“Close,” I said as we all left the pool and it returned to its neutral state. “Wait here a moment,” I said to Estelle and Cassia as I raced back to my supplies to fetch two water skins. I dumped each of them out as I went back to the Waygate and filled them up again with liquid from the pool. Once they were corked, I took another look at the pool. The Lady had said that all her people were with her in at the feast, after all.
“Seal,” and just like that the Waygate turned from a liquid into a transparent crystal, then back into liquid again, although a few pieces of crystal remanded suspended in the pool. Remnants of the link to the Faded Lands I supposed. “And that settles that. Now let's go back to my home, shall we?” I said, smiling at Estelle and Cassia.
Cassia looked like she was ready to do a dance of joy. Estelle looked confused. “But you asked it to take you home. Why would it have taken you here?”
“Convenience. This is the only Waygate I'm aware of and I'm not that sure as to how they work, so I opened it to here.”
“Oh. So, how do we get to your home?” She asked as she looked around the cave. I realized that there wasn't a clear source of light as the sphere that had been here before was now gone, so the way into the cavern wasn't obvious anymore.
“Come along, I'll lead the way.” I didn't add that there was a chance that we would only end up lost because of our lack of a good light source, but I didn't want to worry them unduly.
As it turned out, I needn't have worried. The glowing fungus that the Lady had told me about had surged back into their old homes and so the cave was filled with phosphorescent light. There weren't many animals yet, but it had only been seven years and I wasn't sure how long it took to fill up a cave with life so that might have been normal. I could also smell the fresh air unmarked by Fafnir's stench, so getting out was less of a task than I was afraid it was going to be.
Once we got out of the cave, I was happy to see that all of my things right where I'd left them. Since they had been more or less exposed to the elements for seven years my packs weren't in the best of shape, but they were there.
Once I'd moved all of my gear outside of the bush I pulled Estelle and Cassia out of the small cave entrance and into the open. “Give me a moment to repack my gear and we'll be on our way,” I said as I turned to take everything out of their respective bags and see what I could really use. I realized that about half of my supplies were rotted to the point of uselessness, including all of my other clothes and a good chunk of the other fabric in the bags themselves as well as much of my food supplies. Given the circumstances, though, I was still pleased that any of it had survived at all. From the look of things, Sen was also long gone. His reigns were gone as well, so I hoped that he as at least alive. I sighed and repacked everything that could be used again before I got up to face Cassia and Estelle again.
“Looks like we'll be foraging as we go, but it shouldn't be too terrible so long as we can get to the river.”
Estelle eyed me suspiciously and relayed the information to Cassia, who looked horrified once she heard. “Cassia said that she doesn't want to go near the river because the river god is very angry with her.”
I sighed. “Could you ask Cassia who was ruling when she first went into the Faded Lands?”
Estelle nodded and spoke to Cassia, then turned back to me. “Emperor Claudius Octavian had just gained the Eagle Throne when she left.”
I had to think for a moment to place him. King Ulric had drilled me multiple times on history but even his greatest bards only knew so much. “The Eagle Throne of Rem?” I asked to clarify. Estelle asked for me and nodded in affirmation, so I went on. “The Eagle Throne fell about eight hundred years ago and I think that Emperor Claudius died a few hundred years before that. So although my Remian history is a bit rusty, I think that I can say with confidence that whatever river god was angry with her has probably been long gone for a while. If nothing else, he's bound to have forgotten about it in the past thousand years or so.”
