The Changing (19 page)

Seth and Sara, happy to finally have something to eat, bit into their own berries at the same time as they made it back to the trail. Eating was more difficult for Sara as she had to slide the large, juicy berry under the visor of her helm, lifting it slightly to take a bite, but even so both made sounds of appreciation as they bit into the sweet, ripened fruit. The large berries it turned out were quite delicious. The flavor was akin to something between a strawberry and the green sour apples favored in southern Valdadore. They were both sweet and tangy and Seth and Sara found the meal refreshing, quenching not only their hunger but their thirst as well.

It was a slow, trudging pace at which Seth and Sara navigated the jungle floor, avoiding obstacles and finding game trails to follow whenever possible. They realized early on, however, that the jungle would provide ample protection when the need arose for them to hunker down and hide from the sun. With that fear subsided, the trek was a leisurely one until, in the middle of conversation, having tuned out his vision of the gods to give Sara his full attention, Seth heard a crunch on the trail just ahead and froze in his tracks as Sara mimicked his response to the sound.

Ahead on the trail, barely a dozen yards away, a large beast stood partially obscured, camouflaging itself behind the foliage of a large bush-like plant. Though neither Seth nor Sara could make out its finer details, both could see its eyes gazing back at them menacingly. Neither of them moved, both remaining completely still to the point of holding their breath. Even so  however, it was immediately apparent that they had halted too late.

In a full charge the beast roared and trampled the bush it had previously hidden behind. Its massive bulk, propelling before it a great boney head where a giant horn sprouted from atop its muzzle and another atop its skull, was lowered to impale the humans. Diving to either side of the trail, Seth and Sara narrowly avoided yet another disaster. With her inhuman reflexes Sara rolled and leapt back to her feet, spinning to watch the monster thunder past before turning to charge again from the opposite direction. Seth was slower to regain his feet and as such the beast had chosen him as the target for his next charge. Again the beast roared with a great trumpeting sound before it charged, bearing down upon Seth. Seth, kneeling upon the ground, watched as vines and fallen limbs snapped beneath the bulk of the monster as it thundered towards him. It was no taller than a man by comparison but easily three times as wide with thick, gray skin like hardened leather, propelled by four massive legs that each ended in four blunt toes. Just as it seemed the beast was about to trample him Seth again dove, this time back towards the trail and nearer to Sara. As he stood up he watched as again the beast slowed to lessen its momentum before turning and trumpeting another challenge.

This time Seth was prepared. Reaching out with his power, Seth latched on to the life supporting the great beast. This life could be melded with a man to create a great warrior, Seth imagined, as he tore it away from the immense animal, watching it crumble to ash as parts of it wisped away on unseen currents of air. Seth reveled in the ecstasy the power rushing into him brought with it, though only for a moment, and locked the power away for later use. Turning to assure himself Sara was unharmed, he looked over the armored visage of the woman he loved, appearing now so much like the goddess he detested but reluctantly served. With a nod signaling her well-being, they again took to the trail to continue their trudge through the jungle.

Seth would have no more mistakes and as such, decided to repeat an experiment he had tried the very first day his powers were realized. Now his mind could encompass more than it could then. It could process more, and discern more details. Seth decided to test his new limitations. As he and Sara walked they continued to talk, though Seth viewed the world surrounding them with his vision of the gods instead of his hereditary vision. Becoming more and more accustomed to the auras around him, Seth, from time to time would close his eyes, for mere seconds at first, guiding his body solely on what he felt with his secondary vision. As he marked success time and again, easily able to avoid obstacles in his path by aura alone, he kept his eyes closed for increased periods from seconds to minutes, to a quarter of an hour, to half an hour at a time. Assured of his ability as midday rapidly approached, Seth related his findings to Sara, who agreed in short order to cover her entire head in the makeshift scarf she wore, blocking off the open sections in her visor as the sun reached its pinnacle in the sky. Seth closed his eyes to shield them from the pain of the sun and relied on his secondary vision to guide them both for the remainder of the day without any incident beyond an occasional stumble by himself or Sara.

With Seth’s ability to guide them during the day, and both of them being free to travel at night without the sun to harm them, the couple kept on the move for long stretches at a time. They stopped occasionally to take turns sleeping, whether day or night, and would continue on just as soon as they were able. Food upon the floor of the jungle came mostly in the form of fruits and berries, though they had discovered a cache of nuts at one point apparently gathered by some small animal. Neither of them being thieves, they each took only a handful, leaving the majority for whatever creature it was that had taken the time to collect them. For several days Seth and Sara walked beneath the great towering trees of the jungle until at last it gave way suddenly to what appeared to be an endless plain of tall grasses.

Here the ground was harder and less fertile. Tall, hollow grasses grew everywhere in differing shades of green and yellow. Though most varieties grew no higher than the couple's knees, some patches sprouted taller than a man and waved slowly, bending before the will of a near constant breeze that flowed across the flat land. Ahead in the far distance the couple could distinguish the peaks of the mountains that they sought to reach, each believing them to be the boundary to Valdadore.

It was early morning as Seth and Sara reached the plains, and with nocturnal insects ending their nightly symphony of chirps, hisses and squeaks, the young couple began to wade through the tall grass with the sun at their backs. It had been near to a week since the battle at Valdadore and Seth was anxious to pick up the pace. Fortunately the terrain here was much easier to navigate than the floor of the jungle behind them, and setting a brisk pace, Seth and Sara set out side by side, their hands clasped together as if it were any normal morning stroll.

With the sun safely behind them, Seth used both his eyes and his vision of the gods to peer ahead looking for any danger. Several times throughout the morning he would make note of some small beast off a short distance in one direction or another, but each time, with the coming of himself and Sara, the creatures, whatever they were, would veer off and away from their approach.

The day passed quickly as the sun climbed higher and higher into the sky above them, and just before midday Seth stopped briefly to assist Sara in replacing her makeshift blindfold. Then they continued westward, Seth guiding them by the feel of his senses alone for several more hours. It wasn't until near nightfall that once again Seth began to notice more and more life around him. It began as a life force here and there that would retreat as he and Sara neared, but the more miles they walked the more of the unseen creatures there were. Seth thought that the auras belonged to some lowly animal and as such took no further action to investigate.

It was little more than an hour before sunset when Seth realized the mistake in his evaluation of the life forces around him, as one moment there were none, and the next moment more than a hundred of the small auras rushed through the grasses from all directions, surrounding him and Sara. Seth reacted by instinct and summoned a wave of air blasting outward from around himself and Sara, laying the grass flat in a giant circle and sending dozens of the small creatures somersaulting backwards at the assault. Though unknown to Seth at the moment of his spell casting, he quickly realized he was not dealing with animals or even creatures for that matter, but a race of man unlike any he had ever seen before.

Seth had seen a gnome upon arriving at the city of Valdadore, and by all the accounts he had ever heard, a gnome was the smallest race of man upon Thurr. Yet here, surrounding him and Sara, stood more than a hundred tiny men no taller than his knees. They were each clad in tiny suits of leather armor of various ragtag makes and colors, and each of them brandished a small stone-tipped spear which they waved in the air menacingly. Seth knew that their tiny weapons could in no way penetrate his armor and perceived little threat in the notion. Sara, blindfolded as she was, had no idea what the commotion was about.

"Seth, what's going on?" Sara asked in a near whisper.

"It seems we are surrounded and vastly outnumbered," Seth said in mock concern.

"Can we take them? I'll remove my blindfold and endure the pain if I must," Sara replied.

"I don't think that will be necessary, my love," Seth responded, trying not to laugh.

"You sound amused, please tell me what is going on." Sara sounded impatient.

"To my best guess we have stumbled upon a colony of midget, midget dwarves," Seth said with a chuckle and before Sara could even respond one of the tiny men broke the silence.

"You see Gumdrump, not Zoomba, they say they dwarves," said one of the tiny men.

"They not dwarves Snikerdidoo, look they have hard shell, they Zoomba!" a second tiny man replied.

"They have hard shell, they hide from light, they Zoomba," a third miniature man added.

"Excuse me," Seth interrupted. "What is a Zoomba?"

"You see Gumdrump, he say he Zoomba," said the second tiny man again whose name Seth could already not remember.

"First it say it dwarf, now it say it Zoomba, but Zoomba no talk, we take to chief, he find out," declared the third tiny man.

Apparently decided, all the tiny men closed in on Seth and Sara waving their spears in an effort to herd them along. Seth seeing that the tiny men wanted to go the direction they already traveled in, and more than a bit amused, followed along with their ruse and allowed them to lead him and Sara farther westward to meet their chief.

"What’s going on now?" Sara asked.

"We are being taken to their chief I would suppose to determine if we are dwarf or Zoomba," Seth replied knowing Sara had heard just as much as he had.

"What’s a Zoomba?" she asked.

"Your guess is as good as mine, my love. Maybe the chief will tell us," Seth replied.

Though the walk was not an overly long one, it took over an hour at the pace of the tiny men and their miniature legs, in which time the sun had set and Sara was again able to remove her blindfold.

"Oh my..." Sara said. "They are adorable! I'm glad you didn't kill them all.  Just look at their tiny little faces." Sara added grinning ear to ear like a child with a new puppy.

"I don't think we are in any real danger," Seth assured her. "And this is much more interesting than just wading through the grass." He added.

Finally it appeared they had reached their destination when the miniature troops stopped at a large clump of the overly tall grass that stood a foot taller than Seth. Giving some unpronounceable verbal command, one of the tiny men motioned for Seth and Sara to proceed into the tall grass. As they moved towards the apparent encampment, the giant blades of grass heaved apart revealing a large clearing at its center that appeared to Seth to be about an acre in size. Small grass huts littered the clearing, each of them about waist high, and at the center a magnificent grass castle stood that appeared to be every child’s dream of a play fort. He could not help but smile and point it out to Sara who was already admiring the small building. In terms of the tiny people, the structure was three stories tall, but compared to Seth, did not quite reach his shoulder.

Letting the outsiders drool over their city's magnificence a moment the tiny men then ushered Seth and Sara to the middle of the so called city. As they approached the castle structure a call went out and a tiny grass gate opened in the wall of the little castle. Through it came a tiny man with a necklace formed of animal teeth and a crown that appeared to be the jawbone of a dog. Seth and Sara were brought to a stop several paces from the castle in case they had the urge to topple over and crush the building, and as they stopped one of the men leading them rushed over to the apparent chief and whispered in his ear. The chief bobbed his little head up and down after the message was relayed and stepped forward to greet his prisoners.

"My man says you Zoomba. I tells him no, you too big for Zoomba," the chief stated. "My man says you dwarf. I tells him no, you too big for dwarf and not big enough," the chief went on, patting his belly to reinforce what it was he was saying. "What is you?" The chief asked plainly scrunching his face up awaiting a reply.

"We are human," Seth replied, enjoying the conversation.

"Hmm hooman," frowned the chief. "We have not seen a hooman before. What you tell us of hooman?" the chief asked, his face scrunching again.

"We are from Valdadore where there are cities as big as mountains," Seth said to impress the little chief.

"From Valdoodoo you say. Where is Valdoodoo?" the chief asked as all his little soldiers nodded their heads in approval to his line of questioning.

"We think it is just beyond those mountains to the west," Seth replied honestly.

"Hmm. So you hoomans come from Valdoodoo, but not know where Valdoodoo is?" the chief asked, very proud that he had found a flaw in his prisoner's story.

"We are lost," Sara responded before Seth had formed an answer.

"You are lost? I thought you was hoomans?" the chief demanded.

Sara just giggled and decided to let Seth continue the conversation.

"We are humans, but don’t know where we are," Seth stated.

"You are here," the chief answered.

"Thank you, chief, for your wisdom," Seth replied, a smile on his lips.