Amity and Enmity

Chapter 21

Day: 1020

Days Left: 4460

Lives Saved: 5

Corinna stood at the border between the forest and the Raining Marshes. Dex, Lili, and Rin had followed her, wondering what the young woman had planned as he had marked the trees along the way. She examined the ground near the border and looked around, her face scrunched up as if calculating something.

"Are you going to tell us the plan?" asked Rin with a slightly amused smile. "We can't exactly help if we don't know what we're doing."

Corinna paused, smiling in guilt as she had almost forgotten that they were even there, too focused on the plan forming in her mind. She retrieved her whiteboard and wrote 'river'.

"But we do not have any spades," said Lili. "We only have a gardening trowel."

Corinna shook her head, still smiling as she showed her mask to Lili, its effervescent blue glow recharged from the failed portal escape.

Dex glanced at the sky in the Raining Marshes, where the portal would be above the nymph-infested pool. He then looked to Corinna, who gave him a reassuring nod that she was fine, though he could see her occasionally stare off into the distance at the closed portal.

After taking a long breath and preparing herself, Corinna donned her mask and walked to the edge of the forest, the rain on the other side pelting down before her. A light shone around the lines of the mask and spread, coating Corinna's body in a blue glow as it transformed her into the celestial. The celestial being reached out an arm to the rain, the water hissing and evaporating on impact. She recoiled from the sting, noting not to connect the Raining Marshes to the trench she was about to build just yet.

The three onlookers continued to watch, with Rin and Dex questioning how Corinna would create a river as they did not know the celestial's full capabilities like Lili did. The royal bodyguard smirked as she realised Corinna's plan but was prepared to rush to get water if a forest fire started.

Once she had chosen the perfect spot, the celestial knelt on the ground like a professional sprinter about to start a race. The grass beneath her began to sizzle, her celestial glowing body scorching it to raw earth. She sucked in a breath, closed her eyes, and pictured herself not moving forward or up but down.

The others backed away, covering their eyes as the celestial blinked into a bright light before eventually fading, her body no longer glowing with constellations whilst her power recharged, having dug down a few inches into the earth.

Corinna grinned as she saw the progress, not as much as she had hoped, but it meant that her idea was not impossible. She stared at the path before her, at the trees she had marked to guide her to the camp. It would take at least a week to complete it, but soon they would have a river nearby to collect water, no longer having to hike back and forth with so few containers. And more water meant more that they could construct.

We don't need the Land of the Lost, thought Corinna. We can build everything ourselves just as our ancestors did.

Day: 1071

Taking another trudging step, Henry Best almost collapsed to the ground, the heat sweating out all his energy, yet he still pressed on through the desert wasteland. The ground beneath him was a dry, cracked beige sandstone that slightly burned his feet. He considered using his mask and transforming into the salamander, the creature being immune to fire and heat; however, Henry had already used his mask for so much of the journey through the empty desert that he could not risk turning into the salamander permanently from overuse. No, he thought, best to endure it rather than lose his mind to the monster completely.