(CHAPTER FOUR: Elemental Wasteland)
NENGO 327年11月22日 7:45 AM - 39 Days Until Culmination
At sunrise the next morning, the party wakes up, has a quick breakfast, and immediately starts breaking camp and getting ready to start the new quest. They load the supplies and such onto the wagon they picked up in Garr in Episode 23, and prepared to leave.
During the course of the morning, Danika had to excuse herself a few times to vomit. She insisted that she was OK, and that she must have eaten something the day before that didn't agree with her. The party finds it strange that, even though everyone else had the same things to eat as her, no one else had an upset stomach; and makes a mental note of the unusualness of that.
The Grynak soldiers and civilians gave the party a brief ceremonial send-off, and the party left the encampment heading East toward the Badlands Valley.
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The party follows a wooded path along a river that THRAX believes will lead to Xanthur Lake. At a little past mid-day, the party comes upon a waterfall, and decides to take a break for lunch. The party also takes the opportunity to clean themselves up a bit in the waterfall, given that it's been a while since any of them have had a shower.
The party spends about an hour at the waterfall before continuing on down the trail. While they were stopped, Danika and Anri appeared to be deep in some kind of girl-talk conversation. None of the males in the party took the time to notice... probably because none of them would have cared for whatever the topic of conversation was. Even after the party continues down the trail, the two girls continued in their quiet conversation.
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After maybe two hours of hiking down the trail, the party notices how the hills and ridges next to the river are growing taller, as they are going more and more downhill into the valley. Everyone is on heightened alert, as the party is more vulnerable to ambush in these surroundings... however no one has yet to notice any unusual activity in the vicinity.
As they pass one of the taller ridges along a curve in the river, TRITHAL stops, and looks over his right shoulder to the top of the ridge. His eyes glow blue, as if he's sensed something. Danika stops next to TRITHAL.
Danika: "Tsutaru, what is it? Do you sense something?"
TRITHAL stares at the ridge for a few seconds, then responds, "No. It's nothing. Nevermind."
TRITHAL and Danika resume down the trail with the rest of the party.
Meanwhile, at the top of the ridge, two camouflaged Dralani scouts peer at the party through binoculars and take pictures of them, then scurry away.
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Another few hours later, the party finds a clearing near a pool in the river full of fish. The party decides to stop here for dinner. TRITHAL, THRAX and AXEM attempt to catch a few fish for their meal while the soldiers scout out the immediate area, and the girls work on building a fire and cooking rice to go with the fish, if the 3 guys manage to catch any.
A while later, AXEM returns to the fire with about 7 fish. As he was approaching the girls, he could hear Danika say, ".... but, whatever you do, please don't tell Tsutaru! He doesn't need to know about this right now."
AXEM: "Don't tell Tsutaru what?"
Danika, semi-startled from being over-heard by AXEM, says "None of your business, Axem. Is that all the fish you caught?"
AXEM: "For now it is. Trithal and Thrax are still catching some. This should be enough to start out with, though."
AXEM leaves the fish with the girls and returns to the river, and the girls start preparing the fish to be cooked.
Meanwhile, on a ridge overlooking the site, 5 female figures are looking down at the party thru binoculars. We zoom in to reveal 4 of them to be the estranged members of the Saibot clan, Palledoris, Alys, Aelle, and Rishna. The fifth appears to be a shorter lady in her mid- to late-20's clothed in black gothic clothing with short black hair, and dark, piercing eyes. The Saibot chicks zoom in on the faces of the group, to find some of them familiar.
Alys: "Well, sonofabitch! Look who it is?"
leader: "Who is that down there? Do you know them?"
Palledoris: "Those three down there fishing are Trithal, Axem and that fucking charlatan Thrax the Hell-Fire.
Aelle: "Those two by that campfire are our estranged sisters Danika and Anri. Those 4 other guys look like Grynak soldiers."
Palledoris: "I wonder what they're all doing way the fuck out here... and with Grynak soldiers no less?"
The leader takes a closer look at the figures below, but soon finds her gaze affixed on TRITHAL.
leader: "Who is that one in the blue by the river?"
Aelle: "That would be Trithal Tsutaru, a/k/a Trithal the Divine Wind, a/k/a Macha-Rei."
leader (stunned): "Did you say Macha-Rei?!"
Aelle: "Yes, Lady Nashira. That's right."
Rishna: "That's the fucker whose responsible for poisoning Danika's mind, making her doubt her beliefs and forsake the Forest Dragon."
The leader was frozen in stunned silence... which surprises the others, who have never seen her apprehensive or scared of anything.
Palledoris: "Lady Nashira, what's the matter?"
Nashira's gaze is still affixed on TRITHAL, who looks up at the ridge with his eyes glowing blue. The other 4 immediately duck and hide, but Nashira remains motionless with her gaze on TRITHAL. Palledoris and Aelle grab her and they exit the scene.
As they make their way back down from the ledge out of sight from our party, the 4 Saibots wonder what could possibly had the fearless Nashira of Darkness scared out of her wits.
Alys: "Lady Nashira, are you OK?"
Aelle: "What troubles you? You're never fearful or apprehensive! You definitely shouldn't be fearful of those losers down there."
Snapping out of her daze, Nashira responds "Never mind me. Since you seem to know those intruders so well, I'll leave it to you to deal with them."
Palledoris, Aelle, Alys and Rishna: "Yes, Lady Nashira."
Back at the river, the party enjoys their dinner of river fish and rice. After everyone has something to eat, they notice the hour growing late. They come to the consensus view that they're in too vulnerable of a location to camp out, so they decide to load back up and try to get at least as far as Xanthur Lake before nightfall. After everything was loaded back onto the wagon, everyone mounts their horse lizards and make haste down the trail towards the lake.
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