It was a shame that Daren had decided not to join them.
"Someone needs to stay here and help the other unbranded people who might enter through the portal."
That was his reason and though what he was doing was a noble cause, in Aksel's eyes it was nothing more than an excuse. He could see the fear in his eyes. The thought of leaving his home and stepping outside into the unknown was not something amiable to him.
He was grateful to Daren and respected him but he could never understand his decision.
"Do you think he will be able to live well on his own?" Aksel asked remembering that the guy only had one arm that would have to do all the jobs of fighting, protecting, and escaping according to the situation that would present itself.
"Are you looking down on him? If you are then it's only because you haven't seen him fight with a staff. Who do you think taught me?" Yve laughed on hearing Aksel's prejudice. Just because he looked disabled and weak doesn't mean that he was one. That man was the longest living unbranded that she had come to know and also the strongest.
Although this train wreck of a new partner of hers wasn't as bad as well.
"Really?" Aksel asked walking in the shadows of the empty buildings.
They had come far from the main city and their 'home'. They had moved farther from the outermost part of the city, that being the Debilis quarters.
Past the Debilis quarters had been more buildings, old dusty, and seemingly ready for when more people would arrive from the door after getting branded. Since they were in the Debilis zone even though these buildings were unused and 'new' they weren't in the best of conditions with cracked walls and moss growing on their sides.
"Come on now will you just let it go?" she exasperated tired of how stuck Aksel was over Daren's decision. She understood his feeing of living in freedom but everyone was different. Turning to him she jested, "Don't tell me you had a crush on him?"
Hearing Yve's words came as shock to him not because of what she said but because it was 'her' that had said these words. It seemed like she was starting to trust him and open up more. For fuck's sake she was joking with him!
"That's harsh can't I just care for my friend?" he joked back and Yve was about to spat a comeback when she stopped and told him to keep quiet as they stayed hidden behind a fenced wall of a house from where they were just about to turn corner.
Aksel immediately stood alert and perking his ears he tried to listen for any weird sounds when a slight whizzing could be heard.
The dimly lighted part of the city, with a lousy street lamp approximately every four hundred meters away didn't help their situation much in looking around. Their only help was the two small lamps that they had been carrying with them.
When Yve turned hers off he followed her actions and crouching down he tried to peer on the other side of the wall to find the source of this sound. They needed to be careful in their next step as they both had bags on their back making it difficult for them to jump over the walls or run for miles on end like they had to when they first met each other.
The sudden darkness that they were now completely covered in was daunting and their only help was the small moon shining above them.
"Can you see anything?" Yve asked in a whisper and shaking his hand in negative he tried to make sense of what had been the hurdle in their way.
For the past two hours, there had been no disturbances of any sort as they simply walked and walked towards their destination.
'Could it be that they were closer to the exit of Aquilo?'
Suddenly something flashed in the distance. The glow it carried had been a pale yellow and it had been so swift in its movements that it made Aksel wonder if he had merely been seeing things. Focusing for a second more he carefully looked around when he saw the glowing object nearer to them as the audible whizz could be heard with its movement zooming from left to right.
The light then stopped and settled on a rundown building and looking at it carefully he could make it out to be blinking and suddenly it was completely gone. The sudden lack of light made it difficult for him to see that spot from afar and wondering if he should go check up on it or not he informed Yve about it.
"What should we do? If it's some sort of surveillance then it could very well be watching our moves right now and we wouldn't even be aware of it," she fussed hating that she didn't know anything about something like this.
Moving Aksel away she took a peek herself but when nothing came into her view she sat back down and leaned her head against the wall as she said, "Do you think we should wait till morning, here?"
Aksel didn't like that idea, he wanted to get out of that city as soon as he could. They had decided to cover as much distance as possible at night itself for if there had been any border patrol then deceiving them in the dark would be the easiest.
Suddenly the whizzing sound increased and came closer and stopped a few feet away from them on the other side of the road perpendicular to where they had been hiding.
The glow again blinked, dimmed, and was gone. This close to them the object posed a threat to their safety and destroying it seemed like their only option.
"You stay here," Aksel said and crawled forward before Yve could stop him. She watched him, ready to act if he needed her help as she clutched her staff in her hands tightly when she saw him slip out the knife from the holster around his thigh.
The sharp blade that had only been used so far to chop vegetables glinted in the night sky as if greeting the outside world with a smile. The knife was not the best weapon for defense but if worse came to worst it could at least buy them some time.
With slow and careful movements Aksel proceeded further towards the object that lay dormant on the ground, closer to it now he could make it out to be as big as his palm. He was about a foot away from it when suddenly the glow returned, it blinked and illuminated the whole area as it whizzed and sprang up into the sky and darted straight towards him.
Seeing it fly at him he sat up straighter and with an instinctive movement he slashed the object with his knife.
He had expected to feel the clang of two metals meet but instead, the cut was smooth and fluid. It felt like he had torn through a sack of slime and when he felt something fluid like splatter on his hand and face he quickly took out his lamp and used its light to investigate the 'object'.
Watching Aksel light up the lamp Yve ran towards him and the two looked confused for a second as they observed the giant writhing insect on the ground.
"Is that a firefly?" Yve asked with uncertainty audible in her voice.
In the last three months that she had stayed there, she hadn't seen one single animal so to see a life form other than that of the brandings she felt a joyful hope in her heart.
"Seems like it," Aksel said cleaning the goo off his face as he noticed that the insect was actually, in fact, larger than his hand. He tried recalling about animals in his head as so far he hadn't even seen a single bird in the city and realized that not much came up in his mind about them.
They were a part of their daily life in the form of food but where they came from and how they were was not much told about.
He had learned the basics about their names and everything in school but their concerns for animals had been less.
Suddenly the whizzing that they realized was being made by the wings of the insect or maybe it was coming from inside its body, increased. It was a small sound at first, nothing more than a distant echo and when they turned to look towards the dark road they notice the glow increase. The yellow light was bathing the streets in a ghostly manner as it came zooming towards them.
"Are they all-?" Yve stopped as the whizzing sound now took on a loud buzz, rapidly moving in their direction.
"I hate to say this but yes they seem to be coming for us! Run!" Aksel shouted taking her by the hand as he pulled her inside the closest house and hopefully to safety.