Martyr woke up to tickles on his stomach.
It actually shocked him quite a bit, but he was too comfortable shoot up right now.
The bed was nice and neat, plenty of room. His pillow was big and cushiony, his back seeping into the soft mattress.
The little claws tickling him were covered by a heavy blanket, trapping him in the peaceful environment.
The angelic moment almost distracted him from the hellish pain that littered throughout his entire body.
It wasn't nearly as bad as he remembered it feeling when he lost himself in the Draconic Rainforest, but he still didn't know if it would hurt to move. And he didn't really want to test those boundaries just yet.
He barely even remembered what happened.
Last thing he could remember was tearing the fire serpent apart into bloody chunks.
"Ugh I hate that. How did I even get to that point?"
How could anyone want to cause something else pain.
It was such a horrible part of life.
The last thing he wanted right now was to be violent.
"I just wanna lay down here. Fuck doing anything today."
He turned over from his back to his side and tucked his hand behind his pillow. The refreshing new position helped ease the physical pain.
A very tiny thump hit the bed when he did that.
"Hmm?"
He finally rubbed his eyes to see clearly, and found a tiny yellow wyvern getting up from the clean pink sheets of the bed.
It was having a lot of trouble getting back up from its fall. She only had two little wings to use as arms and they weren't exactly made for the challenge of flipping over.
Martyr struggled to lift up his hand to help the whelp out, but flinched at the pain in his shoulder.
Honestly, he didn't even care to check what was going on in that area. It reminded him of getting up and doing stuff, the last thing he wanted right now.
After he lifted up his hand the pain subsided a slight bit, letting him move his arm around.
But the wyvern had already gotten back up, so he settled with petting it with a finger.
She looked confused at the finger at first. The wyvern was trying to claw at it like she was saying "give."
She sniffed it for a second, but stopped to make curious eye contact with him.
It ran forward a little too fast and sniffed his face, tickling his nose.
"Okay calm down." He thought, pushing the dragon away a little bit. She looked annoyed at first but seemed to settle with him petting her instead.
He looked around the room for the first time so that he could see clearly.
The room walls were a silky, cloudy white with brown tree branches bringing together everything.
Beds were all over the room, pressing up against the walls, all of them empty.
It was a peaceful room, that's all he needed to know. He didn't care much about it right now because something else was grabbing his attention.
Sitting next to him was a pretty girl looking off into space. She was facing away so all he could see was her wavy blonde hair draped down the back of the cushioned chair. She was really close, practically pushed up against his bed, the consistent back and forth swaying of the rolling chair was shifting the pink sheets ever so slightly.
She looked too peaceful right now.
He didn't even interrupt her, he just let her continue to gaze into a random corner of the room.
Martyr was thinking of all the different things she could be thinking about.
"Woah, that's deep." He thought to himself, continuing to gaze at her.
'neurow'
The baby dragon yelled at him for not petting her.
It made the lightning girl turn around to look over at the bed.
Surprise slowly started to show itself on her pretty face as she locked eyes with him.
"Heyy Glorbia…"
Martyr couldn't help but laugh at himself.
Everything felt so euphoric right now, it was amazing.
He very well could be on something right now, and he couldn't care.
"Heyyy Mab." She imitated with a soft smile.
"What were you thinking about?"
Her smile faded just a tad. "Oh you know… just dumb shit."
"No for real. You can tell me." Martyr said, trying to encourage her.
Vanagloria paused for a second to stare at the ground, cutting off eye contact with him.
"If it's about the whole village thing you can talk to me about it. I'm always here for that kind of stuff." Martyr told her.
It took Vanaglora a few more seconds of thinking, but she eventually came to look back up at Martyr. Her smile had faded.
"Do you think I'm a good person?"
"Yeah, of course I do."
"But I'm a murder." She said, her voice was getting more and more emotional.
"No you're not, it was an accident. It wasn't you're fall."
"But I caused the accident. I am at fault. I took a risk and it got people killed. I made a stupid, impulse descision and a whole town was destroyed. I don't know Martyr… I don't even know if I'm ready for this. I think this job is meant for people more responsible for me."
"But you clearly didn't want this to happen. You took that risk so you could save a baby dragon and you did. You never had any bad intentions for the town and you clearly want to be better than that. The fact that you are asking this shows you are a good person."
Martyr let that sit with her for a second.
"You can't undo what you did. Just don't think about it, it'll only make you sadder."
"Okay… thanks. I needed that." She started to smile again.
"So what happened? Did you get attacked by nymphs?" Martyr asked her.
"Wait, what?"
"Like when we split up and lost you, where did you go?"
"Ohhhh. Nevermind, I know what you're talking about." Vanagloria came back to her senses.
"Yeah I did actually, one of them tried kissing me and then I had to blow its face off and I like… oh yeah I blew it up while going-while falling down the cliffside edge thingy and I ended up by the uh… I don't even know where, but there was a teenager dragon that I fought and beat, and then I found it's cave and I hid there for a bit which is when I found this girl here, Salazar. That was pretty cool, we also found a crocodile with her and we gave her to one of Vega's knights because she thought it was cute. But yeah, anyways, that's when I left the cave and started exploring, which is when I found the village and… y'know, destroyed it and stuff, and then I fought the wyvern on that temple floating island thing where I found you too again somehow."
"Mhm. Sounds like it was fun." Martyr responded.
He felt like he didn't get much of what she was trying to tell him but it sounded like she had fun which was good enough for him.
"Yeah I mean, up until I got to the village everything was fun. Although I felt really gross the whole time. Nobody ever really talks about how gross nature is." Vanagloria was messing around with Salazar, sticking her finger near her snout. It looked like she was doing it subconsciously, she wasn't even looking down at the little wyvern who was trying desperately to snatch her attention away from Martyr.
He laughed. "Yeah, true."
Martyr really hadn't realized how much he missed her until now.
Vanagloria's presence was almost magical, like she shouldn't be here right now but she was. Probably a byproduct of him worrying so much, he had been only thinking of the worst when they lost her.
Seeing her now was giving him so much relief, maybe too much for somebody he basically just met.
"I missed you." Martyr said with a big smile on his face, he wasn't even trying to hide it right now.
Vanagloria hesitated after he said that, switching in and out of eye contact with him.
"T-Thanks." She said with a small joyful smile.
Although after a moment of silence it turned into a quick frown.
Her face looked a little red, but not in a blush, but with what looked like some sort of stress.
"I should go get everybody else. I was sup… I'll just… just wait here for a second." Vanagloria got up quickly with her satchel and dashed out of the room.
Martyr heard her take a giant inhale just before she walked out.
"Aw fuck, was that weird? Are we not there yet? I gotta calm down."
Martyr felt like garbage.
He just ruined a nice moment.
"Was it even me though? I feel like normally that type of thing is fine. Maybe it's her. Oh wait yeah! This happened before."
He should've seen this coming from the floating island when he tried to carry her down. She seemed anxious about that too.
"Why does she gotta be like that."
But he had just hugged her seconds before that and she was totally fine.
"This is confusing."
He just wanted to show her how happy he was in the moment.
Maybe he should just stop. Clearly she is uncomfortable with that kind of stuff.
"Yeah, I'll just stop for a bit then."
Martyr sighed and leaned up to look around the room.
Although, much to his surprise, he figured out someone had been here this whole time.
Vanagloria had been sitting in between the bed next to him, covering up the girl behind her.
Vega was completely unconscious, the brown skin of her forehead tainted red from some sort of injury. Her face looked completely drained.
She had her mask back on and was wearing a short sleeved white shirt, same as his. It was the first time he was seeing her arms which were apparently jacked. They weren't as big as his, but it was still very unexpected, even though it makes total sense. Not to mention she had a tattoo went up her sleeve going up around her shoulder.
Vega looked like she had died.
She definitely didn't, because why would they put a corpse in a…
"Wait, where the fuck am I?"
"Wait, why is Vega passed out?"
"Wait, what happened?"
"Martyr!"
He looked over to see the rest of his team jogging over to his bed. They were with a tall older woman that looked a lot like Vega, but older and white.
Samsara, Spectre and Blair all crowded around his bed, all with extremely worried faces.
"Are you okay? Does it hurt?"
"You all good?"
"Can you walk?"
"Yes I'm fine… you guys gotta calm down for just one second. I'm gonna get a headache." Martyr was getting surrounded by them.
"Did you really fight that fire serpent?" Samsara asked him.
"Yeah, it wasn't really m… er, I don't really remember much. I kind of lost myself. Do you guys know?"
"You killed Xuihcoatl, and destroyed half of the Draconic Rainforest."
Martyr looked up to see the woman softly pushing her way through his friends. She did not look happy.
"Wait… did I actually? Is the forest okay? Wait, how do you know?"
"Quetzacoatl brought me to save you three and help clean up the mess you two made. You're lucky our goddess can grow back forests, or else you might've left a permanent scorch. It's wildly irresponsible to try and fight a creature as powerful enough to host an elemental god. What were you two even thinking?" The woman scolded, like she was some school teacher.
"Well Xuihcoatl attacked us, we didn't have much of a choice." Martyr was trying to hold back raising his voice at the woman in anger.
If she was just some knight he might've been more assertive, but if this was the woman Martyr thought she was, that wouldn't be smart at all.
Although what she was saying to him was getting to him, even though he wasn't gonna show it.
Martyr definitely shouldn't have let his dark element take over, he got way more into the fight than he should've. He should've taken it more seriously and tried to cause the least destruction possible. And now because of that, he had just murdered countless animals in that forest.
"Mom?"
Vega had opened her eyes and was leaning up in confusion.
"Finally you're awake, what were you thinking?! This isn't what I taught you! Taking them out to the Draconic Rainforests?! How is that a good idea for a trail?! Not to mention you left the other three to one of your knights?! One of them got blinded because of that, they are all furious! Blasphemy! Utter Blasphemy on your part!"
"I don't wanna have this talk right now. Please save it for later." Vega said after a big yawn. Her eyes were barely open and she was slurring her words.
"You have to get up! It's Monday, the public needs to know how Vulcan's team did in the trails!"
"Oh my fuggin god…" Vega muttered under her breath as she put her socks to the ground.
"Alright guys, I guess we're going, get up Martyr." Vega stood up slowly and started walking towards the entrance.
Everyone on Martyr's team had kind of an awkward look on their faces as they started following Vega and her Mom.
Very carefully he touched his socks to the ground and groaned as he pushed off the floor, pain shooting all down his body.
He pushed through it and started walking with a slight limp. It didn't hurt much once he got going, but each step felt unnatural like he was learning to walk again.
With Martyr lagging behind, the group silently made their way out of the room into a large golden hallway.
All the walls, the ceilings, the floors, they were all made of shimming gold. Large windows were tinted slightly yellow, gold chandeliers hung from the church-high ceilings, pictures of colorful green forest landscapes hung on the walls with gold frames.
It was the most naturally clean place ever, everything was shining.
He felt so small walking through the hallway, just this part of… wherever he was right now was big enough to hold hundreds of people.
"Where am I even?" Is what he wanted to ask, but didn't want to break the silence.
Vanagloria was all the way in the front of the group with Blair. She was holding her hand, and was being very quiet.
It made Martyr feel like shit.
Spectre turned around and noticed Martyr lagging, which made him stop for a second to let him catch up.
"Hey Spec, where the fuck are we right now?" Martyr whispered.
"We're in the temple of the sun right now."
"Oh shit… like the castle of El dorado? Wait, how did we get here?"
"Bro it was crazy. I mean, you and Vanagloria rode in on the goddess dragon, but we got here from a giant turtle that carried us up a misty mountain. Apparently it's like the only way to find this place on foot."
"So your trail went well?"
"Noooooo, no way. There's no way we're getting any sort of credit for that." Spectre had a dumb smile on his face, like he was proud of doing a bad job.
"What why? The fuck did you do?"
"We made the squad of knights really mad."
"It was for a good reason though." Samsara interjected after she backed up from overhearing them.
"So what, are you guys just screwed on this trial? You're just gonna take the L?" Martyr said, confused on why they weren't more stressed about this.
"It's fine bro, we don't have to complete every trial. We can still get rich and famous even if we don't become knights." Spectre reassured him.
"Plus I didn't want to be a forest knight anyways. I wanna try and be one of Kryphia's knights." Samsara added.
Martyr sighed. "Alright that's fine with me if it's fine with you."
Martyr wasn't really cool with it but he couldn't do much about it. Plus he didn't want to be a prick and boss them around.
"Er, wait… isn't that what I'm supposed to do if I'm gonna be the leader?" Martyr thought as the front of the group started going down a staircase.
As he took his first step down the gold spiral, he caught the sound of a crowd below them.
It got louder and louder the farther they descended, echoing throughout the small chamber.
It ended at a large doorway that revealed a massive part of the temple that Martyr had seen on TV before.
It was weird for him to see it from this perspective, on a balcony above the masses where only certain people were allowed.
Below the balcony was the center room of the temple, the only place the public was allowed to be in. It was practically a museum, giving visitors a glimpse of the royal castle.
Right now it was crowded with people, seemingly all of them talking at once. It definitely wasn't the biggest gathering the vast gold room had seen, but it was enough that there had to be a reason for them to all be there.
"What did you do to my team?!"
Martyr whipped his head around to see Vulcan standing on the balcony with his arms crossed, glaring right at Vega.