After six hours of walking, Alice swooped down and landed behind us.

  “Good hell, Alice!” called out Nessy.

  “Hi,” said Alice.

  “Where you been!” asked Nessy.

  “I could ask you the same question.”

  “Please don’t,” said Nessy.

  “I circled back every day. Didn’t see you on the path, so kept scouting. We got rogue orcs playing highwayman up ahead. Day out. Throws a wrench into our path. One sec.”

  Alice went behind me and gently unfastened and opened her bag. She dug through and pulled out parchment and a pen.

  “Camp here,” Nessy said. “Brax, stand guard for a while. You’ll have the later night off. Charlie, go to sleep.”

  “But it’s early,” I protested.

  Nessy walked the path ahead while Alice found a comfortable spot and began drawing her map. I laid on the ground next to her and watched the lines and shapes take form as she drew. Alice didn't speak, though she hummed.

  “How do you remember all this detail?” I asked.

  “Oh,” Alice smiled. “I just see things and remember what I see. Edgar calls it a photographic memory.”

  She was an incredible artist. A perfectionist too. She used her eraser just about as much as she did her pencil. I watched her until she completed the map. When she was done, she began drawing a portrait of me half asleep. After a while I fell completely asleep.

  When I woke, Alice was gone. Nessy was back and on guard. Brax was asleep nearby.

  “Go back to sleep,” Nessy said.

  I yawned and deeply considered it. I’d never known exhaustion on Earth like I knew it here. But something drew me to my feet.

  As I walked over towards Nessy, she folded up the map and put it into her armor. I sat next to her on a large rock.

  “Can I see it?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Go to sleep.”

  “Something has been on my mind,” I said. Truth was, very little had been. I just felt compelled to talk with her beyond her barking orders at me.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I’m trying to make sense of everything.”

  “Sometimes there isn’t much.”

  “I felt something at Edith. I felt connected to people. I saw you and I saw Roland. I saw myself through your eyes in the crowd.”

  She said nothing. Didn't even turn to face me.

  “Do you know what that was?” I asked.

  She ignored me as if I wasn't even there. I closed my eyes heavily, feeling tired, lonely, lost, dejected.

  In the long silence that followed, it became clear she was done talking. I was too stubborn to go lay down and sleep. I fell asleep while sitting on that rock.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh,” I said half-asleep.

  I felt her help me to the ground.

  I woke to a sunrise and a dull ache that began in my feet and ended nowhere. I suddenly felt all those miles I had walked yesterday.

  The fog hadn’t left, but it had lifted quite a bit, revealing gorgeous flowing hills around us that we hadn’t been able to see the night before. It felt as if we had woken somewhere new.

  Brax was laying on his belly, sprawled out, and murmuring something to someone. I slowly maneuvered myself to my feet. I spotted Nessy walking along the edge of the hilltop, looking down at something below.

  Wait, who is Brax talking to?

  “Brax?”

  A disinterested grunt.

  My curiosity gave me lift and I walked over to where Brax was laying. He was face to face with his giant axe. A few clever wisecracks came to mind, but with a look at Brax’s face, I thought better of saying anything at all.

  “We move out in twenty minutes,” called out Nessy.

  I sat on the ground next to Brax and cleared my mind. We sat in silence those twenty minutes. The breeze was gentle and warm.

  We began walking the direction Nessy had been looking earlier. The clouds moved fast across the sky. What had been ache when I woke was now a burn, which in some ways was easier to manage. I couldn’t fathom tomorrow. I had also grown quite anxious. Alice was gone again. I wanted to ask Nessy about her, but I didn’t want to bother her. I spared us both the trouble, for now.

  What of the landscape wasn’t shrouded by white fog was remarkable. You’d see glimpses of things, like a waterfall off a cliff in the distance and a valley filled with yellow flowers. I could feel the temperature drop a degree every thirty or so minutes we walked.

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  Up hills, across hills, around hills. As we went higher in elevation, my ears popped and the fog slowly crept in and surrounded us again, until we were so immersed in it we could hardly see each other at times.

  “I don’t like where we’re headed,” Brax murmured.

  “Where are we headed?” I shouted up ahead to Nessy. You had to ask.

  “Almost there,” her voice returned. It meant nothing to me. But it meant something to Brax.

  We kept walking. I felt a strange mix of fatigue, worry, hunger, and boredom. A selfish thought continued to surface: I wanted to ask Edgar what happens if I die. Am I missing an easy path home? What if I am dreaming, like Edgar, and all I must do is merely wake up?

  As the sun began its descent for the day, we came across a battered stone wall. Nessy seemed encouraged to have found it and immediately took a right and had us walk its perimeter. It had to be at least twelve feet tall. We walked alongside it for perhaps an hour until we came across a large breach in the wall. We entered through and found ourselves at the edge of an abandoned marketplace within the settlement’s walls.

  The terrain of the town was no different than outside the walls, with sudden and steep hills. As we continued our walk upwards within the city’s walls, it became apparent just how big this settlement was. It was a sprawling city. The biggest I had seen yet. But it was abandoned. Many areas of it were in ruins.

  “What happened here?” I asked. My voice was lost in the wind. Grey storm clouds were ahead of us, complete with rolling thunder and occasional flashes of lightning. I could see walls of rain scattered up ahead.

  We continued onward, still within the city walls, until it was so dark that Brax and I kept tripping over things.

  “Okay, here,” Nessy finally said. She led us into a building and barred the doors. Brax and I sat in the darkness while Nessy rummaged around, doing God knows what.

  “I can’t feel my anything,” I said.

  “Hate walking,” Brax groaned.

  “Do you know where we are?”

  “Black Sheep. Close to Shadelands now.”

  “What’s Shadelands like?”

  “Dark forest. Dangerous. Nomads. Harpies. Zounds of gnolls. Some undead too.”

  “Lovely.”

  “Not all bad. Lucrative mushrooms and herbs there. Network of goblin foraging tunnels. Leads straight into Redrock.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “Redrock?” He raised an eyebrow at me.

  I nodded.

  “You a prince or something?”

  “What?”

  “You act like it’s your first time outside the palace.”

  I shook my head. “I’m just a normal boy.”

  “Hope not,” he smirked. “Redrock is Redrock, kid. World its own. Dozens of interconnected subterranean cities. Goblin capital at the center. A chaos college. Sorcery and arcane too. Massive cave system, the bellows. Great food. The caves keep goin’. Dwarves the other side.”

  Nessy joined us with a candle aflame. She set it on the ground next to us. “Both of you, sleep. Do not blow out the candle.”

  “Where is Alice?” I asked.

  “Sleep. Do not blow out the candle.”

  I laid down and tried to get comfortable. I heard rain. Kept checking if I was wet. I never was.

  I woke to the sound of distant thuds. The candle was still lit. The thuds continued; they had a pattern, like a frantic heartbeat, and they got louder. It shook the walls and made nearby junk rattle. Brax was on his feet, axe in hand. He motioned for me to follow. He crept towards a corner. I hopped to my feet and began to follow but then I spotted Nessy through a window. She was running towards us.

  Nessy swooped in and grabbed me by the arm, then yelled at Brax to follow. We ran. Brax was yelling something, I think to Nessy, but I don't know. The thuds were deep. Felt just as much as heard. And they just kept coming. Only growing more and more intense. Then I heard a long, deep, hellish shout that sounded like it came from a mutant dinosaur on a over-amped megaphone.

  Nessy screamed to run faster.

  Brax was screaming in a language I didn’t understand mixed with profanities I did understand.

  Suddenly the pattern of thuds missed a beat or two, then resumed. I then heard a rushing noise from behind us, a large blur swooshed past my head, then there was a loud explosion in front of us.

  “Hell!” Nessy yelled.

  Dust was everywhere. I smelled metals and stone. I clung onto Nessy’s hand and lunged forward behind her.

  We just kept running and the thuds continued. We eventually came to a flat opening. I glanced back just long enough to see our predator. It was a giant, at least twice our size. He was chasing us, boulder in one hand, a giant club in the other.

  “What is that!” I yelled.

  “He has another!” shouted Brax, “Zigzag!”

  I could see the far side of the city wall ahead. But there was no door, or gate, or opening or hole. I was beyond sore, in pain, outside myself, near-resolved to die, but the thuds of the earth behind us inspired me to keep running, forward, somewhere, anywhere, away.

  Brax ran ahead and split to the right. Nessy grabbed my arm and rushed me onward, straight ahead towards the wall. The giant’s thuds stopped. I turned to steal another look. He was throwing the boulder. It was coming straight for us.

  Nessy yanked my arm and threw me back while pushing herself in front of me. The boulder crashed into her and exploded into dust. The impact didn’t seem to affect her at all.

  The giant screamed and began running towards us. Brax the dwarf, now positioned to the giant’s flank, screamed too, charging him from his side. The giant stopped and turned. Brax lunged forward and sunk his axe deep into the giant’s arm.

  The axe was sunk deep into the giant’s arm meat. The giant recoiled, pulling the axe out of Brax’s hands. The giant, now with Brax’s axe stuck in his arm, was now more resolved than ever to kill us.

  The giant kicked at Brax, but Brax lept out of the way with a flip and tumble onto the ground. Brax had his smaller axe with green crust on the blade now in his hands. The giant kicked at Brax again but Brax dodged and sliced the giant’s leg with his axe. The giant, now screaming, jumped up with both arms raised, and slammed the ground, knocking Brax off his feet and a nearby house off its foundation.

  The giant leaped towards Brax, but Brax rolled in between the giant’s legs and sliced the giant in the groan with the blade of his hand axe. The giant screamed and kicked the tar out of Brax, flinging him into a fence. Brax still clung onto his hand axe, but he was not moving.

  As the giant positioned himself to face the downed dwarf, Nessy stepped forward with her right hand glowing white and aimed towards the giant, palm out. Green light formed at her palm and darted out in an arc towards the giant, pelting him in the back and then his neck. As he turned to face us, a final bolt struck his torso. The magic bolts were a strange mix of glowing goo and green neon plasma that sparkled like an electric fire. It latched onto the giant’s skin and turned bright white, dripping green liquid sparks, and what looked like perhaps blood, onto the ground.

  The bolts seemed to hurt him, but it would take a lot more bolts to stop him, and Nessy was no longer firing. She was buckled over gasping for air. The giant began running towards us.

  “No!” Nessy yelled. She turned and grabbed me by the arm. “The hourglass,” she said, gasping for air. “Use it.”

  I grabbed the hourglass. “No.”

  The giant screamed.

  I stumbled backwards and turned to face the giant. The world quieted. Time slowed. I felt a warm above my eyes. A sliver of light just above my vision.

  “Do it,” Nessy groaned behind me. Her voice was muted now.

  “No!” I heard Brax shout from the ground behind the giant. He was crawling towards us, dragging his legs behind him.

  I could see the giant clearly now. It was a woman. Mossy green leather clothing with pink flowers growing from her clothes and hair. Her club, which was larger than me, was pulled back.

  I could see Nessy yelling at me. But I could no longer hear her. The world was quiet, slow, and dim.

  I closed my eyes and looked up. I centered my sight on the itch between my eyes, like I had in Edith. I felt a choice, to lift up like I had at Edith, or dive down, like I never had before. I went down and fell deep into my mind. It was an abandoned mall, an barren field, then a vacant grand hotel. I searched its inner corridors. I found long empty halls there and felt nostalgia for lives I never had. I ran faster than my doubt, faster than my fear, and I turned the axis of that world, surfed gravity to make time, and then, I found a warm room of darkness with light leaking in. I entered.