After Nicholai turned left he followed a path, it seemed pretty easy to follow. Clear skies, no trees. He looked around, he felt at peace nothing here but fresh air and fields on either side of him. The quiet of nature made him feel at ease. He felt so relaxed that he just walked on looking around, taking in his suroundings.

The path bent to the right, Nicholai just carried on following it, hoping it would lead to a new place. Wanting somewhere new to adventure and new people to meet. As he turned the corner he noticed trees ahead. He carried on walking towards them, step by step feeling more and more uneasy.

Nicholai started to slow down the closer to the trees he got. Wondering if he should go further or not, if to enter and walk through or to find a way around. He looked forward, there was nothing there that he could see so he carried on into the trees.

About half way through the trees something caught his eye, he turned his head to see what it was. He froze, looked ahead of him and noticed what looked like a person walking towards him. He couldn’t see it clearly due to the shadows from the trees. It got closer to him. Nicholai gasped.

There was something different about this being though, it looked more like a silhouette than a person. Nicholai turned around to walk away from it but it followed him walking faster the more he walked away. When he got back to the gate to Antykla he turned around and it was gone. Nicholai wondered what it was, he never wanted to go back that way again, such a clear space, lovely surroundings but that was weird.

He walked round the outside of Antykla hoping to find another way to the next town. He noticed another gate to Antykla but this one was buried by bushes and overgrown plants. He thought about trying to make his way through them until he noticed there were rose bushes with thorns on them.

He stood wondering if there was a way through this gate, the top of them was clear, it was just the bottom half buried. Could he clear them and make his way through? He stepped back to get a clearer look. He looked in the bag he had with him to see if he had anything that could help. He found paper and pencils. How would these help him get through? He peered around to see if there were any tools around, all he spotted was a bench. He went to sit down to figure out these gates.

He began drawing what of the gates he could see. The top of them was a headband of lilies, a pattern of colours, red, pink then white from one side to the other. The metal frame was silver with bits of rust in random parts. The details of them were silver bars arching with little silver spirals between the arches. Each spiral had a lily in the middle of it. They would have been quite exquisite back before they had weathered. These had clearly been forgotten about for a long time. Nicholai wondered if he could just get to them would he be able to restore them and get them usable once again.

He sat drawing for quite a while, he looked around and noticed it had gone dark. ‘When did the sun go down?’ he thought to himself. He looked back up at the gates. Looking confused at how different it all looked in the dark, Nicholai stood up and turned to the bench he was just perched upon. It now looked black as night, like it had changed colours with the time of day. The whole situation made him feel weird.

He turned back round to the gates and put his pad in his bag, taking one last look around he turned right and walked slowly looking around. He took a while to get back to the front of the wall that encircled Antykla. Once he was back round to the front gates he walked up to them, realising his pencil was still in his hand he opened his bag and placed it inside. Once he was done with this he walked a little bit further and he saw the gates he could go through.

He slowly walked up to the gates looking up at them, they seemed so much bigger at night, like they had been replaced during his time out of Antykla. He just stood looking at them, they are totally different from the one on the side. He wondered if there were more gates on the other two sides of the town he hadn’t been to yet.

He stood just outside of them, wondering if he should go in and go to Wilfred and his family or to the inn the other guys were in. He hadn’t seen them since they were dropped off at the inn. He now started thinking about the guys and how they were.

Michael was seriously injured when he last saw him. Nicholai just stood thinking about them and if they were even still in Antykla or if they had moved on. He decided to go to the inn and see if they are still there. He turned and faced away from the gates and just stood looking down the path he had followed originally.

He looked down at the floor, there was a flower he never noticed before. It was a rose, purple in colour. Nicholai bent down to look at it, he had never seen a purple rose before. It looked really pretty but the thorns on it were very pointy so he decided not to touch it as it would hurt him very much. He stood back up and turned back to the gates. He walked right up to them, standing in them. Not outside of the gates but also not fully through them.

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes and dropped to the floor. “Nicholai, are you okay?” A voice said. He felt a tap on his shoulder, he looked up but everything was black. Nicholai could not see a thing. He just closed his eyes and lay down. Whoever it was that was there tried to pull Nicholai up.