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Chapter Twenty-Nine
“What am I doing?”
The day wore on and night came with the warm, soothing breeze of the zephyrs from the west. Alex struggled to drift off to sleep on his ragged, dirty mattress covered by a single thin sheet. The Citadel had gone quiet and all Alex could hear was the soft chirping of crickets in the distance. This was the most peace he had felt in the past thirty hours, yet it seemed like an eternity.
He still had no idea what sort of fate lay in store for him here, but bigger questions remained on his mind. Though he couldn’t sleep, Alex closed his eyes and allowed his mind to wander. He did not know what to think of these people. No one had given him an actual explanation of their seemingly dire situation, but Alex could see just from looking around how devastating an effect it was having on them. He remembered his first encounter
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Alex backed up a step and turned around. He let out a loud gasp of panic and he realized now that there was no chance any of their enemies could ever breach the Citadel’s wall here. Just in front of him, the ground suddenly dropped away into a steep cliffside. The cliff dropped so far down that Alex could not see the bottom in the middle of the night. One more step back and he would have fallen right down into the abyss below. The sudden sight scared him so much that could feel his balance faltering.A hand quickly pressed on his chest and pushed him back against the wall. Alex caught his breath and saw Rowan just beside him, holding him back. He looked over at her with wide eyes of shock as he breathed heavily.Rowan stared back at him. “Watch your step,” she said calmly.Alex was baffled by her s
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“Holy God…” he muttered, his mouth hanging open. The sight he saw before him looked like something that could only come from some sort of fictional story. Previously, the two of them had hiked down into a low trough between the mountains. At this point, just past the large cluster of brushes, the trough had suddenly opened up into a natural basin of some sort. Alex had never seen anything like it before. The large opening at the tree canopy level allowed the light of the moon and the stars to pour into the area. The effect this change of light had on Alex's eyes made his surroundings appear much brighter, allowing him to examine this basin with clarity.Two small, river-like tributaries flowed from the walls of the encircling hills like a spring; one poured forth from Alex’s left, the other at the side of the basin opposite from where he stood, and the two of them flowed downward a
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As he entered, the light of the nighttime sky and the unnatural reflections of the Oasis’ environment quickly evaporated from Alex’s peripheral vision. He could barely see his hand in front of his own face. Looking up, the immense clusters of mountain laurel were so cluttered that they formed a natural roof over the small, rocky passageway, completely blocking out the light. Alex was growing uncomfortable as he stared as hard as he could into the darkness, trying to find his guide.He followed the narrow path for over a minute and soon the rock had expanded away from him. He realized that he was now outside of the Oasis, but the trees and plant life around him were so dense that his sight was still reduced to nearly nothing. And worst of all, Rowan was nowhere to be seen.“Rowan?” Alex quietly called out as anxiety began to grip him. The
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When Alex opened his eyes, he realized that he was exactly where he had been that night; lying on his patched mattress in his oversized tent. The events and images of that night were the first things to begin flashing through his waking mind. Though he woke in the same place in which he had fallen asleep just the evening before, it felt like he had been away from here for an eternity.What happened last night, Alex asked himself. He could recall Rowan waking him and sneaking him outside the Citadel walls. As soon as she had taken him off of the high plateau, Alex felt as though he was walking into yet another world, seemingly separate from the real world around him.Right now it all felt like an elaborate dream. Maybe it was a dream, he thought. Alex hazily remembered everything Rowan had led him into last night; from his astonishing close call on the cli
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As they had been walking, he did not realize that Matheus had been leading him down toward the large, corral-like area where he had seen Malachai honing his impressive swordsmanship the day before. At his time of day, there was no one training there, and it was clear that Matheus was interested in observing Alex’s own fighting skills, but Alex knew that he was not a fighter.Matheus led him within the fencing of the training corral. “Matheus,” Alex said. “I’m really not comfortable with this.”“Oh yeah?” Matheus responded casually as he walked over to a small rack against one of the fenced boundaries and picked up a carved, wooden object shaped as a sword. “That’s what I said once.” He threw the training sword over to Alex. He made a quick attempt to catch it but dropped it clumsily. Matheus snic
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At the end of the day, once the sun had set and Alex was quite exhausted again, Matheus led him to another fire pit. This particular site was much smaller and sat near the edge of the lake. Rowan still accompanied them as she had all day. The dusk sky glowed a faint red shade as the sun was nearly gone and stars began to appear.Matheus knelt by the pit and stacked a small pile of wood and twigs to make a fire. He then took a small chunk of flint from his pocket and struck it against a stone he had picked up to spark a flame into the pit. By the time the fire was lit and roaring, the sky was dark with the night. Matheus sat down across the fire from Alex, with Rowan just beside him. The air was growing cooler at a rapid rate, and Alex moved in close to the fire to keep warm.He was growing rather tired as he gazed into the flames. For once, after the day
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Miles away, deep within the Dark Zone, the mountains had grown cold with the changing of the seasons. A layer of snow had begun to make its way beneath the treelines.Alex Lee was hiking up the wooded hillsides. Seven months had passed since his accidental arrival in the Dark Zone, and he had come such a long way. He had long since repressed his desire to leave these territories. So many things happened to him over the course of the most extraordinary summer of his life. After his fireside night with Matheus and Rowan, Alex willfully complied with Delmar’s refusal to let him go and spent the next few days working on his basic swordsmanship. Though he never managed to hold his own in a friendly duel against Matheus, he certainly improved well enough to earn his respect.His first few weeks among the Ravennites in the Citadel were rough. Many of the people
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