It took Azul the greater part of the week to finally meet a group of humans. He had traveled over the vast swathe of plain lands before he reached the edge of it. It was there that he found a group of humans.
The only reason Azul had not arrived earlier was that he was traveling at a somewhat human-like pace. He had also taken time to enjoy the new sights, to familiarize himself with the air of the lands. It had been an unimaginably long time--or so it seemed to him--that he had spent inside his still dream. Azul was enjoying the new scenery.
The group of humans consisted of six individuals with tanned skin, judging from the gaps in between their armor. What was intriguing to Azul was that five of them consisted of four females with white metallic armor and the fifth one the sole male who formed the vanguard of the group. The male wore an entirely jet-black armor that gave off an intimidating look. Five of these armored individuals centered around one female, who looked to be the youngest, in a protective arc.
Dressed in a light green leather armor, the center female looked to be of fifteen years of age or so, if he judged correctly from her height and her general body structure. He was not an expert in human anatomy or society, but he had learned some interesting information from the fragments of memories he retained from the two adventurers.
The human girl was most likely in a position of higher power, judging from the way the other five humans acted protectively. They were most likely guards, with the male who looked to be the oldest the leader of the guards. As to the reason why there were four female guards, perhaps it had something to do with the gender of their ward.
As soon as Azul approached the group, all five of the guards looked over at him warily, hints of steel and suspicion flecking their eyes. He could easily see their eyes, for they wore no protective articles around their heads.
At the suspicion in their eyes, a realization came over Azul. 'Oh, I do indeed look suspicious.' He gave a cursory glance over his clothing. His brown tunic and leather pants could not even be called brown anymore. In fact, they could not even be considered clothing. It was more fitting to call them pieces of fabric that had been dipped in blood and let to dry out in the sun for quite some time.
Such a discrepancy in his appearance had not even entered his thoughts until the guards eyed him suspiciously. To Azul, the smell of blood was rather comforting. And familiarity was the mother of comfort, and if not the mother, then a sibling at the very least.
"Halt, stranger! Come no further, lest we treat you as an enemy," the leading guard called out. His square jaw along with his unkempt beard that was already showing signs of his age perfectly suited his gruff voice.
Azul could only barely make sense of the words spoken with the help of the guard's tone and threatening posture. In his haste, the matter of him not speaking a common language with the humans had slipped past his mind. He only knew a smattering of their words, words which were part of the widely used language known simply as Trade Tongue.
He stopped at the guard's behest. Despite his tendencies for blood, Azul did not think himself an indiscriminate killer. He was a logical, if not peaceful, being. Poring over the stolen memories of the two adventurers, Azul attempted to find the right words to defuse the tense situation. He could sense their wariness, almost taste it, in fact.
"I…am Azul..am adventurer," Azul uttered each word in a deliberately slow fashion. Then he gave a small, tight smile toward the group, formulating that this was the necessary social human cue required to alleviate their suspicions.
As was somewhat expected, Azul could sense the palpable tension in the air lessen slightly after his smile. The four female guards stared at him with looks that Azul could not quite puzzle out. As for the young human girl, she was looking at him with a curious gaze.
"An adventurer, you say? How delightful! If you could please tell, what sort of troubles did mister encounter that landed you into such unfortunate circumstances," the girl asked. Her sharp brown eyes, tinged with an orange hue of sorts, perused him, never once leaving him.
Though he did not show it, Azul was somewhat perplexed. He understood less than half of the words the girl had said to him. Perhaps she was asking about his clothes? He did not know what to think of it. Left with no easy answer, Azul could only shake his head slightly, gesturing a negative.
"Perhaps it is best that I do the asking, Lady Mary," the gruff voice of the male vanguard said, his black gauntleted right hand already lowering toward the long sword strapped to the left side of his waist. His eyes narrowed in suspicion at Azul who carried no obvious signs of a weapon. The dried blood stains on the man's unkempt tunic also did not go beyond his notice. The guard doubted an assassin would be this stupid. Then again, it could be a cunning ploy.
What made the man even more suspicious to the guard was his striking appearance. The man had stunningly snow white hair that flowed past and stopped just short of his shoulders. But it wasn't the hue of his hair that caused concerns for Bernard. It was something else he couldn't quite put a finger to.
"Aww, you are no fun, dearest Uncle Bernard," the girl said with a pout to the male vanguard.
The older man known as Uncle Bernard barely gave the pouting girl a glance. His gray eyes were only trained upon Azul. His instincts, honed over a lifetime of fighting--he had once been a famous adventurer--was screaming danger at him. That this man, or was he even a man at all, was quite dangerous.
And for some strange reason, Bernard felt a sense of incongruity, a sense of nervousness. The cause of such a feeling inside Bernard wasn't the dried blood on Azul's attire or the fact that he felt danger from him. No, it was something far more subtle. It took a moment before realization dawned upon Bernard. Bernard realized that his nervousness came from a subtle aspect of Azul's appearance.
To Bernard, Azul appeared to have a face of a proud highborn with unsettling crimson eyes, not that eyes of such a color wasn't rare. One could also ascribe his high-browed face, which strangely did not sport any facial hair, as overly handsome. But Bernard had seen his fair share of handsome and beautiful people.
No, it wasn't these features that unsettled Bernard. It was the extremely perfect symmetry of the white-haired man before him. It was an inhuman symmetry. The right side and the left side of his face perfectly meshed together into a symmetry that looked all too inhuman. No blemishes or distinguishing features that marred the symmetry existed on either side. It was a such a perfect and unsettling harmony that it bordered upon disharmony.
Bernard had never seen such a thing, not from the countless of humans he had met and not from any other humanoid species. Even elves, in all their beautiful grace, did not hold such symmetry. At first, Bernard thought Azul to be an elf, for a few of the elves sported platinum white hair, but now he was no longer certain. He grew even more wary of Azul.
"What do you need, adventurer?" Bernard pronounced each word with a deliberate and clear precision. He had noticed that the so called adventurer did not fluently speak the common Trade Tongue that so many kingdoms shared, an even more obvious cause for suspicion.
Thankfully for Azul, he could understand those simple words with his limited grasp of Trade Tongue. Knowing that the guard had already seen through his weak attempt of a guise, Azul decided to keep his words short. "Information." He paused a while. "Town? City?"
One of the female guards, tall and bulky enough for Azul to almost suspect she was a man, walked up to Bernard and hissed softly. "We should not be entertaining this addled fool. He is too suspicious. Let's just be done with him." She lovingly patted the greatsword strapped over her back.
"Shut it, Leona," Bernard whispered through gritted teeth, a whisper so soft that only they could hear. "Let me do the talking."
Bernard prayed that Azul had not overheard them. It was the epitome of stupidity to threaten a strange being whose powers you knew nothing of, even more so a being that made his instincts scream out in danger at him. In his experience, it was best to solve complex confrontations through a mannered exchange rather than violence. It was much, much simpler and better long-term.
His prayer went unanswered. For Azul, it was an easy matter to overhear the two guards whispering. He had an extremely sharp hearing. And while he could only make out the meaning of some of the words, he understood enough to make out the general meaning of it.
Azul took no offense to their threats. They were merely words. It was only when those words translated into action that he would be offended. And should they deny his request, he could always steal their memories. He was, if nothing, pragmatic. Perhaps it had been a trait of his past life.
"We will take you to Frontier, Azul," Bernard calmly said. It was a strange name, the syllables somewhat strange to the tongue, despite it being in Trade Tongue.
"What!" Mary cried out in a burst. "But I thought we were going to the edges of the Outlands. I wanted to view some oddities!"
Bernard gave his ward a steely glance. It was a serious situation they were in. His
"The city of Frontier is about four days away on foot," Bernard said. "We will escort you there."
While Bernard knew it was folly to escort an unknown being into a highly populated city such as Frontier, there were two reasons for doing so. One reason was that he had a feeling that denying Azul's request would result in unforeseen circumstances, thus making the situation even more unfavorable. The second reason factored from the fact that Frontier, being the city that headed the exploration of the Outlands, was full of people with esotheric talents. In addition, there was also the Adventurers Guild which was full of people with combat experience.
Azul nodded lightly. "My thanks." Those two words seemed to be the proper reply to when one agreed to another's request.
"Follow along." With those words, Bernard turned his back and started walking in a southeastern direction, passing the edges of the plains. "Form up behind Lady Mary," he ordered the other guards. It was unwise to turn his back to the enemy, but, in this regard, he could only hope for the best. He sighed mentally. Perhaps he should really start thinking about retiring.
Azul followed along, crossing the final edges of the plains and approaching the right side of Bernard who formed the rearguard alongside a glaring Leona. He was curious to know more of this new world he had awakened into. And now that there were a few somewhat willing sources of information, it would be foolish not to learn from them.