Benny Two snorted. Well, Benny Two wasn’t the horse's real name, but Alek thought he looked like Benny from the farm with his brown coat and big white spots. Alek held out his hand for him to sniff. He snorted again this time, but seemed less upset. Alek loaded the pack onto the side of his saddle without trouble and then gave him a carrot.

  ‘That’s all of them,’ Alek called out.

  Their camp was in the middle of a dense rainforest, the worst kind of place to bring horses, but there was no other way to carry their packs. Not to mention, Broken Fang planned to carry treasure home from the dungeon’s depths. Alek had never been to a dungeon before and to be frank he didn't like the sound of it, but it was dungeon or death. The rainforest was filled with thick trees snaked with vines that loomed overhead. It was always wet there and roots protruded from the ground that tried to trip Alek at every turn. They often succeeded.

  ‘Good work,’ Rowan called back. He was dressed light, in khaki pants, a collared shirt and wearing glasses that were twice home-repaired with twine and tape. He had his hair swept to the side and a thick moustache grew on his lip that he had a habit of twirling the ends of. He was fussing over his personal mount, the only mule, cobalt grey with large donkey ears. Alek called him Nippy. The name explained itself.

  Between Nippy and Benny Two were Scruff and Ugly. Benny was Jarrah’s horse. Scruff was Aria’s, a short horse with curly black hair. Ugly was Eddie’s, it had a cut that stretched through its face and a nasty look in its eyes. Its body was tall and muscular like his owner’s.

  Over the past few days Alek had become familiar with each of the horses and named them to his own liking despite their owners already naming them. He had plenty of experience with animals, and helping was a way to pay Broken Fang back for not leaving him to the wolves.

  He smiled at Rowan, the biggest happiest smile he could muster. I have to be happy. No one likes a downer. Alek smiled and laughed as much as he could. Please don’t leave me behind.

  Alek had to keep a promise to his mother, “don’t listen to him, no matter what,” but the man’s voice would not stop nagging, even now. I command you to die, the man in the suit whispered in Alek’s mind, unkind and unwelcome. It was far and distant now, but at night the sound would grow until Alek thought his ear drums would surely pop and his mind would go with it. It was a screaming that no one else seemed to hear.

  I might be going crazy, Alek thought, maybe I already am and this is all a strange dream.

  Rowan patted Alek on the back, snapping him out of his daze. ‘Come on kid, let’s get some breakfast. It’s going to be a big day.’

  Leaving the horses behind, Alek ran after Rowan. A fire had been built under a cliff that overhung like a giant's cradling palm. Over the flames a tin pot hung from a tripod of sticks. The fire licked the bottom, staining it with soot. Aria sat huddled by it in a ball of furs, she pulled them tight over herself, trying to hide from the day, but the sun continued to rise. Her hair was a bird's nest that sprouted over her face painting her as some kind of cave monster from bedtime stories. Behind her, Eddie and Jarrah were chopping red meat.

  ‘How did the hunt go this morning?’ Rowan asked.

  ‘Monkey again,’ Eddie said, ‘it was that or monster meat.’

  ‘Ape,’ Jarrah corrected, ‘it’s a great ape, not a monkey.’

  The Viking was shirtless and hacking at the meat in mean vicious strikes. When he separated larger chunks he passed them to Jarrah who more carefully diced it. This was done without any communication.

  ‘They are the same thing,’ Eddie insisted.

  ‘You’re wrong,’ Jarrah said calmly.

  Eddie liked to show off his body, Alek was coming to realize. It was honed and ornamented with tattoos. His blonde braid hung down his back and Alek thought it must take a long time to comb then re-tie it. Jarrah, by his side, was the opposite. Alek rarely saw more skin than what was around his eyes. He wore a cloak over his head and a face wrap that went from the bridge of his nose down to his neck, even his hands were covered. A dagger was sheathed on either side of his hips.

  ‘They taste the same,’ Eddie replied. His voice was almost emotionless, but there was something sharp underneath it.

  Rowan sat down with a smile on his face, ‘I don’t think they do. Ape has much more…’ Rowan pinched his fingers together, ‘gamey taste. It pairs really well with hot peppers.’ Rowan fished through his sachet and brought out two vials filled with red flakes. Alek could smell them from here, an itching sensation that tickles your nose and crept down your tongue.

  Aria made a retching sound. ‘I want pork belly.’ her stomach rumbled beneath her furs. ‘Or fish.’

  ‘Then go find some,’ Eddie said.

  Aria rolled her eyes.

  Alek slipped near the fire to warm his hands, choosing to sit opposite Eddie.

  ‘Today’s the day,’ Rowan said as he unfurled a coffee stained map, ‘if I am correct, which I am, we should arrive at T’karamatu around noon.’

  Eddie grunted in reply, his eyes were fixed on Alek through the flames. Alek had seen that look on someone's eyes before. It was the look his father gave a troublesome rooster that had pecked Charlotte's hand, drawing blood. It was the look that had decided who would go into the soup pot next.

  Dad had followed through, Alek remembered. He remembered how Big Red had tasted that night too.

  * * * *

  About an hour after they had set off that morning, the air filled with mist. It was always muggy and humid in the rainforest, but this was worse than being trapped in a cloud. Alek could only see the flicking tail of Ugly in front of him, everything else was lost in the blur. Jarrah told him it wasn’t mist, but steam bubbling from a great ravine nearby. Alek found that hard to believe; the ravine would have to be a kettle the size of the Grand Canyon.

  They walked through the mist for hours. It had slowed them even more than before and Alek found himself walking with his hand outstretched, otherwise he would bang his head on gnarled branches. His clothes stuck to his skin and breathing became difficult. I’m going to drown on land.

  Alek was struggling to lead Scruff over some jagged rocks - with Aria snoring on Scruff’s back - when Rowan called out.

  ‘Holy! Get a load of this.’

  Alek stumbled through the mist, excited to see anything new after hours of monotony, but what he saw was barely anything at all. It was a wall. A plain looking wall made of black bricks. It wasn’t even the cool kind like Alek had seen pictures of in books about brave explorers. Those gray crumbling pyramids in South America. This wall seemed perfectly stable, brand new. At least what Alek could make out. The rainforest pressed right up against it and the mist was as thick as ever, looking up the wall stretched forever towards the sky until it disappeared into the leaves.

  Broken Fang - excluding Aria who was still asleep, leaning on Scruff’s neck - were in awe. Jarrah was silent, which wasn’t unusual, but his eyes were wide with disbelief. Rowan was slack jawed. Eddie touched the wall as if to confirm it was really there. Alek was confused.

  It’s just a wall. Sure an odd place for a wall, but weren’t we searching for a dungeon?

  ‘This looks just like…’ Rowan began before trailing off into the silent ambiance of the forest.

  ‘Yeah.’ Jarrah said, confirming some connection Alek was unaware of.

  ‘There will be time to ogle later,’ Eddie said, ‘We need to keep moving.’

  Eddie walked to Scruff, each footstep heavy and squelching in the damp forest mush. He grabbed Aria’s shoulder and shook her back and forth like a child with his toys. ‘Time to move.’

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Aria screamed a little, then when she saw Eddie’s hand on her shoulder she had the same expression mother wore when father returned home late from the town; a vicious snarl. ‘No good morning? No please wake up?’

  ‘You’re on duty, an adult, and you asked to join this mission. Act like it.’

  Aria grabbed her staff. ‘I’ll show you an act.’

  Rowan ran between the two, arms outstretched. ‘Hey, hey, none of that.’

  ‘Move Ro, I’m gonna smack his brains out, or try to, my guess is that there is not even a pink pea inside that egg shell.’

  ‘Try me,’ Eddie said, ‘You’ll snap your fancy stick.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Aria said, ‘I guess your skull is too thick after all.’

  She spun her staff and pointed the tip towards Eddie. On the end of the staff was a large blue crystal; it looked like a sapphire, but Alek could not believe a gem that large would be strapped to what seemed to be a tree branch. The stone began to glow.

  Alek backed up and saw Jarrah leaning against the wall.

  ‘Should you do something?’ Alek asked him.

  Jarrah shrugged. ‘They will work it out.’

  An explosion that shook the jungle. Alek bent over, hands over his ears.

  ‘Is that all you got?’ Eddie called out. The smoke cleared and his skin was red, but he was otherwise fine.

  ‘Don't provoke-’ Rowan started.

  Aria’s staff lit up with blue light and another explosion shot forward. It crashed against Eddie, and Alek thought it would surely kill him, it should have killed any normal human, but again when it cleared, he was unscathed.

  Rowan got caught in the blast and was hunched over coughing.

  ‘Got it out of your system?’ Eddie asked, suddenly sunburnt.

  Aria’s spear lit up a third time and Alek braced for another explosion, but then she pulled away with a sigh. She spat, the phlegm landed at Eddie’s feet.

  ‘Good,’ he said, ‘that’s enough wasting of lifespan for one day. Are you ready to help?’

  Jarrah sighed, but Alek could see a smile forming under his mask.

  ‘Are they always like this?’ Alek asked him in a whisper.

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about it.’ He put his hand on Alek’s head, ruffling his hair.

  Aria pulled on Scruff’s reins and led him to the wall. She tapped on the black bricks with her knuckles. ‘Well we won't be going through it,’ she said, and then raising her staff high, ‘you should all gather around.’

  Broken Fang, all grievances suddenly forgotten, pushed together. Alek did not know what was going on, but followed as well. When the horses were pulled close and everyone’s skin was pushing against everyone else’s, Aria’s staff came alight.

  She raised it into the air, streams of blue light cut through the fog. The sapphire grew so bright Alek had to look away, then he heard her slam it into the forest floor with a wet thud. She held it there as the ground trembled beneath them. The horses began to nicker. Benny Two’s hooves pranced nervously in place and Alek put his hand gently over his furry nose. Then Alek’s stomach tipped over and they lurched off the ground. Or that wasn’t quite right, the ground itself rose. A platform of dirt and stone beneath them rapidly ascended, pushing them into the sky. On the left was a constant stream of falling black bricks, on the right the jungle brushed their shoulders as it shrunk. A bushel smashed into Rowan’s head and he let out a loud curse, but it had already disappeared beneath them. The platform accelerated and Alek felt like he was both flying and being crushed at the same time. The slim sliver of sky that skirted between the canopy grew, widening with each second until the bright blue smashed through their green ceiling. Alek and the rest of Broken Fang went airborne for a moment when the platform came to a halt. Fresh air washed over them and the world was suddenly larger than it had ever been, even before they entered the rainforest. They could breathe, the mist being filtered into slim swirls through the canopy. Alek could finally see the sun after days trapped in the jungle.

  The platform of dirt and stone sat level with the top of the wall, some ten stories above, but the ocean of leaves, too dense to see through, made it feel like they weren’t high up at all. The wall was seamless and perfect all the way to the top, as if it had been built yesterday. The leaves had pressed right up against it, but no vines dared to grow on its surface and although the canopy came right up to its peak, not a single leaf had been blown onto the walkway at the top.

  Sitting in the air between broken Fang and the wall, Alek thought he saw something that wasn’t there. It was like someone had stretched out a thin curtain of water into a blanket that wrapped the air above the walls. It was nearly invisible, but Alek thought it would be hard to miss in the way it warped your vision the same way looking into a lake warped your vision of objects sitting at the bottom. Rowan, however, must not have seen it as he tried to walk from the platform onto the wall, his head making a smacking sound that repelled him into Eddie’s arms.

  ‘Fuck,’ he said putting a hand onto his forehead, ‘the second time today.’ He looked around, confusion on his face. ‘What was that?’

  Jarrah walked up to the wall, outstretching his hands like a blind man looking for a railing. His fingers touched it, that curtain, and a small ripple was sent along its surface. ‘It feels like a barrier.’

  Eddie pulled his battle-ax from his back and tapped the edge against the barrier, then put it back.

  ‘What’s a barrier doing all the way out here in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere?’ Rowan asked, ‘I mean, who is powering it?’ No one answered his question, but Rowan’s eyes widened as if he answered it himself.

  ‘What’s the strength?’ Aria asked Jarrah.

  Jarrah closed his eyes and slowly applied pressure to his finger against the barrier, after a second his entire hand slipped through. He pulled it back. ‘It feels about priest level. It’s difficult to be sure, it feels… different.’

  Alek was confused why they still couldn’t seem to see it. It would make sense if they missed it in passing, but all four of them still had to grope at the air to find it. ‘What is a barrier?’ he asked.

  Eddie looked at Alek with disdain, but Jarrah answered. ‘It’s a film of lifespan. Think of it like a coating, but for a large area instead of a body. The easiest way to move through a barrier is to use an equal or greater coating.’

  Alek nodded. He did not know what a coating was either, but it was a start.

  ‘Jarrah and I won’t have trouble going through,’ Eddie said, ‘but you two might struggle-’

  ‘I will be fine,’ Aria said, ‘I may be a mage, but don’t think I can't at least use a priest level coating.’

  ‘Right, okay,’ Eddie said, ‘but the problem remains on how we will get Rowan and the horses through.’

  ‘And Alek,’ Jarrah said, ‘he can’t use coating either.’

  ‘Yeah, the kid too.’ Eddie pinched his brow and sighed. ‘Another problem.’

  ‘It will be fine,’ Aria said, ‘you just need to apply the coating on them like they are a weapon.’

  Eddie looked doubtful, but he kept it to himself. Jarrah put his hand back onto the barrier and pushed his hand through. This time Alek was able to see a similar warping of air tight around Jarrah’s body, then he stepped through completely onto the other side. They are different colors, Alek noticed. Jarrah’s is white like a cloud, but the barrier is faintly golden. Aria followed next, she struggled a bit, but was able to squeeze through. For Rowan, Eddie placed a hand on his shoulder and that curtain of air, that barrier, that coating covered Rowan from head to toe. Eddie kept his hand on Rowan for his entire journey through the barrier and when he let go on the other side, the coating disappeared from the doctor. Eddie and Jarrah repeated this for each of the horses and soon only Alek was left on the other side.

  ‘Ready?’ Jarrah asked him.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘It might feel a bit strange,’ he said and held Alek’s arm. Alek did not see a coating form over his body like everyone else's. Jarrah frowned.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Aria asked.

  ‘I can’t feel it passing onto him.’

  At this point Alek was becoming certain the others couldn’t see the barriers or coating the way he could. They could feel it, but not see it. Alek was also becoming certain of something else. He felt like he could walk through that barrier, coating or no coating. But they will find that strange, even the horses need a coating. Eddie was watching Alek with something nasty in his eyes, like he was plotting something and Alek did not want to give him any more reasons to dislike him. Apparently the way Alek died was strange enough, not that he had any control over that.

  ‘I think I feel your coating on me,’ Alek said, lying.

  ‘I’m not…’ Jarrah trailed off.

  ‘Hurry up already you two,’ Aria called out.

  ‘Can we try walking through?’ Alek asked.

  Jarrah hesitated, but then shrugged.

  Jarrah stepped through first and when Alek’s arm reached the barrier Jarrah looked like he was expecting resistance and he would have to pull Alek through, but Alek followed him without the slightest trouble.

  ‘Let’s keep moving,’ Aria said looking at the sky, ‘I’d say we only have a couple of hours left before the sun sets, and I hate setting up camp in the dark.’

  Jarrah made a nonverbal agreement, but his eyes narrowed in confusion, wrongness.

  At least it is him concerned and not Eddie.

  Looking inside the walls, there lay an entire city. Abandoned and demolished, not a single building in site. But the roads were there and the places where homes, shops, and communities must have been, remained; there were all the signs, vacant plots and orderly piles of rubble. It was like everyone had vanished, and the building had slowly decade into dust, a century of wind and rain.

  But if that is true, then why is the wall still here? Why is it untouched?

  Not a single plant grew inside the walls besides low grass, despite plenty of open ground. Not a single animal rummaged through the rubble. It looked like Broken Fang would be the city's first visitors in centuries at least.

  Aria raised another pillar of stone on the other side of the wall and after they stepped onto it she lowered them down inside. They walked along the roads in silence, Eddie kept a constant eye on Alek. The entire group was fighting back exhaustion, you could see it in the bags under their eyes and the way that Aria had already fallen asleep on horseback.

  Their heading was simple and required no map, to the center of the city. They followed the dusty, black road. Finally, when the sun was cresting the top of the ageless walls on the horizon, they came across it. The only building that remained inside the city, the dungeon of T’karamatu.

  No one said anything, but a silent uneasiness set over Broken Fang. They seemed even more shocked than when they came across the wall. This other building, like the wall, looked brand new, yet ancient at the same time. He didn’t know what exactly disturbed them, but to him it looked like a catholic cathedral.