Times just merely looked away after hearing my rushed apology and stared into Skystead Keep without acknowledging the presence of anyone with him. Not his unconscious daughter, not the still fuming soldier, and definitely not me. Who knows what's running through his head now.
'Hey, it's worth the shot.'
'Glorified prisoner?'
'Well, I don't mind that. They can even lock me in their dungeons; I'm sure we can find a way to escape. As long as we get to do what we came here to do.'
I just looked away from Times and the soldier since I was getting a bit uncomfortable with the tense atmosphere in the basket and just looked down at the scenery below.
'Are those kapres?'
Below our slowly moving hot air balloon is a forest filled with thick and gigantic trees with what seemed like mossy stone houses built beside them, some even above them, perched expertly on the trees' thick branches. Dark violet grasses and shrubs blanketed the blackened soil, a scenery much, much different from what I had seen earlier on my way here. Areas not touched by plant-life are submerged in inky waters tinted purple by the identically-colored mosses. The kapres are unafraid to dip their large legs in the marshes, but remembering how I'm not even tall enough to reach their loins, it's not farfetched to say that I would drown in that swirling black waters.
The kapres themselves are already towering figures with enormous bodies enough to put my feeble human size to shame. But the trees that their stone houses are connected to are even grander, ten times larger than the kapres. Its trunk is like a collection of hundreds of thinner trees, hugging one another to form a monstrosity of a body similar to the veins underneath human skin. The magnificence of the giant trees extends to their brooding branches that stretch into a grotesque, web-like formation. Their violet leaves blanketed a few hidden structures concealed among the shadows, casting darkness upon the marshes. And as if nature itself proclaimed that the sprawling trees' insidious embrace was not enough murk to slay hope itself, whip-like brown vines with a subtle orange tip slither around the trees' branches and dangle down into the marshes.
Large monolithic stone spikes peer out of the surface of the marshes and wrestle with the trunks as if the ground itself wishes to impale the trees to death, making it feel like an eternal civil war between nature occurs in this very land. However, the kapres have no interest in dealing with nature's bullshit, but they very clearly make use of the intersection between stone and wood to create their homes. The protruding spikes are enormous and robust enough to support the kapre's egg-shaped stone huts. And from within those houses laid warm orange lights that lit up the darkness all around.
The marsh, even with all the darkness it brings forth, was a peaceful one. And its people look just as solemn, tranquil, and almost mute.
'So those trees are called baletes?'
'Eh? Then what's with all that noise?'
From a distance, countless loud metallic clanking resounds in the air, almost as if numerous people are fiddling with machines to create metal-wears. And they are! Once the hot air balloon had flown away from the marshes, it went straight into a completely different biome. There, I saw an innumerable amount of giants fiddling with machines and other smith tools to fiddle with metals and other raw materials.
One would start to wonder how these two diverse places even managed to connect together. Stones as far as the eyes could see, not even a twinge of soil mingled with the rocks. There, on the open rocky ground at the foot of the mountain, the kapres smash their hammers on piping hot and still reddened metal to form what I could only imagine as shields and armor. Meanwhile, some of them are assembling a complicated set of mechanisms I had never seen before. It was like some kind of tube with smoke puffing out of glowing wires all around it.
"We're almost there," Times whispered in my ear, leaning closer to me. It shocked me a bit, but his following words immediately shushed my trembling lips. "Do not make any noise, or else they'll detect us."
The hot air balloon then rose even higher in the air until the kapres became far enough to start looking like ants.
"Those beasts are just like your kind; they can't see past the fog, and with how loud it is down there, I'm sure they wouldn't hear our aircraft if we're this far high up," Times uttered in a subdued and relaxed tone. However, the nervousness of the soldier with him made me realize that this situation is not as carefree as how Times made it seem. This has got to be the longest time I've heard Times talk; whatever is happening down there has also affected the Vyurborne general in some capacity.
'No way... This couldn't be, right?'
"Sir..." I gulped down my saliva and looked at Times straight into his eyes without intending to lower the volume of my voice. "Are we at war against the kapres?"
Times flinched after seeing me; it wasn't about what I said, but there's something with the way I stared at him that flustered him a bit. After a while, he managed to collect his demeanor, cleared his throat, and looked away from me with his eyes again peeled at the Keep.
"Stop asking too many goddamn questions," Times uttered while tapping his wings lightly on his knees.
'He really is your son, Dominion.'