The fire from the torch lighten up the forest, the heat from the flame pushed away the darkness and bugs around the boys, keeping them away from the unknown danger in the green maze.
They were following the tracks for hours but yet to find the causes of the empty city. The trail was lightened up by the flame, the only thing that gave them the courage to walk into the endless forest.
This country, Helland, gained its name for some reason, one of them was the harsh and dangerous environment. The people on this land called here their "fatherland", symbolized the land wasn't a kind mother but a strict father, forcing everyone living on it to push themselves through their limit.
"How long did we still need to march? We have already been walking for 1 hour." Igor asked Vaterian about the thing they do, it seems endless. Vaterian, who was ahead of Igor, put a finger in front of his mouth, giving Igor a sign to stay silent and moved up.
Igor climb up the cliff that Vaterian stayed on and looked forward, he saw a creature. A creature stood and walked in two boney legs, some spike grew along its humping spine. It carrying a knife with its long and boney finger, it turn its head around, within Igor's eyes was a head that looked like a lizard, but the sharp fang showed it was not those harmless creatures.
The most terrifying thing about the monster might be its tongue, a long, tube-like tongue that strangled a man, who was already dead. The creature seems to smell something unusual but it walked away after couple seconds.
Vaterian walked out from the bushes, he looked at the torch in his hand, "It must have a pair of awful eyes, otherwise we should already be discovered." Vaterian looked at the tree the monster just stood beside, he roughly measured the height of the monster according to it, "about 160, If it could straight up his back, it would be higher."
"What was…that thing?" Asked Igor.
"No idea, but this was not our first time to face an unknown creature, the only thing we need to do was kill it before it caused more trouble. Wasn't that what you want to do? If you wanted to abundant those people I could just leave, I never care about the underling of Talismania." Vaterian replied to Igor, he helped these people just because Igor want it, just like in the past.
"You really good at making people mad!" Igor spoke to Vaterian and followed the trail of the monster.
Vaterian kneeled and measure the footprints between Igor and the creature, the footprints of the creature was deeper into the ground, "It wasn't a good sign." Vaterian whispered.
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Igor followed the creature to a cave, it didn't give him a good feeling because of the bodies piled outside of the cave, some of them were animals, but most of them were humans.
"By the name of Wycliff, what happened here?" Igor hold his sword tightly, he couldn't imagine what happened here. "People get killed and die. Easy as that." Igor turn his head and realized Vaterian was beside him, giving an answer that solved nothing.
What dragged Vaterian's attention was the state of those bodies, dried inside out. Not a single piece of skin was moist and not attached to the bone. He quickly thought about the small injuries on the boy's arm, he realized there were people still surviving.
Vaterian quickly went right beside the bodies and opened their eyes, he saw a shine of silver from it, he was relieved. "It was just a bunch of silver-eyed slaves, those citizens might still be survived inside of the caves, as long they not get strangled before they came here."
"What should we do now? Your people are waiting for you to save them." Igor seems inspired by that, he asked Vaterian about what he planned to do afterwards.
"It's up to you, you was the one who decided to help, and I doubt they hope for me, an enemy of the Talismania to save them." Vaterian handed over the choice to Igor, it was not the first time for Igor to handle a task, but he never made a decision against an unknown monster. You never knew what surprise they could give you.
Igor dropped silence, he was thinking about a way to sneak in without being noticed.
"If you were worrying about how to walk into the cave, I would tell you that those monsters had a pretty awful sense, we could just walk in without being noticed." Said Vaterian.
"Those?" Igor looked at the front of the cave, he saw a lot of footprints, there were more than one of that monster in that cave.
"Let's go in then, we had no further information about the others, why don't we just go in right?" Igor smiled and started to move his legs.
"At your command. Although I would always go for the safer choice " Said Vaterian.
"I was not you, every second we wasted here meant more danger for them." Igor had made his decision, he walked into the dark cave after talking to Vaterian.
"As reckless as always." Vaterian whispered to himself and followed Igor.