"Where is the boy? Shouldn't he have come back now?" Jyu'so asked Gorrum. Gorrum and Lily were going at it in the kitchen, preparing dinner while Jyu'so sat in the room outside. He turned to look out the window and noticed the suns were much lower. "He only has a couple hours of light left before he's in complete darkness. What is he doing?"
"He'll come back to us. He's probably off trying to find something." Gorrum brushed Jyu'so's concern off. "Lily, once your down with those, go ahead and start throwing them together on the pan, alright?"
"Yes, sir." Lily nodded. She finished cutting the last tomato and moved over to grab the huge cast iron pan.
"I just don't want anything bad happening to that poor boy. His luck has been bad for the last several weeks. That's why I wanted him to visit the Shaman. I told him many times 'Do not wander off! Go there and come back! Don't get distracted!' He never listens to me or you!" Jyu'so complained. He stood up and moved out of the dining room.
"Where are you going?" Gorrum asked.
"I'm going to find him!" Jyu'so waved.
,m Keng was almost on his way home from the Shaman. He was moving quickly through the forest with many hours of sun when a calming melody caught his attention. Keng slid to a stop and turned to face that music. It sounded familiar.
'Wait.' Keng thought. 'Isn't that..?' The calming melody pulled him out of his thoughts. His feet started moving before he could even tell it to do so. He walked off of the determined path and headed towards the noise. The strings grew louder as the gleam in his eyes seemed to glow brighter.
'You're slipping.' Keng thought. He snapped out of it. The sounds of chimes caught his attention. A large beast let out a grunt as it slowly clacked from Keng's left side to his right. The glint of silver in the suns light caught his attention. Moss grew on the antlers and the animal resembled a mix between a moose and a stag. This thing was huge. Every step it made seemed to give life to nature around it. It's hooves were made of the same metal as their antlers.
'Woah, is this a Majestic one?' Keng held the bow in his hand. With a single blink, he switched to Sight sensory. The large Majestic was glowing. 'Holy crap. That energy! I-i-it…! I have to get this!' Keng started to raise his bow and pull an arrow out when the Majestic looked up. It grunted, loudly, before it took off.
'It heard me?!? I was being quiet!' Keng took off after the Majestic. Nature seemed to bend to the Majestic's will as Keng chased after it. Bushes, grass, trees, flowers sprouted from every step it made as it quickly gained speed and darted right. 'I was greedy. I should've been more patient.' Keng darted after it. The energy footprints were easy to follow. If he hadn't trained hard for the last month, he would've struggled to do such a feat.
Between the music that radiated off the Majestic and the energy footprints, Keng was sure he could capture it. The Majestic was barely visible by his enhanced sight. It had kicked up its speed.
'No time to play around. Let's go before it makes me lose it.' Keng told himself. He picked up his speed and began to dart through the forest, following the Majestic. He followed the footprints for awhile until they suddenly stopped. The music cut off and Keng slid to a stop, spinning around.
"Where is it?" Keng muttered. He spun around in his spot until a faint light caught his attention. He sprinted after the light. Keng followed it for awhile, the realization that the forest wasn't in his favor. It was working the Majestic's favor to hide itself from Keng. The forest opened up and Keng flew through the opening. The light died and was replaced with the sound of wind.
"Shit." He had ended up at a cliff side. He slid to a stop, rocks flying off the cliff. "Shit, shit, shit!" Keng wasn't going to stop. He was going straight off the cliff like the rock if he didn't do anything right now. "Displacement!" A silver light lit up behind Keng as he flew off the side of the cliff.
He flipped himself in the air and watched where he came from quickly disappear. He reached for the displacement, but nothing seemed to work.
"Ah, dammit! Displacement!" Keng landed with a thud on his back. He let out a yelp as his ass hit the ground first followed by his head. The air flew out of his lungs. "That… Oh god…" Keng coughed. He slowly lifted himself up as he tried to recollect himself.
"Let's sit for a bit, huh?" Keng whispered to himself. He scooted farther away from the cliff's edge and stopped when he was in between the cliff and the forest. The adrenaline made it hard for him to catch his breath. He had, luckily, remembered he had a skill that could pull him back to where he marked it at.
"Thankfully it worked like a regular spell." Keng laid himself on the ground and looked up at the blue sky. "If I had to actually mark it, I would've died!"
After a long (a very long) break, Keng lifted himself up from the ground and looked around. He apparently laid here for too long. The suns has lowered even more and the dawning realization was coming to Keng. He didn't know where he was.
Keng pulled the map out and unrolled it.
"I think this should tell me where I am…" Keng looked around and sighed. He didn't see himself as a dot on the map. "Did I wander too far from the map?" He stood up and turned around. "I'll have to go back the way I came. Ugh, this is gonna be hard… I barely remember what was around me when I was chasing!" He could hear the Elder and Sir Gorrum already telling him what he did wrong.
"When you hunt, you must know where you are at all times. You must take in everything or else you'll get lost! Do you want to die because you made a wrong move?" Gorrum's voice came in on cue. Keng groaned as he started into the forest.
"I'm so stupid. I found the Majestic but I didn't even know it could cloak itself like that! Hunting that thing is going to be hard!" Keng groaned. He shook his head, giving himself some small slaps before he rolled the map and stuck it back into its place on his backpack. "Let's try to retrace my steps and occasionally check the map. Get on the map and we can go from there!"
Keng went for awhile, checking the map and not getting any updates on where he was. He continued to berate himself on how reckless he was and kept a lookout for anything he could use to get him back to the Tomb. The map wasn't going to be of any use to him, so he decided he would just roll it up and keep his attention on surviving.
'I haven't found anything too familiar so I'll just go with the worst-case scenario.' Keng told himself. 'I need to hunt for something to eat and then find a place to rest for tonight.' He popped out of the forest and noticed smashed trees. The logs weren't there and the indents in the ground seemed a bit too abnormal to be a natural thing.
'What happened here?' Keng wondered. Keng avoided the large holes in the ground. 'It looks like something big was here…' Unbeknownst to Keng, this was the field where Lee Seng and the others came to help fight the large Golem.
"This place isn't going to be suitable for camp. I should somewhere more secure to sleep… Don't want wolves or goblins ambushing me in the middle of the night." Keng whispered. He entered the forest on the other hand, opposite to where he came from, and turned his Sight sensory on. He scanned the forest for awhile until he spotted a small animal moving. He readied his bow and arrow and fired. The energy off of the animal was connected with the energy off of his arrow. He could see his energy rush into it and in an instant, the animal was dead.
Keng moved to retrieve it and noticed it was one of those mole-rabbit things. They had claws of sort that could dig through the ground with ease. He grabbed the mole-rabbit thing and kept the arrow in. He didn't need this thing to bleed so much while he tried to find a place to sleep. He wandered for awhile, collecting sticks to make a fire with and eventually found himself a pretty flat small opening for himself to sleep at.