The girl grunted feeling like she had been hit by a wall of bricks. Her eyes opened lazily absolutely unaware of her circumstance. Zekes sat on the bed in front of her frozen as he was about to take a bite of an apple.
"Rczmz vh-" She uttered drowsily before becoming fully alerted. Once her senses came back to her, she quickly tried to jump to her feet, only to realize that her waist was strapped onto a chair. The way she was tied to the chair not only was sloppy but also uncomfortable. She growled and bared teeth at Zekes who was enjoying an apple while watching the whole thing unfold in front of him.
She struggled, lashed out, and screamed at him, making quite the commotion in the otherwise peaceful inn.
"Shush, shush! I have already had to embarrass myself enough by explaining to the innkeeper why I was dragging you back here?" He pleaded. "If you keep causing a commotion like that, she will kick us out for sure."
Which was a poor choice of words for him, since it only encouraged her to put more effort into it.
"Who the hell are you even screaming for? It is not like anyone else tried to help you when you passed out in the bazaar."
She aggressively stared at Zekes as if she planned to use her eyes as a weapon to cut him into pieces.
Zekes was surprised at the pace she could change her hateful expression from one form to another, but at least she wasn't screaming anymore.
"You didn't have to run away, you know?" He reached for another apple as he threw away his previous one. "If you had only listened to me for a single minute, then you wouldn't have had to be tied down in the first place. So don't blame me for doing my part. You have no idea how much trouble I would have gotten into if that baldy-."
In the middle of his rambling, he realized that she wasn't hatefully looking in his direction anymore, but rather her mind was completely focused on something else, it was the apple he had just picked up. She had most likely not processed a single word he said.
"Hey! Are you listening?" He irritatedly shook the apple left and right as her eyes followed its movement.
"Are you … hungry?" He asked. She refused to answer and went back to growling at him, yet the trail of saliva drooling from her mouth suggested otherwise.
When he reached into the basket on the table next to him and grabbed another apple with his other hand, her gaze quickly switched over to the apple again.
"Huh. I guess it has been a while since when we found you at the bazaar." He snarked. "Must be pretty hungry."
"You know what? If you promise to act a bit more friendly then I will let you eat this juicy apple and perhaps loosen up the ropes a bit." He offered as he approached her.
Her expression seemed to slowly shift from aggressiveness to a more neutral one. He took this as a sign that she had accepted his peace offering.
"See? I knew we could get along if we just talked. To tell you the truth, I don't have many friends." He confessed as he played with the apple in his hand. "So after that baldy had come back, why don't we become friends?"
Now that they were face to face, she let out a little smile which made Zekes return one of his own as a show of kindliness.
He lifted the apple towards her mouth.
"This makes me really happy. I have always wan-"
In a swift motion, she quickly spat on his face and used her leg to kick him in the groin.
He let out a squeal before letting go of the apples and dropping on onto the floor. The girl rocked the chair to the side and dived down to her left to firmly bite onto the apple.
As to let fate have the last laugh, the door creaked open to reveal that Rafik has finally returned to the inn.
He was already exhausted from what had transpired at the chapel of virtue. So naturally, when he was unexpectedly welcomed back to the sight of Zekes squealing on the floor while holding onto his nether regions and the girl munching on an apple while she was tied to a chair that had fallen on its side, he instinctively let out a deep sigh with his eyes closed.
"Zekes, what the hell did you do this time?" He called out plainly.
"Don't … help her." He struggled to say whilst fighting against the pain. "She is a demon. She will hurt you."
"What?" Confused, he watched the girl struggling to rotate the apple she was hanging onto with her sharp teeth.
"She kicked me … in my peeing place." He howled as he tried to slowly crawl back onto the bed.
"Ok, but why is she tied to a chair?"
"She ran away, so I had to drag her back."
"You let her run away?!"
"Well, I am sorry that I was tired from pushing the cart all the way to the inn although we have been traveling for – Ouch ouch ouch!." His crotch began to sting as he corrected himself on the bed.
Rafik pinched his nose from frustration, trying to make sense of the situation. Only now had it hit him how Zekes living all his life with Maquil might have rubbed some of his uncle's stubbornness onto him.
Perhaps the grand overseer's advice had more credit to it than he had imagined. Kids truly like to follow the steps of their mentors. That is why he had to make sure to work extra hard to earn Zekes' respect. Otherwise, he would never be able to fulfill his promise to Maquil and the grand overseer.
He exhaustedly crouched so that he was at the same level as Zekes.
"Listen. I am sorry that I was away for quite a long time. It is my fault for leaving you to look after her all by yourself, but I didn't have any other choice. Yet I still do apologize and I promise that I will make it up to you. Now could you tell me exactly what happened while I was gone?"
Zekes gave it some thought, but then ultimately decided to forgive Rafik, since he bought him a steaming milk bun back at the bazaar.
"Ok. But only if you promise not to make me pull the cart anymore."
Rafik was relieved. A child is always quick to hate on things that are inconvenient to them, that is an inevitability, but whether they grow out of this childish hate is a different matter. He silently thanked Zekes for his kind heart, since the last thing he wanted right now was for Zekes to despise him.
"I promise." He said as he extended his little finger.
Zekes also held out his little finger and they shook on it.
"Start from when I left the inn?" He asked of Zekes.
"Well, at first I was watching her sleep but then I felt tired and also fell asleep. And when I woke up she ran out of the window into the street so I chased her from the rooftops. When I finally caught up to her I tried to calm her down, but she ended up passing out. So I had to drag her all the back here. It was difficult to find my way back, you know?."
"You chased her from the rooftops?" Rafik was surprised.
"Yep. I used my Beucara so that I could jump between each rooftop."
Maquil seldom talked to Rafik about his Beucara, the best he knew was that it had something to do with dreams. But when it came to Zekes' Beucara, he would always find a convenient way to change the subject, which made a part of him feel suspicious.
"Zekes, could you show me how your Beucara works?"
He shifted he gave upward as he considered his request.
"Alright, but only if you keep it between us."
"I won't tell a soul." Rafik winked as he playfully put his index finger on his own lips.
Zekes looked overjoyed at the thought of showing him his powers.
Not a moment later, he took a deep breath and declared:
"Rift."
Two parallel black disks appeared in front of them out of thin air, each the size of a plate. Zekes threw what remained of his last apple into one of the disks and the apple instantly came out of the other side of the second disk.
"Wow." Rafik was instantly overtaken by awe.
"Two sides of the disks are always connected. Whatever passes through one side comes out of the other."
"How big can you make it and how many can you make?"
"Well … " He ruminated. "I can make one as big as a cart and once I was able to open 4 of them at once."
"Huh. You said something before they appeared."
"Rift." He corrected. "Uncle said that if I give it a name then my mind would adapt faster on how to use it. He also told me not to use it much in public, because it could attract bad eyes. But I was afraid that you would be angry at me if she had run away."
Rafik stuck his finger into the dark disk and watched it appear out of the other one, wiggling it up and down. He continued by sticking the rest of his hand in.
"What happens if it closes with something still inside it?" He asked out of curiosity.
"It gets cut in half." He answered innocently.
"What?!" He quickly withdrew his hand. "You should have led with that!"
"Don't worry. It doesn't disappear that quickly."
Slowly the disks started dissipating into nothing, edge first until no sign of it was left.
"Amazing!" Rafik thought to himself. "No wonder Maquil never told me about it. This might be what the Insurrection was after. If they were to get ahold of this, they would undoubtedly try to brainwash Zekes into a superweapon. If they truly knew about his Beucara then it was only a matter of time before they pursued him. Maquil must have foreseen this, but why now of all time?"
Was he making a big mistake by taking Zekes with him? Wouldn't it be safer for Zekes to stay in the chapel so that they can keep an eye on him?.
"Did anyone see you use Rift when you were chasing after her?"
"I am not sure. But I think yes."
He knew that any attention they gathered would only accelerate their inevitable meeting with the Insurrection.
Zekes became gloomy when he saw the stone-cold expression on Rafik's face.
"Are you … angry at me?" Zekes asked worryingly.
"Huh?" Rafik snapped out of his train of thought. He realized how all of his worrying gave Zekes the wrong impression and made him sad.
"Oh no. Of course not." He reassured him. "I am happy that you were able to think for yourself," He put on a smile. "even if might have been a bit dangerous to run into the streets unaccompanied."
"You are … proud of me?" Zekes asked shyly.
"How couldn't I?." Rafik patted him, which made Zekes gleam with pride. "I am sure your uncle would be delighted to hear what you did."
The precious moment of rekindled friendship between the two was interrupted by a quiet sobbing.
Zekes and Rafik both simultaneously drew their attention toward the source of the mysterious noise, for it to be none other than the girl who was quietly munching on her apple ever since Rafik arrived.
She was quite engrossed with sating her hunger for the last few minutes, only now that all the flesh on the apple was stripped bare had she come to a mortifying revelation.
"Kjjk …" She sounded defeated.
"Kjjk?" Rafik repeated in confusion.
"K-kjjk-" A sudden growling muffled all other sounds.
Rafik sensed a strangle smell and as he sniffs, a daunting realization hit him.
"Zekes. Had she been to the bathroom ever since we found her?" He asked grimly.
"Ehhh. Well, I … I guess not since she had been passed out for the last 5 hour-" His slow-working brain had finally caught up to what Rafik was alluding to. "Heh!"
"Zekes, go make sure the bathroom isn't occupied." Rafik regrettably commanded.