Kai was swifter in his reaction and managed to lie flat, his belly on the ground, without making any sound at all. I kept my back against the tree trunk, looking at him while noticing the reflections of the purple incoming lights shifting on the trees in front of me. I couldn’t hear anyone approaching, but those lights could not be traveling by themselves.

Contrary to what I believed though, this turned out to be exactly the case. A swarm of small purple orbs reached around and through the tree I was hiding behind and started circling around me and Kai. I took a defensive posture, confident that our protective orbs would be enough to keep these low-power magic entities away from us.

Yet again, I was proven wrong, as the little purple entities were not actually orbs but just energy and light, passing through all matter and protections. No matter how much I focused on them, they did not register any Dark Energy signature in my eyes. It was like they were stones, or dirt, yet moving all the same.

They didn’t act in a hostile manner, but they didn’t hesitate to pass right through my hands and body either. It was as if they were incorporeal or an illusion of some sort, since I didn’t even feel them touching me or the slightest discomfort when they ran through my chest and out of my back.

“What do you think these are, Myriam?” Kai asked, now standing on his feet again and trying to capture one of the little purple lights in his hands.

“I don’t know,” I replied, “but I don’t think they mean us any harm. They most certainly aren’t moving randomly but they don’t have much purpose when it comes to circling around us.”

“Maybe they’re just curious,” Kai suggested.

“Could be,” I agreed, as I looked at the forest in front of us. “Or maybe they want some company. In any case, it seems we don’t need our torch anymore.”

The path ahead of us was now clearly illuminated by the purple lights lazily hovering some feet above the ground, but not higher than the lowest of the tree branches. Not knowing what to do with them, we simply decided to continue moving forward, utilizing them for what they were. Light sources.

The path continued through twists and turns but was always clearly visible, without leaving much space for questioning whether we could have taken a turn anywhere else. However, about fifteen minutes later, we came to a split in the path. Both the left and right branches were equally illuminated by purple flying swarms and there was nothing to indicate that one path would be more preferable than the other.

“Left?” Kai asked.

“Why not,” I responded, shrugging.

We took the left path and continued walking on it for some five minutes before I realized that none of our protective gear was functioning anymore. I tried lighting up the magical torch Kai had put back in his bag but to no avail.

“Is this a null-magic zone?” he asked.

“There’s only one way to find out,” I replied, and tried casting a 4-word illumination cantrip.

Nothing happened. Just for the sake of being sure, I tried casting another spell, this time a 16-word one that would bring forth a gust of warm wind. Again, nothing happened, which meant this was indeed a null-magic zone.

“We need to move faster,” I said, feeling extremely uneasy without the ability to cast spells or the protection of our magical items.

“Check the chest,” Kai proposed. “If something goes wrong, we can jump in there right?”

I quickly unstrapped the chest from my back, laid it on the ground and opened it. All I could see in it were some of the items we had stored in its mundane form. There was no staircase leading down. It was just a plain old chest.

“The chest is not working either,” I said, as I shut it and strapped it on my back again. “Let’s move.”

Before we even took another step, I noticed Kai’s skin was rapidly changing from its normal color back to gold. He had also noticed it and even though he did not show it on his face, I knew this unsettled him enormously, especially because there was nothing we could do about it right now.

“You’ll fix me later,” he said, and moved forward before I was able to tell him there was nothing about him that needed a fix.

Our pace now resembled light-jogging more than a walk in the forest. We had no reason to think we were anything but alone there, though not having the protection of magic was very unsettling for both of us. We managed to cover a bigger distance at this pace, but I was sure tiredness would eventually catch up to us.

Before we felt the need to take a break and catch our breath, we came across an identical split in our path. I didn’t want to stop, so I made the decision as we grew closer to the crossroads.

“How about right this time?” I asked Kai, who was jogging right next to me.

“Sure,” he replied. “Looks the same to me.”

Indeed, the path was no different than any we had traveled on so far—dry ground, thick trees on both sides and little purple hovering lights everywhere. After less than three minutes of jogging on this path, we both felt the cooling effect of our magical robes envelop us once more.

“Magic is working again,” Kai half-asked, half-stated. “This forest is weird, Myriam.”

“Let’s see,” I replied, and stopped walking to cast my 4-word cantrip which immediately produced a very bright yellow light in my hands. “It also seems to be much stronger in this area.”

I released the spell and the light faded in my hand. Something or someone was controlling the magic in this forest. But I couldn’t see any magic-nullifying devices around us.

“Turn your body around,” I asked him, and started casting the minor metamorphosis spell which would change his skin color to resemble mine.

The spell, which would normally gradually take effect on his skin, now changed his color almost instantly, the golden patches disappearing in less than a couple of seconds.

“Magic is amplified here,” Kai noted, as he checked himself for any missed spots.

“That’s not necessarily a good thing,” I replied, and checked to see if the chest was operational again.

Once we were sure everything was functioning properly, we resumed our walk at a much more relaxed pace. The forest was still completely quiet, but by this time we were both used to it and we had the protection of our magical items to make us feel more at ease.

Though quiet, it didn’t seem boring at all. Maybe it was the unnatural silence, or the completely black sky, or perhaps the floating purple lights, but we were almost enjoying our walk and continued to do so for another twenty minutes until we reached another crossroads.

This time, the road split into three directions and the constant twists and turns in the path, combined with the absence of sun and stars in the sky, meant that I couldn’t really tell which way was south anymore, not that I thought directions mattered in this place anyway.

“Do you have any idea where we should go?” I asked Kai, as we stopped in front of the three-way split.

“They all look the same to me,” he replied. “Same lights, same ground, same vegetation. Let’s take the middle one?”

“Sure,” I said, and we went on our way, but not before I made a note of our route so far on a piece of paper in case we needed to trace it back.

So far, we had moved left at the first split, right at the second split and then took the middle path at the three-way split. The journey might have become a bit boring at this point had it not been for these intersections. Just as I was having this thought, our walk took the exact opposite turn as I felt the magic of our items being nullified again. I turned to Kai and saw his skin fading to gold as well.

“This is becoming really frustrating,” he said, as I prompted him to pick up the pace again.

Our jogging lasted roughly ten minutes before we reached yet another two-way split that looked exactly the same as the previous ones.

“Let’s go right again,” I said, as I started to get an idea of what might be happening. “I think something is amiss in this forest.”

“You think?” Kai replied, and stretched his arms to show me his smooth golden hands reflecting the purple lights.

Just as I thought, somewhere around three minutes of light-running on the path, I felt the mana envelop us once more. I tried casting the metamorphosis spell on Kai but he raised his hands to stop me.

“There’s no need,” he said calmly. “If we become sure these null-magic parts are over, you can cast it again.”

I didn’t want to leave him in this state because of everything it represented for him, but I needed to recognize how strong he was trying to be in this moment and didn’t want to argue with him. I simply nodded and we resumed walking.

As expected, in roughly twenty minutes, we reached a three-way split which was most definitely the same one we had come across half an hour ago.

“Myriam, are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Kai asked, as he glanced at the crossroads ahead of me.