4 Decimandria

The first thing Alex felt was air. It gently flowed over him enveloping him in its softness. "What happened?" he thought. He felt as if he'd just fallen from a great height. He felt nauseous and his head felt heavy. He took in a small breath to calm himself. "Wait! I can breath again? Where am I?"

Alex still felt weak and semi-conscious. He clenched his hand and got a fistful of grass in his palms. "Grass? Cold. Where am I?" He still couldn't see anything but blackness. Suddenly, he realized that his eyes were closed.

In a rush of returning sensation and recollection, Alex slammed opened his eyes and bolted upright. His legs outstretched in front of him, he looked around. There was nothing but...grass...around him. The surface was not flat though; there were a more than a few hills around him. He then moved his eyes to observe his more immediate surroundings, and saw a some black shapes on the ground a few feet from him. As his eyes focused, he suddenly realized that they were people...and who they were exactly.

He sprang up and ran to the unconscious body with the dark red hair. He turned the girl round and lifted her head onto his lap. "Felicia! Felicia." he said, with decreasing panic as he saw her chest heaving.

She slowly opened her light brown eyes. "Whahapped?" she murmured, "Where....where are we?" She sat up and looked around; but Alex had already rushed to his younger sister. Liana was gaining consciousness as he rushed up to her, and she grabbed at him gratefully; something familiar in this place. Before she too could ask much, Alex had run to Eve. By the time he got to Robin, he was already sitting up, and looking around, dazed and confused. "What the hell?" he muttered.

Alex stretched a hand to Robin who took it, and Alex heaved him up to his feet. The girls, now almost recovered, walked over to the pair. "Where in the world are we?" asked Liana.

"Are we dead?" thought Felicia out loud, "Or is this a dream?"

All of them looked around again. Nothing but plain grass. Most of their view was obstructed by the rather large hills that made the area. The sky was clear with a few cheerful white clouds.

"Okay, I can feel the panic creeping up." said Eve in a slightly hysterical tone, "What the hell happened to us? What was that light? How are we here? Where is here?"

Alex himself was confused beyond belief, but looking at the fear and bewilderment in his friends' faces, he suddenly realized that it would do them no good if he panicked too. He had to rally them all to back to calmness and reason.

"Listen. Listen." he said, "We'll figure this out step by step, okay? Whatever the light was, however we got here, try to forget it for a second. First, let's just establish where we are, alright?" The 4 of them slowly nodded their heads. "We're gonna climb to the top of one of these hills and see where we are exactly. Come on." The five friends picked out the tallest hill from the ones they could see and began their trek up. The hill wasn't a steep one, and the rich soil provided enough traction. Without too much effort, they were soon at the top.

Again, however, they were greeted with disappointment. Nothing but those short hills spaced out by moderate flatlands in between them. "Oh, for God's sake!" said Robin, slumping down on the ground. "What now?" Without answering, Alex got on one knee and observed the area around them. He knew he needed to figure out something soon. Night was coming, and he didn't want the five of them stuck here in the cold that would follow.

He looked over to the girls; they had sat down on the floor too, looking so lost, he felt sad for them. He looked at Robin, who was rummaging through his pockets.

"What're you looking for?" asked Alex.

"My phone."

"You don't have it. None of us do." said Felicia, bitterly, "we made up that stupid rule that all of us have to put our phones in a bowl and not even look at them while the six of us are playing games."

"To be fair, when you made the rule, you didn't expect we'd get transported to some grasslands by the almighty light and would need phones." grinned Alex. Felicia glared at him. Alex snapped back to staring at the horizon as if it was the most interesting thing in the world.

This time, though, he saw something. "Look! There!" he exclaimed. The rest of them looked over to where he was pointing; a thin pillar of smoke was rising from behind a hill. "Smoke means means fire. Fire means civilization." said Alex getting up, "Come on!"

It took the five of them some time to cross all the hills in their path. As soon as they crossed one, another would be in front of them. It felt like they would never end. All the while, Alex was worrying what would happen if the smoke stopped rising. He kept making mental notes as to where it was, so if that were to happen, he'd still have a direction to lead the group in.

Soon, the hills started getting smaller and smaller, and the grass started giving way to soil. Alex reached the summit of the last hill first, and immediately signaled the others to get down.

They looked over the top and saw the source of the smoke. It was a wooden cabin almost at the foot of the very hill they were on.

It was a modestly sized built from a bunch of sturdy logs. It had a small accompanying barn a bit farther away from it, and a farm, about the size of a big backyard, attached right beside it. The peculiar feature was that the cottage itself had an extended roof which stretched out to the side. There were four, thin, wooden pillars holding up the roof, but no walls surrounding it. The cabin acted as one wall, while the other three sides were open to the elements. The most amazing sight to the group though, was that there was a man inside that shed!

He wore a dark red shirt, brown pants, and a thick leather apron. He was hammering at an anvil on which some metal was glowing red. The smoke that had led the five here, came from the man's blazing forge. It was made from thick stone bricks, and had a weirdly shaped thing attached to the side of it which, as they observed the man pump it, Alex realized was an old fashioned fan used to blow air into the forge.

"This is some hermit." said Robin.

"Can we really trust this guy?" asked Eve, suddenly feeling some kind of fear.

"I don't see we have much choice." replied Alex.

"Well, let's not just all of us walk up to him then." said Felicia. "You and I will go, while these three stay here."

"No." said Alex. "After what happened, I don't want us splitting up."

"We're all going?" asked Liana, apprehensively.

"Just follow my lead, and let me do the talking. Especially, you, Robin. Don't open your mouth at all. We have no idea where we are, and no way to contact anyone. He doesn't have to know how vulnerable we are. Come on."

The five of them got down from the short hill and started walking up to the wooden cottage. The blacksmith had started fidgeting with some of his tools and had turned his back to the group. With each step Eve took, she felt a strange foreboding. But the next step it would be gone. And in the next it would come back.

Soon, the five of them came up to the cottage. The workshop where the blacksmith was working was raised about two feet from the ground and it had two steps leading into it. The group stopped a few feet behind the steps.

There was a moment of awkward pause when the blacksmith kept hammering away and didn't notice the five people behind him.

"Er...excuse me." said Alex, wondering if the people here even spoke English. The blacksmith didn't hear him, so he tried again, a bit louder: "Hey, excuse me!"

The man turned around and was immediately taken aback to see five people standing out there. Up close, Alex could make out even more details about the man. He had a pot belly which was visible even through the black leather apron. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up to reveal muscles that would make a bodybuilder jealous. His rich hair was immaculately combed to the left. They were almost completely powder snow except for the the stripes above each ear which were black. His medium beard was also the same shade as most of his hair.

"Yes?" the blacksmith asked. His voice low and gravelly; Alex also picked up a tone of suspicion. The curiosity and the surprise on his face was uncomfortably apparent as his eyes observed every single one of them in detail. "Can I help you?"

"Er...yes." replied Alex, a bit awkwardly, "We...er...we're...we're travelers. And we...we seem to have gotten lost. Er...would you mind telling us where we are?"

"You're a few hours away from the town of Lemara." replied the man, his eyes still a mixture of curiosity and slight suspicion.

"Le...Lemara?" repeated Alex racking his brain to figure out where that could be. "I'm afraid I've never heard of that town before."

The man gave a short bark of laughter. "I don't blame ya. It's a pretty small town. Not even depicted on most maps."

"So...er...would you mind giving us a broader sense of where we are?"

"You're a few days south of Barfoss." he said.

The five of them exchanged looks with each other.

"You haven't even heard of Barfoss?" asked the blacksmith when he saw the group's reaction. "You people are not from around here, are you?"

"Er...no. We...we live a bit far away."

"Really far away, seems to me." said the blacksmith, nodding his head.

"Can you tell us where we are on the biggest scale you can think of? Country or something?" asked Alex.

The blacksmith looked a bit taken aback. "Is this some kind of joke?"

"Does it look like I'm joking?" asked Alex. The blacksmith looked at the tall, well built boy. Something about him...something in the sincerity in his tone, the determination in his eyes, and the worry in his face suddenly made the blacksmith respect him more. He gave in.

"Why, you're in the continent of Decimandria." he said proudly.

There was a silent shockwave throughout the group. Suddenly, the birds chirping seemed louder. The wind blowing could be heard for miles. None of the five spoke a word. Just looked at the white haired man in utter shock.

"The...the cont...the continent of Decimandria, did you say?" asked Robin incredulously.

"Yes."

Robin turned to the group: "Either this old man has lost it, or I have. What the fuck is-"

"You wanna address me, boy, you can look at me while you do it." said the blacksmith a bit crossly.

Robin spun around; whether it was panic or courage, he said: "You're out of your mind, old man."

Before the blacksmith could retort, Alex stepped in front of Robin. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." he said, "My friend's a little flustered. He didn't mean it."

Again, looking at Alex's demeanor made the blacksmith stop from coming down the two steps. "It's no problem" he said a bit gruffly.

Alex turned to Robin to tell him off, but caught the eyes of all four of his friends. Every single one of them gleamed with worry and panic. Just looking for something to hold on to.

The blacksmith from behind Alex's back saw the fear too. "Er...why don't you come in?" he asked. "Maybe the land you come from addresses Decimandria differently. I've got a map, so maybe looking at it will give you an idea of where you are."

Alex turned around thankfully. Some hope. "If it's not too much of a trouble." he said a bit nervously.

The blacksmith gave his bark of laughter. "No trouble, my boy." he said cheerfully. "You lot look like you could use a drink or two. Come on." Saying so, he turned to the door of his cottage which opened into his workshop, pushed it open, and walked in.

As the five began to follow, Robin hissed: "Don't drink anything he offers. He could be a crazed psycho for all we know."

"He's right." said Alex, "Be alert."

The five walked to the door the blacksmith had held open from the inside, and walked through. The interior of the cottage was, if primitively, very modestly furnished. There was a big fireplace with a low fire merrily crackling. There was a wooden bench with no cushions and two padded armchairs. The rug in the room was basically an unprocessed brown hide of some animal. Something was wrong here felt Alex. Something was...missing.

"Please, sit." the blacksmith offered, and tactfully didn't close the main door.

"Lis!" he called. "Lis! We have some weary travelers. Can you bring us something to drink, please?"

"One moment!" came back the reply from the small corridor leading to the different rooms of the cabin.

"Forgive me for being blunt, but...er...I still have no idea of your names." said the blacksmith walking over to window, standing a bit further away from the five sitting on the benches and Robin on the armchair. Alex realized, the man was purposely doing this. He wasn't giving them a reason to feel threatened. The door had been left open and he stood well away from it so if the group decided to run, they'd be home free. But is he just building up the trust for some other reason?

"Oh, yeah, sorry about that. I'm Alex...Wright" he said, hoping the others would play along, "and this is my sister Liana Wright. My friends, Evelyn, Robin, and Felicia Corr." Each of them nodded as their names were mentioned but none gave a single hint about the surnames being changed.

Just then, a woman walked in holding a wooden tray with long wooden cups in it. She was almost a foot shorter than the blacksmith, and her hair was just beginning to gray. She wore a dark blue gown which was very dirty as if she'd been working in the farm recently, and had a small white bonnet on her head. Thin and a bit plump, she still walked in with a cheerful smile that warmed everyone in spite of themselves.

"Ah, don't worry." she said to the group as she handed out glasses to each of them, "this is just like Herm. He'd bring in a fellow from the bottom of a gutter if the man needed help."

The blacksmith shook his head lightly, and picked up the conversation as if it hadn't been interrupted. "My name is Herm. Herm Fegg. And this is my beautiful wife, Lis Fegg." he said putting a hand around her back as she handed him his glass and stood beside him.

"This group of young people apparently got lost. I have no idea how this lost they got, but I invited them in. They looked like they needed some rest and something to drink." Herm explained to his wife.

Alex glanced inside the cup and saw some blood red liquid. He stuck with the plan and chose not to drink it. "Er...the map?" he asked.

"Oh, yeah, yeah." said Herm, walking to a wooden cupboard above the fireplace. He opened it, took out a scroll, and handed it to Alex.

"I'm afraid the map isn't of the best quality, but I guess it's better than nothing, eh?" asked Herm. A bit taken back, Alex, took the scroll. It was made of thick parchment and felt rough to touch.

Out of nowhere, Alex realized what was odd about this whole thing. "What year is it?" he asked suddenly.

Every single person looked at Alex in disbelief. Herm raised his thick black eyebrows higher than than any of the previous times. "It's the twelfth age, son." he answered slowly.

Again there was this high pitched silence from the group. Even Lis felt it. They just looked at the blacksmith in shock. Shaking his head, Herm walked over to the group, sat down on one of the wooden chairs facing them, and looked them straight in the eye.

"Where the hell are you guys from?" he asked incredulously.