I don't think I really noticed anything until much later. I just ran, and ran, and ran, until I was sure that I could run no more. But I continued to run, no matter how much my brain babbled at me that I was at my limit, that I should stop before I fell over and died right on the spot. And something kept me going that entire time, though I wasn't quite sure what it was.

Much later came...much later. It was, as I later found out, sometime long after I passed into Zerin, though I never noticed crossing the border. For some reason, I couldn't feel the divine wind of Zerin this time. I think that was just as much of a reason for my not noticing how far I had gone as was the fact that I wasn't quite thinking as much as running. As it was, I didn't notice that I had crossed the border until I was forced to stop by a palace standing directly in the path that I wanted to follow.

It was then that I came to my senses for the first time since I had started running, about a day or so earlier. As that happened, I began to recognize my surroundings, particularly the fact that the palace blocking my path was the same palace I had been too a few years earlier, the Zerin palace, and that both Reney and Virie were standing in front of me, almost as if they were awaiting my arrival. Reney watched me with an amused expression on his face, smiling almost smugly, as if he knew some great secret that no one else had the slightest clue of.

What surprised me the most, rather than suddenly realizing I was in Zerin when I was sure that I couldn't have been running that long, was when Reney bowed slightly at the waist as I came to a stop. He still had that smirking smile on his face, but the bow was one of respect, something that he shouldn't have been doing toward me. Not him, a Ruler who had to carry the honor of his entire Land, and not just of himself and his family. But then Virie followed suit and curtseyed, not an official move per se, but far more appropriate to her than a bow would have been.

As much as I seemed to have come to my senses, I still wanted to go onward. There was a palace in the way, and I wanted nothing more than to be on the other side of that palace, as well as the two Rulers in front of me, to continue toward my destination. I still wasn't quite sure where that destination was, but that didn't change the fact that I wanted to get there as soon as possible. And I think Reney realized that, based on the first words that came out of his mouth.

"I'm sure you want to continue," he said, his voice oddly gentle, with none of the smirk that had graced his face just a little bit earlier. "But the way you're going, you won't make it before you collapse. I know it's frustrating, but you should stay here a night before you move onward. You still have a long way to go."

All I could do was shake my head and stamp my foot impatiently. I didn't care what he had to say. All I wanted to do was continue, and there was no way that I was going to let him, or Virie, stop me from doing just that. I would break through the walls of the palace if I had to, though it looked like at first that wouldn't be a problem. My path seemed to lead right into the main palace gates.

It never occurred to me to reply to him with words. It almost felt as if I had forgotten how to speak in the time since I had uttered those four words that sealed my fate back in front of my father. But that didn't worry me. I knew that Reney would understand what I meant by what I did, and that words weren't necessary. And, oddly enough, that seemed to be the case.

"Like it or not, you can't make it through this palace without my help," he said, stepping back a bit and crossing his arms across his chest. "You may try to break down the doors in your path, but they're reinforced with metal bars for just that purpose. Unless I unlock them for you you'll just end up knocking yourself out trying to get through. That would work just as well for my purposes as having you go to sleep on purpose, so do as you will."

"But we would truly prefer it if you would cooperate," Virie added.

I almost refused again In fact, I had started to walk forward already when I finally looked at Reney again, noticing as I did so that the smile was gone from his face. While he still had the face of a boy, the eyes he stared at me with were in that instant just as old as I knew he was, the eyes of a man who had lived his life, and more. And those eyes told me that he was completely and utterly serious about everything he had said, including the fact that he would be just as fine with letting me ram myself against the doors inside until I passed out as he would with me going with him by choice.

I paused in mid step when I noticed that, and I stood there like that, one foot hovering a few inches above the ground, for several moments. I don't think any one of the three of us breathed until I finally put my foot down the rest of the way and stopped, bowing my head in defeat and signaling that I would go along with them, for now.

Virie breathed a sigh of relief at that, sharing a small smile with Reney as she stepped to my side and laid a gentle hand on my shoulder. "I can take it from here," she said, and with that Reney left the area.

"Now, Kirn," she said to me, her hand rubbing my shoulder gently, as if to calm me down. "Come with me. I'll lead you about halfway into the palace, to a room where you can rest for the night. You won't have to leave your path, so don't worry about that."

I nodded, and let her lead me into the palace. As we moved forward, I saw various servants moving ahead of us to unlock the doors that seemed to lead right through the middle of the palace in a straight line, following the path that my brain was still telling me to continue upon. We walked for several minutes, the doors continually opening in front of us, sometimes in places that appeared to be solid wall and nothing else, until Virie called out to me that we had arrived.

It was the same room that I had stayed in before. I recognized the room, particularly the painting over the fireplace of a night wing battling a one horn. I hadn't realized the first time I was there that the room was in the center of the palace, literally, mostly because the route that we took to get there the first time was a circuitous one, and not the straight line through doors that seemingly appeared out of the nothing that we had just taken. Either way, I felt strangely calm as I let Virie help me lay down in the bed that had been prepared for me and then take a seat in one of the chairs near the fireplace, turning it so she could face me.

"I am quite glad that you chose to cooperate with us," she said. "I was honestly afraid that you would be like some of the others and fight us until your body gave out on you."

"Others?" I wanted to ask, but for some reason I couldn't find the words to do so. All I could do was look at her, and hope that she picked up the sense that I was confused, even though I had no reason to think that she could do that in the first place.

"You've lost your words, haven't you?" she asked me, and I saw a sad, but strangely reminiscent smile cross her face as I nodded. Then the smile changed to one of hope and encouragement. "Don't worry," she continued. "They'll come back once you reach your destination. This is a temporary condition. Just as some find themselves unable to stop until the end, some find that they have lost their words until they reach the end. It's nothing to be afraid of.

Again, I wanted nothing more than to ask her what she was talking about. This was the second time she had referred to others, as if what had happened to me happened to other people. I suppose that would have made more sense to me had I realized exactly what it was that had happened, but that wasn't the case at that time. As it was, all I could do still was look at her with all my questions shining bright in my eyes, and hope that she would be enough of a mind reader to realize what it was I wanted to know.

"You don't know what's happening to you yet, do you?" she asked me. I shook my head, and she laughed softly.

"I suppose that is to be expected," she said. "After all, you had no reason to expect this. I can't say that I understand everything that you're going through at the moment. I told Reney that he should be the one to talk with you tonight, not me, but he insisted that like be with like."

"Like with like?" I thought, though at that moment a certain thought started to work its way through my mind. It was a thought that I didn't even dare consider yet, but that didn't stop it from starting to bloom and pick up intensity with every little thing that Virie said.

"You haven't even realized what form you are taking at the moment, have you?" she asked me. "You still think that you walk around in the same form that you were born in?"

"Of course I am," I thought. "People don't all of a sudden just change shapes."

But even as I thought that, Virie stood from her seat and walked over to me, passing the bed in the process. The bed, which I wasn't laying on. I was laying on a bed, one that my senses now told me was not much more than a pad laid on the floor. But I was laying on it comfortably, and could not really imagine trying to lay in the bed on the other side of the room, such was my current state.

The thought deep within my head floated a little closer to the surface, gaining strength and sense as it moved upward. Even as it did so, I looked over at the full-length mirror sitting beyond the bed on the far side of the room. It was covered, which it hadn't been when I stayed there in that room. Virie's eyes followed my gaze as I did so, and I heard her sigh a little bit when she noticed what I was looking at.

"I'm afraid I can't let you do that," she said. "If you haven't realized it already, I can't tell you. There is a reason that no ponds lie near Hell's Road, after all."

"Hell's Road?" I thought. I had never heard of any road called Hell's Road before, and I had no clue why it would matter that there were no ponds near it.

"I suppose that wouldn't be something that you would know about," she said. "Having grown up in a Land with no ruler, it wouldn't matter very much." She sat down next to me, leaning back against the wall as she smoothed her skirts out beneath her. For some reason, it was odd having a Ruler sit on the floor next to me, especially a Ruler such as Virie was.

"Hell's Road is proof against the divine wind," she said. "No matter how strong the Rulers of a Land are, Hell's Road will never carry the divine wind. It runs straight through the middle of each Land in the inner circle, but becomes a little less regular in its path once it reaches the outer circle. It even flows through the ocean and to the islands. But if you follow it inward, it always leads to the same place.

"The common people were the first to call it Hell's Road. After all, to them being on it was like being in a part of hell. The common people depend on the divine wind, and the absence of it tends to be quite traumatizing for them. So they referred to these naturally occurring paths where the divine wind cannot reach as the roads of Hell, which over time changed to Hell's Road.

"You've been following Hell's Road almost since the beginning. We're on it right now, since it runs right through the middle of the palace. That is how we managed to shield this room from the divine wind even though it is right at the heart of our Land, as the room only extends a little beyond the Road itself.

"But that is enough talk for now. It grows late. I have been up since the dawn, and I suspect you have been up even longer than that. We shall sleep now. I will stay by your side tonight, so that you do not have to spend this time alone, and when you wake in the morning I will see you off for the rest of your journey."

She leaned back against the wall, though I am sure that the position could not have been a comfortable one, and set her hands on her lap. In just that position, she looked over at me and smiled softly. "Sleep now, Kirn, and dream pleasant dreams. I will be here the entire time, so you need not worry."

As she spoke, I felt a great weariness come over me, almost as if she were causing it. I wanted to fight it, to protest and insist that I was more than capable of staying awake, of traveling the rest of my journey that day. It wasn't late, no matter what she said. My memories of everything from running out from my coming of age ceremony up to almost that moment were fuzzy, but I was sure of nothing more than the fact that it could not be much past noontime. But I found the will to fight fading along with my consciousness, scattering without a trace as my eyes became too heavy to keep open.

Before I knew it, I was fast asleep, though I could feel Virie still there as she had promised.

I woke in the morning, just as Virie had said I would. And, again just as she said, I found her still beside me, as if she had indeed stayed in that spot all through the afternoon and night as I slept. Knowing what I did of her, I was sure that that was exactly the case. Virie would not break her word, even if it meant having to stay by my side all night long.

"Good morning, Kirn," she said when she noticed that I was awake. "I trust you slept well?"

I nodded, even as she pushed herself up off the floor and made her way to the door on the other side of the room, the one right across from where we had entered. She rapped a simple pattern on the door with one hand, and within moments the door opened from the other side to reveal a uniformed palace guard standing there at attention. Without saying anything, she and the guard urged me up out of my bed.

It was time to go, and the moment I got to my feet that feeling flowed through my body with a vengeance, as if trying to make up the time that I had lost sleeping by growing stronger by far than it had been before.

Reney met us on the way out of the palace. He fell into place by my side easily, saying nothing except to ask if I had slept well. I replied, as I had to Virie, with a nod, because I had slept well, better than I had in years despite the ever present feeling that I should be heading father along Hell's Road, farther toward whatever destination lay in wait for me.

And then, finally, we emerged from the palace. I noticed, barely, that the guards accompanying us walked on the edges of the passageway, and only made their ways inward when forced to by a narrow doorway. In addition, the furniture in the few rooms that we passed through was carefully arranged to leave a path at the walls. Besides that, there were only two guards who actually stayed with Reney, Virie, and myself the entire time. The rest would veer off into other rooms whenever we came to a particularly narrow doorway and join up again later.

I later realized that their reason for doing this was to avoid walking on Hell's Road as much as possible. For Reney, Virie, and myself it was not particularly bothersome. But the guards were not sensitives, but common people, more attached to the divine wind of their Land than a sensitive, but less able to feel it. For them, being in a place with no divine wind was as painful and disturbing as traveling through Zerin had been for me the first time I came.

Now that the trip through the palace, which had seemed to take forever, was over, I was more than impatient to leave. I think both Reney and Virie noticed this, because the first thing they did once we emerged was ask me to wait just a little longer. I think that, if I had made a dash for it right then and there they would not have stopped me. They could have, I'm sure, but I don't think they would have. But, that didn't matter, because I managed to summon up enough patience to wait a little longer while they sent their guards back inside, leaving just the three of us.

"So you have the rest of your journey to finish now," Reney said. "I'd say good luck, but I know you won't need it. There shouldn't be any surprises between here and there. I'm sure you won't have to worry about it, but just in case remember that you're not supposed to stray off Hell's Road on your way. Of course, that wouldn't be very fun for you, so I'm sure you won't do it, right?"

I shook my head emphatically at him. Besides the fact that I knew that I didn't want to step out into the full force of Zerin's divine wind, I was in no mood to leave the path I was being pulled along. As it was, I wasn't particularly fond of the idea of staying there any longer. So, with that, I turned around, unable to say a farewell even if I felt doing so, and started to walk off.

"We'll see you in a short while!" I heart Virie calling behind me as I walked away. "Have a safe rest of your journey!"

With that, I started running again.

Again, I ran, and ran, and ran. I think in the end I ran less for this second leg of my journey than I did for the first, but to this day I am not quite sure of that. What I knew for a fact is that I continued along Hell's Road until the scenery around me started to change from the green, peaceful fiends of Zerin to a more rocky, hilly terrain. Even then I kept to the path that my instincts led me along, though I slowed to avoid tripping and injuring myself.

I continued like that for another length of time, this one quite a bit shorter than either of the times when I ran. By the time I reached my next stopping point, the green had completely disappeared, and I no longer saw even the slightest hint of the Land that I had been in not too much earlier. I was fairly sure that I couldn't have passed into another Land, since I was pretty sure than I would have had to pass through the center of the world to do that. But at the same time, I could not seem to wrap my mind, even as obsessed with reaching the end of the path I followed as it was, around the idea that that rocky place I found myself in was the same Land as the verdant fields of Zerin I had been running through not too much earlier.

Not too long after I noticed that the grass had all disappeared, I spotted a bit of green up ahead. When I reached it, it turned out to be a well trimmed lawn surrounding a small cottage that lay just to the right of my path. Straddling my line of travel was a narrow opening in the rocks that had curved inward to surround the green lawn. And standing right in the middle of that gap was an old man, who watched me with amused eyes as I approached the grass, and then him.

I stared at him for several moments, willing for him to move out of my way so I could continue on my way. I still did not find the words that I needed to convey this out loud, so staring at him and trying to act impatient was all I could do at that moment. Unfortunately, he did not seem to get the idea, and instead just stared back at me with those amused eyes. But, the more I watched him, the more I saw that behind the amusement and smile in his eyes, was knowledge: of me, of my situation, of my destination, and of my future.

"You want through?" he asked me after several minutes of the two of us standing there staring at each other. The smile in his eyes seemed unable to creep downward to take over his mouth, which was perfectly straight and inexpressive, moving only to form the words as he spoke.

I nodded emphatically. He looked at me again, taking even less time to look me over than he had when I first appeared in the area, and then shook his head, the smile in his eyes dimming a little as he did so. Then he crossed his arms and sat down on the ground beneath him, still blocking any and all traffic that might want to pass through that gap in the rocks.

"No can do," he said. "They aren't ready for you in there yet. Or rather, you aren't ready for them. You still haven't figured it out yet, have you?"

It was only the second time I had been asked that, but I was still starting to get tired of hearing that question. First Virie, and now this old man who I had never met before... Both of them seemed to think that I should know what was happening to me, as if it should be obvious. And yeah, I had a bit of an idea floating around in the back of my head, one that scared me too much to actually think about it, but otherwise I was operating on instinct. The feelings in my head told me what I should be doing. I was doing those things, and now this old man was blocking my way, trying to imply that I should know what was going on.

Of course, I still couldn't find the words to reply to him and express my frustration and annoyance. All I could do was stare at him some more, until he started laughing, the smile in his eyes finally spreading to his face. This didn't make me any happier, since no one really likes being laughed at.

"I haven't had one like you in at least several hundred years," he said, in between laughs. "Most of you are too scared and confused to do anything but beg me to explain things. But you...you're actually mad at me for treating you like the ignorant youngling you are."

He continued to laugh, and I started to glare at him. Being laughed at was not fun. Being told that I was ignorant was even less fun. Besides, he seemed to be implying that I deserved being told just how ignorant I supposedly was. And by then I had come to the conclusion that there was no way I could be expected to know what was going on, even if that little idea was still floating around in the back of my head, just outside of my notice and waiting patiently for me to remember it. (That wasn't about to happen, however.)

This process of me glaring at him and him continuing to laugh at me persisted for several minutes, during which time I got angrier and angrier. In fact, the anger grew and grew until I was about to reach my breaking point. At that point, I was faced with a choice between moving forward and doing something violent that I would probably regret as soon as my anger cooled, and turning around and going back. Neither option was one that I liked very much, though hurting the old man seemed to be winning the closer I got to the edge. After all, I needed to continue forward, no matter what, and turning around and going back was not going to do that for me.

But then, just before I finally slipped over the edge, the laughing stopped. I stared at the old man, who stared back at me, and silence fell over the area. My anger cooled a little, without the laughter to fuel it, but not much in that tense silence.

"I like you!" he finally said. "That pride of yours will serve you well in the future, so don't let go of it, no matter how confusing things get from here on in." He smiled at me a little bit more before his face changed back to the serious expression with the same smiling eyes.

"Now, back to business," he said. "I believe we had just established that, unlike some, you have not yet realized what it happening to you, had we not?"

I glared at him a little and nodded, realizing that losing my temper was not about to get me any farther ahead at that point.

"But you also have a little idea floating around in the back of your head that you currently do not care to acknowledge, do you not? One that has been growing and growing, but not enough that it comes to your attention. One that, perhaps, explains the situation you currently find yourself in."

That thought, the one that I still had no desire to think about, decided to try calling out to me again then. This time I noticed it, and it noticed that I noticed it, but I still could not bring myself to think it. Somehow, without knowing what the thought was, I still knew that it was not a thought that should be thinking. Because if I thought it and it wasn't true, I would have been overstepping myself in a manner far beyond any impoliteness I had ever done before.

"Yes, that thought," he said, as if he could see what was going on inside my head better than I could. "You might want to stop fighting it, since it will force itself in eventually anyway. Besides, I'm not going to let you through until you do."

"But I don't want to," I thought, and the old man just smiled at me.

"You don't want to?" he asked me, his voice full of laughter. "Sorry to say it, boy, but there are going to be a lot of things that you don't want to do from now on, and you are going to have to do them whether you like it or not. You can start getting used to it right here and now."

"Where do you get off ordering me around like that?" I thought, angrily. After all, I had never met this man before just then, and even if I was barely an adult, I was noble. Commoners like him couldn't just start ordering around nobles whenever they felt like it, and if he didn't know that, it was about time he got taught that. But even more than my normal noble pride, that thought in the back of my mind was pressing me to think the same thing, and that scared me more than a little.

But he just laughed again. "Boy," he said, his voice still full of laughter, but with a layer of hardness just beneath the smiles, "I would stop with that line of thought for a while. At least wait until you know more about who you are before you start making assumptions about others."

I bristled, not quite literally, but had I been a cat my fur would have been standing on end, and then glared at him some more. This just evoked more smiles thinly layered over seriousness. A few more minutes we continued to stare at each other, neither one of us moving except to breathe and blink (and I'm not even sure if he was breathing or not). Then, just as I was about to reach the end of my patience, he heaved a great sigh.

"You're not going to cooperate with me, are you?" he asked me. I shook my head emphatically, and he sighed again. "Well, you should be thinking about this yourself to figure it out, but I suppose I could give you a hint..."

He trailed off, thinking about something for a while before he continued. I watched him expectantly, just wanted to get this all over with so I could continue forward. But he didn't say anything else. Instead, he just pointed over to his right, to the cottage that I had all but forgotten, since it wasn't in my path.

"Go in there," he said. "There's a mirror in there that I use for shaving every now and then. Not often, mind you." And here he stroked his beard, which reached almost down to his waist. "But every several centuries or so I feel the need to have a smooth chin again, and a man needs to be able to see what he's doing when he shaves. Anyway, go into my cottage and have a look at what can be seen in my mirror. Maybe that will give you an idea of what's happening to you."

"That's off the path," I thought, eyeing the cottage suspiciously.

He laughed. "That it is," he said. "I didn't care to have my cottage laying across the force lines, so I built it off to the side. But this close to center you won't have any problems leaving the force line you've been following. So don't worry about that and just hurry up and get inside!"

I didn't like the idea, since it would take me away from the pull that still called to me, a little more strongly with every moment that passed. But at the same time, I realized that he really wasn't going to let me past him until he was satisfied with something. That something seemed to be me realizing what was going on, and if using his mirror would help... I figured that at least couldn't hurt, so I slowly started toward the doorway, not hearing anything from the old man as he watched me retreat into the house.

It took me a bit to find the mirror, since it wasn't a standing one like the one that had been in the room I slept in the night before. It was just a small, round piece of reflective class set into a crude wooden frame and casually tossed on top of a pile of worn out clothing. As it was, I had a hard time positioning myself so that I could see myself in it. There was another large pile of clothing right in front of the chair that held both the first pile and the mirror, and that large pile kept me from easily approaching the chair. But, as I noticed not too long after making my way to the chair, I couldn't seem to get my body to work right to grab the mirror and reposition it.

I found out the reason for that problem almost immediately. Not just that, but I also managed to get rid of the last of my hesitations about the thought floating around in the back of my head. After all, even if that thought wasn't the case, just being as I was at that point was more than enough to damn me for all eternity. And to think, all of this just because I looked in the mirror and realized part of what was going on.