When the Final Seal Breaks

3rd Entry

After everyone finishes up with packing, we'll be leaving this little rest outpost where we spent the night, and it should be almost one more full day to get to whatever Easton is called now. I'm sorry, Navar, if you're the one reading this. I honestly don't mean any disrespect. I think that the excessive use of my magic to maintain the seal has been wearing on my cognition. I'd never gotten motion sickness before but there's a first time for everything. Maybe it's the roads, or lack thereof. I guess when you can teleport anything non-living, you don't really need to travel all that much.

Anyway, I'm going to write more about what happened in the sealed forest, since I have a table to sit at to write now.

This is actually a little embarrassing to think about. While I've been off living my life for fifteen years half wondering if I've lost my mind, the former rulers of this world were waiting for me here, even guarding the entrance to my world. I had Kings waiting for me for centuries.

I really doubt that that was necessary too- the park on my side was public. There was no way that not a single other person passed under that bridge in the last fifteen years.

According to Orleris, it was just his turn, and the title King holds no sway anymore. He didn't tell me why he was forced to stay there alone, but it had all the amenities he needed, and food was teleported in. But, since I had shown up, as the current 'King' in the sealed forest, it was his responsibility to guide me as necessary and stay by my side- and what he deemed was necessary was a trip to central to meet with the governing council to show them that the final seal was still intact, but only for now.

When we first showed up, despite the fancy title of King, we could only manage to get a meeting with a clerk. She was a very by the book kind of girl and spent more time looking up protocol than looking up at us from her desk.

It would have been comedy gold if it hadn't been me as the punch line. What did she say? Something like, "unfortunately I can't find a statute pertaining to the reception we are supposed to be offering to guests from another world. Can you standby while I reach out to my manager?"

Her manager was less by the book and more annoyance-aversive, meaning as soon as he saw the King, he started up on complaints that we were wasting his time with ancient articles in the law that should have been revoked ages ago. When Orleris finally demanded they bring in Navar, it only escalated more too. Our clerk kid seemed to just be unmoved by antiquated rank, but this superior was clearly anti-nobility. Eventually Navar was called, and while we waited Orleris explained that the superior was from a former Duke family, and resented that he had to work while Orleris was sitting around doing nothing for years on taxpayer dollars.

Taxes! In another world!

Can't escape them.

It was Navar who finally took us seriously. He is a council member- elected by the uh... region formerly known as Easton to represent them at the governing council table. He was a bit of a history buff, and believed my story about the seal stones even before I pulled my earring out of my bra again. But when I showed it to him, he managed to look even paler. He pulled a necklace out from under his layers of fabric around his neck, and handed it to me, insisting that it would be safer than just jamming it into my shirt, then he took off at as close to a run as an over-the-hill kind of office worker could handle, shouting at the first clerk to keep us comfortable.

Sadly, the remaining council members weren't very impressed with the red crystal. Navar got us a seat at the council sessions, but in order to prove my identity they asked me history questions that they didn't know the correct answers to, or that I couldn't have possibly known. What day did the sealing battle take place? Back then I didn't really pay much attention to their calendar. And, not to mention, somehow even the number of sealing stones wasn't properly passed down, so sixteen became the wrong answer. I don't blame them for that though, sixteen was really too many to keep track of.