Chapter 176: A Victory Trophy
"What happened to Gill?" he asked her with deep concern.
"At last, we could say that you were fortunate with your own fate, despite the fact that you horribly suffered too. It was worse for Gill. A lot worse," April explained to the demon as she still had the remains of his most recent load, which she worked for, in her mouth.
"Do you mean?" beginning to ask her, not believing that it was really the end of their amphibian friend, who did everything to help them. He didn't deserve to die like that. He was furious.
"No. Nothing like that. He is still alive. For the time being. I wish he was doing better…. But… He is still fighting," she attempted to calm him down a bit and realized she might have accidentally led him to believe that he was already dead or something like that. It wasn't her attention at all.
Now, as the two of them were moving from room to room within The Autumn Tower, the horned demon sped up quite a bit. There was some kind of underground water pool in the tower. A place he had been before. He immediately began thinking that it was exactly where Gill was. The amphibian creature required water. Lots of it. So, it only made sure that it was exactly where Gill was.
He rushed downstairs in order to get to the basement as soon as possible. He didn't even look back behind him to see if April was still following him. She was. Barely able to keep up with him, but she was following him indeed. Originally, it felt like the Minotaur was heading for the kitchen or something like that, which could very well have been the case since he was virtually always hungry and that he spent the last two days in a coma, unable to eat real food. He had to be fed magically. However, that didn't exactly happen…
September thought about giving him a bit of her milk, which she would have made him drink while he was still in his coma, but that didn't happen as the witch remembered that her milk was strictly and only for Junk. So, past that, she had infused his body with plenty of different proteins to have him remain stable during those two, very long days. But not her milk.
"Hey, where are you going like that?" April asked him.
"The aquarium. Where do you think I am going like that?"
"The aquarium? What are you talking about? We don't have an aquarium," April corrected him. Confirming to him that there weren't such things in the tower. And she was right. There weren't any aquariums in the tower. This truly took her by surprise when he said that. This wasn't making any sense to her. Why would there be an aquarium in such a place? The tower wasn't a zoo or a park.
"Oh, excuse me," he pretended to apologize to her for saying the wrong word. He didn't really apologize. He shrugged his shoulders, cocked his head to the side, and kept moving forward within the tower. "I meant the freaking pool in the basement," he spelled everything for her, so she understood what he meant. Now, the more she was running after him, and the more she was slowly, but surely beginning to be annoyed by him.
Junk truly was a bull. A filthy and strong headed bull. He never listened and he never slowed down. Typically, it aroused April deep down, or during other circumstances, she was living with it, enduring it, but this time, she was annoyed. She couldn't fathom the fact that he didn't want to slow down and listen to her first. She didn't even tell him everything about Gill yet.
"What are you thinking of doing right now, huh? Going swimming? For fun? Junk. You just woke up from a deep rest, which lasted for two days. You need to take things easy first," she advised him to do: Take things easy and go at it, step by step, but he never listened to her. He kept moving forward and barely paid attention to her as she tried stopping him and explaining important things to him.
"Do I really look like I want to go swimming, April?" he asked her, turning his head around to give her one look as she asked her this question. His facial expression said it all. It wasn't about taking things easy or not for him, it was about doing everything he could to make sure Gill was going to be okay.
As if he was a doctor or a healer now. No. He was none of these things. He was a fighter. A brawler. Not much else, unfortunately, for him and, unfortunately, for their amphibian friend. On his way to the underground pool, the demon made it to the recreation room of the tower. A large room where there were a lot of couches and chairs. It was a place where September and the others could come, sit, and relax.
This honestly wasn't a place where Junk went too often, since he wasn't about relaxing too much in general. As it was confirmed with the very first thing he intended to do after waking up from his two day coma. This was only the second time he came here. When he arrived in the recreation room, he immediately noticed something that finally made him stop. He discovered a large object that was mounted on one of the walls of the room: It was a skull. A giant skull. It was a trophy.
"Is it?" he asked April. Was it the thing he…?
"Yes. It is. It's the skull of the serpent you slayed, Junk."
"Finally something I can be proud of," he said out loud, crossing his arms together as he stood in the middle of the recreation room. He was proud of this one.
"But you are wrong," the Minotaur told her, still fighting her and debating with her. There was always something that he wasn't alright with.
"What are you talking about? I am not lying to you. It's the skull of the serpent you've defeated. Why would I be lying about this?" April shrugged her shoulders and was about to lose patience.
"This is not the skull of the serpent I defeated. This is the skull of the serpent we defeated together," he turned his head to her. "Without your arrow, which paralyzed him, I would have been eaten alive in the lake. Thank you, April. This is your victory trophy," he told her, which made her smile and blushed.
"Thank you, Junk…"
"Alright, then. Let's go to the basement to check on Gill."
"If you would stop for one second and let me explain: Gill is not in the basement," she finally told him.
"Where is he then?"
"Come with me…" she told him.