173 Lost In A Sea Of Green

Altair really didn't know how bad Ordin Prime was on foot, or at least, where she was currently.

All around her was a sea of vibrant green grass that was all trimmed to the same height without exception. It stretched beyond sight into the distance on all sides. There were no mountains in the distance or trees to try and get a grasp of progress. No matter how far someone walked here, they wouldn't know if they had moved a centimeter or a kilometer from where they originally started.

Altair had burned through fifty Transferences before she decided it was a bad idea to keep going. This was because throughout all the distance that she traveled, she didn't see anything different since she lost sight of the forest she came from. She didn't cross any rivers let alone see any sign of water anywhere. There were no trees or mountains or buildings. She didn't even see any hills.

It was as if the entire planet was covered in the grass that surrounded her.

She was completely lost. She had been counting on running into some kind of landmark, or at least a river so she could get some sleep near a water source. But, alas, she found none of that. By now, the sun was high in the sky and she was not moving anymore. It wasn't because she didn't have energy but rather, she figured it was a bad idea to keep moving at random.

She had been relying purely on her memory of traveling to that place with Renald. From what she remembered, there wasn't this long of a patch of plains though. Or maybe she was just going far slower than a cruiser could travel. Altair had no idea and, either way, it didn't matter due to how lost she was.

She could not keep traveling the way she was travelling. Also, she was getting very thirsty. She had stopped to snack on the chocolate bars that she had found along the way and she had two left. They were really hard to resist eating.

However, she only had those vials of Manamium enriched water to consume as a drink. Of course, this option was off the table. Or, at least, consuming all of them was off the table. She had downed the vials that were made with her Magic because she wouldn't be able to keep them when she went to sleep anyway. Maintaining Magic required constant concentration, albeit a little concentration depending on how must practice you had. So when she went to sleep, if she had found a river, the Magic keeping them as vials would have vanished and her Manamium enriched water would have been absorbed by the ground or whatever surface they found themselves on.

As a result, Altair only had the single vial she had left from the Marnithok mansion at that moment. She had also stopped covering herself with her Shadow Magic as well once she had jumped several times away from the forest. She did keep the shoes though, as she was somewhat used to footwear.

There was no chance she would use that vial for drinking water.

She would rather teleport back to the Rebanon Kingdom, with some river far away from Dyersburge and the capital, in mind. She would then drink her fill there and, possibly, look for a way to keep it contained while she rested for a day or two. After that, she would return to the Empire, consume her last vial for a little recharge, before she fled the place she arrived at.

But there was a problem even with this idea, at least to her. Quite simply, everywhere around her looked the same. If she tried to return to the spot she left from it was iffy, at best, on if she could actually return to the same spot.

She could wind up more lost than she currently was.

With all of that on Altair's mind, she flopped down into the grass and laid herself out to stare blankly at the sky. She then burned a bunch of Mana on her only real choice at that moment: scouting birds. She created a dozen of them in a circle above her and sent them all in different directions with only three things to look out for: a source of water, buildings, or the Marnithok mansion.

The last one was a little redundant but Altair added it anyway because she was tired.

After a short amount of time, Altair yawned heavily while she rested. Her eyes drooped as she watched a cloud that looked a lot like a snail drifted past her eyes. She yawned again and rubbed her eyes while thinking, 'Just another moment. Then I'll get back up.'

Even though she was lying on grass, it was still really comfortable for her to be resting at that moment. It was like she was laying on a cold, slightly mostly, blanket on a hot day. If that blanket also poked her butt and the backsides of her legs.

'Still,' she considered, 'How is all this grass kept like this?' She rolled over, turning her back to the sun, as she yawned again. Her thoughts turned to Din and how she failed to get vengeance for her.

'How I would have loved to be able to pay them back for that. Sorry, Din.'

Altair didn't like many people, even in the Empire. She liked Donel, the steward of the Marnithok family, of course. He was the first person that had treated her well in the Empire and he was patient enough to teach her the Empires language. Of course, Altair wasn't completely ignorant anymore. She knew that Donel was given that job. That didn't matter that much to her either. He was like the grandfather she never had, at least in her mind he was.

Her opinion on Stacey was mixed and undecided still. She was overly friendly a lot of the time but she seemed to have learned Altair's boundaries on things over time, even if she got a lot worse when Sarah started living in Altair's room. She also made for an excellent conversation partner when talking about Miracle Dancing Magical Girl Arneli Arnessa, but Altair wasn't as interested in that show anymore. She also wanted to keep Altair dressed up in that indecent clothing.

Sarah was more complicated than Stacey. She didn't know her for very long and yet she seemed to get really attached to Altair. It was also really difficult for Altair to refuse her requests after a while. Altair couldn't see any malice or subterfuge in her actions, despite her best efforts. Thus, she was wholly unable to stop herself from slipping more and more into doing things for Sarah. Sarah would even make sure to take small steps towards what she wanted Altair to do, each step being ever so slightly more against what Altair would actually want to do.

But, because Altair was slowly pushed more and more, she didn't realize everything she had done until now. It caused her to frown slightly, then sigh it away. It wasn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things now and she realized that she didn't mind it too much now.

Renald was a business partner more than anything to Altair. She was treating him as a merchant because, as far as she could tell, he would only really do things for self profit. Granted, he did allow Altair to leave before when she could easily have never returned, so maybe he wasn't all bad? But Altair wouldn't be able to ever trust him fully. After all, every action she had seen him take would benefit his family the most.

That was understandable to Altair. It was his family that he valued more than anyone else, as Altair had been in the past. Thus, if there was enough profit for him, she wouldn't doubt for a second that he would turn her over to the people who were after her. However, she also knew that Teleportation Magic was incredibly valuable to him. She could, theoretically, instantly move whatever supplies or ships he wanted her to move from point A to point B, but she couldn't move anything living. He didn't know that, though.

Noel was a chatterbox when she had first seen her. She imagined her to be one of those extremely gossipy girls she had seen in the Kingdom. However, she had become really quiet and timid after the first time they met. In fact, she would have been lucky to hear a sentence from her every week that passed. Even after Sarah had invaded her room, she still remained as meek as a mouse. Altair didn't know what happened to her to cause her to be so withdrawn, but it was obvious that something was wrong.

As for Joshua… He was just trash. Everything about him was trash in her mind. She wondered how Renald's family would do in the future if he didn't stop being trash but that didn't matter to her that much.

The Ladrian siblings were a bit worrisome. She didn't know what they're plans were for her but she could tell that they were nobles to their core. It wasn't hard for her to see that. As a result, she had to be cautious about them. She would freely admit to being stupider than them, as such she felt she was vulnerable to their machinations. But she doubted that she would be outmatched by either of them if it came to blows.

Altair felt her eyes drooped low as she thought, 'I should get up.' The thought crossed her mind as the should-be-hard ground comfortingly invited her to slumber. Sure, the dirt part of the ground would have been uncomfortable, if it wasn't for the grass creating a really crappy cushion on it. However, Altair had lived almost half her life sleeping on dirt, so it was actually decent in terms of ground she had slept on and with the fact that she had stayed up for over a day, she found it difficult to resist the temptation to sleep.

Then Altair awoke some amount of time later to an abyssal black sky over before her eyes and she muttered a mild curse. She sat up and her back immediately complained to her. The hard ground did not do her any favors and she immediately burned some Mana to take care of it while creating another circle of birds and sending them out at the same time. THe ones she sent before were, of course, gone.

Thankfully, though, she didn't get picked up by any strange Humans or found by those people who were chasing her. So that was a plus.

Her throat cracked when she tried to swallow and she knew that she had, at most, another ten hours before she would need to return to the Rebanon Kingdom if she didn't find any water. She also felt her stomach grumble slightly and she pulled out one of her remaining chocolate bars and began eating it on the spot.

She ate while she gazed at the dark sky that weakly threatened to consume her. Unlike before, however, she was no longer concerned by that feeling it gave her. She knew the truth about it so she didn't really pay it much attention.

She was actually searching for—

A light, far ahead of her, caught her gaze and she stood up hastily while taking a bigger bite of her food. She narrowed her eyes and focused all of her attention on it. It was impossible to miss or ignore, given that it was the only source of light that Altair could see. Within the inky blackness of the night sky, it was like a lone star that promised hope of some kind.

For Altair, it was a promise of civilization. She decided to watch it intently with all of her focus, lest she lose the direction it was going in. That would be tragic as she had no other leads to go on. She even stopped eating her chocolate bar, it was that important.

And then the light vanished without a trace, as if it had been an illusion the entire time. It's disappearance caused Altair to look around the sky frantically for it. Perhaps it could cover a large distance very quickly or perhaps the light would come back up somewhere else in view. Either way, she didn't want to miss it.

After searching for some time and still seeing no further signs of it, Altair scornfully cursed the sky above her as if it would make the sky ashamed and show her the way she wanted to go. Of course, it didn't.

She sighed heavily after several moments of silence. She then crunched another bite of the chocolate bar before she heard an aggressive roar that echoed in her surroundings. It caused her brows to furrow and she looked around cautiously before she was suddenly blinded by a light that shone down on her face.

Her heart leapt to her throat in an instant. She quickly turned away from the source and began to run in the opposite direction. Before she could take two steps, another light poured down on her face from that direction too and she shielded her eyes immediately from it. Then, she ran in away from the lights that were flanking her, only to find that they rotated seamlessly to block her path again. After trying to escape that way one more time and having the lights, once more, surround her effortlessly, Altair came to a stop.

From what she could see, there was a cruiser that stayed hovering above the ground. It didn't appear to have any intentions of descending as it just kept the light on her and made obnoxious roaring sounds like it was some kind of massive beast.

She turned around to the other source of light and found it to be the same as the other one. Together, they made an excessively loud pair of cruisers that quickly grated on Altair's mind. Dozens of questions poured into her mind at every second as she wondered who they were and what their objective was. After all, why else would they choose to sandwich her between them and make excessively loud engine noises?