The door swung open quickly and easily, casting a purplish glow out into the darkness surrounding the group and cutting a line between the students, who stood basked in the light and Malina, who stood just on the edge.
Calen instinctively lifted his arm up to shield his eyes from the bright glow but quickly found it wasn't needed. He stepped forward into the doorway unthinking and almost without notice, blocking the view from the rest of the group. He stood in a slackjawed combination of wonderment, confusion, apprehension, and relief. The town certainly wasn't the dark castle he had expected but it wasn't what Malina had described in the bullhead either. Far from a simple wooden settlement, what stood before him seemed more fitting of a city. The buildings were all modern buildings, hard concrete, brick, steel, and so forth, and attached to almost every single building were enormous neon lights advertising shops or taverns or hotels in brightly colored letters that cast a bouncing glow off of the lightly falling rain. The streets were just like the ones in Vale, though they didn't seem to be used for any vehicles. Large passageways through the city with stone sidewalks on either side and, from the looks of it anyway, sewer grates in the middle of the "road".
The rain was also different, Calen thought, the smell of rain had come with the opening door, something distinctly missing from the swamp that he hadn't noticed until now. Although, perhaps that was wrong. It wasn't rain, not really anyway. It smelled like... nostalgia? Yes, nostalgia. That didn't make much sense to Calen but he still seemed to completely understand and accept the thought.
His trance was broken as a group of three shoved past them as they walked along the sidewalk. The group had been made up of three men, although one was short enough to be mistaken for a boy before Calen noticed the large beard. The other two, a large tan man and a lanky man whose skin almost appeared.. green and tan at the same time. "Oh, not even gonna apologize, huh?" the short one asked in a gravely voice. The lanky one looked down at him and Calen could now see he had almost feminine features. "Has he been on TV, Merle? No, I don't think so." He said in a higher pitched and sarcastic voice.
The group faded off into the distance and Calen finally looked down and confirmed that, yes, he was on the sidewalk. He looked back and saw that the door he'd entered through was a good twenty feet away. 'When did I get out here?' He thought, but the fear or confusion that should have followed that thought were notably absent. His gazed went back to the city in front of him and now he noticed the odd mixture of people. No two outfits were the same, not like some villages where there's a general fashion. It almost seemed as though they were all hunters with their wildly varying clothing. A woman with dark skin passed by, her hair a flowing length that almost seemed to shift colored from blue to gold, to purple in the light. Her flowing blue coat was viable for only a moment before she disappeared into the crowd.
A man's laugh caught his attention and he saw a larger man sitting at a table with three others, two men and two women. The laughing man had short brown hair and a large muscular body. It seemed he'd just won an arm wrestling contest with the other man at the table.
Suddenly it was as if he'd taken earmuffs off that he had on for the past ten minutes and the sounds flooded in. It was overwhelming at first, but he quickly adapted. This place was loud. Very loud. It all suddenly clicked in his head like a gunshot. This place was wrong. He couldn't explain it, but it was wrong. They should have been able to head this much noise from outside, the walls were way too high, it seemed like hunters had already made their homes here, and-
'Wait.' A thought shot across his mind. 'Ten minutes? How long have I been in here?' He whipped his head around just in time to see Malina entered in the door, now at least forty feet away. She wasn't exactly his favorite person in the world, sure. None of the group were, but at least they were familiar. Calen looked around quickly before hurriedly walking back toward Malina.
Malina took one step into the walled settlement and came within a hair's length of immediately shrinking back out into the darkness. Although she didn't realize he felt it too, she shared the feeling of nostalgia with Calen. Hers was much, much more defined though. She could feel it everywhere, she could see it everywhere. Floating through the air like water currents in an ocean. he hand instinctivly shot to her staff and gripped tight. This was not right. They needed to figure out what was going on and why. Her gaze was so transfixed on the rooftops and neon signs that she hadn't noticed she too had walked forward and met Calen halfway, bumping into him absentmindedly and breaking her from her trance.