Pov: Ael
"Okay, I am ready." I flared my arms as I walked out of my room, where Amiel was waiting.
Amiel doesn't say anything and gets up.
"Who put a stick up your ass?" I said under my breath as I followed behind.
"So should we explore the forest just in case Eirian is right?" I leaned toward his ear, still following a few feet behind him.
"There's no point, he's crazy."
"So when you said we would check it."
"It was so he could get some rest."
I leaned away, "Wow, you are considerate." I smiled before continuing again, "Let's still check. We are going to the edge of campus at one point or another; it doesn't hurt to check."
Amiel stopped walking.
"Look, I'm not saying he's not crazy, but if there is a hint of truth to what he is telling us. That someone is here, that we might be trapped in here, that we are living the same week, then we should at least look and see before it's too late."
He remained silent, thinking about the situation. "Fine, we can explore the forest. I needed to check it out either way."
"Perfect," I patted him on the back as I walked in front of him, "I knew you would see eye to eye with me, map boy."
---
Before checking out the forest, Amiel and I mapped out the rest of campus. There were only a few buildings that needed to be mapped and checked to see if their phone lines were working. None were.
We have gone to every building, and all the lines were down. At first, we thought it was just a few buildings, but no, as we continued, no matter what, it was just a long beep on the other side. At this point, we just theorized that there was some kind of EMP attack here or something preventing us from contacting people.
After Amiel tried the last phone, he sighed and slammed the phone down. "Another one."
"That's weird. The whole campus just went down?"
"Seems like it. If no one even knows we are here, no one will come for us. They probably think the whole academy is still ongoing like normal." He paused, contemplating what to do. "I think our best course of action is to travel through the wastelands."
"I don't think that is a bright idea. Too risky."
"Well, it's our only choice from the looks of it."
"Still too risky, people who live in the wastelands have trouble surviving themselves. And that's help from the empire."
"Good thing we have someone who has experience then."
"Even with someone, it's still too risky." I sighed, placing my fingers on my temples. "Look, we can talk about this later, right now we still have another area to scout."
"There's not much to talk about, but sure." He walked past me, making his way to the exit.
---
It was now a bit past noon, about one o'clock. We made our way to the north-eastbound side of campus, the opposite side of where Eirian explored. We planned to make our way to the edge of campus and see the wastelands, prove Eirian wrong about the veil, and then make our way through the rest of the forest.
Walking through the forest, I can see Amiel mapping different things on the map—anything with different changes. The whole point of mapping wasn't just to map out the campus, which we already know. It was to figure out what was different, and there was plenty about it. The different plants, the trees that grew a hundred feet higher, we were just trying to figure out what happened here in hopes of contacting someone.
Noticing Amiel falling short of me, I turned, "Hey, map boy, how's it going?"
He looked up at me, looking back down. "Just getting some detail down."
"Well, hurry up, we don't have all day."
As he caught up, we were a hundred yards from the edge of the forest; we should have been able to get there rather quickly. The only issue is that Amiel slowed down the process of mapping out different things.
"Does that huge boulder really need to be mapped out?" I asked, with him a few feet away from me.
"It helps to remember where we are." Putting down his pencil, he continued walking.
"Finally."
"Just keep walking."
"That's what I have been trying to do this whole time."
After a few more yards, the trees begin to thin out.
"What is that?" It was a white, misty wall, almost like a storm surrounding the campus. I don't get too close to it, worried about what it might do to me. "Eirian was right—we are trapped in here."
Amiel walks up from behind me. "Is this what Eirian was talking about?"
"Seems like it." After pausing to think for a bit, I turned to Amiel. "By chance, do you think this is what is disrupting us from contacting the outside world?"
He doesn't turn from the wall, "Might be."
Nothing here made sense to us. This world had a sense of magic to it, but never like this. The gods were able to grant us a way to live, pacts to depend on, but this with a whole new degree of what is known to us.
"Does that mean that Eirian might be right about the rest?" Amiel said.
"There's a chance." I turned south, and I started to walk. "We should really see if this does go around the whole campus. There might be a way out."
'Just how much of what Eirian said was true. If we were really reliving this whole week, why? And who else was here that they are hiding from us?'
"Right." Amiel starts to make his way behind me. Looks like he was wary of the whole situation now. He had his hand on his knife rather than focusing on mapping out the forest.