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h t t p s : / / w w w . p a t r e o n . c o m / t r a s h w i t h g l a s s e s
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had messed up badly.
I ended up losing sight of the one I was pursuing in the caves that those birds used to ambush Ike, Spruce and I before, but I didn't allow myself to simply give up and go back to the Bear Mountain. Since I, at least, had an apparent unlimited magic supply I simply continued shooting myself forward through the desert, my eyes darting from one side to another, searching for the stolen Bear Mountain treasures, and its thief.
Still… a part of me feared what I would find if I continued to push forward like that.
There was no space to hesitate when possibly people's lives were at risk, so I continued exploding my path through the desert, over canyons, and sand dunes. If I was looking for something in those lands, I knew exactly who to ask for help.
That was how I ended up by a large rock formation, and a cave with hundreds of paintings in a line. Red Ochre would certainly know about someone suspicious moving through the desert!
I dug my feet onto the ground, stopping with the explosion and shield technique and slowing down, until I was in running speed, and then a fast-walking speed, and then a strolling speed. I got to the place where the bowman was keeping guard before, but strangely enough, he wasn't there. Without thinking too much about that, I continued to walk deeper into the tribe's encampment, seeing their bushcraft house with leafy ceilings and twig walls, but this time, no comforting bonfire light came from within them to fight the darkness of the night. In fact, the houses were completely empty.
There was no sound other than the owls chirps, and the wind whistling across the desert in an ominous crescendo.
I slowly walked deeper into the encampment, looking from one side to the other, but finding no one, just empty shelters and dead bonfires. No more women cooking, children playing, and elders telling stories. There was nothing. Until there wasn't.
"What…?!", I fell onto my knees.
The wind and chirping of owls stopped all of a sudden, leaving me with only deafening silence. And the carnage of a view.
Dozens of corpses piled up one over the other: men, women, and children, people of all ages, all dismembered, burned, crushed, and impaled mercilessly right in the center of the encampment, in a pool of blood and entrails, right where not long ago I had talked with Red Ochre.
The stench hit me all of a sudden when the wind changed directions, and I immediately curved over my stomach and threw up whatever I had eaten before. The smell of blood and rotten meat with shit assaulted my nostrils, and I could feel the taste even over all the stomach acid I had barfed.
"What is happening?!", I asked myself, on all fours on the ground, tears falling nonstop from my eyes. "What just happened!?"
"We murdered them", someone answered from behind me. A familiar voice.
I slowly turned around, feeling nauseated and dizzy, with all my muscles trembling. Behind me, a human boy with a messy hair and sleepy eyes. Hyber of the Deathbead Clan.
I knew already… From the moment his clan members attacked the Bear Mountain, I knew it was him behind that, but still… Still…!
"Why?!", I shouted, my voice coming out as a squeak as my entire body seemed to be giving up.
"Because we needed the object that opens the Rock with Wings, but they wouldn't give it to us no matter what."
So that's why he pushed me to tell my story to him? To learn about the Rock With Wings and how to enter it? So, were all of those deaths my fault?
But- But what about the music? And the laughs, and the threats we faced side by side?!
"And now I'll have to kill you, Coyote. I can't let you follow me any longer", Cloudy slowly stepped forward, approaching me with a nonchalant expression.
Even… I? Didn't I mean anything to him? One of the few I considered a friend?
"I know exactly what're you thinking. You're too naïve, too easy to read", he stopped right before my frightened figure, and slowly involved my neck with his hands. "But there was nothing in between any of us to begging with."
"CRACK!", Cloudy snapped my neck, and I fell with a wet thump onto the pool of blood on the center of the encampment.
He killed me mercilessly, for there was nothing between the two of us, even if I thought otherwise, even if I considered him a friend. There all was but an illusion. A lie.
What else remained, I asked myself?
My aspirations for traveling with Cloudless and Sunburned were cut short, for I was rejected. My expectations for a life in the village were unrealistic, for it was a place just as dangerous as the wild. The school's hierarchy meant I was the butt of every joke. And then, even friendship, the only thing that brightened my days, seemed to be so… fragile.
"Kuh…!", I cried, and covered my eyes with my arms as my neck was put back in its right place by a black smoke.
"What? But I swore…", Hyber, who had already started to walk away turned back to me, confused. "It doesn't matter. I'll make sure you're definitely dead this time."
He raised one foot, then stomped the ground, and from right beneath me, a huge ice spike sprouted up, piercing right through my spine, ribs, entrails, and lungs, and raising me three meters into the air.
I coughed up blood, and felt death once more. I needed to fight back, I needed to stop Hyber from running away with the school's treasures and punish him for the murder of Red Ochre's whole tribe, but I simply couldn't stop crying, even while he murdered me.
So, I broke another one of the chain links.
"What the fuck…? Why aren't you dead yet? Die", he stepped onto the ground again, and five more ice spikes pieced my body; impaling my arms, legs, and head.
And yet, I couldn't stop crying, even when my brain was raining down, I exhaled only blood, and all my limbs were literally freezing from the inside out.
So I broke another chain link. And another. And one more. I needed to move, but I my body refused to do so, even if the truth had already been revealed, I still couldn't… I still couldn't hurt a friend…!
"Wh- What are you…?! Die! Die, die, die!", the sleepy boy retreated one step, but soon after got back to attacking me.
The ice spikes piercing through me exploded in hundreds of shards, and shredded my body from the inside out, breaking bones, piercing organs, and tearing flesh apart, leaving little more than a bloody, and falling apart skeleton behind. And yet, black smoke involved such a ruined body all over, and recreated its every fiber as it was before. No, stronger.
I broke another chain link, and another, and another, and my chain tattoo morphed into more and more different strange symbols.
I had already lost count of how many seals I unmade when I finally stopped crying.