I coughed myself awake. Something was on my chest. I rolled over and flung a massive pile of leaves off of me. Aavern quickly popped up, holding more leaves.
"Oh! Hello! You're awake!" he said.
"Not really." I replied.
"Okay, I'll not bother you.
He went and stood in a corner. I went back to sleep. Eventually, I awoke fully and felt my head. It felt fine. There was no scar, clot, or injury left. I looked around. There was a rock half-covered in blood on a table next to me. I threw it at Aavern and looked around. I was in the infirmary in Azor's castle, on a bed. I felt fine. Azor must have healed me when I was unconscious. Qassot appeared at the doorway.
"Hey, there!" she said.
"Hello," I replied.
"You okay?"
"Ouch."
"Oh."
"I'm also hungry."
"Come eat, we saved some food for you."
I, famished, ran over to the dining room quickly and found Dracoa, eating some nice bread shaped into a steaming bowl of soup. Another one was placed at my usual spot. Around her sat Riselus and Azor. I sat down and devoured the bread-bowl. Then, I ate a pile of delicious meatballs in a red sauce with long stringy things that Azor called "noodles".
"I healed you with magic, so you should be fine now. How are you feeling?"
"Hungry."
"You literally just ate," Dracoa said.
"I'm still hungry."
Azor cleared his throat. "Now that I saw the results of that battle, I feel that you are ready to go gather the gems." This sparked a small cheer.
"Can we take the practice gems with us?" I asked. This was met with thorough agreement.
"No. Those are mine."
"Why?" I asked.
"Why are they mine?"
"Yes."
"I made them."
"Why?"
"Which gem should we go for first?" Aavern interrupted from the door, before Azor could get angry.
"Well," he replied, "Dracoa is the most experienced fighter out of all of you, so you should probably get her a gem first so she can help you all."
"Which gem do we give her?" Qassot asked.
"Remember the dreams you had, the ones that made you come here in the first place?"
"Kinda," Qassot said. "It was so long ago."
"You each had a different color gem in your dream. I think that gem is the one that belongs to you."
"The only issue is that we don't know where any of the gems are," Aavern said.
"We'll find them eventually," I said cheerfully.
Azor clearly did not understand my logic.
"When do we leave?" Qassot asked.
"Let's go now. I want to fight something," Dracoa said.
"What?" I asked. "But I haven't finished eating yet!"
"Okay, then we leave once you finish eating."
"But I wanted to relax in the castle for a few days."
"No time for that."
"You can't just drag everyone around just because you want to fight something."
"You don't want to go, do you?"
"Not really."
"Too bad. We're leaving once you finish eating."
"Wha-"
"Eat faster."
"Just let me eat in peace!"
-
Soon, we were on the road to obtain the air gem. Since we didn't know where the gem was, we decided to get to the middle of the island before trying anything. Looming on the horizon was a dark cloud and a spine-chilling cry that made us stop. Well, all of us except Dracoa. She simply glared off into the horizon and the cry was cut short.
"Stupid birds," she commented.
"The what?" I asked.
"The black birds that attacked us on our way here."
I had forgotten about those.
"What did you do to it?" Qassot wondered.
"I told it to stop."
"I almost forgot that you can do that," Aavern said knowingly, "Azor always told you to not use those in the fights because it would make it too easy."
"Some of the scales on your forehead were glowing white," I said.
"I know."
"Why does it do that?"
Dracoa ignored me.
We continued walking. It was evening when we made it over the mountain range surrounding Azor's castle into the wide expanse of space that was the southern half of Falnear. We stopped. The sky was unnaturally dark due to cloud cover. We were all hungry.
"What do we eat?" I asked.
"How about that flying ray?" Qassot suggested, pointing at a brownish flat creature, with wide, massive fins floating through the air, using its ten trailing tentacles and fins to glide through the air, occasionally flapping.
"Huh. You don't see those this close to these mountains at this time of the year," Aavern said.
"I know. They only exit the water occasionally," I added.
"It's really big," Qassot said.
"Let's catch it," I said, "We can drop Riselus on it!"
"What would that do?" asked Riselus.
"That's actually a good idea. If we drop you from high enough, you might be able to force it onto those rocks," Aavern responded. "And then we can jump on to attack."
Riselus stared at Aavern as if to ask why he could consider that a good idea.
"Just don't drop me too early," Riselus finally said.
We waited until the ray had crossed over our heads and had flown a little bit away from us. On cue, we all grabbed Riselus and silently flew towards the ray. It was heading towards the sea, where it might be safe. We overtook the ray slightly and prepared to drop Riselus on it.
We dropped him when the ray was right above some sharp rocks. He landed squarely on top of it. Once we dropped Riselus, Aavern, Dracoa, Qassot and I circled above the ray, gradually getting lower. We did not expect what happened next. Riselus's weight should have pushed the ray onto the rocks before it had time to react, but when Riselus landed on the ray, it dipped a little, but it ignored him and kept flying. The rest of us had to drop down and attack the ray.
"What do we do now?" Qassot asked. "That didn't work at all!"
"Dracoa, try to make it stop moving!" Aavern yelled. "Everyone else start attacking!"
It kept dipping lower, heading into the sea. It hit the surface of the water and we went down as well. Aavern and I quickly grabbed a rock each to go down.
Dracoa swam up to its face and stared the ray in the eye, stopping it with her mental powers. It stopped flapping. Aavern was slowly munching off a fin (he was more hungry than we were on account of missing a meal waiting for me to wake up). Qassot was biting it at random. I realized that the skin of this creature, because it was so tough, could not be easily penetrated. I decided to do something different from the others. I got right in the ray's eye and stuffed a rock in the black part. That made it angry. It broke out of Dracoa's control, despite all of her efforts. It began to fight back.
Two arms wrapped around Aavern, who immediately began to eat the arms off. Two arms went for Qassot, forcing her to swim away. Two arms went for Dracoa. She moved in a weird way and the arms impaled themselves on her sharp tail spike. Two arms went for me and I dropped the rock I was holding in surprise. I shot out of the water and bobbed for several seconds before I made it to shore, grabbed another rock and sunk again. Two tentacles finally went for Riselus, as he managed to claw his way right into the ray's side.
Several minutes of desperate wriggling and clawing later, we got free from it. It continued to thrash at us while retreating. Riselus lumbered back and tried to attack its eyes. Qassot tried to claw at the huge gash on the ray's side. Dracoa tried to stick her spiked tail into another gash that she had opened. Aavern and I swam around and around it, avoiding flailing tentacles. Suddenly, the ray released a cloud of solid black ink that completely obscured our vision. Without thinking, Aavern swam outside the cloud and found the ray. I followed. One eye was knocked out and was floating. Aavern lunged for that eye. I went for the ray's remaining eye. It didn't notice me. I hit it repeatedly with a rock until that eye also popped out. In a spasm of pain, the ray leaped out of the water and onto the sharp rocks.
"Riselus! Jump on it!" Aavern yelled.
Riselus got out of the water and jumped surprisingly high, coming down on top of the ray, impaling it on the sharp rock.
"Why did it work that time?" Qassot asked in bewilderment.
-
We awoke before the sun was up, ate the last of the ray meat, and set off again.
"Why are we going into the middle of the desert, again?" Dracoa asked.
"I dunno," Aavern said, "I'm just following you guys."
"We're all following you, though," Qassot said.
"What? Why?"
We got to the center of the immense desert we passed on the way to Azor. We found a huge red rock in the very center. The rock was smoking and was incredibly hot. It was evening. We camped around the rock. At night, the rock glowed burning red and flickered like a fire. An idea suddenly popped into my head.
"What were the four gems again?" I asked suddenly.
"Go to sleep," Dracoa grumbled.
"I feel like this rock might have a gem in it," I said.
"There was air, water, earth and fire," Aavern said.
"Fire gem, maybe?" I asked.
"So we just move the rock?" Qassot asked. She tried pushing it, but immediately let go. "Ouch, it's really hot."
"Didn't Azor's scrolls say something about needing all the other gems to get the fire gem?" Aavern suggested.
"I think so," Dracoa said, having not read the scrolls at all, "But let's not get ahead of ourselves. We should follow Azor's advice and get the air gem first."
"So where would the air gem be?"
"Perhaps a place where that element is strongest. The fire gem is obviously in this hot desert, underneath a fiery rock. That place in Qade Valley has the most trees, so the earth gem might be there and maybe the water gem is someplace with a lot of water, perhaps the Ninlog Lake. So, I think the air gem is in a place with a lot of wind," Aavern said.
"How'd you know that?" Qassot asked.
"Didn't you read the scrolls?" Aavern responded.
There was silence.
"Why didn't you read the scrolls? They had some really important information!"
"You two read them, though," Qassot said. "So why would we need to?"
"Where are there really strong winds?" I asked before Aavern could retaliate.
"Mountains," Dracoa said, "And Ysk Mountain is the tallest, so perhaps the wind will be strongest there. The Raik Mountains have a jetstream which stops flying animals, so it could be there."
"I think it is Ysk Mountain," Qassot said.
"Why?" we all asked at once.
"I assume this has something to do with that supernatural sense," I said.
"It doesn't," she said, "I just don't want to go near that creepy mountain we saw back then."
We all heartily agreed, pushing the memory of the mountain out of our minds, and set off towards the place where the meeting had last taken place. We arrived, riding the jetstream back over with ease, as close to the western shore as we could (and as far away from the creepy mountain as possible), when the sun set on the same day.
After another two relatively uneventful days of travel back to Ysk Mountain, we finally arrived.
"So… This place looks rather…" Qassot said hesitantly.
Boulders had been moved to create a number of walls around the mountain, and there were small groups of Krie Clan members moving around as if on patrol.
"Where do we start looking?" I asked. "The top of the mountain?"
"There's nothing up there," Dracoa said, "I used to live there."
"So we look for caves that might hide a gem and its guardian," Aavern said.
"I don't think a guardian would fit in a cave."
"It would fit in the meeting cave," Aavern suggested.
"I never saw a big primordial guardian beast in the meeting cave," Qassot said, "Why would it be in there?"
"Can we go there anyways?" I asked. "I'm hungry."
"I need to tell the council about what happened," Aavern said, "Informant duties and all that."
"I thought you stopped doing that," Qassot said.
"I did. I just didn't tell the council yet."
"Stop there!" a dragon suddenly called. "Security checkpoint!"
"What's a security checkpoint?" I asked.
"Hang on, I'll come over. Prepare all belongings to be inspected."
"Belongings?" I asked.
"Inspected?" Qassot asked.
"What are you doing?" another dragon asked. "We're only supposed to stop those black things."
"The leader told me to set up a security checkpoint here," the first dragon explained.
"This isn't what he meant."
"What else could he have meant?"
"Oh, I dunno, maybe guarding the only entrance to the mountain from the black creatures? Do those look like black creatures to you?"
"Let's just keep going," Dracoa said. We followed her past the first boulder wall and made our way towards the meeting cave.
The cavern was well stocked with a multitude of neatly arranged stone boxes of food and the creatures of Qade Valley were beginning to shelter inside of it. The Krie clan had been flying around the peak of the mountain, diving occasionally to strike a black shape away, but most of them were now inside, taking a meal.
"Hey, look! It's those creatures who went to find Azor!" someone shouted. We were immediately swarmed by almost everyone in the cavern.
"I thought you went to live with Azor forever!"
"Does Azor really exist?"
"Why is Aavern with you?"
"How was the trip?"
"So what did Azor say?"
"SHUT IT!" the announcer suddenly yelled. "This is NO WAY to welcome back fellow creatures."
Everyone fell silent.
"I'm hungry," I said.
Everyone immediately started throwing food at me.
"STOP IT!" The announcer yelled.
The crowd eventually calmed back down and let us through to tell the council what happened. Aavern explained Azor's training and what Kovo wanted us to do, and that he was retiring as an informant. The council then talked with the announcer for a bit while we ate. The announcer soon came back out to talk to the general public.
The announcer announced things about bright futures, victory on the way, and peaceful times ahead. Then, my gaze drifted to the floor. My eyes opened wide. The floor was carved with a large symbol, something that looked like one of the symbols you would write. I didn't recognize it.
I quickly told the others.
"That symbol…" Qassot seemed like she was trying to remember something. Her eyes were tight shut. Qassot gasped and opened her eyes.
"It means 'air'! The gem is here!" she said softly. The glowing rocks in the cave walls briefly lit up. The crowd shifted nervously. The announcer frowned but continued.
"How do you know? I don't see anything else." Dracoa said.
"I just know."
"Maybe you're wrong," Riselus said.
"Maybe I'm not."
"What do you mean? There is nothing else in this cave!" Dracoa argued.
"Uh, look again," Aavern whispered, staring at a ledge high up above the entrance to the cave. "There's a path."