"Would you look at that? Mera blood is poisonous to leaches," said Roshar after the flying black insect fell to the ground to die after pitching on his forehead.
The others after hearing this stopped fanning away the annoying cloud of black balls above their heads, as it began to fade on its own.
In the blink of an eye, something sprang from the flowing river on their left, and the alert assassins held out their weapons ready for the attack.
They watched awkwardly as the creature crawled with its two front limbs out of the water to stop on the bank in front of their path before rising to its wide webbed feet. It looked menacing with multiple rows of sharp teeth that continued to the back of its mouth and double eyelids that blinked sideway.
Before it could charge at them it began gasping. It crawled in a panic back into the water and its head popped up to stare at them. They lowered their weapons and continued their journey.
Not once did the water creature come back out. However, it continued to follow them for as long as the stream went. Even when they were on higher lands looking down at the stream from among the tall pine trees, they saw it in the water as the tiny dot looking back at them.
"That's one creepy bug," said Cronan with deep lines on his forehead as he looked down there between two trees.
"What a stalker," commented Ezra.
Rue could not hide a smirk as she said, "It's Skinner's girlfriend, but she's too shy."
"It's even tailless like him," Ezra added.
"That face, I see the resemblance. A species recognizes its kind."
Rue and Ezra giggled.
"What's the holdup?" asked Skinner who did not stop walking and so was too far to have heard.
Cronan and Roshar had smiles on their faces as they continued to walk to meet him. Dayrue's efficient ears allowed her to hear. She laughed but made no sound so none knew until they noticed her shoulders moving up and down. It was the first time they saw her laugh, they decided not to comment on it. Skinner had no idea what was so funny and thought she was madder laughing to herself.
As night drew nearer creatures hidden in the darkness of large caves and tight spaces between boulders created beautiful lights from glowing freckles and patterns on their skin.
Roshar went closer to get more details to add to his scroll, but the second he saw a black tentacle move slightly out of the shadow he decided it was not a good idea after all.
Bright early morning they had reached a field with low sparkling waters below really tall stemmed flowers. Their tops were covered with long thin petals arranged in a circular pattern to resemble puffballs.
A strong wind blew the thin stringy petals from their tops to drift slowly down to the ground while crowding the air above.
"Is this what snow is like?" asked Rue as she walked looking up waiting for them to reach her level.
Little did she know that those gliding petals would explode whenever they touched anything dry. Soon they were all running for their lives with their feet splashing through the low waters and rattlers sliding over the wet grounds to get out of that field as short painful explosions erupted all over them.
Ezra was the first to step foot out of the field followed by the others. Their skins had hardened and so all had dark red faces under their hoods.
"That was embarrassing," commented Skinner.
"Ezra, you've got some impressive speed there. You're even faster than Skinner on foot," said Roshar as he stood upright from leaning on his knees.
"That's ridiculous," Skinner puffed.
"Oh, it's nothing," said a swell-headed Ezra while brushing dust from his left shoulder while suppressing a smirk.
Roshar went closer with squinted eyes as he towered over Ezra to observe him.
"Yes, yes, I remember now. You were the first one to reach the cliff too after that mutt chase at the waterfall."
His eyes widened on his hairless face as he looked down at him with an intense stare. Ezra's brows knitted together and his feet stepped back from uneasiness.
Roshar laughed with delight after he remembered where he first saw Ezra. "I remember you know. You were that Mera running towards the gates after a Frontera shift of patrolling the border. My pals and I were heading out for a wild boar hunt when you just zipped by with such speed, it was mind-blowing!"
He put one hand below his chin before moving a finger to tap at it, "I keep forgetting you used to be in the Frontera. You looked different in your green cloak but I never forgot that face. You were moving so fast I had to wonder. Was something chasing you down, if you don't mind me asking?"
"Nah," said Ezra with a fan of his hand. "I always move that fast so I can say hi to my family and meet Rue in time before she realizes I'm back."
Rue's eyes looked around at everyone before looking down on her boots and turning away. Her cheeks got red from embarrassment and she began to walk off.
"Okay, can we go now? We have an evil Vampire Queen to kill before a virus wipes out all life on the planet…"
"Oh, I see," said Skinner. His voice got Rue's upper lift to twitch. She knew she was not going to like what was coming.
"We have two love birds here. Ezra and Rue sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G," he sang before leaning on his knees with one hand over his mouth to block his laughter.
Cronan laughed and said, "Now that was funny."
He began to walk off along with Rue and patted her on the shoulder as he knew she was upset about the teasing.
Skinner and Dayrue followed to walk off, leaving Rohsar with a self-lowered Ezra. He pulled the hood further over his face embarrassed by her father's words.
"This is Deja vu?" said Skinner. "I predict one of you will die since both lovers can't make it back from an assassination Quest. My bet is on Ezra."
Roshar said to remind them and also to cheer up his depressed pal, "The next Domain is going to be dangerous, we're going to need speed like that to make it out alive."
"Even worse, the one after is the Werewolf Domain," added Cronan. "Yikes."
Ezra was in his little world, remembering his parents. Once he had gotten older he stopped going on the same shifts as his father, and so he had to greet both on his return. He would find his mother in the fields along with the other farmers, and then his father who did crafts while he was not on shift. It was also a short greeting since he was always in a hurry to meet Rue. She had a habit of fleeing once she knew he was back to avoid him.
If he knew they would leave him so soon, he would never have rushed away to go meet her. He would have spent as much time with them as possible.
They soon reached a distance where they were able to see across the wide brown desert that surrounded the center of the Domain. Appearing tiny so far away with stems continuing to thousands of feet in the air were several giant trees.
Above their flat crowns that reached the clouds was where the Dominant species lived, and each tree served as a separate town that connected. They grew from special beans and lasted for several hundred years before they withered, and would need to be replanted.
They marveled as they passed by until they could no longer see it from trees that got thicker the closer they got to the other side of the border.
Rue knew it was getting close to the other Domain. They had preserved their energy mostly for both it and the Werewolf Domain that was back to back. It was an unlucky coincidence she thought. She wondered about how she would juggle between keeping alive and preventing Ezra from abandoning them to go about his revenge.