As they walked farther along the little trail and deeper into the forest Lin noticed a number of dark piles in between the bushes and trees. After a while she tried to ignore looking straight at any of the piles when she saw that a few of them had bones, ashes, and the bloody remains of various creatures, including humans. Lin gagged. The smell was horrible, it smelled like something rotten mixed with burnt plastic. She looked over at Izhmayel and saw that he had one of his hands over both his nose and mouth. "Well, I'd say that somethin' big an' bad went through here alright."

Lin nodded and continued ahead of Izhmayel. And almost walked off the edge of a cliff, but before she did he grabbed her arm and jerked her backwards.

"Hey!" Lin yelped as she fell down then rubbed her arm where he had grabbed it. "What was that for?"

"Can't yeh just be a bit patient and let me do my job?" He said and pointed down. "See...look where yeh are walkin'."

Lin got up and looked over to where Izhmayel had pointed. The trail had suddenly ended and a huge gap in the trees parted the forest. Several stories down a river cut its way through the dense forest. On the other side of the river were cliff faces full of dozens of caves and trees that were twice the size of the ones on the side she was on. Lin squinted, she thought she could make out some sort of rope bridges that connected the caves when a twinkling light suddenly appeared and zipped in and out of them. "Is that–"

"A village...yes."

"In the caves?"

"And woven throughout the trees, sort of like tree house caves...I s'pose."

Lin looked around, as far as she could tell there was no way of getting down to the village without jumping off the cliff and into the river, which was not exactly something she was willing to do. "So...are we going to that village?" she asked and scanned around for a way down.

Izhmayel scoffed, "Of course, it's where yeh wanted teh go."

Lin gave him a confused look. "What? I thought I was just following you..."

Izhmayel sighed and took a deep breath. "Yes, but you told me which direction, or more accurately the village ya wanted teh go to."

"But...I don't even know where I am!"

"That's what I thought too..." Izhmayel replied and swung off the backpack he had been carrying. A few minutes later he had pulled out a rope and securely tightened it around the trunk of a nearby tree and then himself. "Think yeh can climb down?" he asked and held a rope out to her.

Lin stood there with her mouth open for a minute.

"Guess not, then..." Izhmayel said when she didn't answer and suddenly looped the rope around her waist. "Better hold on." With that, he jumped off the cliff, pulling Lin with him. She screamed the whole way down and they landed roughly in a bush.

Lin got up and immediately started to loosen the rope. "A warning would have been nice!"

Izhmayel brushed himself off and untied his rope. "I did warn yeh," he replied and stuck his finger into his ear, as if to clean out some ear wax. "An' less screamin' from yeh would've been nice too...Pro'ly woke the whole village."

Lin looked up and noticed that they were a few yards in front of a rope bridge that crossed the river and connected to a platform that was inside of a cave. Hundreds of other rope bridges weaved to and fro from the cave platform to some tree house looking structures and then to more cave entrances.

Next to the entrances and all throughout the tree branches hung little lanterns. Several residents had already taken a few of them and were racing towards them. As they got closer, Lin noticed that they were all in their teens or younger and they all had some sort of makeshift weapon. The leader of the group was a girl around fourteen years old. She raised her bow and arrow and pointed it straight at Lin. "What are you doing here?"

"We've just came for the Gate, that's all," Izhmayel said and raised his hands.

The girl narrowed her eyes. "Walker..." Suddenly, she snapped at Izhmayel, "She shouldn't be here! She will bring destruction to our home! She can't pass, find a different gate or we will show no mercy!"