Name Pronunciations:
Cateline (KATE-UH-LINE)
Glaceaoa (GLUSS-AYY-OH-UH)
Bavernian (BUH-VERR-NEE-INN)
Teleportal (TELL-UH-PORT-UHL)

Willow ended up making trees for us to sleep in, albeit my protests that it would be too risky since the trunks were so big.

Thankfully by morning, we were still alive and breathing, and every part of us was still intact. I rolled my way out of the trunk I was in and tapped on the bark of hers.

"What?" She groaned, yawning noisily.

"It's time to go," I said. "Root Girl."

She laughed at the name, then said dead seriously, "Don't call me that."

She pulled herself from out of the tree and limply wove her hands, so that the pair of trunks vanished. It was just us, my bag, and Squeak in the grass now.

She yawned loudly again, and rubbed her eyes. Then she gave me the death stare and made her way toward the trail where she began trotting annoyedly. It was a little intimidating compared to her jolly skips and hops from yesterday.

I followed closely behind, but not before looking back and admiring the spot where the trunks had been. Willow really had magic... I didn't know why I was so stunned about this, but I was.

"Willow," I piped up. "Do you know where this trail leads to?"

"Of course," she said.

"Well, where?"

She didn't say anything more, but ignored the question and continued to trot on the yellow line like I wasn't even behind her. Wow, I let her come along and she couldn't even answer a simple a question.

"Willow," I said. "If you don't tell me, I'm taking you back."

"Stop being paltry," she joked, then frowned and turned to me. "All the way back?"

I nodded. She groaned, then tapped her chin thoughtfully.

Then she turned back around and continued walking. So she was giving me the silent treatment again. Real nice.

I ran up to join where she was on the trail, but she just kept walking faster. Why was she being like this? Had something happened in Treeville that I didn't know about?

"Are you okay?" I questioned carefully, as though not to push her buttons any further than I had already pushed them. "You seem a little on edge."

She laughed dryly at this. "On edge? You're the one being pushy and provoking."

I scoffed. "Whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm the one who's being provoking? You won't even answer a simple question, even though I'm letting you tag along. You hardly deserve to come anyway, because you're being really stingy."

Now she scoffed this time. "If I don't want to answer stupid questions, I don't have to. You're not forcing me to. Nobody is."

She started to run, performing a little jog just so she could get away from me. She was about twenty feet from me now. Squeak whimpered from behind me. Poor buddy. He must have been so hungry. We had to be close to where we were headed, or at least somewhat near an inn or something along the lines of that.

I looked down, my feet trotting on the yellow dirt as we continued down the line. How long had it been? It had to at least be over an hour now. Why was this place so far away? Where would it even be? Where would it lead to? How would it help me push onward with my quest?

These questions popped in and out of my mind repeatedly that it just became habitual for at least one of those queries to come to mind, craving to be answered. My curiosity slowly fed away at my brain and I'd almost forgotten where I was and what I was doing.

I looked up from the yellow on the ground to see that Emma was no longer there. Just the long, endlessly-stretching trail, but no white-blouse wearing, dark brown-jeans rocking, overly cocky and confident root girl. It was just the meandering trail.

My heart stopped. Where was Willow?! She seriously couldn't have gotten far, or at least that far to the point that I could no longer see her, right? Gods, I had to find her. I started running, ignoring the very somber whimpers and whines of Squeak.

Just a little longer, buddy, I thought.

I kept sprinting until my legs could no longer move. I fell to the floor and panted heavily, harsh breaths exiting my mouth as I took off my bag and fell back on the dirt.

Where was she?! She seriously couldn't have gone that for off, could she?

•••

It was very cloudy out, and the big puffy blankets in the sky, blocking view of the sun, seemed to be taunting me and the fact that I'd lost Willow. This was the precise reason I did not want her to come.

Then I saw it; I caught sight of a town, a little village with pyramids and sand and all kinds of cacti. It was far away from me and I was exhausted, but I was so desperate for rest, for food, for water—for anything—that I started to run again.

Before I knew it, I was more near the village than I'd been before. It was only a matter of seconds, and then...

I would...

Be there...

So close...

Suddenly, everything in and of the ground around me started to rumble. The earth shook so that the heavens did too, and I fell to the floor with a hard thud. Squeak crawled out of my bag and into my arms, visibly afraid of the loud noises and sudden vibration.

I held him close and waited for all the commotion to pass. Except it didn't. Unlike the airquakes with Vex, the rumbling and the clangor didn't come to an end, but continued for what felt like ages.

Then, out of nowhere, the ground before me started to rise... All around me. Humongous rocks popped out from the earth, one covered in grass, the other in golden dirt, the last in dull-gray sand.

The first rock, the grass-coated one, only got bigger and bigger, and soon enough the others followed its lead.

A bunch of villagers from the town began to circle around me and the growing rocks, some shaking with fear, others with wide eyes and gasping in awe, a few shocked, and a few unaltered by such.

The ground rose some more until a full-fledged green, booger-y giant was looking down upon me, mossy eyes and all. It opens its mouth and says in a rash and thunderous voice,

"Who goes there?"

Just the loud vibration of their voice is enough to knock me to the ground. I hit my bottom and scramble to get up. I can barely move my hands, let alone my whole body. I rise with knees that feel injected with slime.

The second giant is up before I can even register the entirety of the first, or its question. The dirt-caked giant. It seems larger than the first, and much more frightening than it, too. Soot and grime falls of the backs and fronts of this large chunk of dirt, and some of it hits my face, nearly sending me toppling over.

I turn back to the first giant, the green, moss-covered one. He seems more compliant to stomp in my face than repeat his question, so I say,

"Dylan Castro."

Now all of the surrounding villagers gasp, some cupping their mouths, others squealing, many muttering to the person closest to them.

Even the giants seemed to be perplexed by this, but they'd hardly shown it before the dirt-piled one asked his question, the corners of his mouth full of chocks of dirt. His voice was even more tumultuous than the one of that before him,

"Where are you from?"

I gulp, then say, "I am from..."

I pause. I don't know what to say: Shlaido, the Hark Kingdom, or Treeville? It doesn't change anything much, but I end up saying,

"The Village of the Trees."

Just because it's the most recent place I've been to, I have more knowledge of it than the ones listed prior to it. I know of the Golden Tree, the gigantic ambush, and even the imageries of the golden houses and the wooden cabin.

Some of the villagers gazed from the sight of the giants and me to the trail, where yellow dirt created a meandering path that lead all the way back to Treeville. None of it really mattered to me, though, since I just wanted to know where Willow was.

The sandy giant on the right asked the third (and hopefully final) question,

"What are you doing here?"

If this were a question by a mere Regular or even a Magick, I would just shrug or say, "I don't know." But I didn't know what to say to these gigantic rocks in front of me, one green, one gold, one light-yellow. They were much to menacing to come up with something quick and clever on the spot.

As I scrambled for words, a voice came from behind the giants, a faint and gravelly voice,

"Tri-Giants, stand down."

The giants looked back, clearly seeing a person of high authority because they blinked, then stepped away. No giant would take such an order unless this person was the mayor of this town.

"Come closer," said the voice to me. Even with the shadows of the giants surrounding us, it was hard to recognize their face.

I stepped forward and something pulled me toward it.

An old woman was offering me a gingery smile. She was wearing a long gray robe that said Order of Crossing on the front and back of it. She was tall, even taller than me, and it was a little humiliating that I had to look up at this woman. But it didn't matter much, since nobody seemed to care about height, but the fact that the Chosen One was at the entrance of their village. She had a long silvery-gray beard that matched with her lustrous-gray eyes. Her face was long, and scarred—maybe not as much as Con, but it looked damaged, maybe by battles or something else, something that ran much more deep than even the blemishes on her pale face.

"Hello," the woman held out her hand, which I shook, but had to hold back the urge to immediately pull away, because it was ice cold. "I'm Cateline."

"I'm Dylan," I said.

"Oh, I know who you are, Chosen One," she said firmly, which for some reason made me feel oddly guilty. She said it like being myself was a crime. Maybe she was one of the people that thought I was going to bring the world to ruins, who knew. "And welcome..."

She paused, then turned around gestured to the village, which I realized was not a village, but a station of some kind. When you bought horses or needed to ride them to someplace far, you would usually have to come all the way to one of these places where they kept the most durable ones, at a crossing.

Order of Crossing, I thought. This woman, Cateline, is the owner of this crossing.

One thing I noticed was that there was no horses. I'd assumed that they were being kept somewhere safer, in case of onslaught or thievery. Most crossings did that.

"...to the Crossing."

The Crossing? Did this perhaps mean that this particular crossroad was at the center of the world? It wasn't a totally wild thought...

"So what?" I said. "Is this a crossing that's in the middle of the Earthlands?"

"Heavens no," Cateline laughed. "This is called the Crossing because that's what it is. Instead of the common horse transportation, we use something different. Teleportation. It's much quicker and easier, and it has become rather popular with Magicks overtime, so instead of beholding the name of closest village, we call it the Crossing. It's much more important than any old horsey interchange."

I nodded at this. Then Cateline took me by one of her frozen hands again, which I seriously loathed, and led me to the entrance of the Crossing. I took the opportunity to peer in so I could pull away from her hands. When I did, and when I looked into the village, a sudden warmth crossed over me. Who was this woman anyway, Glaceaoa?

"This used to be a Bavernian ghost town before me and my pack found it and built up a place that makes traveling easier for magical and even royal people," Cateline explained, then gestured at three little ovals with swirls and a mixture of colors, like rainbow doors, on the dirt grounds. "Those are our Teleportals."

"And these can take you anywhere you want?" I asked. "Like... even the Crooked Realm?"

She gave me a little nod then said, "Most people who go there never come back. And most people is only three people. You'd be the fourth maniac ever to want to go there." She gave a dry laugh at her even drier joke.

I wasn't laughing, though. "I didn't necessarily have a choice," I intervened. "It's part of my quest as the Chosen One."

"Ah," said Cateline. "Well, I s'pose you shall be on your way then. Unless you'd like to stay a night? Either is fine with me, 'cause I'm getting gold either way!" She did a little victor's dance that I tried hard not to walk away from out of embarrassment.

The name Cateline and the way I described Cateline would make one think she was this former warrior turned hard-working originator of the Crossing. She was anything but that. She was this weird old lady that did uncanny dances in the middle of her structure and had giants as gatekeepers. If that wasn't even a little odd, I had no idea what could be.

Squeak whimpered from behind me. I lowered my bag and let him out to run around. Many of the residents at the Crossing were all scrambling to avoid him hitting their shins. I had to hold back laughter as I gave my response to Cateline, at last.

"I'll stay. One night, and one night only," I told her. "But that's only if you give us free food. And a free bedchamber. Then you can have all the gold you desire by the end of it."

The leader of the Crossing look startled by this statement. She stopped doing her weird jig to face me again and mumbled, "Fine. A day. But only the free bedchamber. If you want food, whether that be leaving food or food along with your stay, you're going to have to fork over some money, Chosen One."

I sighed. "Sure."

Then I grabbed Squeak and walked away to go do my part in the Crossinn. Ha. Clever name. Two Magicks waved their hands and suddenly the wood doors to the hostelry opened wide. I trotted down the threshold, Squeak in my hands, and the first thing I saw was the desk where I was supposed I was meant to sign in.

Then there was the crisp smell coming from the bakery. I tried not to let my eyes drift from the desk to the bread, or I might just faint out of hunger and craver. I mouth drooled before I could stop it from doing so.

There was also a big sign that read The Crossinn, a pair of stairs that clearly led to the rooms, and a little tree made of gold, clearly supplied from the one back at Treeville.

The man didn't even look at me when I came to the desk.

"I am Dylan—"

"I know who you are," he said. "Next!"

I walked away from the rude receptionist and made my way up one of the pairs of stairs and to a bedchamber, where I plopped on the soft bed and sighed. Squeak, still in my hands, made a little noise that signifying he was past hungry: he was ravenous.

I placed him next to me on the covers and fell on my back. I hit the pillows with a soft thud. It felt like it'd been years since I'd last slept or eaten anything. What was even crazier was that by morning, I would be on my way to the Crooked Realm. Not that I hadn't been all this time, but I'd simply just... teleport there. After all this trouble of walking and camping, I would just go through a portal and be on my way.

Squeak nibbled on my ankles. Suddenly, there was a knock at the door, which alarmed the little cub who fell off the bed and rolled under it. I took all the time in the world to make my way to it. When I did, I turned the knob limply and opened it up.

The person that was standing in front of me now nearly sent me toppling over...

...because it was Princess Emma.