Speeding beyond the reach of massive clouds. The seven people, a strange ride and a headless corpse flew.
From battles of physical nature to one needing them to approach it differently. However, it was still an ocean away from their current location.
"Hello! What does infected mean!?" He screamed over at Litto specifically. Naph wasn't having it. He knew the word, he knew its primary meaning and yet he felt that here it meant completely different.
'How? What does that do to me?' He needed answers.
The carpet of clouds below shimmered like an oil painting becoming blue over a gentle course. The blue wasn't of the clouds but of the waters it hid. The waters of an unexplored ocean.
Nert broke the silence. "Infected means the cata within you has been affected by a caaestre's lesio." Naph turned his head to him. "It's nothing more than that… on the surface, at least."
Wind splashed against Naph's jacket collar. His neon jacket weighed down didn't budge much. 'I don't carry that much in my jacket?' The truth it didn't flutter didn't sit right but he had to keep focused.
"And that's all you could explain?"
Nert nodded. "Anything further first requires teaching you," he began pointing to others, the sky, the ocean below and the sun far west, "and this does not look like a classroom."
Anaphol took it in a slow nod.
Keeping his eyes peeled at the horizon and below, Naph potentially believed he could see normal sea animals from up this far. Dykur broke that too.
"Those dark emerging and diving curves are not dolphins or such." His spear already pointed down, "they are caestre, double or so the size of the fountain crossroad we met in." Eyes never leaving the six tracking dots.
The dots increased before the next cloud rolled in. "How far up are we?"
Bafflement was ready to engulf Naph. Ovier non-chalantly gave a reply, "about 400 kilometers above the ocean's surface."
And he was engulfed in his own astonishment. He had put his hands in his jacket's pockets when he had asked. Now, after learning, he cut his finger on the tip of a hidden dagger.
"Ouch," he acted. 'Magic..magic is real.' Being so high and not dying. It only brought a memory buried deep in him. He pushed on it, suffocated it again.
'I…no, not ready now.'
He had suffocated his surprise too.
The dots below were now over fourteen. Before any more could add to it, the water below seemed to become darker. In that very instant, a colossal gaping ravine opened below the collected dots. Water fell, the dots went along.
That wasn't all. The shape that made the ravine in the ocean rose high and snapped itself shut.
It cracked all nearby clouds apart, the ones closer to the water surface. And shockwave of the rupture and closing hit the seven above.
Ovier swerved all of them trying to muffle against the demolishing shockwave. It still hit them bad.
Svnyo cried out, "Come on! We just survived that lord, I don't want to become dessert for a Tryst."
Naph mouth mid speech was cut off by Svnyo. "No, we don't have time to explain. You will learn them. For now think of how you are going to help Sevenren."
"Sure! Why not!" Anaphol energetically gave a smile. "Obviously I already know where I am going, who I will meet, so obviously I will be able to get them to help me, right!"
The phenomenon of the ravine opening and closing implanted itself in his mind. He thought he spotted something like huge eyes. More than two. 'Whatever that was, I don't think I'll ever be able to kill.'
He with his supposed protectors had flew for more than an hour. The sun had rose by a hand's breadth from its horizon. Its rising from the west felt so conflicting to him against the year he had spent in Confederation of Tarna.
Sky became bluer as they went west. Clouds gaining silver lining and whitening from time to time, casting shadows down below from above the ocean.
Curiosity getting a better hold of Litto's mind, he suggested. "Naph, can I call you Naph?"
"Yes, you already have."
"So, I just wanted that you use any of your cata…what do you call it?"
"I…uh, cata combination?"
"Yeah, use one of that on a target below. Look, there's a flying caestre right there!" Litto pointed at a weird single winged caestre whose wing wasn't even attached to its left shoulder. The entire body a mix of a reptile and dissected cylinders. Naph could see through the spaces in between each of its partition.
Caestre flying below looked up. It had felt Anaphol's gaze.
Naph instantly thought of 'ca' and ended it at that. He had caught the gist of his recent discovery, directing his intent at the flying caestre.
Mirror shards broke encompassing him and flew straight out disregarding Litto, Dykur and Svnyo in its path. Ovier disengaged the unseen force. Naph fell down forward trailing after his mirror shards, while the rest scattered.
Before Naph could even show a sign that he noticed his predicament, his mind only ran to a single thought. 'So, that's how it works, huh?'
Ovier re-caught everyone. Cryst instantly scolded Litto. "Why would you ask a nearly cata exhausted boy to use a lesio?!" Naph's nose bled, he wiped it on his sleeve.
"I just wondered how strong was his lesio and," Litto gave an honest look to everyone then Naph, "yours is quite weak. I don't think Ovier even needed to disperse his lesio."
Cryst slammed her forehead. "Idiot! Yes, his is weak. That was obviously a given."
Ovier feeling for his own image of Naph said, "It's ok kid. I dispersed it just because I didn't want it to shatter inside."
Naph in his own thoughts gave a small nod. 'How is cata …gone? Affects the body?'
But his vision caught his attention next.
A land teeming with lush forests came into view. Its gentle reflection shining within his eyes. A green, brown and black caught in the irises of orange dancing with blue and deep blue forming a perfect iris frame to the beauty of the land in front.
He asked, "Is that the continent?"
Cryst patting his head. "No, it's an island undiscovered by the people of Tarna. Yet it belongs to it." Flying fast enough that the island zipped by before the words even reached Anaphol. He did notice a few mountain ranges.
"So, how far is …Jhorime?"
"At this speed?" Cryst contemplated. "Another day or two." She looked up and nodded to Ovier.
Ovier understanding her intention increased acceleration. The tides Naph could rarely spot became unrecognizable almost a broken symphony of lines.
"Now, it will just take half an hour."
Naph looked above in horror at Cryst. 'What!'