“Shit!” he exclaimed, one foot splashing into the pond—but the other passed through, and he had a strange sensation of being half on solid ground and half sinking into the pond, then his momentum kept him tumbling forward through the curtain until he was in the Veil once again.
“Ow,” Florian grumbled, stumbling onto his hands and knees. He took a few steps away from the curtain, knowing Kade would be close behind, before taking a moment to look around.
The first thing he realized was that the curtain must have been at the very edge of the dragon kingdom, as he could see the Blight barely thirty yards to his left. It was an unsettling realization—though he was not sure why it disturbed him as much as it did. The thought of having to get so close to the Blight any time someone might want to go back to Earth seemed somehow discouraging, and he wondered if this was maybe why the dragon kingdom was so notoriously insular.
Kade came leaping through the curtain a moment later, landing on his feet far more gracefully than Florian had.
“You alright?” he asked, frowning. “I saw you trip.”
“I’m fine,” Florian answered quickly, embarrassed. “Look how close the Blight is. Isn’t that weird?”
Kade’s frown deepened as he considered the bright light, cutting the landscape perfectly from the lush, forested environment that was extraordinarily similar to the mountain they had just left behind.
“It’s unsettling,” he replied after a moment. “Not like they can choose where either the Blight or the curtain is, though.”
“Did someone choose where to put the curtain at some point?” Florian asked, realizing he did not know how the points of connection between their worlds even came to exist.
“Sort of,” Kade replied, shrugging. “C’mon. Walk and talk.”
He gestured in the opposite direction of the Blight, and for the first time Florian took a closer look. Their surroundings were still quite forested, but now that Kade pointed it out, he noticed a stone pathway leading away from the curtain, presumably to the dragon kingdom.
“Walk and talk,” Florian agreed, and they headed down the path.
“The curtains exist where the barrier between the worlds was already thin,” Kade explained, his voice low, but still easily audible in the silent forest that surrounded them. “So someone did create them—basically tore a hole in the barrier where it was weakest—but those points already existed. To try to break through the barrier somewhere else would be... well, impossible, I think. I’ve never heard of anyone doing it before.”
“Hmm,” Florian said, considering. He’d already done something Kade had thought impossible—maybe he could do that, too, though it was a problem for another day. And the only reason he’d been able to teleport was because he had been using old magic without knowing. The thought turned his attention back to their meeting with Elodie and everything they had learned there, and he could feel the dark weight of it creeping into the edges of his consciousness. Pushing the bleak thoughts away, he continued quickly, “Yeah, you’re right. I’m sure if they could have set it up anywhere other than here, they would.”
He paused then, thinking. “Do you think the curtains that lead to places in the Blight still exist on Earth?”
Kade was silent for a moment, considering the question. “Maybe,” he finally answered, making Florian laugh. “Not that they would be usable even if they did.”
That was true—a curtain leading straight into the Blight was completely useless. But maybe someday, after they’d gotten rid of the Blight...
It was too hard to imagine what that would be like. They still had five Arrows to find for that to become even a possibility, not to mention they still needed to figure out how to actually use them to end the Blight.
“Have you met the dragon king before? Tetsuo?” Florian asked as they walked, bringing his attention back to their more immediate task.
“No,” Kade replied, shaking his head. “Jerah told me about him, and the dragon kingdom, but even he hadn’t seen Tetsuo in... years. Decades. I don’t know any more about him than you do. Jerah didn’t like him. Thought he was arrogant and short-sighted.”
“Yeah,” Florian sighed. It was exactly the impression he’d gotten from the little that he’d heard. Elodie had mentioned in passing that each of the shifter kings had visited her with Jerah once, but she had made no comment as to what any of them were like. So all he had to go off of was what Jerah had told him, the same as what Kade described. He anticipated having to meet with a cruel and uncooperative king, but there was always the chance that Jerah’s impression of the man was faulty, or outdated—it had been a while since they had interacted, after all, and maybe Tetsuo had grown and changed in that time. Maybe he wasn’t even the king anymore at all. Shifters were long-lived, but they did die eventually; and Florian had no idea how old Tetsuo was when last Jerah met him.
“What was the deal with that dragon, anyway?” Florian blurted out, his thoughts turning back to the strange sight that they had just witnessed. “I didn’t think shifters could change into their other forms on Earth.”
“They can’t,” Kade answered quickly, looking perturbed. “But... they can cross over in their shifted forms. When they do, they can’t shift back until they return to the Veil. That’s why no one really does it.”
Florian blinked, processing the revelation. “So they can’t speak or... wow. That sounds miserable. How long do you think they’ve been there?”
Kade shook his head. “No telling. Probably not a job anyone wants. Hopefully not too long. I think I would go crazy stuck as a wolf for longer than... I don’t know, a week.”
Florian laughed. “Really? I could see you being fine for months as a wolf, just hanging out in the woods away from everyone.”
Kade gave him a chagrined look. “I might like it at first, but I think I’d be over it sooner rather than later.”
The path they were on had started to go uphill, a gentle incline at first, but now stone stairs appeared ahead of them. At the top, two stone pillars marked where a low stone fence began, its top green and fuzzy with moss. The forest was still quiet around them, but now that they were further away from the Blight, Florian was picking up more ambient sounds of insects and wildlife.
When they reached the top of the stone stairs, Kade gestured silently toward the hills they were approaching. Near the peak, a flash of red came through the foliage of the trees—some sort of gate or city wall. Beyond it, Florian thought he could make out pointed roofs, signs of a settlement. He smiled, relieved they were nearly there, but another part of him tensed with anxiety. They would know soon enough if the dragon king would even grant them an audience—if he didn’t, Florian was unsure how they would proceed.
They continued to follow the meandering stone path; the walkway itself was meticulously clean, but moss and leaves were overtaking the fence, an odd contrast. But other than the slightly increased sounds of wildlife, they did not encounter any voices or humanoid shapes in the distance. The only sign they had of any living shifter society nearby was the occasional flash of the red gate through the leaves, still steadily uphill. Florian focused on keeping his feet moving and his breathing steady as they walked.
