Chapter 19

I promised to tell about the wakeup and rest of the trip.

I woke up to a feeling that something is not normal. I looked around and saw a dark armored and hooded figure sitting on one of the branches nearby looking at me with an amused expression. His skin the the black of midnight. I have heard stories that there are people with that skin color in the southern prelates, but what alarms me a bit is the fact that Anneli, who is on guard did not seem to have noticed him.

He then spoke in a quiet, measured tone and said “I thought, you might be the one to notice me, given your abilities.”

Because I was still a bit groggy, I just blurted out “What do you mean?”, instead of something more intelligent like asking who he was or how and why he got there without being noticed.

His mouth got this quirky half smile and he replied “You are one of the very few power natural mages in the world”. I must have looked confused as he continued “Almost all magic users, be they wizards, priests or mentalists have to study magic methods to do things. They can shape minor magic freely like you do, but to make any more powerful magic effect, they need the formal structure of spells. But you can shape powerful magic directly without such.”

At that point Anneli noticed him and yelled an alarm, so there was a bit of confusion for a while as the others woke up, but as the visitor, while clearly a very dangerous person given his clearly high powered magic gear and bearing, did not seem hostile, things calmed down soon.

Ertak was first miffed that someone had sneaked into the camp unnoticed, but suddenly he got really quiet and did not say anything more during the rest of the visit.

Garis asked who the visitor was and why he was up in the tree with us, to with he replied “I am known by many names, some of them more flattering, other derogatory. You have heard many of them I am sure, and Ertak here”, he nods towards Ertak, “seems to know at least some of them, but you can call me Aleh-Gre, that is one of the more neutral names I have. In my languages it means, the seer of future tragedies.” He then continues “As to why I am here, I was close-by on an another task and had always meant to look up Luvirini at some point, because I have seen him in some of the important events on the future. His role will not be as major as some others nearby, but still even the lesser contributions are needed.” After a quick “What are you talking abour” from Slanat, he replies “I see possible futures for myself and people involved in major events in those futures, none of them is set in stone, but some seem more likely than others and Luvirini is involved somehow in suprisingly many of those events. Thus I came to remind him that not everything that he hears about people is always true and not all seeming enemies are always that.”