Honshane. I'd never been there. Here. I've never been here before.

Even the shores are different... the sand sharper, larger-grained, and dark. Rust-red and black mingle with the pale beaches that I'm used to. It's a strange texture, and it burns and cuts at my hind paws, grinds within my hooves.

There is a sense of enormity here that you won't find elsewhere. The scouts say that the whole of Honshane looks to be about as big as the northern half of Penyns, making it the smallest continent.

They say that, but I'm looking up at the landmasses just hovering in the air, low enough to nearly scrape mountains. No, this place isn't small. I bet you a Minmon could leap up there. I wonder if it would cause the land to sink.

Everyone's started calling them 'wind isles'. They do move with the wind currents, but they never approach the beaches - they never hover over water. It's eerie. I wonder if there are plants up there.

Scouts also say that Honshane is riddled with a network of caverns and deep tunnel networks. Some are filled with a strange plasma - some of those allow air to pass, and some don't. The ones that don't allow bodies to move easily, and aren't breathable, are considered impassable.

We're going into one of the "lighter" tunnels.

It's strange. The plasma... it looks like mist, but it glints like the surface of a pond where the light slants into the mouth of the cave. I'm not the first to go, but I'm close to the front, and so I have the disconcerting 'honor' of watching our leader step inside. The plasma peels away, not touching her fur. As she gets too far in, it seals behind her, leaving her in an air bubble that extends a muzzle-length from her hide. She pauses, then half-turns and beckons us to follow. The scouts made it to the other side of this sharp-ridged line of mountains, so we'll assume our air will last, too.

I step in. The plasma smells like fog, damp and dewy, but it stays away from me, too. I have to wonder what keeps it from touching us. The uneven rock floor isn't slick or slimy, but it's dark with moisture. My claws and hooves click, the sounds deadened as the plasma closes behind me.

Blindly, I follow the few in front of me. The air is beginning to taste stale by the time I see light filtering into the exit, just like the sun filters into water. Our leader is out, not looking unnerved nor relieved. I get out, too, and shiver. The warmth of the day is welcome after the wet chill of the tunnel.

The rest of the group gets through. Some are as unruffled as our leader; most are like me, skittish and shaking it off. It's good to stand on grass, though it grows like leafy moss and is a shade of vivid green. We passed underneath a wind isle in going through the tunnel, and I peer up at the floating landmass. There's a network of tunnels in it, too, the entrances glistening with plasma.

There's another tunnel entrance nearby. The plasma looks opaque, like dense smoke, and glitters in the light like exposed flesh without the skin. One of the more curious members of my group approaches and pokes the surface with a tailblade. The plasma ripples thickly, but doesn't peel away. He plunges the tailblade into it and holds, then - with a shudder - jerks his tail back. None of the plasma clings, but the blade looks wet. He sniffs it, huffs, and returns to the group.

We're moving deeper inland, now. No scent trail exists inside the plasmic tunnels, but our scents and prints lead right up to the entrance. If our enemies managed to follow, they'll know where we've gone. They'll follow.

The scouts reported strange creatures. There may be races in this land that no one has ever seen before. Hostile, perhaps. Even so, the group's moving forward at a fast clip, less afraid of the unknown threat than the one that hunts us.

We'll make it. We've got to.