The next day Katherine and I arrive at the northern shore of Ouroboros early in the morning. We have to walk twelve miles to reach the Yugallan village. It should take us about three and a half hours if we don’t take any breaks, which we might have to do because it’s rather hot and muggy here in the Ouroban rain forest. That’s because while it may be the winter season in the northern hemisphere, here in Ouroboros, in the southern hemisphere, it’s summer. The temperature shows it.

I take off my purple cutaway coat and blue vest. I also untie my white lace cravat and remove it. I then stuff all of my unnecessary accessories into the magical inventory bag in which I keep my clothes. I also undo the top two buttons of my white flax shirt. This makes it much cooler for me although it’s still formidably hot all the same. Katherine is already wearing a skirt with an open collar blouse, so she’s stuck the way she is. With all of my excessive clothing layers removed, I’m ready to begin the long trek to Ouro village.

As a precaution, since monsters attack at random in the wilderness, Katherine and I equip our magical weapons. She equips her father’s wand and I equip Sophia. Then finally, we move beyond the sandy northern shore and enter the forest.

We only manage to walk ten minutes before the first group of random monsters attacks us. They’re three red snake-like creatures with scaly yellow bellies and arms that end in three-fingered hands. Each finger possesses a slightly curled razor sharp talon. These creatures stand, or slither rather, at about three feet tall each. There are two in front of me and one behind Katherine. They presume that they get the jump on us by suddenly springing out of the trees, but they don’t. This isn’t our first time walking through the wilds.

I place my staff against my hip and take aim at the one in front of me on the left. I start to cast the Comet spell, but a barrage of Thorn Darts decimates the creature before I can get my spell off. Re-targeting, I take aim at the one in front of me on the right. This one gets smacked by a vine whip that sends it soaring over the treetops. I quickly spin to finish off the last one that’s behind Katherine. I’m barely fast enough to witness a large root grow out of the ground next to the snake creature. The root slams down and smashes the creature beneath it. And just like that the monsters are defeated. And all by Katherine.

I cross my arms dissatisfied. “Somebody’s feeling greedy today. Way to hog all of the monsters.”

Katherine smiles innocently. “They were just small ones. You can have the first big one we see.”

“Uh huh. How generous of you. By the way, was that the Root Smash spell you just cast?”

“Yup! Professor Ismelia taught me the grandmaster Plant Magic spells in private even though our class was still on the master level ones.”

I nod my head impressed. “That’s pretty cool Katherine.”

Katherine merrily wraps her arms around my left arm. “I know right!”

We continue our march with our arms intimately entangled. We used to walk like this quite a bit in the past. Those were turbulent yet exciting times. I don’t entirely miss those days since I was getting my butt kicked on the regular back then, but there was something sweet about the way Katherine and I had to rely on one another. Sure, I’m grateful for the calm life we have in Winterspring now, yet part of me misses the chaos, especially since it was chaos that first united me to her.

“You know Katherine,” I say with a pause, “You’re becoming almost as powerful a mage as me. I better watch my back.”

She smiles and giggles to herself. “What?” I ask her.

She responds, “I was just thinking how funny it would be if I smacked you in the butt with a vine whip. I can see you yelping and floating up high into the air like a cartoon character.”

Right. Random. Taking Katherine’s screwball comment as a joke and not something she’d actually do, I continue the march towards Ouro village with her still attached to my left arm. It’s truly a long walk in the midst of the summer heat. Before long I notice beads of sweat bristling on Katherine’s forehead. I look around. I don’t want her to overheat, so if I could just find something to shield her head that would help. At the moment, all I see are large banana tree leaves draping over the canopy above. “Katherine, hold on,” I say, detaching my arm from hers.

I target the base of one of the leaves and blast the Wind Razor spell. My spell cuts off the leaf and it falls softly to the earthen floor. I pick it up and then hold it over Katherine’s head to block the sun. She smiles appreciatively. “You’re such a gentleman.”

“Of course my lady.”

Katherine curtsies to play off the lady bit. She then once again wraps her arms around my left arm while I use my right hand to hold the leaf parasol over her head. It would seem that my considerate move scored me some much needed bonus points. Nothing wrong with that.

We journey for what feels like forever before we reach the western river. Margaret told us that Ouro village is just a short distance from here. Unfortunately, her little map is apparently not to scale. This river is frickin’ wide. I don’t have a boat, and I don’t have any idea how we can get to the other side. I stand at its bank tapping my feet. I have to come up with something quick, or Katherine’s going to think that I’m an idiot. I can’t afford to lose the bonus points that I just scored.

I look to the east. I look to the west. Nothing but trees on either side. I cross my arms and hum. Maybe I could take hold of Katherine and jump over it?

“Souladonis,” Katherine says. “How are we going to get across the river?”

I point my index finger upwards and open my mouth to give her my brilliant answer. Sadly, I still don’t have one. I lower my finger and point it at Katherine instead.

“I don’t know.”

She rolls her eyes. “Maybe we could make a bridge or a raft.”

I think about it a little more. “I have an idea!” I announce. “This might sound crazy, but what if I summoned my red dragon and you used your vine whip as a rope to tie around it so that you could hold on while it flew you over the river? Do you think that would work?”

Katherine shrugs. “That does sound crazy, but we’ve done crazier things before, so why not?”

I smile. This is totally going to work. Using Sophia I cast the Ruby Red Dragon spell. My 9-foot tall bipedal dragon appears at the bank of the river. It huffs its chest in preparation to breathe out a huge fireball, but then it sees that there are no enemies around. My dragon has clearly caught on to the pattern. Generally, when I summon him, I’m getting my butt whooped and need help. Not this time, however, everything’s honky dory apart from being unable to cross the river.

My dragon turns and looks at me as if to ask hey what gives? I explain the situation. “We have to get across the river and we need you to fly us over. Katherine’s going to wrap a vine around you like a lasso. Fly her across the river and then come back for me.”

My dragon shrugs his shoulders indifferently. As Katherine put it, we’ve done crazier things before. I suppose Red isn’t all that surprised by my strange request. Besides, this is a better deal than the time when I summoned him to help me fight the gargoyle familiar Cornelius. That got him pounded into dust. And then there was the time when Vampiric Sidney pelted him in the chest with sharpened icicles. Compared to that, carrying a pretty girl across a river is a luxury vacation.

Red lowers his head so that Katherine can tie her vines around him. Once she’s secure, he takes into the air and flies across the river. I trace his movements over the treetops. He doesn’t just stop directly across the river. Rather, he flies her off somewhere else and sets her down deeper in the forest than I anticipated. When he comes back, I raise my left eyebrow at him. “Where did you go?”

My dragon is smart, but he doesn’t speak human. He simply lowers his head and lets me jump on. Unlike Katherine, I don’t know how to cast the Vine Whip spell. I probably should have thought of that ahead of time, but no matter. I wrap my arms around his neck and hold on for dear life. He takes off and I feel the tug of my weight against my arms. It’s a rough take off, but not the worst that I’ve experienced. That would be the one I experienced with Nathan Bram’s familiar, Metanoia. That thing shot up like an inverse falling star.

I ride my dragon across the river and over the trees. Before long we come to a village enshrouded in the center of the sea of trees. Red sets me down on the dirt path leading to the village. Katherine stands there waiting for me.

I hop off my dragon and give him my thanks. “Well done my friend,” I say. “You’re becoming strangely smart for a summoning creature. Have you been reading books or something?”

He shakes his head and points the index finger of his claw at my golden staff. I quickly hide Sophia behind my back. “Ah ha ha!” I pretend to laugh. “Good work.” I unsummon my dragon and turn to face Katherine.

She raises her left eyebrow at me. “Did your dragon just point at your staff?”

“My staff?” I ask incredulously. “No. Of course not.”

Actually, I’m pretty sure he did. My staff Sophia once belonged to the first Arch Lord of Winterspring. Its special effect is that it causes me to learn everything 300% faster than normal. Initially, I planned to only use it to help catch up on my studies, but I’ve since learned that Sophia is more powerful than it seems. Learning at a 300% accelerated rate has an exponential rather than linear effect. That is, learning one thing makes it easier to learn related things. I’ve found that I can take up learning a new subject in the morning at the absolute beginner level and be at the master level by the end of the night. This sudden expertise carries over into related materials much like how learning one language in a family of languages makes it easier to learn all of the other languages within that family. With time my accelerated learning compounds with more and more things to the point where I can encapsulate years of learning into months and months of learning into days. My knowledge and magical power have exploded since I acquired Sophia. However, I’ve kept this fact a secret from everybody, including Arch Lord Aerolyso. I also don’t want Katherine to know since I promised Master that I wouldn’t tell anyone about Sophia. That said, however, I’m starting to understand why Arch Lord Horatio left a note saying “such a dangerous weapon was never meant to exist in this worldˮ and “if this staff were to fall into the wrong hands, then it could cause the downfall of all of human society.ˮ I presume that my hands aren’t the wrong hands, but then, you never know.

I gesture my neck towards the path that leads to the nearby village. Katherine and I approach it, walking side by side. When we arrive at the gate, we’re met by a group of men with spears. They look at us just as curiously as we look at them. These native men of Ouroboros all have brown skin as dark as the earth unlike Katherine who has a lighter complexion. They’re tall, muscular, and have either black or brown hair. The one who approaches us first has a smooth face and neck length brown locks. He wears brown knee-length shorts and a green vest with no undershirt. He points his spear at me and scowls menacingly.

“What are you doing here pale skin?”

I’m taken aback by the offensive racial comment. I clench Sophia tightly, ready to fight.

“We’re looking for Ouro village,” Katherine says calmly.

“For what?” the man asks.

“I’m the daughter of Shaman Terranostra. I’ve come to help the village.”

The man shifts the point of his spear from me to Katherine. Immediately, I use Sophia to nudge it back towards me. I stare coldly into his eyes so he gets my message. “Do not point your weapon at her.”

That’s my final warning although I don’t say so verbally. When people threaten Katherine, I tend to go berserk.

“You’re not the daughter of Shaman Terranostra,” the man tells Katherine.

She shows him her father’s wand. He and the men around him look at it closely. “I don’t recognize this wand,” he says. “But my father, Chief Hekima, might.”

“Well then can we see your father?” I ask.

“No, no, no. We’re not letting you pale skins in. However, if you could prove your worth by completing a small quest, then perhaps we might let you in.”

I sigh. “What quest?”

“Some of the women and children said that they saw a pale skin spying on them in the forest. Capture this spy and bring him to me. Then maybe I’ll let you into my village.”

“Your village?” I question. “Sounds more like it’s your father’s village. You’re not the chief.”

“My village!” he repeats.

Whatever. This guy suffers from delusions of grandeur. If I had my way, I’d just knock him flat and casually stroll into town, but unfortunately, Katherine would never approve of that.

“Shall we go and look for this spy?” I ask her.

“Yes,” she answers me. She then turns to the delusion man with the spear. “Any ideas where we could find him?”

“Hey, not my problem.”

He and the other men laugh. I take that to mean we’re on our own. Katherine frowns, and I stick my fists against my hips. She asks me, “Any idea where we should start?”

I reply, “Let’s just travel in a widening arc away from the village until we find the spy. We’ll probably hear him before we see him in the thick forest.”

“Okay. Let’s go.”

Katherine and I set out to find one person in a gigantic jungle. It’s a nigh-impossible task. I don’t know who that guy at the gate thinks he is, but I don’t like him.