9

"What is it Oscar?" Gimli asked as silently as he could.

Oscar's face relax as he turned to his right side to face gimli.

"I thought I heard something." Oscar said, he was not completely sure whether or not he heard it.

"And now?" Gimli asked.

"Just the chirping of birds from a far. But prepare yourselves incase of an ambush, what I heard earlier was different."

"What did you hear?" Gimli asked to confirm whether or not it was danger.

"Drums beat." Oscar replied and gimli's face contoured into something Oscar could identify as alertness.

"Gnomes." Gimli whispered and looked around.

Oscar brought out his sharp and curved claws and climbed one of the trees, where he could get a good view of what was coming. His eyes read the numbers of the short human looking creatures with pig-like faces. They were matching towards the human rangers with weapons. Clearly, they had been alerted of the humans approach. The stench of the gnomes stung Oscar's nose as he wrinkled his nostrils and got off the tree. The rangers had already loaded their bows with arrows and had taken their positions to attack.

"What did you see Oscar?" Gimli asked as he walked closer to Oscar.

"Gnomes. About twenty of them. They are heading towards us with weapons." Oscar answered.

"They caught our scents. We need to regroup. On the trees, quickly." Gimli instructed, it would be a waste of time if he was to tell each of them which tree to climb.

The rangers did as their leader said, they pulled on their bowstrings as they hid in the tree leaves. Oscar did the same, he noticed that kara was on the tree that was right in front of his. He wondered how a girl so young could be so skilled like a person who had been trained for seasons.

The humans and the wolf watched as the gnomes dashed into the forest and stopped as confusion laced on their ugly faces. Clearly, they had been expecting to see the humans defenselessly walking around, not knowing that they were the ones being ambushed.

Gimli waited for a while to watch the drama before letting the arrow free.

One of the gnomes snorted and spoke " Where are they?" Then snorted again.

Another one snorted and answered, " they must be here somewhere, I can smell them." And ended with a snort.

Oscar looked at gimli who had an amused smile on his young face. He was getting impatient, all he wanted was to get it done with and continue with the journey. Oscar released his arrow, catching both the gnomes and the humans off guard. Soon the rangers gave their shots and reloaded their bows until they were sure that the gnomes were all dead.

They all climbed off the trees and inspected the dead gnomes before their attentions turned back to Oscar.

"How dare you shoot before the leader, you need to have respect for protocols." One of the rangers said, Oscar noticed that he was the same bearded ranger who had insulted him when he first arrived at the village.

"That's enough!" Gimli ordered and looked at Oscar.

"I understand that you could not wait to finish things off Oscar, but we don't just shoot. We plan before doing so, I will shoot first and the rest will do the same simultaneously. That way, we will succeed and not get ourselves injured." Gimli explained as politely as he could.

Oscar could barely contain his annoyance, but he remained patient.

"Of course, can we proceed now?" He asked and gimli nodded knowingly, he knew that Oscar had been having an internal battle as he had constantly been lost in thoughts throughout the travel.

"Let's proceed." Gimli yelled and the rangers followed Oscar and him.

***

At the enchanted city, two white wolves could be seen, wounded and dragged around by two soldiers in silver armor. When they reached the big silver gate, they paused and announced their arrival. Soon, the wolves had been taken to omaya for a brief interrogation.

Omaya was seated on her throne, her green eyes casted on the two wolves in mockery, the state they were in would have left a tug at omaya's heart, but not after what the wretched wolves had done to her husband long ago.

"You are myrus's spies, I assume." Omaya began, the two wolves shook their heads in unison before one of them spoke.

"We are no spies, your Highness. We are just travellers. We were heading to the eastern layers."

"Oh really? Not a single truthful word can ever come out of the mouth of a wolf. Do you think I haven't already read your mind?" Omaya barked. The wolves shivered in fear of what the Queen might do to them, he wished he hadn't lied in the first place.

Omaya handed a scroll to the nearest soldier.

"Give it to him. Let him go, so he could deliver this to their king. Lock the other one in the dungeon." Omaya ordered.

Meanwhile, kina and the soldiers continued to have encounters with dangerous creatures. After jumping in between two orcs and slashing their throats, the two bodies fell almost simultaneously and kina wiped the stain of the orcs blood on her face. She looked down at the dozens of orce bodies they had killed in disgust. Their fangs were dirty and bloody, their slimy skins left on Kina's garment an unbearable stench, pointy ears shooting out like that of the elves. Kina was sure, she would see those shallow yellow eyes in her dreams for some times.

"Please tell me there's a stream nearby." Kina asked, eager to get the stenches out of her cloths,silently thanking her mother for forcing her to take a few extra things for the journey.

"Yes, your Highness. We will reach the golden stream in twenty minutes." The commander explained and kina raised an eyebrow.

"Golden stream?" Asked kina to the commander.

"Yes, your Highness. They said that a Long time ago, bars of gold had been seen underneath the waters, perhaps they were scattered after the destruction of the ships of the pirates long before you were born your Highness." The commander explained as they walked side by side.

Soon, they rested at the stream and the soldiers excused kina to bath herself and changed into another garment. That time, she wished she hadn't flunked cloth changing spell classes at her younger age, it would have been easier for her to clean up without even taking a bath or carrying the burden of cloths around.

After their princess was done, they proceeded with their journey, constantly hiding behind the bushes to prevent being seen by the bird spies of the orcs.