Arrival I

Kies and the demon walk over the teleportation array and it starts to glow. The wind spirits all fly towards them and start to circle the array, creating a wall of wind around them.

"Hmph, I guess I should introduce myself. My name is Ammine."

"Mine is Kies."

"Hm, how many of them are there?" Ammine asked. She looked up at the wall of wind, trying to find the top of it but couldn't. It was quite tall, and it looked like it reached up to the clouds.

"I think there are hundreds of them," Kies said. It was probably an inaccurate guess and they may be a lot less but they were too fast for him to count.

"Hundreds!? Then this isn't a teleportation array, this is a wind tunnel!"

Kies saw that Ammine was panicking a little and asked, "What's a wind tunnel?"

"I can't explain right now, just get ready."

"Ready for what?" Just as Kies finished his sentence, they were lifted into the air and carried off.

Kies looked around him. It looked like they were inside of a tornado. The winds around them kept spinning and blocked the view out, so there was no way for them to see where they were going. He looked at the demon next to him. Her face was pale and she looked unwell.

Kies opened his mouth to ask if she was okay but found that no sounds came out. He grabbed his throat to see if there was something wrong. It felt fine. He tried to say something again but nothing came out of his mouth.

Kies looked at the winds spinning around them. Even with the speeds that they were moving at, the entire space was quiet. 'Does sound not work in here?'

Kies didn't know how much time went by, but eventually, he saw the end of the tunnel, or that is what he thought. As it turned out, it wasn't. They changed directions and were now flying downwards. Kies silently cursed to himself. Since he didn't know how much more time it was going to take until they reached their destination, he decided to think about what the demon had told him.

According to her, he was apparently on the same side as them which he found strange since he had no memory of anything like that. As far as he knew, he had grown up on the streets as an orphan with no recollection of who his parents were and what they looked like. Thinking about it now, it is weird how he didn't have a single memory of his parents.

As Kies recounted all his memories, he noticed that there were many holes in them, and the recent events started making more sense. 'How did I end up living with the humans then?'

If his race was allied with the demons then wouldn't they had taken him in? So why was it that he was taken in by the humans instead? The only explanation that Kies could think of is that the demons were defeated first and were forced to go into hiding. After that, the other two races that were allied still put up a fight and lost. But, all of this was just guesswork. Kies wasn't sure what really happened and he had so many questions that he wanted to ask the demon right now, but unfortunately, they couldn't speak at the moment.

They finally reached the end of the wind tunnel after what felt like an hour. Kies had started counting in his head the number of seconds out of boredom. By the time the trip had ended, he had stopped at somewhere close to 300. 'Huh.' It was a lot less than an hour. But, considering the speed of the winds that were spinning and the amount of time they were stuck in the wind tunnel, Kies assumed that they were extremely far away from Silverfield.

After having got out of the wind tunnel, Ammine walked over to a tree with her arm holding her stomach and placed her other arm on the trunk. She felt nauseous during the entire trip and it took all her willpower to not throw up or pass out mid-flight.

"Are you alright?" Kies asked.

"G-give me... a moment..." Ammine gasped.

Kies left the demon at the tree and started exploring around a bit. He was surprised that the demon wasn't able to handle the wind tunnel even though she was able to fly remarkably fast herself.

"Where are we?" Kies asked. They had landed in another forest. But unlike the other one, the surroundings here were filled with stones and they all looked worn out. They had cracks and moss covering them. It almost looked like a lost civilization.

Kies continued exploring and found what looked like a pathway but it was hard to tell with all the dirt and grass covering it. He followed it for a little bit and found a stone structure that was a little taller than him. He brushed aside the vines and moss that was growing on it and inspected it. The stone contained symbols similar to what he had seen on the magic circle before.

Kies kneeled and wiped the dirt that was covering the bottom portion of the structure and found a carving of a bird in the statue. The bird had four wings and two tails, but only one head. It was a very strange bird indeed. But seeing it reminded Kies of something.

Kies quickly patted his chest and felt a bump. He took out the wooden carving of the bird. Kies cursed in frustration. He had been too lost in his thoughts that he forgot about Nina. Kies banged his head against the stone structure and sighed.

There was no way of checking if Nina was okay or not and it didn't look like he could go back right now. The only thing that he could do is hope that Silverfield won the battle and that Nina didn't get caught up in all the fighting. Kies recalled that the Otanian woman from earlier was trying to call for a truce. Hopefully, it would be accepted.

"What are you worrying about?" Kies turned around and saw Ammine looking at him with a distant expression. Her face was back to its normal color and she had fixed her hair which had been in a mess from the wind tunnel.

"No, it's nothing. Let's get moving." Kies got up and shook his head. As worried as he was about Nina, he needed to find out more about the demons, the war, and himself. Nothing was making sense right now.

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