Brantley was standing with a tray of assorted cheese, pancakes, maple syrup and baked potato. The smell of food wafted through her nostrils and her stomach grumbled. 

She narrowed her gaze at him and said, "You and I have a lot to talk!" 

​​

He smiled. "We do have to talk a lot Dawn. The thing is that I can't wait to talk to you," he said and walked to the desk to keep her food. He waved his hand at it and said, "First you eat." His gaze flitted to the small rack that was laden with food in her tent. "I hope you haven't eaten anything from there." 

Dawn shook her head. "No! I waited for one of you. However, if you wouldn't have come, I would have attacked that food." 

Brantley pursed his lips and muttered a sorry. Then he went to pick a strawberry from the rack and held it high against the lights. 

"What are you looking at?" asked Dawn as she sat on the chair and began eating like a hippo. 

"Watch this," he said and flung the strawberry into the air. The bloody fruit exploded with a soft 'phut' into thousands of tiny red particles, which slowly floated in the air and landed on the floor. 

Dawn's face fell open with a munched pancake inside. 

Brantley explained, "That strawberry would have exploded into your gut and all you would have felt was a little burp. Those tiny pieces would have then entered your bloodstream. They are a special kind of poison, which make you weaker by the day and by the end of five days you are so weak that you can't even crawl on your knees. It affects the neuro-system. Made from the venom of anacondas and newts of this jungle." 

"Shit!" she said and gulped her food down. There was an overwhelming sensation to puke. "Why would Sedora do that?" 

"Remember she is doing this only to you. As for others, she is giving them super grade food so that you are automatically weeded out." 

Dawn didn't know what to say. The woman had become too vicious. But whatever she thought, she couldn't think that for all the follies she committed back in Bainsburgh against her, Sedora would go down this path. It was just beyond any logical thinking. "This all is so twisted that I can't understand the head or tail of it." 

Brantley sat on the bed and rested his hand on the back. His green hair was neatly combed. To change the topic, he said, "I can see that you are beginning to get those green streaks." 

Dawn rolled her eyes. "I hate them. People will think that I am some punk." 

Brantley raised an eyebrow. "I don't look like a punk!" 

Dawn took a spoonful of maple syrup, poured it on the pancake and ate it. She turned to look at him. As the light and dark played over his face, she found him attractive. But she couldn't shirk that dark aura around him. His emerald color eyes were a shade darker than hers. His hair was short, thick and looked lovely for a change. Small stubble accentuated the chiseled jawline that led to the cheekbones of a model. Dressed in a white shirt and black leather pants that were tailored just for him, she said, "No, you look better than that!" 

Brantley let out a soft laughter. 

"So, start telling me what is it that I am missing? Because it seems that I am out of my depth here!" Dawn breathed. 

Brantley looked up at the ceiling and said, "I won't tell you anything, but you have to ask me questions, which I will answer in all honesty." 

Dawn gritted her teeth. "Why the hell all Lore people are so cryptic? Why can't you guys just be straight?" 

"There's a lot that depends on what we speak or rather what we reveal, so we have to be careful in what we have to answer." 

"Ah! Okay!" she said. Popping a grape in her mouth she asked her first question, "How did you find me?" 

"I knew that Sedora had started the contest. The news has spread like forest fire in the Lore. And I knew that only one thing could have triggered her decision, which was captivity of Daryn, which meant that you would come to find him. That information was enough for me to find you. As for the exact location, then let me put it like this—" he tilted his head, "I know of all the portals that lead to different planes in this jungle. Right now this kingdom that you are in is a plane, which you entered from a portal." 

Dawn remembered how Quetz explained these things. She nodded. "I thought you and I are enemies, then how come you suddenly decided to help me? You imprisoned me at the Ulfric and made sure that I don't leave it until I find the Stone of Solaris. Those were the most horrendous days of my life. I hated you like hell and I was sure that you hated me equally. Then what is it that makes you want to help me?" 

Brantley smiled. "That's the main question." He took a deep breath and licked his lips before answering her. He couldn't look straight in her eyes, so he walked to the door of the tent and stood there with his hands clasped at the back. "Dawn, whatever I say, listen to me patiently and don't interrupt," he said looking over his shoulders.

"Okay," she said and braced herself for the mystery that he was about to reveal. She almost laughed at the way he was behaving, but stifled it with a cheese sandwich. 

"The Stone of Solaris was given to us by Goddess Chimala and it brought prosperity and fertility to the kingdom of Aztec. However, it was stolen and we couldn't find it after numerous efforts. I think I have already told you. It was important that we found the stone. However, with all the wars that kept taking place amongst the various factions, our progress was slow. And ever since the stone was stolen, our fertility rate in the kingdom dropped to zero. Can you imagine—not a single child born in two thousand years?" He let out a long sigh. "But thanks to you now that balance is restored and I heard that some women in my realm were pregnant." 

"Wow!" Dawn rasped. That was a compliment from him.

"Sedora had been a very greedy ruler. She had killed her sister Janet in order to become the Queen of Ixoviya. She is a very powerful sorceress but there is one thing that scares her the most—her death. It was prophesied by the Shaman of the Derize Barrens that she would be killed by someone her own. Ever since that prediction, she had been finding that 'someone'. Her hunt led to Gayle from whom she had two kids, Caleb and Daryn. They were her own but the Shaman had said that someone unnaturally born would be able to kill her." 

Dawn's eyes became wide. She stopped eating. She couldn't eat. 

"I think you can put two and two together and understand who that someone her own is, and who someone unnaturally born will put her to her end." 

She gasped. Her skin prickled as adrenalin gushed through her veins. Her hands went to her tummy. "You mean— you mean—"