The next morning, I stepped out of my tent, suppressing a huge yawn.
"Good Morning." Tess greeted me with a smile while sitting down beside the cooking pot. In front of her sat Aria, making a stew on the makeshift stove with a somewhat dazed expression.
"Hope you got enough sleep yesterday," Aria spoke while handing me the bowl.
In the end, Aria's reflection hadn't left the entire night, instead roaming around at some. It wasn't safe for Aria to keep watch, so in the end, I decided to stay up the entire night, only sleeping for a couple of hours at the crack of dawn.
"We need to deal with this reflection business," I complained while taking a bite out of my bread.
"There isn't much we can do when it comes to the reflections. Besides, we should be glad they are roaming so far away from us."
I sighed and dipped my bread in the stew. Seeing my tired face, Aria spoke again.
"We need to be as careful as we can; trust me on this. The result of seeing a reflection might vary from person to person, but it's almost never a good thing; you start losing your mind, your memories, your personality, not to mention hallucinations."
"We have seen it firsthand," Tess spoke with a reminiscent look on her face.
I had an idea what she was talking about. The night I met them they said one of there knights had seen his reflection, but they hadn't give me any details about the incidents. I too hadn't asked anything because the cases vary from person to person.
"You never told me what happened back then."
Tess paused before speaking. "One of our new recruits, who was in charge of cooking poisoned our food, said he had to; he wanted to. Poor guy, by the time we caught him, he didn't even remember his name."
"That's… unsettling." I muttered before focusing back on my food. Aria as well kept eating, occasionally throwing worried glances towards Tess.
After having our fill, we packed our stuff and once again set out on our journey. I released the Storm Raven so it could patrol the sky, helping us dodge the stronger predators.
Of course, sandweavers were still a danger we couldn't seem to shake off. Add that to the desert's blazing heat, and I was definitely cursing the seven generations of Gods.
Today however seemed to be our lucky day, the entire day we only encountered a single pack of sandweavers, allowing us to retore our mana to a much greater extent.
It was around noon when the storm raven cawed, sending me a signal; sharing our vision, I saw something that momentarily shook my heart. Out in the distance stood the remains of what seemed like a large city.
"There is something ahead; it seems like a city," I spoke, catching Aria and Tess's attention.
"What kind of city? Describe it in detail." Aria questioned while stopping and pulling out a map from her spatial storage.
"Hold on a second." I mentally commanded the raven to circle around the city, slowly giving me a clear picture of its shapes and surroundings.
"Here, let me draw it for you." I took out my knife and began drawing a sketch in the sand, half of my mind busy observing through the raven's eyes.
Aria and Tess stood quiet, deeply concentrating on my drawing, especially Aria, who seemed to be studying her map in detail.
The city in itself was mostly largely made of stone, with two concentric walls in the center, most likely used to separate the city into three different districts. Houses and buildings made of stones were broken and destroyed. In the center of the city, where there should have been a palace, lay a huge crater. Even though Raven couldn't see inside its dark depth, I could still sense this eerie feeling coming from it. One look, and I could tell I needed to stay as far away from that place as I could.
Yet somehow that pit wasn't the most peculiar thing about the city. The western front of the city displayed a large circular sandy area crashing inside the middle district, tearing away the middle walls . Too clean to be human made, that particular circular area was devoid of all and every structure, whether it be a houses, buildings, the giant walls or anything else. It was like something large had eaten away that part of the city.
After a while, Raven had already circled the general area for quite some time, so I called it back. Aria was still busy looking through her map; her eyes narrowed in concentration as she occasionally glanced at the city's shape before focusing back on the map. Eventually she took out a diary and began reading through it, going through it page by page searching for something.
"This is bad," Aria spoke up after a while, removing her eyes from the map. "The city you described, there is no mention of it anywhere on the map."
Hearing her say that, my throat went a little dry. "What are you saying?"
"I think we might be lost," Aria spoke with a shaky voice.