"Go north? Go North!?" Naph screamed.
He was barreling to the western boundary of the territory designated as Sevenren in the nation called Confederation of Tarna.
There were few key points he had taken notice of.
Another jolt rattled his ride. Bulwark was as silent as Naph had made her.
"You still are a pesky passenger!" Naph quipped at her corpse.
He started recounting the details he had to base his decision on.
"First, Sevenren as a city is forsaken by Confederation of Tarna. The very nation whose most landlocked city is getting attacked and not its borders. You following me Bulwark?" He needed anything to keep his sanity.
No response by her. Stillness was her friend just as death had embraced her tightly.
"It is quite a miracle you hadn't begun rotting," Anaphol noticed that too.
"Moving on," he pedaled faster westward. He needed to get as far from Sevenren and the plateau it was on.
"Second, the nations and kingdom attacking Sevenren includes Thryesco, Southern Regda, and Streno." The boy felt as if a gaze just missed him.
'Weird', he couldn't shake off how he is picking up these strange new sensory reactions.
A jolt rattled into and across the mechanical ride.
"Will you please pipe down Bulwark!" Naph had enough of her sudden influx of cata across his only ride.
But do the dead ever obey the living?
Death seemed to love its new companion, while Naph hated his silent passenger.
"Alright, alright. Let's keep going. West. West. Not north. West." He chose the direction that suited his disobedience.
The territory of Sevenren was large as the entire plateau was designated as Sevenren only a few parts of it in some other cities territory. The Confederation of Tarna as a nation was built of territories and each territory was just a city. No triple layering or quadric layering in drawing the nation's inner boundaries.
All of this ran through his mind.
"Third, Streno, Thryesco and Southern Regda, all lie on the eastern, south-eastern and northern side of the Confederation of Tarna respectively. So a better chance of survival in Tarna is only westward." He consoled himself on his choice.
He didn't feel right with the advice that 'Shrik' gave him, "I don't even think he is called Shrik. Who even name their child as that!"
He sped up his speed. The grasslands had grown, this marked the untamed outlands of Sevenren territory.
"Bulwark you better stop jerking the ride—"
Another jolt.
Bulwark's cata didn't like that, or was it just a natural cata reaction he didn't know.
How even he could? He is first time learning a deeper side of the world. He knew of caestres, and hunted them. But he hadn't seen every kind the world had to offer.
Only the ones that he was allowed to hunt by the bounty dispersing system of Tarna, he got to hunt.
Shaking off his anger, he whispered to the wind, "No caestre. No caestre. Please no caestre. Not today."
A small group of rodent-like creatures walked out of one high patch of grassland straight in the path of his ride.
"Uhhhhh!" He sped over the rodent-like creatures. As several died, he felt some weird sensation of an intangible watery substance flowing into the ride.
He glanced back, and saw a huge swarm now chasing him. But the ones who were crushed, they didn't get up like the usual broken pieces of a caestre does.
He sped through the grassland getting chased by the rodent-caestre.
"Damn it, at least help somehow you stupid corpse!" He quipped back at Bulwark.
As if on cue, another jolt rattled through the ride and same time the ride's back was attacked by the entire front of the swarm.
The swarm didn't die, or get dizzy. They still attempted to get onto the ride ever more. Only difference was the swarm was now divided.
The caestre rodent swarm that was chasing wasn't big, and if Naph had stopped and attacked them. He would have won without incurring any damage except of time wastage.
His skills as a bounty collector had given him many kinds of memorable experiences.
Today's five hours had added plenty that broke his previously highest ranked moments in life.
Swarm's sudden division is a shock he didn't anticipate.
"What is up with this cata?" His attention was now divided. One on keeping the ride on a safer path, the other to shake off the only alive part of the rodent-caestre.
The divided swarm had one part dead, left behind. And several from that swarm climbed over the dead rather than cannibalizing on them like the usual caestre behavior.
This is the part that was hungrily attempting to get closer to Bulwark. They wanted her fresh flesh.
Naph drew a stick he had stuck in the side of the ride's front seat. Meant to hit or poke at targets around him in case he needs to defy his first vicious trait.
'Better alive than respected.' A quote of his rambled within.
Naph hit back with his stick all around the corpse. Trying to scare off or make the rodent's jump. One of those hits randomly hit Bulwark's cold shoulder.
A sudden explosion of air went off.
Naph skitted the ride to left, and sped as the explosion of air scattered and ruptured every single one of the rodent-caestre.
"You should told me so! I would have definitely hit you earlier!" Naph's luck and quip shook hands.
The rodent-caestre was gone.
"That swarm was still weird. It didn't choose to eat its own flesh to make up for the loss. Weird."
He pedaled and pedaled. Another boom arrived shaking his ride.
"What is happening! How strong was that? Did Sevenren just get wiped off the map?" Naph questioned the reasons behind the shockwave.
Yet he was sure it was from Sevenren.
The grassland gave in into some more higher rough bushes. "Just a bit more kilometers!"
Naph was defiant against all the odds stacked against him. He chose west even knowing Shrik may have given him a good advice, but did he trust him enough?
He didn't trust himself enough. A non-believer trusts the actions and behavior he has knowledge on. And Shrik wasn't among the collection of knowledge he has on his world.
But the collection was expanding very rapidly.
Another shock spread through his mechanical ride from Bulwark. They escaped the large patch of bushes they had sped into.
Naph knocked on Bulwark's other shoulder before rapidly knocking on her previous one. He needed the boost to escape faster.
And the ride flew.
The field from where Naph and the corpse of Bulwark had exited the plateau had a steep slope high enough to kill any humanely killable caestre by pushing them off.
What Naph was attempting was reaching the other part of the same plateau, he had ran into a gorge. Rather what he needed now was anything that could make him cross the smallest gap in the gorge he had chosen.
And Bulwark so obediently provided it, albeit she needed some push with a stick.
Naph laughed, "Look Bulwark! Now this is how you ride!" His maniacal voice echoed into the gorge. A caestre hidden in the water jumped up to bite onto the ride.
But it missed.
'Oh, Bulwark if only you had eyes!' He considered within.
"Next time! And get some more wings moron!" He called out advices to the caestre.
They both landed on the other side of the gorge. "Now, starts the harder part," he tossed his words into the air.
Defiant in his choices, and his will to make a mockery only doubled it. Naph had finally arrived at the downward slope of madness.
The same could be said of the plateau's softer cliff he was on. A corpse in tow.
Naph didn't stop and continued onwards. What was madness if not defiance disguised as mockery?
He and the corpse buddy Bulwark, one just of 12 years in age and freshly cut, barreled down in zigzagging pattern avoiding the trees and dense bushes that barred their path to safety and escape out of Sevenren.
"Let's recount what was left. Uh, Streno, Thryesco, and Southern Regda. That was done." He thought out.
"Shrik did mention that Don Extea wanted to imbue the 'magic'?...of the ancient caestre into me through me saying…Cata?" He repeated it word for word as he strung up his thoughts in a mental map.
A giant shadow was cast over on his ride at the same time as his last word.
Yet the giant shadow missed the ride in that very instant. For the ride was gone. A few kilometers away.
Naph in his ride, jerked back to reality as the kaleidoscopic space ended around him. He, his ride, Bulwark, and everything that belonged to him from the duffle bag to the provisions Shrik hid in the ride.
He never expected him saying cata now, would do something so terrifying.
All of them traveled to a parallel space, one used for teleportation. It was near same as the ancient caestre's teleportation pole.
Except the boy landed on the beach he had been to the last year. The extreme westward point of Confederation of Tarna. The boy and everything around him coated in Bulwark's cata immersion had landed there.
A place Naph had felt lonely once.
A place now he vomited at as he felt ever so defiant at his luck.