Chapter 18

"We should hold hand" Ezra said

"What? Why?" Xavier asked

"How else would we know where we all are? This is safer than finding out that one of our members are missing" he explained

We all agreed and we fumbled around, trying to find each other. I eventually found someone's hand. It was small and dainty so I would have guessed it was Leah's.

"Did everyone find each other?" Ezra asked

We all agreed and we headed out.

The streets were crowded in the center of the town so we had to take the long way around the town to avoid getting caught. The potion wouldn't last for very long so we had to hurry.

We eventually made it to the outskirts of town. But instead of finding the woods, we ran into a field of crops. Well...more like dirt and dying crops.

"So, where are the woods?" Leo asked

"They should be further ahead. But I'm not sure, this wasn't here the last time I was here" Leah said

"We should hurry then. I think we only have less than an hour left" Xavier said

We continued on. At this point the potion was starting to wear off. Turns out that the hand I was holding wasn't Leah's. It was Ezra's.

"Dude, you have such small hands. I thought you were Leah!" Xavier laughed

"Is that why you held on to me so delicately?" Ezra asked

Xavier blushed and said "I said that I thought you were Leah"

Ezra rolled his eyes and we trudged towards the woods which we could now see in the distance.

The potion had completely worn off and we had to keep an eye out for anyone who could see us.

For such a big crop field, there were hardly any people here to take care of it. We passed by a total of eight people and it didn't look like they were doing much.

We entered the forest and decided to go deeper to build a camp for the night.

"Had I known that we would stay in the woods for the night, I would have prepared better," Leo said as he swatted the mosquitos around him.

Xavier smirked and laughed and evil laughed. "Niko! Bring me my bags!"

I envisioned his bags bigger. Unfortunately for Xavier, he forgot that they were still in his pocket.

RIPP!

"Gah!" Xavier yelled as his pants ripped from the now bigger luggage.

Ezra bursted out loud with laughter. "That's what you get for ordering her around!"

But that is my job…

"Hello?" A voice asked from the forest

Everyone got their weapons ready and got into battle stances. Since it was already nighttime, it was difficult for them to see anything.

"Who's there?" Leo asked

"We're not bad! We just heard voices and wanted to check it out!" Another voiced yelled

"Please come out slowly" Leah said

Five people came out of the woods. They had ragged clothes and looked to be underweight.

"We don't mean you any harm. We've just never seen any new people come here." An elderly man said

"No. We are sorry. We didn't know anyone was here" Ezra apologized

The new group of people consisted of four people. The elderly man, one girl, and two guys. The girl and guys looked to be around the same ages. The older man looked to be around seventy? Eighty? I'm not good with age. Is that too old or too young of a guess?

"Where did you guys come from?" One of the guys asked. He had long light red (pink?) hair that covered most of his eyes. It also covered his ears but they peaked out the slightest bit at the top since they were pointy. Is that normal?

"We were just...uh…" Xavier started

"We were camping." Leah said "You know...the wilderness and all"

"Y-yeah!" Xavier nodded

"Well, you came to the wrong place," the second guy said. He had dark red hair that reached his knees and kept it out of his face unlike the other guy. His eyes were a silver that shone in the moonlight. His ears were also pointy. Now that I look at all of them, they all have pointy ears.

"Why is that?" Ezra asked

"There has been a shortage of animals in these woods. We can barely eat for ourselves and we still need to feed the entire town." He explained

"Why? Has you been over hunting recently?"

He shook his head. "Overpopulation. Too many mouths to feed and too little meat to go around. The crops haven't been doing well either. We had to harvest what we had early and left little to no time for new crops to grow before the next harvest."

"Aren't there earth magicians that could grow the crops faster?" Leo asked

"All magicians were to go to the central and use their magic there. And before you ask why, all the wealthy live there. They promised them a place to live there with their families. Well…we're pretty sure that's not actually true" the girl said

"What do you mean?" Leah asked

"They promised them full housing for them and their families but for far, no one has even prepared to leave."

"Well, we promise not to take anything from the forest while we are here." Ezra said

The forest group didn't look totally convinced but nodded in agreement.

"While you are here would you like to stay with us?" The older man asked

"We would love to" Ezra said

"We would?" Xavier whispered as he leaned towards him

Ezra pushed him away and said "We would" with an annoyed face

"Great!" Grandpa exclaimed "You can follow Lana here. We just need to prepare this" he held up a dead deer. "Also, why doesn't one of your men have any pants?"

None of us could answer that question.

We followed the yellow haired girl. She had the shortest hair out of all the rest of them.

We were deep in the forest and suddenly came upon a tall wall. She knocked on the wall and a man popped out from the top. He stared at us for a second before going back down.

The wall suddenly disappeared. No, more like it was never there to begin with. Weird.

"By the way, not to sound rude or anything, but what race are you guys again?" Leo asked

The village was full of red, orange, yellow haired people. Dark, light, and different shades. But the most noticeable feature that they all had in common were their pointy ears.

"We're elves"