"Are we all ready?" A familiar male voice calls out to my group as we all gather in the courtyard of Kamar-Taj. I go over my backpack once more to check if I got all the relics and tools I wanted to test out in the fields.
Rachel: "Yup."
Nicolas: "Ah huh"
Akshay: "Ready."
"...." I look up from my list as I give James a thumbs up before going back to putting my stuff away in my bag.
James: "Great! Well I'm sure you're all excited about this mission and already know what the job will be but as captain, I want to explain the plan once more just so we're all on the same page. We are heading into the jungles of Northern Thailand in the province of Chiang Rai. Our only source of information so far came from a Buddhist monk when a bunch of villagers ran away to the temple to seek shelter. All we know is that the villagers came from three separate villages around the Thai and Laos border and too many people have gone missing recently. Now it's normal for rural villagers to go missing and never be seen again however these people did not stay missing for long. A couple of the villagers spoke about seeing recently deceased people standing on the edge of the village just nights before they abandoned their village. The head monk thought that this is beyond his abilities and had asked for assistance from us while his temple watch over the villagers. Our job is quick and simple. We investigate the rumors and check out the villages to see if there are any supernatural things going on. If there are ghosts and spirits then we'll deal with it until we find the source of the problem, at which we will return to notify the masters and instructors about our findings. However if we encounter something more than just some hungry spirits then we are to return right away. Is everyone on the same page?"
""""YES!""""
"Great. Now I'll open up a portal to the temple and we'll start from there. Remember, keep your 'Sling Ring' on at all times and be ready for anything to go wrong. We are no longer within the walls of Kamar-Taj and we will need this experience to steel our wills and hone our skills. Watch each other's backs and try not to die." James waves his hands in the air in a circular motion before a sparkling ring of orange energy begins to form. Within moments a link between Kamar-Taj and Thailand opens up as we all step towards the portal. Waiting for us on the other side was a group of young monks who were standing behind a much older and experienced monk. We all follow James' actions and remain silent as he and the head monk spoke to each other in Sanskrit. Now I was able to follow a little bit of their conversation but my Sanskrit is still pretty bad. I can read it but I can't pronounce the words well and actually hold a conversation to save my life. Our group eventually begins to spread out just a little bit while James and the head monk continue their conversation. Looking at the temple I can see that there are a bunch of villagers who seem to still be shaking in fear. Maybe it's because we just came out of a magic orange circle that appeared out of nowhere but I'm willing to bet it probably wasn't us.
Moving my gaze away from the villagers I can see that there are a few boys around my age who are going through their journey as monks. This is probably their first time seeing sorcerers in person too. I give them a simple smile and wave before looking back towards James and the rest of my group. It seems like Rachel is trying to keep to herself but Nicolas is trying to spark a one way conversation meanwhile Akshay is just looking towards the jungle. It must have been a while since he had seen this part of the world. I think, if my memories and eavesdropping serves me right, Akshay came from Bengal. I've yet to make any interactions or conversations with him but I believe he was one of the held back students in my first class. He was pretty good at fighting during the couple of spars that I saw him in during my first month here. I wonder just how far everyone has gotten since the last time I saw them in 'action'. I'm really curious if Rachel had improved since the last time I teased her before her graduation onto the apprentice classes. As for Nicolas, well I don't really know. He was one of the more recent students that joined my third novice class. I helped him out here and there but he was more interested in talking to the girls than receiving help from me. Mhmm. I turn my attention back towards the temple and the group of villagers around the building. There seems to be no one younger than 20 or anyone older than 50 in the group-
"Alright everyone gather up!" James calls for the slightly spread out group of student sorcerers to get everyone's attention as he walks away from the head monk and a group of disheveled men. I turned away from the temple to look towards James. "A villager said they had to make the trip to this temple during daylight to avoid seeing the children. These people ran away from home because their kids started to go missing until they eventually started seeing little children standing just beyond the village at night. Most of them are from two of the villages near the border while there's only one that came from beyond the country. This means that we have just a few hours before nightfalls and since we are unsure of what we are dealing with exactly we better stick to the sun. We-" James looks at me for a brief moment before continuing. This also caused everyone to turn to look at me. "We better get going. The sooner we get to those villages the sooner we'll find those children and bring everyone back home." And with that speech coming to an end, James turned to the monks and the scared parents to give them a small bow. We start walking towards the direction that the villagers came from at a quickened pace. Since we're unsure of the exact distance, we can't run at our top speed to get there quicker. The only information we have is that it was a days walk from the temple but only during daylight. We came here almost immediately after breakfast in Kamar-Taj but now it has already passed noon because Thailand is one hour ahead of Nepal. This gives us an even smaller window of daylight than when the villagers first made their journey.
.
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.
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"So James what are we going to do about him?" I turn my head towards the front of the group as James and I make eye contact. He stares at me for a moment before responding to Akshay. "Nothing. He is a part of this team and will be treated as such. And that's the end of that." I nod my head and we keep walking for a few more places before Akshay finally breaks the silence. "You know what? I've had it with this kid. I'm here to be a sorcerer not a fucking babysitter. Why the hell is he even on our team?" Everyone stops in their tracks to look at Akshay. James gives me a look as he's unsure of what to do. Out of everyone him and I are probably the closest here, so he's in a bit of a sticky situation. I give him a smirk to let him know it'll be okay.
"Baby sitting? I've yet to make a single complaint on this whole mission so far." I turn away from James to look towards Akshay. "Why am I on the team? You ask. I'm on the team because I'm just as capable of not more than you. How long have you been at Kamar-Taj anyways? The first time I saw you, you were still struggling with your shield spell. And that was almost a year ago. How much have you improved by then? I-"
"Why the hell should I tell a brat like you? You've been spoiled ever since you've been here and you still can't produce a fucking spell." Akshay snapped back as he slowly started to get heated and frustrated. I can't help but chuckle a little bit as I slowly drop my backpack to the ground. "Tsk tsk tsk. You really don't know do you?" I slowly walk towards him as my blood begins to pump through my veins. "See you left before I got the chance to break into you but Rachel and Nicolas had gotten the chance to see what I am." I stopped in front of him, leaving just a foot and half of space in between us. "THAT'S ENOUGH!" James voice cut in as he placed his arm in-between us. "We got a mission to do and we're on a time limit. The longer we sit and bicker the more sunlight we lose. If you two want to fight then fight once we get back. I'm not taking any responsibility if Ned breaks your arm." James stares at Akshay for a moment before Akshay finally summits and nods in agreement. However just as I thought I was going to be in the clear James turned to me to give me a stare down too. I crack him an innocent mischievous smile and shrugs before heading back to go grab my bag.
For the rest of the day we spent the trip hiking in silence until the sun eventually began to set. I think we made some pretty good progress as we don't really have an exact unit of distance to guide us. "Alright everyone. We'll camp here for the night. Let's make a clearing and set up our tents. Keep close and keep your guard up even if you're asleep. We never know what might be lurking beyond the camp fire." James claps his hands together as we all disburse a little bit to set up camp. I set my backpack down and clear out a little space for where my tent would go before walking back to my bag. I reach inside and pull out a metal disk. I flip it around to make sure it's facing the correct way before tossing the disk into the middle of my clearing. WAH! CLING! WAH! POOF! In just seconds my tent is up and ready for me to sleep in, however I'm still not done with my preparations. I reach down to dig in my backpack once more and pull out a long rectangular box. I turn around to look at everyone else as they are still in the process of setting up their sleeping quarters. Well everyone except James of course. It appears that he had already finished putting his tent together and the surprising thing was that it was just a regular tent and nothing like mine. I guess he must've felt my eyes looking at him because he turned his head to look at me before giving me a wave.
I smile and wave back at him before I start to open up my box. Inside is a very primitive security system that I had made a few days ago. It just comprises thin wooden fixtures that have an engraving of a lantern on them and they're all connected with a tripwire and some gears. I pin one of the stakes into the ground a few feet away from my tent as I slowly walk around our camp set. I put down a stake about every dozen feet or so until I circle back to my original stake. With each stakes and their engravings facing away from our encampment, if someone or something were to walk into the lines it would trigger the gears of stakes to go off and produce a flash of light to alert everyone. The closest stakes will most likely burn up because they are essentially a flash bang grenade. However the surrounding stakes will produce a steady stream of light because their gears wouldn't move enough for the engravings to detonate. Which was a very fun experience when I first tried to create this relic. I couldn't go to class for a few days and my ears were ringing during the first night. Now it's still a prototype but adding the tripwires really makes it a decent primitive security system for me.
"Hey Ned what are you doing?" Nicolas calls out to me as I try to calibrate the gears to make sure they function properly. "Uh? Oh just setting a trap around us. I want to have a first line of defense in case anything tries to get close to us while we're sleeping. They're just security lights" I smile at Nicolas before moving on to the next stake and setting that calibration. "Huh oh okay. Well just don't do anything stupid okay? I don't want to trip over these things when I gotta piss at night." Nicolas tries to sound cool or something but he just comes off as a dimwit. I just chuckle and give him a shrug of my shoulders as whether he wakes us up in the middle of the night or not is not my problem. There's more than enough room around to camp for him to not run into my tripwires. Once I was done calibrating everything I walked over to the fire to join everyone. For dinner it was a rather simple as everyone brought their own food. Well everyone except for.
"You're not gonna eat anything?" James calls out to me as everyone is currently holding a cup of noodles in their hands. I'm the only one who's not eating any dinner tonight since all that I brought is equipment I wanted to take out for a test. "No, I didn't think I would need to bring anything. I was hoping to hunt for some squirrel or fish for dinner because we were going to be in a jungle. But...well it's awfully quiet. Even a regular forest would be buzzing with activities at night." Everyone stopped eating as they all remained silent. "....." James finishes his cup before finally speaking. "So you noticed that too huh. I've been to Thailand a few times before I became a sorcerer and this is the first time I've been to a jungle where there's no sound at night." James stares into the dark abyss for a couple of moments before opening up a portal. Falling out of the portal is another pack of noodles and a soda. "Here eat this." He tossed me the noodles before cracking open the soda himself.
"Thank you James. I really should've packed my own food cause I can't rely on others to carry my burdens." I give him a weary smile before pouting some hot water from the nearby kettle into my noodles. "Oh shush. You're like my little brother Ned and as captain of this team I can't let someone fall behind. We all need to be at 100% capacity or else we won't succeed together." He takes a sip of his soda while the rest of the team continues to eat in silence. Eventually as the night grew older and as dark as the void, it was time to call it a night. Akshay got first shift on night duty and later it will be Rachel who gets to watch over us. I told everyone goodnight and started heading for my tent when I suddenly froze in my tracks. "Ah guys!" I call out to everyone as I'm the first to leave the fire and the first to turn away towards the darkness. Just beyond the edge of where the light of the fire could reach stood a little girl in an all while dress. If she wasn't wearing a white dress I would have never made out the figure.
"What is it Ned?" Rachel calls out as she gets up to go take her rest too. "I think there's someone her-" I turned to face her before turning back to the little girl but she was nowhere to be seen. "What the fuck? I could've sworn I just saw someone there." Rachel walks over to me to try and help me find the person. "Are you sure Ned? you're not pulling a prank on us are yo-" "HEHEHE"