Gin shook her head. “Omerith, with all respect, we cannot keep the orb safely any longer. Your mother has already sent an emissary after us to take the orb, and I fear that emissary has magic as well. We came here because we were in danger out there -” Gin stopped talking for a moment and looked around.
“What is it, Gin?” Sath followed her gaze.
“She’s here—well, something is here—someone is here.” Gin turned around in a circle with her eyes closed, concentrating, tracking—and then opened them as she rubbed the back of her neck with her free hand. “I can’t be more exact than that, but someone is close by, and I believe it is the dark elf.”
“Impossible.” Omerith snorted at the idea, and Gin and Sath had to each jump clear of the flames that shot from his ruby nose. “Apologies. But that simply is not possible. After the Forest War, Ikedrians were forbidden from La’al Drygyr—should they make it so far around to our side of the world, and they are killed on sight here. Ikedrians are the mortal enemies of my kind. None would make it this far into my citadel.” He walked over to one of the giant windows to look out, and Gin marveled at the fearsome grace with which such an enormous creature could move. “I do sense that Mother has been in contact with an Ikedrian, but she hides that part of her mind from me, and I do not wish to probe further. This plan of the All-Mother’s will not work—we cannot take my mother’s magic so easily. Now, I know not how you have arrived on our side of the world, but I will make sure of your safe passage back home.”
“Again, with all respect, how can you do that? Make sure of our safe passage, I mean—our histories are full of the names of explorers that sought the dark side of the world and never returned.” Sath glanced over at Gin, who was glaring at him to stop talking. “I assume that there are traps all around your continent, set by the Mother Dragon that keeps those adventurers stuck here for eternity?”
“No. Well, yes, but no. The traps are not all set by my Mother. I set some of them, in the hopes that they would frighten you into staying on your side of the world. But Mother heard tell of them, and she enchanted them so that time would run differently there—if someone happened to escape, they would return home with no one left to tell.” Gin looked at Sath in alarm. The warrior they met at the cabin was one of those prisoners. “Easy, Nature Walker, I saw that you fell into one of the traps, and I made sure that the portal remained open until you could escape.”
“So, no extra time passed at home while we were there?”
“No. But it did alert Mother to your presence, and once she found out that it was you—well, she took matters into her own hands, so to speak.” Omerith smiled sadly at them. “You did very well escaping from her traps, though, even without my help.”
“What do you mean?” Sath stepped protectively in front of Gin, who shoved him to the side as she stared at Omerith.
“J’yr Va’al. The prison that you escaped, and the inn where you two were attacked. The entire peninsula is a time trap—one of her first, an experiment of sorts. Everyone that was originally sent there is gone by now, that’s why you found it sparsely populated. Time actually moves faster there, so while you aged, the world outside of it did not.” Omerith looked from Gin to Sath and smiled. “It is ancient magic, my Guardians. Do not trouble yourselves to work it out.”
Gin smiled sadly. “That is why the food we took from the dwarf disintegrated before our eyes. But the inn? Josiah?”
“Ah, another trap, one that Mother is especially proud of, I’m afraid. All the residents there are in a loop of sorts. They can never leave.”
“What if they. . .die?” Gin was almost afraid to ask but was more horrified when Omerith shook his head.
“They never really die. Those that live there are Mother’s dragonkind; she would not allow that to happen. It is the same day for them, over and over. Those were some of the first adventurers to make it to our continent. They have been repeating the same day for more than a century now. She chose the one male and his compatriots for a specific purpose because she knew that you would recognize him. Why do you frown, Nature Walker? Do you pity him?”
“Yes, Nature Walker, Gin, why do you frown?” Gin met Sath’s gaze and felt his memory of the fight with Josiah in the inn. She scowled.
“I do pity him and all of those trapped there. All they and their ancestors were doing was learning about their world, searching out new land and knowledge, and they suffer a terrible fate. It is not fair.”
Omerith smiled sadly. “It is not fair, you are right—but to let them return with tales of the civilization that we have created here—my sweet Ginolwenye of the Trees, I simply cannot allow that. Surely you understand. They do not know of their fate, does that make it any easier?”
“You are allowing us to return.”
“You two are Guardians. I cannot harm you. Remember? The drake at the Temple to the Mother should have told
