"Jump once." Eodum commanded, and as if a puppet, Kali hopped into the air, forcing her back to bend. Her horns impaled themselves into the dirt above, and she would have tugged them out if her fear didn't tell her to not make any extra moves. Eodum smiled, a completely normal and innocent one, turned vicious and evil with Eodum's teeth. Curved and sharp, extending further than they should, glowing an eerie white.
"Good; now, enter here. I will summon you in the morning. While in there, sleep." Eodum ordered, opening a portal into the void next to it. The opening led to darkness, glittering with picks of light. She swallowed, making a "gulping" sound, and she strode to the edge of the portal. She took a deep breath, preparing for the worst, and took a step into it. She fell away, disappearing from sight and into the void, the portal closing shortly after.
Eodum was glad that it had thought to use her fear to its advantage; it wasn't sure it would've been able to win her over otherwise. It smirked to itself, now back in its rat form, and once it pawed around the comfortable large room, it fell asleep, comfortably curled up like an ammonite.
The next morning came by, the light filtering in through the opening, large enough to fit Kali through but only if she was crawling. The light illuminated the small pieces of dirt that would crumble away from the entrance, dust and soil filtering through the light as spots in the air. Eodum let out a yawn, opening and closing its mouth over and over, making wet snap-like noises as its tongue was forced to leave the top of its mouth.
Blinking away the build-up of crust in its eyes, it opened the portal to the void. The void, already knowing Eodum's plan as the two are always partially fused, spat Kali out. She landed on the dirt and rock ground with a thud, kicking up some soil at the same time. She groaned and quickly rose to her feet, standing at attention with more rigor than most trained soldiers, even despite her rude wake-up call.
In contrast to her readiness to serve, she had clear bags under her eyes, tinted a darker shade of indigo than the surrounding skin. Her eyes were bloodshot, red vanes reaching from the edges. The eyes that the lines traced through were pink and puffy, looking like she had cried while she was in the inky, dark, bottomless, and cold space of the void. Eodum could only wonder why.
"Y-Yes?" She hedged, uncomfortably shifting under the now two-minute long gaze of Eodum.
Knocking itself from its stupor, Eodum once more started ordering Kali"Yes, we'll be heading out now. We need to get food, make our way out of the forest while getting stronger, and then, we'll need to go to the Tarlived Empire."
"Okay." Kali squeaked, nodding shakily along with the rat's words. Eodum nodded once as well, confirming her confirmation of her understanding of the rat's plans.
Eodum walked out from the burrow, Kali following closely behind. Sniffing once, Eodum inhaled the fresh scent of the forest, the mixture of flora, fauna, and everything else in the forest washed away the scent of soil and dirt, leaving it behind as only a memory.
Eodum immediately jumped onto a tree, scrambling up it like a squirrel. It crawled and stopped at one of the thicker branches of the tree. The rat looked down on Kali and demanded, "Come."
She flinched but ultimately followed Eodum into the tree. Like she had done for Ksilisab, Kali jumped through the air, hopping off of invisible platforms only accessible to her.
She landed on the branch with the finesse and proficiency of a trained expert—which she was. She and Eodum stood on the dark brown, almost black, branch, hidden by the aqua, blue, cyan, seafoam green—whatever you want to call it—leaves. The slightly bluish green leaves did well to hide Kali, her purplish blue body's outline being broken up by the similarly colored leaves. Eodum, too, was hidden as its pitch black body was hidden by the shade and bark, and the specks of light just looked like gaps in the leaves.
Eodum hopped higher up into the canopy, and Kali followed after. Once Eodum reached the canopy of mostly green leaves, Eodum looked around. Green stretched into the horizon, opposite from where they came from. If Eodum squinted its eyes in the direction they came from, it could see the opening from where they found the dragon and worm. Even further, and then, Eodum could see the opening to the plains where most kingdoms and empires seemed to exist.
In the other direction, slightly to the right, Eodum gazed at the spire of stone. One could call it a mountain, but it was so steep and tall, that a pillar to heaven might've been a better name for it. The tower shot past the gathered gray clouds around it, reaching farther up than most could even comprehend. It was a pretty clear day, so seeing past the swirling clouds around it was possible, but at some point, it just became physically impossible to see the top. Only one with an extremely overleveled magnification skill would be able to spot the tip.
That was Eodum's destination for its training. It would become stronger as it fought the surrounding monsters, slowly moving to the center as it was a well known fact—to both monsters and civilized beings—that the closer into Kraude you got was where the stronger monsters would reside. With Eodum's [Arcane Perception], it could see that magic and energy seemed to get thicker the closer you got to the spire. Even the clouds surrounding it seemed to be pure magic, formed into the idea of storm clouds.
Eodum turned to face Kali, looking dead into her eyes and turning on [True Fear], and said, "Let's move. We have monsters to kill."