The leader led them towards the small village, his son sneaking glances at the magnificent warriors that had killed the beast.
"How did you kill it?" The boy whispered past his father. Maso groaned at this question, because he couldn't think of a way to answer it. As he had found out in the mock battle, he couldn't even damage Tobias when they fought, his defense was that strong. He also packed a hell of a punch, which made his attacks almost unblockable.
"Now now, you should leave them alone. If that monster was as tough as you said, he would've had a very tough fight." The leader had at first denied knowing anything about the city, but had admitted that something happened, but only because they had saved their town from a great threat (a non-existant threat). But he wouldn't say what, would only gaze east and grind his teeth.
The path twisted to the North, and the 'small' village came into view. Tobias had assumed that the village was small because of the small hunting party, but the village was as big as their town.
"That's a big town. How did we not notice it earlier?" It wasn't that far off from where they had been setting up camp, but the density of the forest had shielded it from view.
"We could have slept in an actual bed..." Maso seemed the most disappointed by their lack of finding the village, or any town for that matter. He had been constantly grumbling about their lack of sleeping commodities, but Bryce had said they needed to travel light.
"Anton, if it's okay, could we wash up in a bathhouse? We've been on the road for a while."
"From the looks of ya', you haven't been on the road in a while" The light tease caused both Tobias and Maso to chuckle nervously. "All right, you can go there, we'll give your clothes a freshen up too."
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Tobias sunk into the steaming water, sighing as his body submerged. Ginea was renown for it's hot springs, with their town's contract being a plasma level lava dragon that rested underneath. It had, according to legend, originally been a salamander that had absorbed so many other salamanders it grew wings and grew enourmous
"We never had anything like this back home, did we?" Surely they would've known if the town had something as beautiful as this. Everyone would've been using it every chance that they got!
As Maso came in, he laughed. This is just like the meditation chamber in the mountain side, we've had something like this for years now, but you were too busy in the workshop to check it out!" He laughed as he slipped in, mocking Tobias.
"Hmph" Tobias did his best to sound angry, but it was hard when he was this relaxed. I wonder if they have a statue of Ganrir as well, like we do Gamora. What if they have something made out of fire! How cool would that be!" tobias was lost in his own world imaging what kind of statue they had, when Maso thought about what he had seen when they entered the town. Tobias had been so busy looking at the gates, he had missed the desecrated statue lumped in chuncks outside the gates.
"Tobias, the statue is like ours... But they've destroyed it." tobias quickly stopped his wild speculations and snapped his gaze onto Maso.
"What do you mean? Why wouldn't they respect the contract keeping them alive!? If it wasn't for Gamora our town would be rubble right now, so surely it must be similar for them.
" think it's becasue you can't fight fire with fire. You know about Zoning, right? How normally only one element can be in anyspecific area? Like our town is almost primarily earth contracts, because we live in an earth zone. But these people live in a fire zone, and fire is the most destructive of all the elements, so Ganrir wouldn't be able to attack without endangering the city."
"but they should still honour him! He provides them with these hot springs, doesn't he?"
"I think something happened in the past. Something bad. Bad enough to stop Ganrir from surfacing again."
Tobias sat silent thinking about this. He had been excited to see all of the strong contracts this town had, but the strongest wasn't doing anything? "There must be something we can do, to help Ganrir protect his city again. All of the Guadians love to protect their cities, it's what they were born to do!"
"Maybe he decided that he could protect it better by not doing anything." The thought of doing nothing while his town was destroyed made Tobias so scared he felt like Ganrir must have been tormented by something truly terrible in the past.
I think we've washed up enough. Let's go speak to Anton, he might be able to give us some imformation.
They walked to the largest building in the town, and saw Anton talking with some of the villagers.
"We want revenge! They should pay for their actions!"
"They had no right to do that to our Ganrir!"
"You know there is nothing we can do. Their forces are much too strong for us, and we don't have the ability to withstand that kind of heat." The two boys exchanged glances and ran up to where the crowd was gathered.
"Ah, you two. I'm sorry you had to see us like this, but times are tough recently." He walked off the elevated platform and dropped down to where they were.
"These citizens want us to free Ganrir to bring the fight to the City, but we can't do that. The chains holding him are too strong and we can't withstand the heat."
"Chains? What chains are holding him?" Tobias had a love for all contracts, so this angered him immensely.
"So we were wrong. We thought something happened in the past to make Ganrir did something in the past, but this was it huh..."
"Sadly, there is nothing that we can do. As I just explained, only an earth type golem with enourmous strength would be able to break those chains. Just know I don't hold it against you for destroying the other one. But perhaps Gord could..?"
"I'll do it." The sheer confidence in his voice almost made Maso agree, but he had to turn and stop him. Bryce told them to never reveal their powers, yet he was this eager to do it.
"On one condition. You keep quiet about what you see." Anton rapidly nodded his head and the surrounding villagers all gave raucous cheers and wept tears of joy, before one asked the question.
"How are you going to do it? I thought Gord's transform was a hammer." As he said this, Tobias turned to Maso, who reluctantly nodded. Tobias then knlet down nect to Gord and yelled;
"Transform!" Once again, the liquid formed and after a few short seconds, there sat a gleaming black ring.
"A ring!" One of the onlookers gasped at this, and theb rest stood agape.
The crowd began mumuring, which put Both Tobias and Maso at unease.
"I've wanted to know this for a while. Whats so special about a ring?" Tobias demanded the question, and Anton was more than happy to oblige.
"Rings mean... that the contract is special."
"Special how?"
"It means they are descended from the Pure Ones."