Leaving Naph's question hanging, they did not subside his innate suspicion.
Having spotted cities after cities, he began noticing grayish paths among the forests. Winding paths with rare clearings alongside them from time to time. He had not enough experience to spot more details as per his own deduction.
'I don't think I have ever travelled this fast.' He compared his fastest travel speed, which apparently was when he hit Bulwark to escape the battle of Sevenren. Her corpse in his ride bumped into him.
Dykur instantiated, "We are arriving." To Naph, it did not sound as if Dykur was proclaiming or saying. It felt odd to him. 'Too plain, but why?'
Something imperceptible to his senses happened, the sky did not feel wrong. The land below did not contoured or convulsed. Nor did the air become different.
It was the forest. More so the grass and leaves. Them rather than dancing or fading, waved at their group in one single unison action.
All seven of them went past the patch of land where that happened. Ovier instinctively turned left. Another patch waved. He followed to it.
Another one waved, the group went above it. Then another, then another, then another. All of them had different coloured grass and leaves. While Anaphol had seen in his life more than two differently coloured leaves, to him any new ones attracted as much attention as did seeing the first one did when he was seven.
That memory of heart-touching leaves and all the other memories connected to it nearly flooded his mind but he reprimanded himself. 'Sevenren needs this. Extea needs this.'
Flushing all of his memories back into the hidden corner.
He still did not know what it is they need except some kind of help. What form will it be he had no idea, except possibly a vague idea about who may have stakes in it.
One of those whose or multiple of them is what he is fast approaching to. Clouds that held themselves low, rolled past them. In hindsight, he would recognize why they were all crescent shaped but not now.
A new mountain in the far horizon appeared. In peripherals he witnessed, two more arising. Out of curiosity he turned back, spotting a mountain he did not see they passed by to be at their tail end. One that they might have passed in the last ten seconds or so.
Looking ahead, Naph absorbed the magnificence of the castle. A castle that held four outer towers all in the same direction as each of the mountains, each of them connected to the castle via a broad bridge with foaming fog falling off its sides.
Before he knew it, the seven of them were on one of these bridges standing. He did not even have the moment to notice the vast city below stretching in every direction obscuring the grasslands and emerald forests that bordered it.
His ride with Bulwark bumped into him again. He grabbed on its handle. Not out of instinct but pure willpower. For he was surrounded by none other than a hundred armed guards. All of them had their weapons drawn. Each showcasing one that seemed to be uniquely crafted for them.
Naph didn't have to comment a rhetoric he held within because Cryst stated. "We have arrived with the proposal by Ennet and her uninformed trustee."
Naph's mind began running, he still forced his face to stay as it is.
Cryst proclaimed, "We demand-"
An insouciant assertion made itself known, "You have my permission to bring him in."
Cryst who had stepped forward to address the audience, present and hidden, turned to grab on Anaphol. Dykur moved in between her and Naph.
"My King, let the boy rest. If not that, then let him have his rights even as a guest."
Cryst's hand froze. She cut in, "He is not a king. But a-"
"I never stated that his rights aren't allowed to him. I greeted him when you brought him to Jhorime's border without informing him, thereby granting him all his guest rights." The voice plainly stated.
That was it. No more commotion, only a simple signal from Cryst.
Naph followed Cryst and Dykur. Others of the seven tailed him whereas the hundred guards in their individually distinctive armours stayed behind.
Being led through corridors, walkways, gardens and doorless halls, he witnessed stories and battles of eras he had no inklings of on the ceilings, floor and walls. Maybe some had hidden wisdom, he could only guess.
Before he even had time to think of them, he was in front of an extremely illustrated wall. Where did the supporting pillars stood and where the corner blended out of sight, it couldn't be distinguished for the mural didn't demand attention.
It took it.
Cryst spun back to briefly look at Anaphol, then she just nodded only to turn back again.
The wall parted, not like a door or a gate, but in parts. Parts that moved away from sight according to what was in focus on the mural. One at a time.
Naph hadn't noticed the mural in depth to remember it. Only enough that it existed.
As every individual painted entity vanished behind another, the wall opened to shine a deep golden light on the oncomers. It shifted silently to more varied ones.
From golden to red to azure to emerald and many more only to at last reveal a grand hall. Anaphol scanned his surroundings as best he could without taking his eyes of the main attention of the hall.
There were three galleries with intricate arches on the left and the right as he entered the hall. Each of them had people in them. Some whose features and faces he could make out, others were hidden either by shadows or by some other means. His mind for whatever reason told him one single fact, 'there are more than what I could see.'
An insouciant assertion ruptured the whispers. "The proposal by Ennet, one of the operatives in the continent of Tarna has been presented. The ones who have arrived here will present their views now."
Cryst, Dykur, Svnyo, Nert, Litto and Ovier stopped a few steps short of the center of the hall. Naph did too. Nert however pushed him slightly. He whispered, "Do what you must for Sevenren."
Taking the hint as presented, Anaphol grabbing on his ride with Bulwark hidden in it under a white tarp, stepped forward. He didn't stop at the center. He walked ahead until he was nearly a fifth of the way ahead from the center of the hall. A guard at the end near the attention of the entire hall's audience raised his palm.
Naph halted. Thinking of how to address people in power, he remembered Extea's few guidelines. His heart beat the same rhythm he had since seeing the tornadoes descending on the city of Sevenren.
"To whom do I introduce and address the….situation I require…urgently be solved?" Anaphol did his best to break the quiet to his arrival.
A woman dressed in garbs of high reverence in Jhorime stepped ahead. She stood on the right of the main attention of the hall.
With her open palm directed at the spiritual center of the audience, she addressed in an insouciant tone. "You stand before the Emperor of the Keyriftrian Empire and his elected council, and the respected gathered audience. The proposal by Ennet you are here to represent is to be addressed to the throne of Keyriftrian Empire."
Anaphol caught the words but couldn't process one little detail. So he asked like the bounty hunter he is.
"What proposal?"
Cryst silently cursed, Dykur held a face of a statue that slightly twitched at the question, and Nert's inhaled breath only elongated by a single moment.