The Grangor

James quietly and subtly eyes the shadow in the trees. Walking over to Tasha, he whispered, barely audible.

"I don't know why he's tailing us, but it could be because of me."

Spoiler

Eep sorry, my bad!

"I don't think he's from here," she murmurs back, watching out of her periphery. "He doesn't smell right. How could he know you?"

"I..." James sighed, at a loss. "I don't know. It was only an assumption," he whispered back. "And it doesn't look like he's going to stop following so I figure we should just talk to him again sooner or later."

"Confrontation would be my go-to. I don't like playing these games."

James let out a small sigh as he turned around, facing the general direction the hooded man was hiding in.

"Ramses, you can come out. We know you're there."

He stepped out from the shadows, lingering beside the tree he was standing under to evaluate if they were going to threaten him with words or weapons.

"Now that you know I'm here, what will you do?" he questioned, studying the man and the woman next to him.

Her sword leaves it's sheathe with a metallic zing and her eyes turn deep amber as she fans out, flanking him. "Start telling us why you're following us or you're going to find out just how sharp this blade is."

His hand went for his own weapon, but he kept it hidden underneath his cloak. He would only use it if he absolutely had to. He eyed her for a moment. Though he felt deeply uneasy about the situation, he kept on a calm persona. He had become quite good at that. "You were the only people I found so far," he said. "And it seemed like you weren't exactly open to me joining your group. I did a little bit of improvisation and decided to follow you instead."

His gaze lingered on the frustratingly familiar man. Unsure of it was wise to reveal that he knew him, he returned to silence and stared at him from underneath the hood of his cloak.

James was disturbed by one thing Ramses had said. He said that they were the only people he'd found so far.

There was something about the wording that indicated that not only was Ramses lost, but it almost hinted at the same sort of language - the displacement of being in another world, a place completely foreign to yourself - as the others. Though he couldn't be completely sure, any suspicions he had before as to whether Ramses was in a similar situation to Tasha, Seung, and Tavis were strengthened.

"Well, we're wary of strangers for good reason," James replied, deciding to then drop a name, to see if Ramses would recognize their location. "We are in the Outlands, after all."

"Ah," he said, certain that the reasons the name had been used was to see if he was confused by it. It would have never been his first assumption when hearing the words, but the way that the frustratingly familiar man looked at him made him deeply suspicious of an already suspicious situation.

"That makes sense. The Outlands can be quite dangerous." He left it at that. It was wiser to keep things vague than try to seem knowledgeable about information he didn't have. Until he knew who these people were and how he had arrived here, he would pretend to be one of them. It was the only option.

Okay. Ramses... definitely wasn’t from the Outlands. No one talked about them like that. There was no neutral tone - there was only ever passionate hatred of or passionate love of this place. And anyone sane landed in the hate category.

James let out a sigh. “So... if you’re not from here, where are you from?”

He froze. The sigh suggested that he knew he was lying and was for some reason tired of it, but he couldn't begin to comprehend why. Had this situation already occurred with another person? Or was the response simply because he had pretended to be another traveler?

"I came from a small village," he carefully said. "Not many have heard of it. I decided to leave it see more of the world." He was still watching the man, eyes clearly studying him even though his hood was up.

“You say not many have heard of it,” James replied evenly, giving Ramses a discerning look. “Well, try me.”

Panic set in. He had never come up with a possible village for him to be from, especially when he was convinced that he was on a completely different planet than the one he called home. He scrambled to come up with some sort of response that made sense in the situation, but even the most logical ones failed to show themselves.

Faced with being discovered, a name came to him. It was only afterwards that he realized how stupid of a choice it was. "My village is called Vuphia." He immediately regretted the name he chose; even saying he was from somewhere in Egypt would have been better than that! But the damage had been done, and there was no turning back now."