Chapter 6

“Oh my God.” Liona heard Foster say.
She opened her eyes and frowned. “You never take the Lords name in vain. You’re a bad Catholic.”
Sitting up, she looked over to see a very panicked Foster lying on his back and seemingly unable to move.
“Oh my God.” He repeated.
She temporarily ignored him and looked around her. Unlike her first encounter with the Kingdom, they were now in a large forest. It looked nearly untouched, and Liona struggled to remember if Adara had said anything about a forest near the castle. She hoped that this was the same world she had been in the first time.
“Did you touch me, Foster? Before I touched the water?” Liona asked the still shocked boy lying on the ground.
“Oh…my…GOD.” He said, sitting up suddenly. “Lilly where are we?”
Liona frowned. “Calm down, Tweak. I don’t know yet, but I think it might be a forest near the Kingdom of Mondel. Look, we have to find Adara.”
“We are not doing anything but finding a way out of here!”
Liona frowned. “Tweak, seriously, you believe me now, right? I’ve been here before and you haven’t. I’m telling you there’s no way out until whatever twisted universe decides we go. We might as well make the best of it and find Adara.”
Foster’s hands shot up to his face, rubbing his temple as if to try and wake himself from a dream. “My Priest really wouldn’t like this.”
“Shut up, Tweak. Get a hold of yourself.”
He shook his head. “One minute I’m walking into the girls bathroom, the next I’m in some sort of alternate universe. I am so never walking into a girls bathroom again, I knew that was a bad idea.”
Liona smiled. “So you did touch me. That’s how you came with me.”
“Kali is going to wonder where we are.” Foster said, frowning and beginning to look around. “I told her to wait for me.”
Liona only shook her head. “When I left last time I left for three days, but when I came back it was only like ten minutes later. I don’t think time is the same here.”
“I thought you said you were at some sort of castle.” Foster said. “This doesn’t look like a castle, are you sure we’re in the same universe?”
“I think so.” Liona said, thinking to herself. “It just feels the same.”
She stood up and held out her hands to help Foster get up. He took them, and followed her as she began walking.
“Where are you going now?”
She shrugged. “We have to find a way out of here somehow. Might as well start walking.”
“We have no idea where we are, Lilly, we could be walking for a really long time.”
She turned back to look at him, smiling. “Well then, we’d better get to it.”

* * * * *

“We’re going to starve, you know. Did you ever watch Survivor? I refuse to eat any bugs.”
Liona rolled her eyes. “We’re not going to have to eat bugs.”
“I also refuse to kill anything.” Foster said, kicking at rock on the ground. “I’m not going to kill some poor innocent bunny just because I’m hungry. Do they even have bunnies here? What kind of animals do they have, anyway? I don’t see anything around here. We’ve been walking for like an hour.”
Liona shook her head, glancing at her watch. “According to this, we’ve been walking for a half hour.”
“Well the scenery hasn’t changed at all, so it feels like it’s been-”
“Shhh.” Liona said, putting her finger to her lips. “Do you hear that?”
The two teenagers stopped to listen as a rustling noise seemed to come at them from all different directions. Looking around them, they were unable to locate what was making the noise, and both of them grew anxious.
“What is that?” Foster whispered. “It sounds like it’s getting closer.”
Slowly, the two moved to stand back to back, gradually circling to try and identify what the noise was.
“Who is there?” Liona shouted. “Please stop, we mean no harm!”
“I know that, silly creatures.” A voice said from right beside them.
Both Foster and Liona screamed in unison as they saw a tall, lanky blonde haired man standing with his arms crossed in front of him appear out of nowhere. Liona tripped over herself in her shock, and fell with a thump onto her back.
The man frowned. “No need to be afraid, humans, I’ve been looking for you.”
Foster backed up quickly, picking Liona up as he did. “How did you do that?”
“Allow me to introduce myself.” The man said, bowing slightly. “My name is Allister, and I’ve been sent to find you and help you seek Adara.”
Liona’s anxiety immediately melted. “You know about Adara?”
“Of course, I know all about you, too. How you’re from a different world and made your way into the castle. How you saved the princess. We see everything, you know. That’s why I was sent.”
Foster shook his head. “Woah, woah, you’re talking like you’re not even human or something. How did you just appear like that?”
“I would have thought that humans from your time would be versed in fantasy, as Liona is.” Allister said, smiling slightly. “I am what you might call a werecat.”
Liona gasped. “That’s how you did it!”
Foster only frowned. “Um, please fill in the one who doesn’t read a million fantasy novels?”
“Bastets are part human, part cat.” Liona said, looking at Allister as if he were an exhibit at a museum. “They can shape shift between the two or even in between if they want. Like the Egyptian statues, you know?”
Allister smiled. “Very nice. Of course what you may not know is that we are also future tellers. We look for signs in the forest that tell us what is to be. We are not as powerful as the tree elders, but we saw you, Liona.”
“But why?” She asked, frowning. “Why me?”
“Isn’t that a question we’d all like answered.” Allister said, his witty smile fading slightly. “But I’m afraid I don’t know. We’re not sure why you were sent here, and we’re not sure why Bakanua has been set free.”
Foster shook his head. “Bak-a-what?”
Allister only shook his head. “You both have much to learn, but I have time to teach you. For now we have to seek the princess before the Elves make things more unpleasant for her.”
“Elves? Shape shifters? What the heck, Lilly, you only talked about princesses, not mythical creatures.” Foster said, seemingly frustrated.
Allister narrowed his eyes. “I resent the word mythical, boy. I stand before you now, don’t I?”
“Yeah, we’ll see about that.” Foster said. “I still think I might have slipped and hit my head in that bathroom.”
“Go with the flow, Tweak.” Liona said, smiling at him. “How often do people get to live in a fantasy?”

* * * * *
Allister led, and the two teenagers trailed a little behind as they followed their guide to presumably where the princess was.
“What if he’s going to kill us?” Foster whispered to Liona.
“If I was going to kill you I’d have done it by now. Don’t tempt me, human.”
Foster made a face. “How’d you hear that?”
Allister turned his head to glance at Foster. “Don’t you know that cats have excellent hearing?”
“He’s telling the truth, Tweak.” Liona said, ignoring their banter. “Before the tunnel collapsed Adara told me about this King a long time ago who started a war against the magic. Ever since then there have been rumors that it was just hidden.”
“She’s right.” Allister said, walking steadily. “We’ve mostly lived in this forest since the Great War. Our numbers used to be much larger, but King James was malicious in his slaughter. Some entire species perished.”
Foster shook his head. “Well that’s just ridiculous. If you guys are so magical how come you couldn’t beat some lousy humans?
“It wasn’t that simple.” Allister said shortly. “King James had wizards and witches on his side, and he also gained support of some of the more…evil ones of our kind. The agreement was that if they could get rid of us, the evil ones would be set free.”
“But they’re not set free.” Liona said, frowning. “I’m sure things would be much different than they are.”
Allister nodded. “You’re very smart, Liona. King James lied to the evil ones, and soon after they’d won he banished them to the Kismet Desert with the help of the wizards and witches.”
“And what about them? Do they still exist?” Foster asked, still skeptical.
Allister only shrugged. “They’ve since assimilated with the rest of the humans. Their kind has a unique struggle, the magic humans have always desperately wanted to be fully human. They never enjoyed their position in between the magic and human world, and when King James began the Great War they saw it as an opportunity to become as human as they possibly could. King James granted them a pardon so long as they never practiced magic again, and they readily agreed.”
“So they’re still out there?” Liona asked. “Just mixed in with the humans?”
Allister nodded. “Yes, but most of them don’t know it. By this time they’d be the great, great, great grandchildren of the original magic humans. None of them will be as powerful as their ancestors because of the mixed breeding with humans, but they do exist.”
“You said that the evil ones were banished to the Kismet Desert?” Liona asked, and Allister nodded. “Adara said that Master Darius was headed there before he disappeared.”
Allister stopped and turned around, frowning. “Master Darius?”
“The guy who set the castle on fire.” Liona said. “Didn’t you see him?”
Allister only shook his head. “We only saw the evil ones being set free, we didn’t know that they’d taken human form when they attacked the castle.”
Liona shook her head. “Master Darius is a real human. The King knew him for a long time before he went to the desert to try to discover the magic.”
Allister turned his head, thoughtful. “Has Bakanua learned to shape shift?”
“Why Mondel, though?” Liona asked. “There are a lot of other kingdoms, right?”
A smile returned to Allister’s lips. “Didn’t you know? King James Mondel?”
Liona’s jaw dropped slightly. “It was the King of Mondel who got rid of the magic?”
Allister nodded slowly. “Your Adara is the great, great, great, great grand daughter of King James himself. Not that she knows this, and neither does her father…or did, I should say. James did all he could to erase the knowledge of his time. He thought he needed to cleanse the earth. Start new, so to speak. At the time he was the high ruler of the West, but he soon spread the power to others that he named Kings of different parts of the land. He didn’t believe in an ultimate ruler, which was part of the reason he was against the magical world.”
“That’s a good thing, right?” Foster asked. “I mean, bad things usually happen when there’s only one ruler. It’s like a monopoly.”
Allister raised an eyebrow. “You have much to learn, bothersome one.”
Foster was about to protest but Allister held up a hand, stopping him. He listened intently, and then his head shot to look down at the ground.
“Well, well,” He said, smiling. “We’re here.”