Sonnet: The Cities of Steam, Brass, and Aether

Chapter Thirteen

Blair was down on all fours with her head held closely to the dirt. Unfortunately, Ziggy didn't take them out the same way they had come in. So now she was busy trying to figure out just how the hell they were gonna find their way out of here.

Luckily for Blair, she had been raised to navigate terrain even without a map or compass. She was able to tell that they were still in the wildlands; given that they were deposited from the mouth of a cave into the Vernelli forest.

The entirety of the Vernelli forest on the Sonnet side of the Sinidel mountain range was completely destroyed during the war. It was taught during her history lessons that the humans needed to do it in order to combat the Faye.

Ha. They needed to do it, yeah right. She had discovered the truth now, and knew the humans skewed history in order to fit their own directives.

She listened to the life that was connected to the ground, trying to gauge where to go from here.

"Uhh hey, Blair? That didn't look like the same cave we entered through. I'm not really sure where we are anymore."

"Yeah I know Grilimir, I am working on that right now; I just need some quiet for a moment and I will figure out where we should go." Or so I hope, she thought to herself at the end.

After listening closely to the ground for several minutes, she was able to hear the very faint sounds of a brook, it was a soft babbling over rocks.

"Let's go this way." At least then if we are lost, we have something to drink.

They needed to travel much further than she had initially anticipated, also Grilimir was beginning to complain about being hungry and his feet hurting.

Just as she was about to give in to his incessant yapping, they arrived at what turned out to be a very large, fast flowing river. No wonder she was able to hear it from so far away, this thing was massive!

From what she could tell, the river ran east to west and they needed to go south to south-west from here.

"Ok, let's go!" She turned to head west, choosing to follow the river either until it ended or she felt they had gone too far west for the Tykla pass.

It was quiet throughout the woods while they walked, the only noises she heard were made from either herself or Grilimir. The occasional hooting of an owl could be heard but there was almost nothing else that depicted life in these woods.

"It is really crazy that the Faye aren't actually monsters, huh?" Grilimir asked her, eyes widely staring at her while awaiting her reply.

"I mean I guess so? But I am starting to wonder if the humans have always known that Faye are intelligent. That we have been choosing to wage war because we want to instead of any sort of need to." She answered his question hesitantly, she really wasn't sure how much of this she should discuss with Grilimir.

It wasn't that she didn't trust him like Henry or even Lavender, she just didnt know how sure of his intuitiveness she was yet. He spoke an awful lot about his father, and not much of what he has said so far has been anything good.

"But my daddy said that he fought in the war, and the monsters were nothing but brutish beasts that killed everything they saw." He said in a matter of fact manner; in fact, he sounded so sure of himself it was almost as if he had witnessed the events himself.

"You know, listening to Lance almost made the humans sound like the monsters." Wow. Did Grilimir actually say that? Maybe she gave him less credit than he deserved.

"Anyways, can we stop please? I am really tired, and we haven't had anything to eat since that meal Lance gave us!" He whined.

"No. There isn't anywhere for cover, we keep moving until we find a cave or something." She looked around to see if there was potentially anything, seeing a spot that may actually work for a few hours.