Only after Eala had happily eaten the papaya, I remembered that I had forgotten to verify if the elven metabolism could cope with it.

I recalled the biology lessons back in school, about how different species can be intolerant towards different substances - chocolate is generally considered to be poisonous for dogs, penicillin is deadly for guinea pigs and some people have lactose intolerance or other allergies.

Luckily, it seemed that elves were fairly sturdy and omnivorous. Eala ate with gusto, constantly expressing her gratitude to me for finding something that wasn’t meat.

She even managed to shape some water into a sort of spoon to scoop out the fruit flesh without getting sticky all over. Amazing water control as always.

After a careful enquiry, I learned that she had often had to eat really weird things during their interdimensional travels.

As an example of some weird foodstuffs she had tasted, Eala described a world, where commonly eaten things were...rocks.

Of course, common rocks tasted bad and were of poor nutritional value, but some rare ores tasted better and allowed a large variety of cooking methods. And instead of fields that world had volcanic ranges.

I had trouble imagining that, so I urged her to finish her papaya, which she did quite fast; had her clean up, which was done promptly by using water magic; and asked her about the directions towards Bial.

Eala thought for a while: “We crossed the river in the city. We first came from other side.”

“No other rivers on your way to the pyramid?” I had to be sure.

“Yes.” Eala nodded.

“So, upstream or downstream from here? Any ideas?” In a dense jungle judging the correct way without navigation equipment or any relevant skills made me fairly useless. I could only see the massive pyramid looming above the jungle from where we came from.

Eala looked unsure: “Well, the river looks wider here… Up?”

“You are not sure?”

“Forgive me, Lord.” Eala began to panic.

“Eala, you know, I told you to stop with “Lord” stuff. I don’t need servants here, I need equal help to get through that shit.” I tried to make my voice as calm and patient as possible, although some feelings of annoyance seemed to seep through.

“Shit?” Eala tilted her head at the unfamiliar word. I had actually carefully watched my language and forgotten to teach her more casual English. And she had ignored my plea, again.

“Nevermind. I meant, ordeal.” I was not feeling ready to explain the intricacies of profanities just yet. Although as far as I could tell, elves generally used idioms as expressive forms in their language.

---

So, we went upstream. Although there was a chance that the changes in the world had also changed some of the geography while Eala was in her cryosleep, the width of the river was the only clue we could use to pinpoint the location of the city.

As we walked, I continued playing around with my poleaxe, now managing to morph it into the shapes of spears, broadaxes, partizans, glaives, tridents, naginatas, monk’s spades, scythes, swordstaffs, guandaos and whatever odd self-invented shapes I could come up with, as long as the volume of the matter remained approximately the same.

And as the saying “practice makes perfect” goes, I slowly became more and more proficient in my weapon manipulation skill, and as a bonus, I also became increasingly better in sensing my own energy.

I felt that the constant concentration condensed the mind-core that acted instead of the brain in my body, and my spiritual and physical self synchronized even more than I had initially thought was possible.

---

On our way we met some of the roaming enemies Eala had described.

Three types of undead - mostly there were the ones modified with crystals and metals, then a few groups were infused with murky smokelike energy and one half-broken skeleton was found being fully covered in a multitude of runic inscriptions none of us could read.

We also found several stone or clay golems in the shape of fantastic creatures like multi-legged crocodiles and winged, but incapable of flight, monkeys.

But as we were walking along the riverbank, all the golems we found were the ones which got stuck in the soft ground and mud, so we mostly ignored them.

To be sure, I checked them, but these did not seem to be traditional mythical golems of jewish Kabbalah, with EMET written on them. I could recall from some History TV-program about something like using the so-called shem which was supposed to be put into the mouth of the golem, but the golems we found were mostly busy snapping their jaws at us, and even after bashing in a few heads, I found nothing.

Missing heads did not stop them from moving, as it seemed that as long as there were large enough pieces of them remaining, they could still be considered active. After observing with my boosted vision, I could not find any core that would emit power, so I could only give up on my golem research.

Eala thought that I could not see, but she kept sighing each time I stopped to take something apart to sate my curiosity. So I gently told her about the famous quote “know your enemies and know yourself” from the Art of War, which sparkled her interest for more stories that I knew.

---

On the fifth day of our walk along the river, when I was almost ready to suggest we go and check the river downstream, we finally reached the supposed ruins of Bial.

Actually, I was reciting from memory the Lord of the Rings to Eala, who was quickly becoming a fan of fantasy, and had just reached the part where the characters first reached the Dunharrow, when from behind the trees we saw the first grey walls slightly obscured by the damp grey fog that began to rise from the river. Very dramatic, I had to admit, with especially good timing.

But what was with that fog? It had not rained here ever since I came out of the pyramid, the temperature was stable, and suddenly there was fog appearing as soon as we reached the city. It made no sense.

I called out to Eala: “Eala.”

“Yes, Lord?”, she responded immediately.

I rolled my eyes at the “Lord”, but now was not the best time to bring that up again: “Was there fog when you came to the city?”

She looked around - there were only stone walls almost completely covered by vegetation, fog, trees and river around us, and replied: “I don’t know if that is the city we found. But we saw no fog then.”

“Wonderful. So either this is not the city you had found or we got something going on.” I reformed my poleaxe into a partizan, expecting that a wide, leaflike blade would allow me to quickly cut, slash, chop and pierce any nasty surprise that could come at us.