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The day had passed into mid-afternoon as Joel, Lynn, and Ryan traveled down the path to the Shroud Forest. They were traveling down a green off road path with a few trees spread randomly about them near a river. The young woman had given up her struggle to be left behind at the now-free city of Choajoi. She still sagged shortly behind Joel and Ryan with a sense of displeasure still flying around her. Joel looked back and started slowing down for Lynn, and Ryan stopped and waited for them both to catch up.

"Hey, is something wrong, Miss Lynn?" Joel asked Lynn, looking down closely at her.

Lynn only sighed and kept moving. Joel scratched his head for a moment, then looked at Ryan.

"Heh, human hygiene." Ryan chuckled.

"What?" Joel asked, "Well what’s that all about? I’ve never heard that word before."

"Oh, it’s nothing." Ryan told Joel, "It’s all stupid."

Lynn suddenly gave a look of disgust, stopping in her place and in motion. She slowly looked at the two guys and shuddered.

Joel looked back and noticed Lynn shuddering and asked, "Is she cold? Maybe she’s still wet from that flood we created?"

"Nope, it’s completely something else, man. Her mind is saying a lot of things right now, though." Ryan said, "Let’s see if I can get any out of her."

Lynn grumbled, then growled and pointed at Joel and Ryan and yelled, "I want food! I want a shower! And..."

"Oh boy, here we go. Cover your ears, children." Ryan mumbled, looking away.

"I want sex!" Lynn yelled at them.

Joel stood quiet in wonder, and his head dropped slightly to the side.

"I was so popular back in my home town!" Lynn said, dreaming off into space, "I had it all down. The cooking, the money, the friendship, and... The men."

She sighed deeply. Lynn then looked at Ryan and inched toward him.

"Hey! How about it?" Lynn asked with a smirk.

"Me?" Ryan asked, pointing at himself. He stepped back, put his hands to his sides, shook his head, and said, "Nah. Over three hundred years, I’ll do it whenever I feel like it." He looked down at Lynn and grinned, "Besides, I’m the one and only..."

Joel gave an annoyed look and twirled his fingers in the air above him and said, "The Guardian of the mind, la la la..."

"That’s right!" Ryan called out, raising his fist into the air.

Wind flew through his cape, lifting it up rapidly into the air. He felt as if bright lights and stars surrounded him, like he was the main attraction of the world. Joel began walking ahead passed Ryan, looking up with his hands between his head.

"You’ve got to come up with a new catch phrase, Ryan." Joel told him.

Ryan snickered and began following Joel and said, "Ah, you’re just jealous, man."

Lynn ran up to Joel, moving at the same pace as him. She moved in front of him with a wide grin on her face and began circling her finger around Joel’s chest.

"So how about you, Joel?" Lynn asked.

"Sorry, I’ve already got my sights set on someone else." Joel told her, "I’m not big into cheating."

Lynn moved to the side and kicked dirt into the air and said, "Aww man, come on! She wouldn’t know..." Lynn started running around Joel and Ryan as they walked along, yelling, "I want sex now! I want sex now! I want sex NOW!"

She stopped a moment and smelled the air, and she quickly put her hands on her face in disgust. She began following Joel and Ryan again with her hands on her face, then ran up in front of them both again, walking backwards.

"Eww, you two stink!" Lynn told them, "Don’t you Guardians ever bathe?"

"Hey, we bathed enough back in the flood, alright?" Ryan told her.

"Um, come to think of it..." Joel said, thinking deeply into his past. He tried to recall any time in his ventures that he had taken a bath or a shower, then shook his head and said, "Nope, I guess not."

"Aaah!" Lynn cried, falling to her side like a statue, "I can’t believe I couldn’t tell earlier." She jumped back to her feet and ran back up to Joel and Ryan and said, "No wonder your hair is so stuck up like that! Have you ever heard of shampoo and conditioner?"

Joel looked up at his hair, one bang of hair already down over his right eye as well, and said, "Actually it’s just like this."

"Oh come on, you can’t expect me to believe that, do you?" Lynn argued.

Ryan shook his head and quietly said, "Some things you just gotta." He flipped his left arm up and out towards the river and said, "So you want a bath. Start undressing now."

Lynn suddenly felt her body lifting up softly, then she was sent flying up into the air at a high speed. She screamed like a maniac as she reached her peak and began dropping towards the river. Ryan shot out his other hand at Lynn, and her clothes changed into a yellow one-piece swimsuit. Her eyes grew big with surprise, and Lynn splashed into the deep, calm river. She felt her body collide with the water sharply, causing her to briefly lay on the water’s surface, then she sunk slowly in. The water gargled with her exhaling breaths for a moment.

"Wow." Joel said as he watched Lynn fall in, "Do you think maybe she knows how to fly like you?"

Ryan shook his head, chuckled, and said, "Nope, she’s just as light as a feather." He looked at Joel and flipped his left arm back at the river again and said, "Your turn!"

"Wha? Waaaaaaaah!" Joel cried as his body was thrown into the river as well. His clothes were also changed into a male’s swimsuit, and he looked over himself momentarily before he hit the water and said, "Hey, I got a nice..."

Joel was cut off as he fell into the river, falling onto Lynn right as she surfaced and grabbed onto the side of the river. Ryan put his bags down and summoned Joel and Lynn’s bags back to the dry ground. He looked towards the river at where other two were and leaped into the air and into the water with a double back flip. He changed his suit into a swimsuit as well before he hit the water. Ryan swam to the surface after plunging down deep behind Joel and Lynn, and sat back against the river’s edge. He looked up into the sky, let out a deep breath, and sighed in relaxation. Soon Joel and Lynn surfaced again, and they both let out deep breaths for air. Lynn removed her headband from around her forehead and placed it on the ground aside from the lake, allowing her red hair to drop down and flow freely in the water. Joel and Ryan’s hair was also down from being dampened by the water.

"A bath wouldn’t hurt, I suppose." Ryan said, leaning back with his eyes closed.

Joel felt around in the water for a moment, then said, "It feels bad to me, though at the same time good."

Lynn paddled over to Joel and hit him over the head and said, "Are you really that obsessed with not taking a clean bath?"

"Well no." Joel told her, "I’m the Guardian of fire, and water is my weakness."

Lynn looked at Joel blankly, and Ryan nodded and said, "We all have our special properties, but at the same time we carry naturally low resistance to certain elements and attacks."

"But if you’re the Guardian of the mind, what’s your weakness, Ryan?" Lynn asked.

"That’s easy." Ryan told her, grinning, "Someone smarter than me."

"Or someone with bigger muscles!" Joel exclaimed, pointing out to Ryan.

Ryan shrugged and replied, "Well, the bigger the muscle, the more stupid they are."

Lynn floated over to Ryan and poked at his body for a moment, then asked, "Are you sure you’re the Guardian of the mind then?"

Ryan laughed and said, "Ah, you compliment me so well!"

Lynn backed off next to Joel, and they both looked at Ryan with a confused look on their faces. After a moment, Lynn came up to Ryan with another idea.

"Hey Ryan, so I heard you can create matter out of nothing?" Lynn asked him.

Ryan looked at Lynn and shook his head, "Nah. It may seem like that, but actually I can only summon items from another location of this reality."

"Isn’t that like stealing, though?" she asked. She floated back again for a moment dreaming off into space, thinking, "All the things I could get him to get me. I wouldn’t have to work to get riches. Ooh man, it’s too much for me to imagine! I could be a princess of my own castle with him around! And with my own moat, too!"

Ryan popped Lynn’s bubble of imagination and told her, "Sorry man, but it’s a bit more complicated than that. You see, first I have to actually come by the item, or a place that produces them."

"But you said you were over three hundred years old! You must have seen at least one castle in your life!" Lynn begged Ryan, "Well what about something like an element? Like water?" She cuffed her hand full of water, "Can you summon like a shower?"

Ryan shook his head again and told Lynn, "Not quite, princess. Some times you’d wish it were that easy, though, but if I tried summoning in any form of water from, say, the ocean, I would summon the whole body of water at a rate I couldn’t stop or control. It’s what keeps me just the master of the mind. I can’t control the elements like the respective Guardians can."

"Oh damn!" Lynn grumbled, batting the water’s surface with her hand, "Well what about some shampoo or something? I need to wash my hair."

Ryan looked at the young woman and shrugged again. He put out his hands and summoned a bottle of cheap shampoo to their little pool party. Lynn quickly grabbed the bottle and opened it, not taking into mind what was said about theft. She reached up to Ryan’s head with the bottle and squirted some shampoo over Ryan’s head, then turned around and quickly shot Joel the same way. Ryan shook his head and sighed for a moment, and Joel gave a disgruntled and disgusted look over his face. Lynn treated herself to some of the shampoo and tossed it to the side, and the three began scrubbing their heads and hair thoroughly.

"Hey, wait a minute." Lynn started suddenly, looking at Ryan, "You’re supposed to take your headband off when you wash your hair, you know."

"I can’t take it off. It’s too precious to me, man." Ryan told her. He poked a finger at his head around his headband and said, "Though I must admit, I must really have a weird looking soggy forehead by now."

Lynn flipped backward into the water and drifted up to the surface and lay floating there. She relaxed as the gentle current of the river waters glided around her small body.

"You never told me about your headband case, Ryan." Joel told Ryan.

"Ah, it’s nothing that big to tell." Ryan replied, "Just a gift from a friend I met three hundred and fifty years back, or so."

He grinned smoothly again and rested back along the side of the river.

Lynn looked back at Ryan from where she was floating and said, "Well I thought you said it was precious. You have a reason there somewhere, big man!"

"Develop a super powered brain like mine and I’ll tell you." Ryan replied, waving her off.

"Ah well..." Lynn sighed deeply, gazing up into the now setting sun in the sky, "I guess it won’t be bad getting used to you two."

"Maybe." Joel said, "Having Ryan around puts fun in a lot of things, really. I don’t have to go wandering around town for half the day for something entertaining."

Ryan nodded everything away as if it were quite obvious to him. He then floated up and climbed out from the river and walked away to their bags. Joel and Lynn followed after Ryan soon after. Ryan brought his hands up and slightly spread his feet out, and used his charge technique to dry his body off quickly. Joel saw Ryan do that and attempted to do it himself, and Lynn felt completely stumped and left out on how the two guys were drying off so fast. With the charge technique used to dry themselves off, Joel and Ryan’s hair were both back up in the fashion they were in before.

"Hey... how did you two get so dry all of the sudden?" Lynn asked them.

"Its called Charge." Ryan told her, "It’s another something that I believe only Guardians can do, and it restores some of our power as we use it. I just used to dry myself off because whenever we use the Charge technique we kind of get swept with a gust of air from the effects of it." Ryan explained further, "You see, as we relax out mind and tense our muscles, then instantly switch them, it creates a reaction that brings back our energy. Our bodies also let out a brief wave of energy in the form of a gust of air, you might say."

Lynn stood about quietly with a blank face for a moment, then she walked over to the bags and pulled out Ryan’s cape from his leather suit of armor and said, "Whatever. Just let me use this towel here to dry off..."

Ryan gave a startled jump as he saw Lynn pick up his cape and walk away with it. He watched the young lady walk away with it to rub her body clean of the soaking water.

"Err... well, I guess it’ll be good in the morning when it’s dry." Ryan said to himself.

Ryan put on his black shirt and blue pants, then began to set up tents around the area. It was getting late and dark, and the three travelers were ready for bed. Lynn came back with Ryan’s cape and tossed it up over one of the tents.

"That was a great towel! What was it made out of?" Lynn asked the two.

"A very... expensive... and rare... fabric..." Ryan said, cringing.

"Oh! Well, night guys!" Lynn exclaimed.

She began to duck into the tent she was next to, but Ryan ran over and grabbed Lynn by the back.

"Hey now, where do you think you’re going, missy? That’s my tent!" Ryan told her as he held onto her.

Lynn stopped pushing into the tent and looked back and said, "You expect me to sleep with one of you? Only if there’s you-know-what involved!"

She winked and began entering into the tent again, but Ryan leaned foreword with his hands on his hips, stomping his foot onto the ground.

"I don’t think so!" Ryan said, "The only way I’m going to give up my tent is if I loose to you in a duel!"

Joel looked between the two quietly, not knowing what to think about Ryan’s challenge. Lynn backed up out from the tent and stood up.

"A duel? Like fight me one on one?" Lynn asked.

Joel gave a blank look on his face between Ryan and Lynn. Lynn edged towards Joel and began brushing his side with her head.

"Oh Joel!" she sang quietly, "Won’t you fight Ryan for me?"

Joel gave Lynn a shocked look and fell back suddenly.

"Leave me out of this!" Joel said as he stood back up on his feet, giving Lynn a maniacal look.

Ryan shook his head at the two of them, and he pointed out into the open field and said, "Not fighting. A ‘duel’ to determine who gets the tent. Come with me."

He moved out to the wide open area, and Joel and Lynn followed him. When Lynn got to Ryan, he pointed to a place a yard away from where he stood. Lynn walked over to the spot Ryan told her to stand at, not sure what was going on exactly, and Joel followed her slightly and looked between them in the middle.

"Umm, so." Joel called out between the two of them, "On what terms are you two fighting, err, ‘dueling’ under?"

"These." Ryan called out to Joel.

Ryan raised his hands up into the air, and from underneath Ryan and Lynn raised two tall towers. As the towers gained several meters in height, a large platform raised from the ground between them. One half was colored blue, while the other half was colored red. Joel jumped up on one foot in surprise as the ground rumbled and the platform lifted him up. Each tower had a number box on the front of it with the number two thousand in digital computerized digits, and the top of each tower where Ryan and Lynn stood at had an odd form of computer board on them.

"We’ll play a game to determine who sleeps where! I call it Duel Guardians!" Ryan called out, "The rules are simple. We each have two thousand play points and a deck of cards that are comprised of our own Guardian monsters and our own personal abilities and attacks." He flipped a hand up, and a deck of cards appeared on each tower’s table, "We take turns using each card that we draw from our deck to attack each other until one of our play points reaches zero. Does that sound simple enough?"

"I guess so..." Lynn replied.

Joel began crawling around in curiosity, feeling and inspecting the shiny tiled platform between the two towers that he stood on.

"We’ll begin by setting up the play field!" Ryan said, putting down a card, "It’s a grassy field card, just like the area we’re surrounded by."

Suddenly the platform Joel was crawling around on sprouted dirt, then grass, and then flowers. Joel found himself covered in it, himself, and he shook it off rapidly. He began stepping back slowly to Ryan’s side of the play area as he looked around some more at the grassy set up.

"Now!" Ryan raised his hand with a card from his deck. He threw it down onto his table and yelled, "Go Blue Ryan!"

From out of no where a giant version of Ryan in his blue leather armor suit and cape appeared and raised from the bottom of the platform, occupying his side of the play field. The giant version of Ryan appeared to stare off into space with a wide grin on his face. As it came up into the air, Joel found himself stuck on top of its shoulder. He tumbled down and fell for the ground as the giant Ryan finished its appearance, and Joel crashed back down onto the platform. He scattered back to Lynn’s side of the platform and looked up at the Ryan.

"Okay, here we go..." Lynn said quietly. She picked up a hand of cards from her deck, raised one up and tossed it down on the table like Ryan did and said, "Go, um... Yellow Lynn? What the hell?"

A giant version of Lynn of appropriate size compared to Ryan raised up from the platform on her side, and Joel once again found himself caught on top of it. The giant copy wore Lynn’s yellow shirt and blue overalls. As it reached its peak, Joel tumbled off the front down across its face and fell into the big pocket on the front of its overalls along the chest. He lifted his upper body out from the pocket and shook his head. He looked around for a moment, then he thought about the situation as it was.

"Hey." Joel called out to both of them, "Lynn isn’t a Guardian, though!"

"What’s your point?" Ryan asked, giving him a shrug.

"Yeah, well, doesn’t that kind of beat the point of calling the whole game ‘Duel Guardians’?" Joel asked.

Ryan stopped for a moment and thought, then told him, "Let’s just make believe and pretend here, man." He lifted a card up from his play hand and showed it to Lynn and called out, "I’ll start by using the Mind Grip technique! It makes my Blue Ryan focus his massive, and did I mention cool, mind powers to distort time and space into a fist of thrashing power. It’s so powerful that you cannot avoid it, because you can’t see it! It will do massive damage to you and generally make you feel really bad, and you’ll wish you had just handed the tent back to me in the first place! Ah hah!"

Lynn stared at Ryan with a blank look on her face, then replied, "You’re getting weird on me, Ryan."

Ryan put the card down on his table setting and the giant Ryan’s eyes lit up and flashed. Suddenly its right hand and arm was up pointing at the giant Lynn as if it had thrown a punch, and the giant Lynn had bounced back as if it were hit. Joel shook around uneasily inside the giant pocket he stood in, rocking back and forth along the chest.

Ryan shrunk down into his tower and said, "Umm, I guess there is a few kinks I need to work out soon..." He looked at Lynn’s point board and saw that only five points were taken away from Ryan’s attack, and shouted, "Stupid random number generators!"

"Well it’s my turn, I guess." Lynn said, looking down at her cards. She blinked at them and yelled, "What? Annoyance? Self-centered? Botheration? Where’s my real attacks?" She looked at her cards again, then yelled, "What the hell? I’m not easy!"

"More so than you’ll ever think." Ryan mumbled to himself with a snicker.

Lynn snorted at Ryan, then said, "Fine, fine... Yellow Lynn attack with annoyance."

As Lynn placed her card down on her play table, the giant Lynn began to light up and look up at the figure of Ryan. It let out a big smile, took a deep breath, and then began to jabber out nonsense towards Ryan’s character. The giant Ryan began rocking back and forth uneasily as if he were annoyed. Its hands were covering its ears, and its eyes were closed tight. Ryan’s point display suddenly decreased by one thousand and twenty.

Ryan shook his head and said, "I think part of me died there as well." He looked at his score board for a moment, noticing the number decreasing to eight hundred, and cried, "Hey, that’s not fair at all! My game is acting in favor of the human!"

Joel looked back at Lynn and said, "He’s the Guardian of the mind, but he doesn’t seem too bright when it comes down to it, does it?"

Lynn shook her head at Joel and said, "You’d think that if he were so smart he would be satisfied with what he’s made, he’s so perfect."

Ryan began kicking his tower in frustration of the situation, then called out, "Enough of this nonsense! Blue Ryan, attack with Masamura!"

The giant figure of Ryan began to light up again, and it started to turn around and looked at Ryan as it unsheathed its weapon.

"No, no, you big idiot!" Ryan yelled, shaking his fist at the giant Ryan, "Attack them! Attack Yellow Lynn!"

The giant Ryan began to slowly turn back to face the giant figure of Lynn, and it raised its short sword up high. Joel looked up at the giant blade and started to panic as it came down at Lynn’s character down the middle in an attack.

"Oh no! Defend with Masamune!" Joel cried, putting his arms over his head.

Joel quickly moved to the side as he watched the giant short blade coming in a descent in front of them. It swung near him, barely touching the front of the giant Lynn’s overalls, and Joel shrieked out with big eyes. The pocket that Joel was watching from cut open, and Joel slid and fell out onto the ground with a long yell. He pulled his head out from the ground and crawled off away from the platform.

"I’ll be watching from over here from now on!" Joel called out to both of them.

Ryan gave Lynn a big grin and said, "Hah! I hope you liked that! A big meaty slash from my mighty sword for..." he looked down and looked at Lynn’s point monitor, "Erm... twenty points..." he twiddled his fingers and looked aside and said quietly, "Well I’m getting there, I suppose."

Lynn’s head fell slightly to the side for a moment, and she looked around quietly. She stood up straight and looked around at her cards again.

"Well, umm... how about Yellow Lynn attack with twin steel rings?" Lynn called out.

Ryan waved his hands around and shook his head, saying, "Wait, sorry, you can’t do that. See I kind of built this thing before I knew you could actually fight, or use those hoops as weapons. So I gave you something in place of a weapon that you could use."

"And what would those be?" Lynn asked Ryan.

Ryan ducked down under his table for a moment, rummaging around for a bit, then stood up with two sucks on his hands over his gloves.

"Hand sock puppets! Have fun!" Ryan answered her with a smile.

Joel fell back on the ground and began laughing in hilarity.

Lynn looked down at Joel and yelled, "That’s not funny, damn it!" She looked at her controls again and called out, "Alright, Yellow Lynn attack with..." She paused, feeling soon to be humiliated, then said, "Hand Puppet Sam on Blue Ryan..." Lynn cringed a moment, then looked at Joel and called out, "And Hand Puppet Gus on Red Joel! Yeah, he’s right over there! Down there outside the platform! Get him!"

The giant figure of Lynn looked off to the side away from the giant Ryan figure and looked at Joel. It started to flash and glow then started to move towards Joel with its left-hand sock puppet. Joel stopped laughing in time to see the giant Lynn coming after him on land. He let out a brief "eep" and began running away from it as it sent its hand into the ground over Joel. Joel jumped up ahead and kept running as the giant figure lifted its hand out from the ground and tried attacking again. He jumped up and flipped back onto the giant arm as it crushed the ground, and Joel ran up to the giant woman’s shoulder. The eyes began to flash again, and it brought its hand back and shot it towards Joel as he stood near its head.

The giant sock puppet collided with the giant Lynn’s head, and Joel jumped down off of it as it fell down to the ground. Suddenly two medics raised up from out of the platform and ran over to the fallen giant Lynn. They lifted her up and put it down on a roll away medical table and took it back to the platform and disappeared with it. Joel stopped on the ground with his left hand up on his chest, breathing deeply from his short breaths of surprise. Lynn looked down at Joel for a moment, then at the platform.

"Wait a minute. She was supposed to hit Blue Ryan first!" Lynn argued. She hit her table and said, "Oh alright, go Yellow Lynn number two."

Another giant figure of Lynn raised up out of the platform and took stand in front of the giant Ryan, and Lynn’s point monitor dropped down to one thousand.

"See, Guardians stick out for one another. Thanks Joel!" Ryan laughed.

"Are you crazy?" Joel asked Ryan, still catching his breath.

Ryan grinned and shook his head slightly, and said, "Now I will use the super powerful and obviously magical strength of haste! This super duper complex technique that you probably could never understand in your entire life will make it so my Blue Ryan is fast enough to evade any and all of your attacks! Granted you don’t get something like an ultimate super spell card or anything. But anyway, you should fear it, because now you will never win now that I have drawn this one card here right in front of us!"

Lynn gave Ryan a disgruntled look and asked, "Did you really have to explain all of that to me?"

Ryan stood silent again for a few moments, and then told her, "...Yes."

Joel sat down again near the platform and called out, "I don’t get it either."

He slowly looked away, nodding his head back and forth slightly, humming a quiet tune to himself as Ryan looked down at him. Lynn sighed and placed a card down on her table. The giant Lynn figure lit up, eyes flashing, and jabbed the Blue Ryan under its chin. The two figures stood there for a moment, Blue Ryan’s haste effect trying to go off around the arms instead of the whole body, and Blue Ryan’s head popped up high as if it were a broken toy. Ryan’s points monitor flashed and hit zero with Yellow Lynn’s last attack.

Ryan’s eye twitched for a moment as he stood still on his tower, mumbling, "I lost?" he looked slightly to the side up in the air and thought, "Stupid bug..." Ryan suddenly fell back off his tower and crashed onto the ground, yelling, "I lost! No!"

Joel ran over to Ryan, who was twitching a little every now and again on the ground. The towers and platform began to sink back into the ground, and the area returned to how it once was before the strange quarrel. Lynn walked over to Ryan and looked him over as he twitched one more, and she crossed her arms and sighed at him.

"You’re not dead, man. Get up." She told him.

"You’re not mentally handicapped or anything just because you lost either. I still don’t get it." Joel told him with a confused look on his face, "Why would someone make such a big deal out of this?"

Lynn looked up at Joel and shrugged, saying, "Beats me. Some people take these things way too serious." She turned and remembered, and danced away saying, "Well, I guess that means the tent is mine then!"

Ryan twitched a bit more in his sad act of loss. Joel grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet, and Ryan hopped up and grinned slightly.

"Well, that’s that!" Ryan said, patting his gloves together, "I’m going back to the tents now."

Ryan began walking off, and Joel called out to him, "Wait, so you’re just going to leave it like that?"

Ryan looked back and responded, "Ah, sure."

Joel ran up to Ryan and began walking with him back to the camp.

"You can share my tent with me if you want." Joel offered him.

"No way, man." Ryan said, shaking his head, "I don’t do that stuff. Not with guys, anyway. Besides, my tent is designed especially for me!"

The two reached the camp again, and Lynn was already inside Ryan’s tent getting ready for bed. Ryan stood in the center of the camp and dropped to his knees, then to his back.

"I guess I could get comfortable here. We’ll see." Ryan said as he spread himself out over the hard and grassy ground.

Joel nodded at him and turned away towards his tent and said, "If you say so, Ryan. Guess I’ll see you tomorrow for the walk for the Shroud Forest?"

"Yeah, man. We’ll get through there tomorrow and we’ll be at Traquo in no time." Ryan told him.

Joel crawled into his tent and laid back in his little set up bed. He let out a deep sigh, allowing the memories of Traquo invade his mind again, and he slowly drifted to sleep. It was not long from what seemed like a few minutes in Joel’s deep sleep when he was awakened by Ryan knocking on his tent late the same night. Joel stood up and wobbled over to the tent flap in his sleepy condition and poked his head outside.

"What Ryan? What’s wrong?" Joel mumbled, eyes slightly closed.

Ryan gave Joel a concerned look and pointed around them and asked, "Hey, do you remember us setting our tents up around here?"

Joel came out of the tent and took a better look around. They found themselves surrounded by a much deeper darkness than the night. Glowing fire flies flew around the camp, and there was a mountain with a cave opening in front of them as opposed to a wide open field of grass and flowers.

"No, I don’t." Joel answered Ryan, shaking his head, "Can you sense where we are?"

"I can’t seem to focus my powers at all here, man. This is freaky." Ryan told Joel.

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