Nelrue looked back and grabbed the two boys in each arm.

"Renaeril," he said. "Pulled Nefaaya with you. You all have to keep up your pace with mine."

"We're not sure what kind of Rotseekers they are," he said and looked at the three. "But if they're a Deprive we could be as good as dead. The same goes if they're a Corrupt Eaten, because most of them are Battledancers. They could pretty much run as fast as you could imagine and immediately block our path."

He eyed the two, "especially when there's something they could be attracted to here. You two should never Merge with the Creation until I told you. Masking was something you still didn't know and Merging without one would be as good as declaring yourself as a target to the Deprives."

She was ignorant about the truth about the Deprives, because it was something that Nefri and Learo refused to discuss with her.

It wasn't Nelrue who answered her question, but Ettran.

The boy looked at her, and wrapped a cloth around his burned skin. It had only made him look more ominous.

"Deprives were mages that were hated by the Flow. For they had done something to gain more power..."

Nefaaya and Renaeril looked at him curiously.

"They eat the flesh of other men in order to gain more power. Those that had died in their hands would become an Eaten, a soulless body, forever wandering in order to search for its lost soul."

"But there are those Eaten," Nelrue started, "who also eat another human in order to fill the emptiness in them. They're called Corrupt Eaten."

Nefaaya gulped, in her mind images of a man in a dark alley flashed in her mind. The man was leaning down on the person lying in the wet alley and when he looked up, he smiled at her with blood all over his mouth and shreds of flesh clinging in his teeth.

Nefaaya blinked and shook her head, what was that! She looked up and lost track of what they're talking about.

It was Renaeril who was speaking, "how are they different from Rotseekers? And how do you know they're them?"

"Rotseekers was like an organization made in order to destroy the Flow... What they're doing here was also a mystery to me."

The musicteller shook his head, "I can't really know if they're Rotseekers, I just assumed the worse... you wouldn't see Tainted Creatures working in pairs and much rare to see a group of ten."

Nelrue's head flipped back at their front and started descending the hill where they stopped. He hasten his pace. The three kids, overcome by their shock, tighten their hold on Nelrue. From where she was, Nefaaya could see the violet glow in Nelrue's body moving towards them, slowly enveloping them with the same light he was radiating.

They felt their body gone light.

Renaeril looked back, his sweaty palms gripped hard on Nefaaya's dry one as Nelrue's speed increases.

Above them the sun ascended its peak, the sky was cloudless blue and the heat above was scorching them. Nefaaya thought that Nelrue would slow down if they were climbing a hill or a ridge but she was wrong. Nelrue Merge with the Creation and used the Flow to strengthen his and their legs and defied the gravity that holds them back.

Nefaaya wasn't familiar with Battledancers, but according to her mother's grimoire, Battledancers are maged who could manipulate their physical strength and attributes this includes: strength, speed, mass, volume, gravity, malleability, force and resistance.

All throughout the day as they repeatedly climbed hills and descended them, Nelrue continuously glowed in a faint violet light. Despite the strength he lent, the boys behind him including Nefaaya where all panting, Ettran's tongue was almost lolling out of his mouth.

Nefaaya and Renaeril had been able to keep because Learo had insisted on training their stamina as the sword was heavy to carry and someone who doesn't have the power to carry it for a long time, no matter how good they were, would just make the sword another weight to carry rather than a weapon of safety.

Nefaaya looked up, on all sides ridges stretch around her, white smooth rocks the remnant of an old city jutted out of the grasses. Nelrue started descending and immediately stopped at the sight of a big rock.

He surveyed the place then said, "break for 15 minutes."

The three immediately ran for the slanted shade granted by the tall rock while Nelrue pulled back from his Merging and sat cross-legged away from them. He closed his eyes and sat there stiffly. She saw him Merge. It looks to her as if the time around Nelrue's space had stopped.

Renaeril leaned his back on the rock panting, while Ettran immediately dropped on the grassy ground. Nefaaya had taken the initiative to look for their waterskin inside her bag. She gave the first one to Renaeril who grabbed it. The other was to Ettran, he put it beside his face as if seeking the coldness of the water.

"You shouldn't lay," she said

The boy looked at her sharply. "Why?" his voice hoarse from tiredness.

"It would be much harder for you to stand up when we continue," she said and leaned her back against the rock, legs quivering in soreness. Nefaaya hissed as she felt her body slowly sliding down. She shook, no. She can't sit because if she does, she was sure she wouldn't be standing anymore. Nefaaya wasn't aware of this Rotseekers up until now. All she know were small pieces of information that her mother and father had almost refused to tell her

Rotseekers, servants of Madness who defy the Flow, often called as Those Who Lose Their Grace. They say they're the reason for the ruin of the Prophet. In every story that was told, Rotseekers were all evil and hated for defying the Flow and worshiping Madness.

Nefaaya was afraid of them, not because of the stories told about them. But about the gravity of their stare, there was something about what she had experienced in her dream that made her feel that she was caught in something that she cannot see. The fact that the Rotseekers had managed to get one step ahead of the Eye was enough for her to be scared of the organization. To think that they can do something like that to a god.

She felt an eye somewhere. Nefaaya stood upright, looking around. She spotted a rabbit running from ruins to ruins. The wind picked up and whistled as it passed on the tall white marbles.

There was no one as far as she could see aside from rocks, miles of miles of rocks and waving grasses.

"What are you doing?" Ettran said beside her.

She laughed, perhaps she was just imagining it. Nefaaya shook her head. On the far side, Nelrue opened his eyes and stood immediately.

As they saw him picking his things, the three immediately pulled their belongings. Ettran having a hard time gathering his senses, Renaeril sighing in tiredness. Nefaaya grunting in the weight of her bag

Why does it become so heavy suddenly?

Nelrue looked at the way down, it was steep, most of the ridges earlier were not steep but the climb took so long and this was the reason that most of them are tired. Nelrue stretched his arm on both sides, hands open, waiting for the arm of the two boys.

Before she dragged the two, Nelrue looked back at them and blinked, eyes glowing in violet pools.

"Starting from here the climb and descent would be much steeper, but I would try to find the easiest path," he said.

They all grunted.

"But easiest doesn't mean that it was short, this easy path are long and windin-"

He turned his head at their back. Nelrue's brows knitted as he stared at something in the horizon behind them.

He grabbed their arms and pulled them

Nelrue didn't speak, but their pace had become more hastened than the last, the three were sure that the Rotseekers were indeed seeking them.

Thirty minutes had passed and the three were all tired. Ettran had tripped for almost five times in the past half an hour as they descended the long ridge. Nefaaya looked at his feet, it was bleeding. Nefaaya pulled back, stopping Renaeril in his tracks.

Nelrue looked back at them, eyes flaring in violet fire.

"What!"

She shivered at his voice, "his feet." She pointed at Ettran. "Is bleeding... if we don't do anything about it. We would be found immediately no matter how far we go."

Ettran looked at her unbelieving. Nelrue pulled back from the Merge and crouched before the kid. He surveyed the wound and immediately snatched something at his bag where he kept his instruments. A cloth. He enveloped the wound in his foot with it.

Nelrue turned and gestured for Ettran to climb at his back.

The boy looked around, aggravated by what he was about to do. He shot Nefaaya a thankless look as he said, "I can still walk."

"You barely can," Nelrue said. "Climb now, we have to hurry and make sure we get away as far as we can from where your blood was... some Deprives could know where someone was based on their blood."

Ettran gulped and immediately climb on Nelrue's back. He put his arm around his neck and cling his leg tightly in Nelrue's body.

Nefaaya took Ettran's place beside Nelrue

"Are you comfortable there?" He asked.

Ettran flushed and kept glaring at Nefaaya using his right eye. "Yes... M-Master Nelrue."

The musicteller nodded and grabbed Nefaaya's and Renaeril's arm. This time ascending a ridge. Nefaaya looked at the ridge and found herself asking if this was the easy path he was saying.

The ascend was long and there was so many rocks laid in the path. Nefaaya had to avoid them or else get tripped as her feet no longer departed from the soil. Renaeril was not doing so well like her, and Renaeril was even a sickly one before he was five years old. She suddenly felt worried about him...

To keep her mind away on the rocks, hills and ridges, she tried thinking of something. She asked herself, if her father was facing the same situation what would he do?

She smiled and almost laughed as he skipped on a stone. Learo would probably try to fight them no matter how futile it was. Her father told him once that his platoon of thirty had faced a group of 100 soldiers and he had managed to get out alive while only losing five soldiers.

Learo said, "The Flow favors my path. And It would be the same for yours too."

Nefaaya hoped it was true, because right now she needed all the favors that the Flow could give to her.

They reached the top of the ridge, where the sun was very dazzling and without any trees around, its heat was scorching them. Sweat poured out of her forehead. But she immediately felt the wind whipped against her face, as Nelrue started descending.

As she was busy trying to make out what was real around her, Nefaaya shivered.

A voice so cold that it had beaten the scorching sun above whispered at her, "so it was true."

With so much resistance, Nefaaya looked back, almost tripping in the process. But there was nothing atop the ridge nor anything around her aside from rocks. But she thought... she felt the eyes closer to her, much closer than they had ever been.