Rachel had not felt so alive in months.

  As she hiked, she murmured to the quickly vanishing dew, then to the rocks at her feet, calling them to gather, to dance, to shoot into her hand so that she could then throw them sidearm into the river. Creeks ran copiously into the river at irregular intervals, most too wide to jump across, but Rachel found great joy in arranging stepping stones and holding them in place so that she and Matt could cross safely. She had thought, more than once, to drop the last stone under Matt’s foot to send him stumbling into the creek, but always thought better of it.

  “How far is, um…” Matt piped up after a few hours.

  Rachel snubbed her nose. “Already?”

  Matt skipped to catch up. “Okay. Do you have a better idea of where we are?”

  Rachel smiled, fighting the urge to lie. “We’re on the right track. We won’t get there fast, not by your standards, but we’ll get there.”

  “What do you mean, my standards?”

  Rachel shrugged. “We don’t exactly have access to a car. Gone are your days of crossing the country in two days.”

  “So it could take a couple weeks to find Jason,” Matt inferred. Rachel almost laughed.

  “That would suggest a very optimistic timeframe,” Rachel sighed, wishing for both of their sakes that they could be that lucky. “It’ll take us a week just to reach Trensicourt.”

  “Dear God,” Matt complained.

  Rachel could understand the sentiment. That was a long time to be trapped with someone she could hardly stand. Still, though, the comment irked her.

  “Get used to it,” she snapped. “Not much you can do about it now.”

  “I could go back to the tree and crawl back out of the hippo,” Matt countered.

  Rachel took a deep breath, fighting off a scathing retort. She stopped and knelt next to a bush bright with red-orange berries, wishing not for the first time that she had packed a few smaller bags in which to carry food. She busied herself in gathering the berries and piling them into the little water bottle pouch on the left side of her bag.

  “You’d just find a regular tree,” Rachel sighed, trying to diffuse the tension between them. “The only reliable gateway I know is over a month from here.”

  If we’re even in the right time, Rachel said to herself. She had kept the truth about the time continuum from Matt for long enough that she hardly believed it herself, but she knew in the back of her mind that she could be decades off. Centuries, even.

  She had known how slim the chances of seeing Jason again might be. But if Matt found out, and they got unlucky…

  How could she live with herself if she had stolen Matt from all he knew just to chase a dream that was doomed to fail?

  “Okay,” Matt breathed. Rachel offered him a small handful of the little berries, and he took them cautiously.

  “Eat up,” Rachel encouraged. “Best energy boost you’ll ever get.”

  Matt stared at the berries incredulously. “Caffeine’s never really worked for me.”

  “Who said they were caffeinated?” Rachel popped a few berries in her mouth and smiled, the familiar taste anchoring her even more firmly back in Lyrian. “Trust me. You’ll need them these first few days. Gotta earn your walking legs.”

  Carefully, Matt tipped his palm over his mouth. He bit down and chewed, then looked down at Rachel and smiled.

  “They’re good,” he approved. “Nice and light.”

  Rachel smiled back. “Give it a couple minutes. Let’s get moving.”

  They set off once again, Rachel leading the way. The hills that had been giving birth to the Telkron’s numerous tributaries began to flatten out as the day went on, and Rachel caught her first whiff of distant sea air on a light afternoon breeze. While the conversation remained more or less dry and uninteresting, the berries kept her legs churning until the sun dipped below the horizon behind them.

  “I’ve got a serious case of jet lag,” Matt grumbled, taking a seat on a bed of moss under a thick, sturdy tree. “Someone should have thought of synchronizing this place to Earth time.”

  Rachel stared at Matt, dumbfounded. She supposed she could just let the gears spin themselves out in his head until he realized what a dunce he was, but after what felt like forever, he hadn’t said a word.

  “Glad you’re sleepy,” Rachel said, holding back a few friendship-destroying phrases. “What time did you normally sleep back home?”

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  “Eh. Around eleven-thirty, unless I worked closing.” Matt stretched his arms over his head, then reached into his bag for his water bottle.

  Rachel mirrored him, only now realizing that she was quite thirsty. “Not too bad. You’ll get used to it.”

  “Wish me luck,” Matt mumbled, then promptly rolled onto his side and fell asleep. Rachel snorted. The uncanny aptitude for sleep must have been something Matt and Jason shared.

  Rachel strolled down to the riverbank as the last dregs of fire stole themselves from the sky. She sat on a small boulder overlooking the water, and without speaking a word, gathered a fist-sized ball of it into the air in front of her. It hung there, like a living lightbulb, slowly bulging and spinning as its momentum slowed.

  Rachel remembered an exercise she had learned from Maldor. She called heat to the water, bringing it to a simmer, then to a boil. Once the water boiled, it became strangely slippery, and drops began to leak from the bottom of the sphere, but Rachel managed to hold onto most of it. She started murmuring the words under her breath, finding that the added effort helped only marginally. She continued to call heat to the water, further increasing the difficulty of the exercise until the majority of the water had evaporated and she could no longer concentrate on the rest. The scalding water splashed against the shore in front of her, prompting her to quickly lift her feet in fear of the splatter.

  She wrinkled her nose. The last time she had tried that, she had managed to evaporate all the water without letting a single drop go to waste. Even though it hadn’t even been two months, she was already starting to feel the lack of practice. A dull ache had developed behind her eyelids, but compared to the horrors she had wrought upon herself with Edomic in the past, this was routine.

  Lost for anything else to do, she returned to the tree under which Matt was sleeping and stretched out on the other side, wrapping herself in her still-damp wool sweater and trying to find compelling reasons for her body to let her sleep. As much as she wished they would, Edomic suggestions did not function on the caster, so she had to battle her way down, Earth-style.

  Nothing worked until she imagined Farfalee.

  That was it! Farfalee was as close to eternal as Lyrian’s people could get. If she could find her way to the Seven Vales, Jason or no Jason, she could finally piece together where she was in this world.

  That was, of course, unless she found out on the way by less pleasant means.

  ? ? ?

  Two days later, after leaving the river to venture southeast, Rachel and Matt crested over a sparsely wooded hill to find a small farming village nestled in a diminutive valley between rolling pastures. A sizable keep formed the town’s centerpiece, though to Rachel’s surprise, it looked nothing like the Blind King’s rundown castle. It was a tad smaller and built of lighter stone, with one central tower ringed by rounded walls and occasional turrets.

  Rachel’s throat began to ache. She scanned her surroundings, one more time, just to make sure she hadn’t been going crazy. Just to make sure she hadn’t forgotten what Fortaim had looked like.

  The hills were the same, though the forested hill upon which she was standing had been a field of wheat when she had last visited. The air felt right. A small pond existed where there had been none, but it only served to reinforce the utter horror of her situation.

  She could not speak. She could hardly breathe through the suffocating fist clenching ever tighter in her throat. Matt stood serenely beside her, blissfully unaware.

  They would never see Jason again. Rachel would never meet Corinne, or Aram, or even Galloran again. This was it.

  Lyrian’s time had shifted, and by a huge margin. Fortaim was unrecognizable. They could have missed by centuries.

  “It’s beautiful,” Matt said, turning to Rachel.

  Rachel nodded, swallowing down an upwelling of tears. “Mm-hmm.”

  Matt frowned. “What’s wrong?”

  Rachel shook her head. “Nothing. Let’s go find some food.”

  Her voice felt choked, like a sponge had been lodged in her throat. Matt knew it too - he reached out to place a hand on Rachel’s shoulder, which she pretended to accept with less gratitude than she felt.

  “Rachel,” Matt breathed. “What’s going on?”

  His gaze, though shy, was somehow disarming. Instead of answering, though, Rachel simply sat down, brought her knees to her chest and melted into tears. Once they came, they came in earnest, shaking her core and forcing choked whimpers from her throat no matter how valiantly she tried to remain silent.

  She didn’t know what else to do. She couldn’t tell him. Not yet. She couldn’t break the already tenuous trust they had built. It would only destroy them both.

  Matt did not speak. He sat next to her and laid a tentative hand on the back of her neck, rubbing his thumb in little circles around her vertebrae. She felt the urge to wrench away from his touch, but did not move.

  “Rachel,” he whispered.

  Rachel shook her head. “Brings a lot back. Being back here.”

  Matt squeezed her neck comfortingly. “Did something happen?”

  “Something?” Rachel scoffed, grasping at disdain as a cover for her despair. “You have no idea.”

  Matt let his hand fall away, leaving Rachel’s neck feeling strangely cold. She almost wanted to ask him to put it back, but she steeled herself. This was not the time.

  “You keep saying that,” Matt sniffed. “One of these days you’ll have to tell me.”

  Not if I can help it, Rachel wanted to say, but stopped. That was probably a little more truth than their friendship could take right now.

  “Soon. But seriously, let’s get some food. Starvation waits for no one.”

  Matt sighed. “Fine. You have money?”

  Rachel’s eyes went wide. She hadn’t brought any drooma back to Earth, for the obvious reason that she wouldn’t be back. Of course, she regretted her decision now. Trekking through Lyrian without a single drooma in her pocket, no matter the era, was probably not a very wise move.

  “Looks like we’re foraging,” Rachel said, standing up and setting off towards the little town. “Unless you want to make some money in town. Get a lay of the land, maybe get an idea of where Jason might be.”

  The guilt of the lie hit her like a tiny jolt of electricity - enough to sting, but not enough to stop her in her tracks. She hated lying. She always had. But if it was in the best interest of their friendship, and for Matt’s already tenuous acceptance of this place, she would have to get used to it.

  “Let’s do it,” Matt said. “He had better be in this corner of the world.”

  “No kidding. Cross your fingers.” Rachel spun a three-sixty to see Matt following her orders, then set off at a skipping jog towards what used to be - or had not yet been - the Fortaim that she knew.