Book One – Chapter 8

And so he traversed the Northlands, seated on his chest, which was in turn placed on the witch’s sled. His Levitation Staff could not affect living beings, but nothing stopped Yves from making the sled float forwards while he sat on top of it.

Yet, a pressing need to cover ground remained. Even with the Levitation Staff, the journey to the settlements stretched dauntingly long — over two months by foot, not significantly hastened by magical means. His advances were hindered by the ferocity of the savage Northlands’ storms, assaulting the cart and forcing Yves to remain low and move at a sluggish pace. At times, he drew up protective shards, but such walls, though they offered fleeting reprieves from the rain, demanded too much mental focus. When deployed as barriers and roof attached to the sled, they became additional vulnerable surfaces for the wind’s assault. When conjured as floating shields, unattached, they were difficult to maintain. Yves needed to consciously move them along in tandem with the sled, while simultaneously balancing out the unpredictable shifts in wind direction and intensity.

Yves had never before used magic to travel the plateau, because any traces of foreign energies alarmed the buried and winged beasts that made these dead lands their territories. But now he dared, because his injuries and deteriorating eyesight left him no alternative, and because the heavy presence of the Vicha was still with him. The mark of the witch’s touch was not on the crater. It was on Yves. The gateway key to the cursed portal still resided within him; he had not been able to separate it in time before the shift. And with that, the Vicha still moved as Yves did. The horrid mountain mass continued to trail him; a sinister affirmation of the connection between the Mirror Dimension and his own dual reality, evidenced by the ashen wades corresponding to oceans and lakes.