"I knew it", a cold voice mutters.
I turn to see Raguk, his hands parting the branches. He takes large strides towards me, eyes glinting dangerously.
"Tell me, why are you here? No, you don't need to tell me. I can guess—You orchestrated this, didn't you?" He angrily grabs my collar and I grab his wrists. I squeeze to let him let me go, but his grip is solid. "I knew from the start—you weren't to be trusted, but everyone didn't think so. Nobody put their guards against you—ridiculous! What was the Batrani thinking?" He looked at me incredulously.
I gave him a kick to which he had blocked with his elbow. He slams me unto a trunk, forcing the breath out of me.
"What are you doing outside with not a single person's supervision", he asks as he searches around for anyone, and yet there was no one.
"…I wasn't—" I start to reason out, but pause. What should have I said? None of it feels real, except for the inexplicable sense of disbelief and feebleness.
"Wasn't what?" Raguk mocks. "Lurking here at the middle of the night when you should be at house arrest, what do you think you aren't doing?"
House arrest? I briefly recall Halvalt telling us to stay inside the house, but Obrecht was sent away, and I ran from Odeti.
Raguk's eyes flashes.
"Or are you here to do something you can only do in the dark?" He tosses me on the ground, and sits in top of me, preventing me from running away. "What, don't tell me you're out here to destroy evidence?" He chuckles darkly.
His heavy hand pushes down at my clavicle. It wasn't as if he was choking me, but it was nonetheless, harder to breathe.
"How about exposing all your secrets one by one and informing the Batrani?" His tone is suggesting it, but just from his expression, I knew that I wasn't allowed to argue. "Why don't I start with this secret."
Just when I'm guessing what he'll do next, he reaches out a hand to my face. I panic and almost unleash a force enough to crush him, but when I forcefully tried to suppress it, Raguk had successfully grabbed my mask, despite my struggle.
"Stop it!" I don't let go of the mask in his hands, but his strength was greater than mine. He yanks it out of my reach.
"I'll stop when you tell me why're out here! What's you motive in—"
I cover my face with my arms but it wasn't enough to hide my appearance. He stares at me, and I stare back at him through the gaps. It's just one eye, but unconsciously I had made a connection with him. Another sense of panic overwhelms me.
It wasn't seven seconds yet. Why did I connect to him?
And when things weren't already a mess, we hear the leaves rustle nearby. I tense up, but Raguk disregards it as if he never heard the noise. Quietly, he just gazes at me, as if gauging and contemplating something.
The rustling noise gets louder, until a person materializes from the dark bunches of violet plants.
"Videre", Obrecht breathes out, and I close my eyes in instinct and fear of connecting with him. But thinking back now, maybe it would have been a wiser decision to have done so.
Obrecht's eyes travel from me to the hand that held me down, and finally at Raguk who hasn't stopped gazing at me. Obrecht's eyes darken, a ferocious aura emanating from him that was enough to make Raguk flinch and be on guard of him—who can ignore such bloodlust? But Raguk wasn't fast enough to dodge, and I wasn't quick enough stop Obrecht.
Fast, heavy steps come, and Raguk flies far to collide against a tree. Obrecht had kicked him off of me.
I gasp, the pain on my back, unable to let me utter a single word. This seems to have let Obrecht misunderstand the situation, as he angrily stares at the third person among us, much more furious than he was before.
"Obrecht", Raguk croaks when the other person grabs his collar to hoist him up. "I wasn—" Raguk's explanation cuts off as a punch lands on his face.
I groan. I can feel the pain on my tongue at having bitten it.
Punch after punch, Obrecht did not hold back one bit. Breathless, I feel like vomiting, my skull feeling as if it is going to explode. I scuffle to fight with the oblivion that wanted to devour me mind.
Yet it seems Raguk had lost to oblivion himself, and has fallen down on the ground, unconscious, but it doesn't stop me from having the dull pain ruminating in me, though it does lessen it a bit.
When Obrecht lifts his foot, I stare wide-eyed and immediately warn, "Stop! Hurting him hurts me…" If you kick him awake, I might just pass out right here and now!
Obrecht halts. He slowly puts down his foot and turns to look at me. The unshed tears on my eyes instinctively brought about the pain may have blurred his face, but the pain and the anger in his eyes, I could adamantly distinguish. Just this face alone, and I know it. Seconds tick until the pain suddenly disappears, and all I could feel is a drowning sense of anger and deep emotional ache.
Was this Obrecht's? How come such rich emotions are inside him? The change from when I got to connect to his sense is baffling. But one thing I am certain right now is that Obrecht genuinely cares about me.
But can I really trust him? My mind whispers the things my heart wants to ignore.
"Videre", he says in a heartbroken tone, as if he's the one that got punched unconscious. "What happened?"
"…How did you know I was here?"
"What, what do you mean?" He looks confused.
"How did you know I was here?" I repeat my question, louder than the first time I said it.
"How…Ama told me to pick you up here."
My eyes constrict.
"And you didn't even question why? Did you know…your mother's Aovialutre's third soul", I whisper.
"Ama? What are you talking about", he asks unsurely, keeling down to support me as I try to sit up.
I slap his hand away, as if burnt. A flash of hurt flits through his eyes and my heart, but I clench my fists and bite my tongue. I do not apologize.
"Did you know that Odeti was Aovialutre's third soul—yes or no?!" I gasp after realizing I had yelled at him.
"What you're saying doesn't make sense, Videre." He softly says but I can feel a vague anger rising inside him. Was that anger directed at…me? Because I accused his mother of lying and hiding the fact that she's Aovialutre?
"How would she even know I was in these parts of the forest when I wasn't even aware I had run here? Do you even know why I ran here? I was running away from her."
"That…doesn't make sense."
"What doesn't make sense?!"
"Everything you say doesn't make sense!"
I pause, and stare at his face.
"You were supposed to be on my side", I say, the pain making my voice hoarse.
"I am—!"
"Then", I cut him off. "Then why can't you trust me on this?"
"Even if she is Aovialutre", Obrecht reluctantly says, "why do you make it as if she's the enemy? She's still my Ama, and maybe there's a reason for all this."
"Reason? Aovialutre wants freedom. Even when that freedom's cost is me getting exiled from Inferis. Is that reason enough?"
Obrecht's jaw slackens. "Exile…What exile, explain!" He grabs my shoulders tightly, but not enough to hurt me. I feel his panic, and with melancholic eyes raised at him, I tell him about Aovialutre's real intention of returning me to the surface along with Vera for the sake of her reincarnation.
"I'm not sure whether I'll get transported out of Inferis once Vera and I are together, or if we'll both get transported out regardless, after a whole day is spent", I continue to explain. "I'm not even sure when he timer for one day started, but I'm guessing that it could be until day-break, or around the time we had met her at the temple."
"This…This doesn't sound like something Ama would do", he whispers.
I snap, but then laugh gloomily, "Even after all I've said, you still don't believe me?"
I stand up to leave. Obrecht moves to stand in front of me, but I push past him.
"That's not it—"
Obrecht's voice suddenly stops
"Not what" I counter, turning back around to argue with him again face to face, and yet all I see are caves and stalagmites. No Obrecht.
I turn my head left and right, but it is dark, so dark that it's hard to accept this place to be anywhere near or inside Inferis' forest.
"Obrecht?"
I survey the place but there is no other person in this cave. Only a faint blue pulsing light could be seen at the ground.
"Obrecht, this isn't funny! Obrecht!"
Despite knowing it within myself that it is impossible for the other person to be playing pranks at a time like this, I can't help but wish it.
I look down to see the faint blue runes of the formation that surrounded a semi-circular dent on the ground. Everything looks familiar—Ah. I had thought it different, as the chasm of rushing water is gone, but isn't this the same cave I had fallen and nearly drowned in upon my escape from the Lycan-kind?
I gape at the cold dent where the gushing, deafening should have originated from, yet everything is noiseless. I walk over and stumble to it, unable to believe that I had been exiled out of Inferis in just the blink of an eye.
"Obrecht?"
I wasn't even able to say good-bye. I wasn't even to make amends—we were fighting and I…
My palms touch the cold stone, wanting to use my bare fingers to dig away the stone and rocks. Maybe when I do so, the water will come out?
I laugh derisively at my own foolishness.
You're not going to get him back. He's gone now. So is your home. So is your new life.
I slam fist on the stone, as if demanding it to open up and show me the way back; acting like a child.
All because you were a coward, my mind whispers to me.
Emotionlessly, I continue to stare at the back of my fingers, even when a sticky-looking black substance emerges from somewhere and coats it over ever so slowly. It doesn't take long for the black thing envelopes the cave's entirety, covering even the faintest light from the formation, until everything is pitch black.
This isn't my fault; I try to argue with myself.
Coward.
If only you hadn't gone out of Lumea.
You should have told the truth sooner.
Nobody's on your side now…
The murmuring self-condemnation of my mind are so loud, contrary to the unobtrusive environment I am in, as every light and every sound got swallowed by the black substance. Slowly, it rose upwards to the ceiling, like some opaque matte liquid.
Nobody's on my side now…
I close my eyes instinctively, waiting for a slumber that may end my suffering.
Coward…You think sleeping will make you forget the pain?
The darkness condenses silently until we are at the bounds of the semi-circular dent on the ground, looking like a protective nest. I can't be bothered to control my power anymore. It can kill me or devour me, for all I care.
In that darkness, I can feel the silent happiness of the shadows that danced around me.
I pray for the first time—
This time, if I wake, let me not remember a single thing. But if not, then I hope that the darkness, that's willing to devour even light, will eventually devour me whole.