The strange potion Kangassk had so trustingly drunk from Vlada’s flask got in his head in the most unexpected manner. He woke up with a start, feeling so brisk and full of energy it seemed he would never need to sleep again. The discoloured forest around him resembled a living pencil sketch slowly drowning in skimmed milk. The sky turned grey, the horizon burned white. Kan quickly glanced back, hoping to catch a glimpse of the colourful world they left behind. There was none. The anomaly affected his ability to see, he remembered, it didn't change the world.

Vlada rode beside him, looking like a living sketch herself, or like a celestial, mystical being. Both chargas lost their spots and stripes. Kangassk himself no longer was chocolaty brown. The white gloom thickened by the minute, eating the very contours of things away. But that wasn't the worst. The worst thing was them no longer being alone: the sylphs had arrived.

Colourless and silent, they looked like jellyfish with their headless bodies and restless tentacles. They kept their distance for now. A direct look made them flinch and hide in the trees. The sylphs were clearly afraid of the creatures that could see them. But as the white gloom approached the travellers, so did they. Kangassk remembered his bow carried away by Fervida. It had probably already reached Gileda by now and maybe even found a new master. A pity. It might have been useful here.

Two hours had passed, judging by the alien-looking white sun slowly crawling up. Kangassk was already almost blind, most of the world replaced in his mind by the white gloom. There were no more oak leaves, branches, and acorns, just an amorphous rustling mass above. There were no more grass blades, just a shapeless shaggy carpet on the ground. There were no more pretty “jellyfish” at the fringe of vision, just a squirming, wriggling mass resembling a huge hungry monster. And it moved even closer to the travellers.

Soon after Kan had lost Vlada to the white gloom his field of vision shrank so much it ended at the arm’s length, just where his charga’s head with angrily folded ears was. Several more steps toward the heart of the White Region – and the world went white, swallowed whole by the reversed darkness. That’s when Kangassk felt the presence of the sylphs. They swarmed him, not biting yet but actively seeking something: a pulsing vein maybe or a softer place on the skin, who knows… The sylphs chirped and screeched, their little bodies were all over Kan. One heartbeat, two, three… he clenched his teeth… two more – and he cracked up.

“Take them away from me!!!” he bellowed swinging his invisible hands in the air. “Help!!!”

“Stop it, silly!” Vlada’s voice came somewhere from the left. “Get yourself together! You don’t want to fall from the saddle here, believe me.”

Well, that was sobering. Kan stopped yelling and started thinking. He couldn’t do much to keep the sylphs away but he could do at least something, so he wrapped his cloak around him tightly, hid his face and hands and leaned against the charga’s neck, face down. That was a very good idea. Chargas could see in the white gloom just fine. From time to time Kangassk heard a loud crunch when one of them crushed a sylph or two with her jaws. After a while, most of the sylphs learned to stay away from the chargas’ heads, but only the heads. They still crawled everywhere else. And there were so many of them! Finally, even the chargas lost their nerves and ran.

Kangassk whimpered miserably with every step, his face buried in his charga’s fur. The world before his closed eyes was dark, with dancing colourful spots, which was way nicer than the unnatural, spotless whiteness of the real world he didn’t dare to look at again.