We were approaching the dark entrance of the tunnel and Senka couldn’t resist his curiosity and asked Wido,

‘How can you navigate in such darkness?’

Immediately after the question, Widogast hit the bottom of the boat with a paddle and it started glowing with blue light.

‘We call them Azure crystals,’ old man started answering, his voice became serious, suddenly he felt superior to us, ‘they react to vibrations or loud sounds, these stones are perfect for cave explorations, as they do not require any fuel and you can easily hide them if needed. However, you can’t use them forever, after a while they lose their charge and you need to give them a rest, that is why when I entered cavern where you were hiding, my boat wasn’t shining.’

The boat looked like a firefly swimming through gloominess of the unknown tunnel. It was very quiet and the only thing that disrupted the silence was constant Widogast’s paddling, that echoed through the mountain. I had a strange feeling that everything goes too smoothly and started whispering my concerns to Senka,

‘Why are you so brave out of a sudden or you just don’t care about the adventure and want to get us killed as fast as possible? What if he is a witch that used magic to transform into a human and tries to lure us into the trap?’

‘Even if you are right, do we have any other option? Do you want to go home after we betrayed our parents and broke the rules of our village?’ Senka never looked so stern before, ‘Wasn’t it you that always wanted to get away from there as far as possible? You were the spark that ignited the fire in my heart and after we separated at the root of the mountain I decided to be as brave as you and survive no matter what. Tariq… Cold Peak will not be so cold if we warm it up with fire from our hearts.’

He left me speechless. The boy who was always afraid to speak, now had courage to fight the giants with his little pocket knife. He had always lived in fear and going through all of this has no impact on him. However, I’m not used to be frightened all the time…

‘Please… just be careful,’ was the only thing that I could tell him now.

‘Oooh, so your friend is not mute?’ Widogast overheard our conversation and that wasn’t surprising, you could hear even a slight jingle in the air, so he tried to cheer up us a little bit but was unsuccessful, ‘Hah! There are no witches around here and I’m not one of them for sure, but you can’t say the same thing about goblins, that are roaming around these caves! I heard that you were calling this place the Cold Peak, it is sure has snow on its peaks, but no one calls it like that in whole Seven Kingdoms. Better call it Eastern Montserrat, then everyone will understand about what you are talking, boys.’

‘But why Eastern Montserrat if ocean is Northern?’ wondered Senka.

‘Haha! You, Stoyans, amaze me every time with your false knowledge of the world. You see snow, you call it Cold, you feel cool breeze and call it Northern. Actually, it’s a sea, not an ocean and we call it the Rising Tear.

‘Why is it called Rising then?’ Senka couldn’t stop asking.

‘Because, there is a Falling Tear as well. Haha! If you could fly as high as the strongest eagle, you could see that Rising Tear and Eastern Monserrat has symmetrical brother and sister on the west and huge fields, rivers and forests are living between them. You will be shocked after seeing the true map of these places, that’s for sure.’

‘We had never seen any maps actually…’

‘Ahh, then it’s not as bad as I thought. It would be worse if you started your adventure with a wrong map, usually Stoyans make up their own maps so no one would ever want to escape their villages. Your minds are not soiled with wrong paths and you will make your own during the adventure. Actually, that sounds even more fun than just following the rules, am I right? Haha!’

Joyful mood returned to Widogast while he was telling us the truth about the world, he found it fun how uneducated we were regarding geography, but then he suddenly became serious,

‘This river, that we are currently sailing, begins in the Rising Tear and ends up in Falling Tear, but I will leave you as soon as we exit the Eastern Montserrat. It is fun to have you guys as my companions and I would like to see how you both grow in this harsh world as children who were born in Stoyan village, but I have other important things to do and you will be just a burden. Sorry,’ and then silence again grew upon us and the only thing that disrupted it, were steady rowing sounds.

‘Wido, you are a good man. Even though I pointed my bow at him, he let us into his boat and shared his knowledge. The old man was afraid of us the same way as we were afraid of him and tried to hide his fear in laughter and jokes at that cavern and Senka realized this much faster than I did. Widogast has a lot of experience behind his shoulders. I think he realized that if he hadn’t offered help, we would try to steal his boat. I don’t think that Wido could survive my arrow, he doesn’t even look that strong. He is crookbacked, his head grows bald and he is so thin that skin hangs on his cheeks like he hadn’t eaten in years, how could anyone hire him to scavenge such scary places?’

 These were my thoughts, while I was looking at an old man that was sitting in front of me, rowing down the gloomy river tunnel. Then without a warning half of the Azure lights switched off.

‘Already, eh?’ Wido started cursing, ‘Damn it, my stop at sapphire cavern wasn’t enough to regenerate the energy of Azure crystals,’ after he finished this sentence, the other half went off and we were left in complete darkness, Wido stopped rowing.

‘Now what?’ whispered Senka.

‘Now we should…’ Wido couldn’t finish his sentence, as something hit the bottom of the boat with great force and he started to lose his balance. After one strong hit, followed the other one even stronger than before. The boat started to swing and Wido screamed,

‘Hold onto the boat, try to balance it and no matter what do not fall into the water, otherwise they will get you!’

‘Will get us?! Who?’ me and Senka cried at the same time.

‘Goblins!’

Then the most powerful strike hit us on the right side of the boat and it turned upside down. We all fell into the cold water. Cliffs near our village were too high and waves were to strong, so no one thought us how to swim. Our clothes soaked instantly and became a life-threatening burden. My lungs started filling with water, my arms got weak and I lost my consciousness.