hat back on and wrapped herself in her cloak, trying to get warmer as she held her hands out to the fire. Warden looked at the small kid, chuckling with amusement. He had noticed her witch attire when they first met, but never questioned her about it, although, he already knew why she wore it.

"So you want to be a mage, huh?" Emily looked up at him when he spoke and gave him a brief nod.

"Y- Yes." She had avoided talking with anyone except Alina the whole trip, not like the other two strangers they were traveling with. Emily reached down to her boot and pulled out the wand she had hidden in it. It looked old and twisted. She waved it around in a pattern and the tip of the wand caught fire. She swung the wand and the flame flew from the wand and into the campfire. The red gem on her finger glowed all while she was doing this. Warden nodded.

"I see." There was an odd expression on Wardens face. "Well, it looks like you have some knowledge."

"I don't know a whole lot... I can't learn that much with this wand..." Emily looked down and nodded as shook the wand a little.

"You'll be an okay kid. With practice comes mastery. You should consider joining a mage college."

"I couldn't afford it."

"I didn't realize you had to pay?"

"I did get to go to one for a little while, but got kicked out because my family couldn't afford for me to keep going." She hugged her knees to her chest. Warden stared at the girl in silence before responding.

"Perhaps I could help. I have... a higher than average amount of funds from my time in... Well, I suppose that's not relevant. But I can help you. You just point to the college and I could pay it for you."

"Really?" Emily sat up a bit excited, only to remember that she had already made a deal with Alina. Her smile faded a bit. "T-Thanks... but I cant... I promised Alina I would travel with her."

"There's always the option to reconsider. Sometimes not helping others is more beneficial to everyone then the alternative." Warden shrugged his shoulders.

"What do you mean?" She asked. The knight avoided eye contact with Emily as he looked skyward.

"Two years ago, I was part of something big. Something far bigger than I originally thought. As I was exploring, I wandered into a village as I was adventuring on the outskirts of a city. Long story short, I met a man named Marcus and asked if he had any work that needed to be done. The first errand was simple, he wanted me to go get his daughter at the local general goods store. The second errand... Things snowballed from there." Emily looked down again.

"I'm guessing people died?" She hugged her knees back towards her chest, scooching a little closer to the fire. Warden maintained silence for a good moment, now staring forward at the landscape.

"Eventually. You could say it wasn't my fault, but if I never wandered into that village..." Emily sighed and fell silent. She took a deep breath, knowing that he was about to tell her a story that frankly she didn't care to listen to, but she stayed quiet anyway. "Marcus was the leader of a paramilitary organization called the Sirens. An exclusive female-only army. There was an incident with Marcus' generation, the Pinder family, over two hundred years ago. And a rival organization had been hunting down his entire bloodline ever since then. Marcus and his daughter, Kasia, were the last surviving Pinders. The village I talked about? It was underground inside a massive cavern. Marcus used the village as sort of a shield. He was protected from the eyes and ears of those who may want to cause him harm. He never let Kasia go outside without wearing a mask... But..." Emily stopped him.

"So it's your fault those people died?" She spoke bluntly.

"In away. He had me deliver a letter to Euphoria Palace with Kasia. I was supposed to protect his daughter, and I did. But Marcus said she didn't have to wear a mask since she would be traveling alongside me. We delivered the letter, but the organization trailed us back to the village." Emily continued to listen, although she was losing interest. "The thing is, they did not harm any civilians the first time. They were only there for Marcus. They killed him in front of me and Kasia... It was hard to comfort her... But events transpired, and months later they attacked the village again and killed everyone... Including Kasia. I tried saving her until the last second, but I was pinned down. The only reason I'm still alive is that they thought I was dead. When I woke up, I was outside of the village with two Sirens who rescued me. They told me what happened... I ran back into the village to look for Kasia, and found nothing but regret and her corpse."

Emily kept looking down. While she didn't care, she did feel some pity for the knight. She knew what it was like. Emily stared into the fire, trying to think of something else to take her mind off the story. She had an idea and lifted her right hand a bit. The ring with the ghostly blue sapphire started to glow, and in her had, a small blue ball of fire was formed. The ball of fire had two holes in it. They almost resembled eyes. The ball of fire floated out of Emily's hand and circled her as she lays down against Alina, eventually the ball of fire rested on Emily's stomach. Warden continued with his story, but Emily had stopped listening at this point. The ball of fire didn't burn her at all, rather it gave off a bit of warmth and a comforting feeling. Slowly, Emily fell back asleep.

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