There was the river before them, flowing through a channel that it dug out of solid rock over its many years of erosion. Its banks sloped up from there, on each side, with short underbrush on this side of the river and the forbidding Dark Forest, on the other side. Lloyd had Boyce hand him a pack and from it he took a dark cylindrical case that he opened. He pulled out from it an instrument of glass and light metal. He pulled the instrument apart and put it up to his eye, pointing it in the direction of the river. Boyce quietly watched him for a while. "Is that one of those distance aids for the eyes?" he queried. Lloyd smiled taking the thing away from his eye and showing it to him. "It's called a telescope. To see further an clearer you pull it out, like this." he showed him and Boyce knew right away what it could be used for. "It is compressed for easier packing and travel. A very handy toy, I might say!" He handed the telescope to Boyce and told him to look at the river near the huge rock and tree, an he did. He saw a cable there, stretched across the river from one rock to another on the other side. "That's what we're crossing on." said Lloyd. Boyce gave him an odd look as if asking him, 'why?'. "We can't swim through that tempest. The current would rip us to shreds and we couldn't control a float on her either." he said. "That wire cable is all we have." "Who put it there?" "I don't know, really. All I know is that when I was maybe nine or ten, some hunters came to my father with new of its existence. We came with a couple of Virunese to see it and it didn't look in very good shape." Lloyd took a breath that shuddered slightly. "I had to carry a thick rope to the other side and back in order to strengthen it until some others were sent to replace it with a new cable." "Why did you have to carry the rope?" asked Boyce. "I was the smallest and therefore the lightest, but I could feel the thing under my weight the further I went." Lloyd smiled reassuringly and took a gulp of water. "I've been over it a dozen times since then." Boyce continued to look through the telescope at the other side. The Dark Forest didn't look any more welcoming closer up and Boyce wasn't looking forward to going through it. The Dark Forest was densely overgrown with titanic sized trees, the diameters of which ranged from one to ten meters in thickness. They were extremely tall, too. So tall in fact that most of the forest ceiling was constantly hidden in the clouds, which never seemed to dissipate.