Noticing that the youngster had already started running, Nautilus ran after him. Nautilus could have run faster, but looking at the youngster's bag, he didn't go the fastest he could. He knew he couldn't run quickly with that bag either, and beside that he regarded that he was at least partly responsible for the youngster due to the fact that he was quite possibly the only man the youngster had ever seen inside the Guild and that he had stayed there a bit longer. Despite that, he decided not to bear the load of any part of the bag, thinking it would give more time for their pursuers to get to them compared to the time saved by sharing the load. His thought that suddenly stopping while over-exerting oneself running would make one unable to run after the stoppage adds his reason not to share the load. However, he tried his best to ensure that the youngster ran as straight as possible.
After about a mile of running, Nautilus and the youngster finally reached another setting, which was very dark. So, we go from a midday straight into a night? he thought. Abrupt weather and terrain changes were still acceptable to him, but abrupt time change wasn't. He just couldn't get the idea. He then grabbed his pocket for his cellphone, which had got a flashlight, but apparently the battery's flat. "Now how would you charge a cellphone inside the Guild?" he muttered to himself, but easily audible to anyone nearby, particularly the youngster. He didn't bring the charger with him, and even if he brought one, finding the right outlet would be another problem. He didn't ditch his cellphone unlike what the youngster did, though, in case those two problems finally found a solution.
Nautilus walked slowly at first, but soon after that a noise was heard from the bushes. He looked at the direction of the noise, wondering what made the noise. By the time the youngster started running, he realized that he might have made a mistake by not trying to escape to a safer roleplay. But seconds later, the youngster seemed to hit something and fell to the ground. The ceiling was even too short for the youngster, so he paid extra attention to the ceiling. After the youngster rolled over, Nautilus lent a hand and helped the youngster to stand back up. Only then that they took a look at what lies above them. At first, Nautilus thought it was an entrance to a cave, but he finally realized that this ceiling was the very cause of the sudden darkness in the setting. It was an island, floating above ground.
"So, it was one of those floating island roleplays...," Nautilus said. He did not know much about floating island roleplays because he was not interested in them and hence did not read much about them. However, he had the impression that in floating island roleplays, significant events rarely happen on the ground below. This meant that if they wanted someone to rescue them in this setting, thay had to find a way up, which is the first problem. Even if they found a way up, one more crucial problem would face them, and this made Nautilus at first unwilling to go up to the floating island: they had no idea what happened above them. All sorts of scenarios may happen up above: post-modern cities with all its technological advances and problems brought with it, a floating superhero or supervillain team base, last settlements after an event rendered the land below uninhabitable, and so on. The last item on the list, however, made Nautilus rethought whether he and the youngster should go up. "Do you think we should go up?" Nautilus asked the youngster.