Part 1: The Way The World Smiles
There were sounds of knocking wood, shuffling of boards, scampering. Things were being moved all over the place. Blinking himself awake, Arash found himself hanging off a wool bed. A bright bronze brazier fell and crashed to the floor amidst the sound of clattering pots and echoing howls from down the hall.
"Oh.." He uttered, "So it was all just a dream?" He tried to sit up but winced at the pain from his thigh.
Catching subtle glimpses from around the corner, Zorion's hair peeking in and out around the doorframe, "What're you making?" Arash hollered, his voice hoarse.
There wasn't a response, just mindless rattling like a wild animal was inside the kitchen.
Sliding his feet over the side of the bed, he pushed with his palms over the blanket. Unable to walk on one of his legs, he limped to the door, "Zorin? You doing alright?"
"I must find something!!" Zorion said to himself. Books and pirates flew through the house, whacking Arash across the face.
Arash looked to the corner of his bedroom. A brazier? He looked down at the trailing blood from his thigh. Then he looked up and the blonde haired man scampered about. "Right.."
His vision fuzzy like cotton, he was back at his bed under the covers with a cone fabriced hat, "What.." It was night outside, and howls hooted through the window like stray birds. A couple of crashes and puppetry slips as if listening to a comedic play.
Then, he caught a glimpse of a blonde haired fellow, tossing himself through the hallway from door to door. He was almost the same height as Arash but he was much whiter and had sharp gold hair. In a separate room, he brushed the tiniest bit of dust off his clothing and took a deep breath along with a smile.
"Today is the day." His passionate eyes gazed out the window, a blank book in hand. He pulled glasses from his pocket and plopped them onto his face. Excitement, pulsing through his veins like magic. "Today is.. The day?"
"Today's the day!" A blond-haired fellow darted through the hallway, tossing himself from door to door. He was almost the same height as Arash but much paler, with sharp gold hair. In a separate room, he brushed the tiniest bit of dust off his clothing and took a deep breath along with a smile. "Today is the day," he declared, his passionate brown eyes gazing out the window, a blank book in hand. He pulled glasses from his pocket and plopped them onto his face, excitement pulsing through his veins like magic. "Today is... The day?"
"TODAY IS THE DAY!!!" HE SOLIDIFIED!!!
A loud groan came from outside the room. "Today is the day for you to shut up!" Arash threw a tight pillow right into the hallway. "Now take that zest out of your damned voice!"
"Zest? The man curled around the corner and into the room,"Oh, up, are you?" His received pronunciation beckoned Arash's ears. "Zest is such a.. Where are you from?"
"Not here.." Arash groaned, stretching his arm and massaging his temples, "How long have I been asleep?"
"A few hours, I might say. However, you hit the corner of the wall with your head. Your head is like a fluffy pillow! Not a scratch! And I am Felix!!"
"You're.. Felix? Are you from.. Giastone? Where are we right now?"
"Yes! Yes! And yes! Wait.. No! We are in Chestnut Village!" He smiled and spouted words like spit. "I found you whilst whistling out of the village; but had to come back here because what was I going to do?? Leave you there? Then! Then!! You tried getting up! How could you get up?! The doctors have left the village!! Oh my! My magicless breath did everything he could!!"
Arash raised his eyebrow. "Uh" he looked around the cozy room. A nifty kitchen, cabinets leaking with junk as if he were trying to hide it. Then a short table in front of the couch, colored a rich mahogany.
"You must be from Giastone as well! Your demeanor! It shouts it!" Felix's spit balls shot Arash like cannonballs. "The chandelier?? The brazier? No no.. Those are tributes to the finest Drachustone residents!! And what of The Lost?! How will I do my research??"
"Please.. Quiet… My head is pounding at me. Please wait to protrude with your voice.."
Felix dimmed the bright candle's scattered around the room and blew out the chandelier. "You came from Pine Village?"
"Yeah. You saw it too then?"
"Indeed." Felix looked down in shame, "The battle was over before it started.. I was actually going to go there to write down anything that could be of use.."
"So what are you? Profession and all."
"I'm nothing. I came here almost a decade ago with my sister from Giastone. Before the civil war.. But she died from a pack of wolves.. So now I've stayed in this sector of the country for almost all my life. And with the war, I can't even go back home…"
"I see now.. I came here to travel with my friend. He's from here.. But the dragon took his life."
"It's a sad day for many.." Felix bowed his head, his hair falling downwards, "I'm glad I found you. You stopped me from going to the village."
"I.. thought you wanted to go there." Arash sat up against the hood of the bed.
"No.. I'm always stuck between a silver-line. It's how I've always been. So when I act, it's not me who's acting…"
"Yeah.. I.." Arash passed out before him.
"Oh dear.." Felix slowly got up to get a magical crystal, "Seems I may have to resort to this."
Arash awoke and the moon was starting to fall without any glimmer of the sun. "Woah woah.." He felt his body twitch with every breath, "This is.."
"It's a magic orb.. What you would find in Giastone and now Dracuhstone, sadly. It won't do anything but keep you awake. No numbing and no healing."
"Right.." Arash felt his heart race rapidly, "Is my heart supposed to beat this fast, It's.. so much."
"Yes. That's how it works. But you're going to have permanent injuries if you don't head out soon. You may take my orb though!.."
"There's a change in your appearance." Arash stated, "Ever since you brought up your sister." He asked Felix for a walking cane, "But it happened long ago. Were you not just gloating?"
"I was." Felix said, "But it's hard. It's not every day I get the chance to open up about it."
"My friend would always say something, even when fighting the dragon.. He said, A frown is just a smile turned upside down. You remind me of him, Felenct, I'd appreciate it if you kept yourself that high. It'll be a beacon for many others."
"It's Felix.. Here.." he handed him the crystal, "take this sphere and go straight northeast."
"No.. Come with me." Arash flinched as he stepped forward with a cane, "You write a lot? I have preposterous handwriting. And.. It's comforting having someone who's also from Giastone with me."
"I cannot.. There is a reason I was brought back here. It must have been fate telling me."
"Fate? Screw that.. Is this how you want to be remembered?" He said to Felix.
"This is!!" Felix stepped back, "I'll come." he stated without hesitation.
"Get some tighter clothing on. But get me a robe, please." Arash asked as he made his way out of the room. When Felix went deeper down the hall, Arash sat while the sharp pain clutched him by his balls. But outside was so quiet and peaceful. No parties, no drama.. Just sleeping residents. "The Lost this and that. Are the here or not? Surely if they were, there wouldn't be such tranquility."
Felix left the house with a furry collar and a tight glittery fabric gushing around his chest and biceps. His feet rang with the sound of loose coins and he had glasses without a top rim.
"Are you serious right now?" Arash raised his left brow, "You are not wearing that."
His, 'what' sounding like he was readying a spitball, "qu~what?! This I've been waiting to wear forever!"
"I need a bow. You have any?"
"How informal to ask! That's not the Gia way!"
"Just give it."
"I don't even have one!"
Arash flipped around, his cloak waving behind him, "Is there any chance that shops are open at this hour?"
"Hmm. Perhaps." Felix led Arash off a porch, the village was quaint and few of houses made of straw.
"Why aren't the roads stone?"
"This isn't Giastone! Only cities have that! And Towns just barely.." Felix walked to a large building, "This is the only store open."
Booms came from inside the building and what sounded like heavy gunshots.
"What's happening in there?" Arash slowly creaked the door, peeking inside with his green eyes. A magical sphere floating near the ceiling provides an array of colors. Red, blue, purple, white, all racing around the area, but still it was too dark to see. There were silk smooth poles and even a man in a full suit of heavy armor roaring at ladies as they stripped and swung like monkey's on the poles. Arash shut the door. He looked right at Felix.
"So I asked for a bow, right?" Arash creaked the door, taking an extra peak, "So why in Gia's gooey name would you bring me to this place..?"
"Hm.." Felix peaked inside, "By Krainin's left testicle!!" Felix slammed the door shut, "I brought you to the wrong place!!"
"Krainin. God of Shield?"
"No! God of Sword! That's the land south of here. Zetzino is the God of Shield, the land north of this one."
"How vulgar." Arash walked away with a limp, "Where's this place you are bringing me to."
"Right there!" Next to the building, an old shack with a slouchy elf was sitting, his eyes stitched open.
"This is the guy? Why's he look like that?"
"He's er.. Been through stuff… But his eyes are sharper than ever!"
"Nice." Arash stepped forward with a poker face, "Any bow you got. Quiver. Set, fifteen."
"No." His slouchy pointy ears wiggled, "Gold."
Arash looked at Felix with his hand out and stern eyes.
"Me?? I only have packets of silver!"
"Are.. you serious? How many do you have?"
"Eight."
"Two gold then?! And you live in that big house?!"
"That's not my house!! The owner is only on vacation!"
"Gia's name… Ok." Arash took the gold, "What can I get with this."
The elf grinned and took his eight silver coins. Then, he flipped around in his chair. The walls were barely walls and the roof was barely a roof. But through all the noise, he tossed two items onto his desk.
A bow, the size of his finger nail and a woodchip next to it.
"Are.. you serious?"
"Oh.. my…" Felix thought, "This doesn't bode well."
"Now this!" he said with a snort, "If you had fifty gold-" He raised a rugged bow with dents and lined scars, "This is an anci-"
"Gimme that shit!" He grumbled with his teeth clenched together, punching the elf across the face and turned to Felix, "Let's go."
Mr. Elf fell behind his chair, and Felix ran with a hoping Arash, "He'll pay back with interest!" Felix echoed behind him.
The night was in its late 40s when they entered the forest, Felix had guided Arash a straight way to Hazelnut Town.
The sound of a stick trailing the dirt and the cracks of bones coming from Felix's every movement. Crickets failing to seduce their mates and ravens ballin each other's eyes. The area was dry and the air ran cold.
Felix leaned down in front of Arash, "Oh my!"
"What is it?"
Felix threw his hand up hair, "Look!" A tiny tadpole squirming in his fingers, "It's a mudskipper!"
"A mudskipper here? So we are close to water then?"
"Not really.." Felix lifted its gills, "It barely has much water left. I wonder how long it's been here."
Then, pops and plaps in the dirt below ruptured below Felix as dozens upon dozens of mudskippers partied around, "Oh my! Krainin's elbow!"
Arash took a step back, "The creatures aren't matching the terrain." There was a sudden croak behind his foot. Arash could barely see past his cloak thanks to the arrow poking about.
"There's mud on that frog.." He looked over it, "And all of those other ones.."
"I must write this down! The Lost Generation? I have never seen those frogs before! White stripes with black squiggles and diggles!!"
"Yeah.." Arash hunched over his cane to poke the frog- its tongue attached to his finger, puncturing it like a small needle with super glue on the end.
Suddenly, the frog exploded with an orange gulp and smoke came from inside its mouth.
"Oh.. Oh my.."
Its guts adorned Arash's shoe, "Are you.. Are you serious right now? It has magic?"
"Perhaps… I have studied The Lost Generation for years but this I know not of!"
They moved onwards. "The Lost Generation, the most controversial event of this continent's history. How could a whole generation disappear without a trace?"
"What do you think?" Felix asked him, tucking his journal into his shiny pockets.
"You want my theory? Considering there were eyewitnesses and books written on it. I think it's a hoax."
"A hoax?!" Felix nearly fell into the dirt, "Truly?? But the mudskippers!!"
"Yeah, a hoax. But I think Zorion knew something about it. My friend that passed. He wouldn't tell me though."
"Well I for one believe that somebody casted a rune around the entire country!"
"Really? How's that any less ridiculous than mine?"Arash asked him.
"Only a rune could be capable of doing such a thing! The sorceress must have-."
"If it was the whole country, there wouldn't have been any eyewitnesses." Arash stepped forward, blood starting to spew out his thigh, "It's oozing again.."
Part 2: The Color of Her Hair
Sometime before the night Arash and Felix departed to Hazelnut Town from Chestnut Village, Jaakobah, with his hair scruffed as bangs and his thin linen prisoner shirt and trousers, followed a thin trail of blood droplets. Eventually, he reached an indent on the ground as if a person fell from fifty stories. Blood gathered near the thigh, "He was here.. Now he's not… Idiot. I can't believe I blanked out like that." The forest was clear and quiet, and he saw a single wick from Arash's head on the ground.
"Just great." Jaakobah picked it up, and followed the dirt path, "Mountains.. There's no mountains or anything around her besides west and south. Is this really Dracuhstone?" He glanced at his palm, "Stupid arrow. But it's good I stabbed myself.. I had to listen to their conversation one way or another. But I'm confused. How in Dracuh's name does he know that about dragons?" He approached a wooden picket sign, 'Chestnut Village'.
"Hm…So this is Chestnut? Shouldn't there be a.. Par for the course, I guess." He walked past a house with a lunatic digging through his belongings. His hair was a single blonde spike forward and a funny accent with it.
"Hey." Jaakobah turned his palm to a misty water, "Where's the nearest tavern."
The man ignored him, as if he didn't even hear.
Too stubborn to repeat himself, Jaakobah walked away. Then, the heel-catcher passed all the straw roofed houses and entered a tiled structure with logged beams and distinct glass shards lodged into the wood. The glass carved out, Scarlett Inn.
Walking in with his khaki thin clothing, a shuriken flew right between his forehead, slicing his head in two directions.
"Shit!!" A drunken man wobbled to him, falling right at his feet.
The door behind Jaakobah was pinned to the logs outside, barely keeping on the hinges. And his face slushed back and forth, "And they would've killed anyone who wasn't me?" Jaakobah looked at the man below him, "You did this?"
"Y-yes! I am sorry! My hand slipped!!"
"Ah.. It's fine…" Jaakobah went to go help the man up, taking his palm and jabbing it into the shuriken wedging against the door. Agony creeped the inn silent.
A woman with a skrillex cut on her head chuckled, "Wowza. Dandy, arenya darlen?" A strong scent of booze seeped through the wood and into Jaakobah's nose. Raising his lip in disgust he looked into a tight corner of the Inn. A few shelves full of books occupied the corner. There was one that peaked his interest. Jaakobah reached for this book, but a sharp shuriken flew by like a magic bullet, so fast, nobody could warn him. Jaakobah stepped aside, letting it fade his nose slightly. He then looked to his left where he saw a counter on the other end of the Inn.
The girl with a skrillex haircut smiled while tilting her head up, her eyes staring down Jaakobah. She was paler than the granite. "New face? Can't just walk in acting like you own the place."
Jaakobah smiled sharply. "Oh? Where are my manners? Seems like they ran away with the other half of your hair."
The inn went from lively to silent. Everyone's jaws dropped. Then, Jaakobah took one step at a time until he reached the counter where the girl, with her legs one over another, sat atop the crisp wood.
"I know a man with that kind of clothing on did not just try and insult me." She smirked. "What's wrong? Can't afford anything? Look, another beggar tumbling into my Inn."
"Please. I'm sure the only begging anyone does here is beg you to shut your mouth."
Everybody fell to the floor in disbelief. "He just said WHAT?!"
She put out her hand, as did Jaakobah. And while she went for a shake, he slapped her palm away, "Jaakobah."
"Tanya. So what're you doin all the way here?"
"What?"
"Yea.. I can tell you aren't from here."
"I am."
"Not from this village! Now what have you stumblin on in?"
"I need to know if a black man came in here. Or if anyone bloody has-"
Tanya rubbed his lips with her fingernail, "Ah ah! Information!"
Jaakobah pushed her hand away with a scowl, "Yeah."
"Information cost-", She rubbed her fingers against her thumb, "Moola! Fifty gold and you have yourself a deal."
"No. Give it to me now, disrespectful wretch. "
"Nope. You have to earn respect."
"You're born with it."
"Right." Tanya cackled, "And did you not just pin one of my patrons to my front door?" Wasn't just any either. He was going to clean up some shit for me."
"And you want me to do it? Where?"
"Go ask him." She pointed her toes to the man pinned crying at the door.
"Bitch.." Jaakobah said under his breath as he walked to the front door. "What bounty did you grab?"
"M-MY HAND!! PLEASE!!!"
Jaakobah looked at Tanya from across the room. She just shrugged and turned around. He cleared his throat, "Would you-"
"GODS DA—"!!
…meanwhile
"War Criminal K'Nare.. Or 'Fuera de la ley de guerra, K'Nare'.."
"Pendejo.. Wrong. In all sorts of ways." K'Nare stated, "Why did you not kill me?"
"You already know why. The fact you would try to get someone to kill you doesn't help anything you supposedly believe in anymore. You'd be killing whoever kills you. Something all three military leaders have agreed upon." Raymond walked through a cowering forest with bitter green leaves and orange caterpillars squirming along the dirt road. "Curiously.. How come you didn't fight the dragon? Could've saved everyone. Couldn't you?"
…
Raymond chuckled, "I'm sure all those little kids screaming and young women pleading as their skin melted was too addicting? Like black magic, right?"
…
"If you're going to be an immortal criminal who's already has the scariest reputation and has laws against him not allowing him to be killed.. I don't know… Don't bad people like you hate good stuff? So try it out and torture yourself more."
… K'Nare silently walked behind him, "Wise words for a brute."
Jaakobah eerily smiled at the man, exhaling out his teeth and clenching hsi jaw so tight that even he could chew a steak cooked by Arash and call it tender. Nooooo. "Listen, I just needa know.." He said with a … sweet..? tone.. Idek..
However, the middle-aged man sobbed as his skin was being pulled apart.
"STOP! STOP STOP!!" Jaakobah yelled, "IF YOU DON'T SHUT THE FUCK UP! I'LL KILL YOU RIGHT HERE!!!"
But the man kept crying.
Jaakobah stood up and walked to a table where some OTHER drunken men were. He grabbed their jugs of mead and splashed himself with it, just turning to water mid-contact.
Instantly, he felt a bubbly feeling in his skin. He looked left and then he looked left. When he looked right, then he would look right. Perfect. He walked to the crying man.
"How about saving his hand?!" Somebody roared out.
"R..right.." Jaakobah looked at the table he was just at, "That wasn't ordinary mead.. Did I just have an entire jug of.." He fell over the man, swinging the shuriken behind himself and letting the purple hand fall off the door.
"Look. Your hand slipped again."
The man fainted. And Jaakobah looked at Tanya.
"Just take the damn flier.."
"There isn't any.." Jaakobah twisted his head like an owl, "Lying cretin."
"Woah, woah.." The bald half of Tanya's scalp lit up with spiky iced wires, "Stand down."
Jaakobah, with visibility nothing to threaten with, smiled. "You can sense it. I knew you were a sorceress. You do realize it right?"
She clumped up some of the pointy wires, detaching them from her head, "Realize what?"
"I am the embodiment of water. Freeze me and I'll just control my ice."
"Have.. you…?!"
"Not even a little." Jaaokabah fixed his bangs into two squiggles hanging off his forehead like a 'w', "But I'm closer than anyone else is."
A sharp metal pole stabbed through his face. Jaakobah turned whilst inside it, the skin around it warping, "Water-man." A big bulky man stated, "Back off, eh?"
Jaakobah looked the man up and down and then looked at Tanya, "Where's the black guy. Give me the information."
"You haven't finished the guy's 'quest'. Now it's unfinished. So go pick it up and deal with whatever he chose."
"Fine." The air in the inn was as thin as Jaakobah's linen. His eyebrow dug down with a frown as he walked past the town..vern.. Tavern.. A paper in hand. "So the bitch had it all along?!" He stormed through Chestnut Village. "This land is so dry.. And cold…"
Then.. Back to the present, late midnight
Whilst venturing through newfound dirt roads and such, Felix took a book out, flipping halfway through and slamming his glasses on his head.
Arash tried to peak over his shoulder, but the text was strange and incongruent.
"What's that?"
"This?" Felix showed him the book.
…
"This is a book!"
…
"An epic fairy tale.. Tells the story of Clotia and her army. Except this version is the expanded upon version. Elongated."
There was a quake.
"You're reading a tale?" Arash slightly scoffed, "Not my type of book then."
"I'll have you know that these tails contain many supposed creatures of The Lost Gen- eration! It's a wonder how so many haven't made the connection."
"Like what kind of creatures?"
"So many vampiric breeds and even mummified Lionsides!!"
"Oh.. okay." Arash pushed Felix with his shoulder, "Let me see that thing."
"DO NOT!! I WILL LOSE MY SPOT!!"
"Seriously?" Arash chuckled, "I'll just save it." With one look at the text, he handed it back to Felix, "Can you read it from the beginning?"
"I love reading to people!!"
Swinging back to the past, sometime in the afternoon
"An upcoming guild, 'Feisty Fiesta.. A band of hunters claiming to rebuild their ancestral guild from the Era of Adventures. They must have some sort of dormant powers. Which begs the question, who was that drunk guy taking on such a task like this." Jaakobah passed by some chewed bark and large trails in the dirt road. Following them, slime started to appear.
"Just how many seals did this world go through? Reptiles of sorts. Have they already mutated?" Jaakobah pushed thorn bushes and berries pushed to the side, going off the trail and into a hamlet hidden by tall mounds of bark. A sharp kick of his toes brought him back behind the bushes. A siblant whisper gone silent. He started to let water drop from his fingernails, fermenting into the soil like seeds.
A prickly feeling on the inside of his shoulder blade, piercing it from below, as if something was watching him down a deep tunnel.
"Manifesting so fast? That drunken guy was something for sure." Jaakobah froze, "What's the density of their acid?" He thought.
Suddenly, his feet started to sink into the terrain like an anvil in water, "Okay.. explains that." He then squeezed his palm and the water inside sprouted into a pole half the size of his own body.
The pole solidified to a sky blue and Jaakobah pushed himself out of the sand, He looked around, landing in the empty pocket of the forest. But it was then when the sounds stopped. As if they scurried away into the unknown whilst uncanny noises and flashes from ravens and insects flooded Jaakobah's ears.
"What a fool.." Tanya sung whilst kicked her feet over her head. She could almost picture the trouble Jaakobah was in walking in the shadowy forest. "Shadow Stream Forest.. Ancient. Newly sprouted from The Lost only a week ago. Not a soul enters, nor escapes. And he.."
The drunken man had his hand stitched around the shuriken, still tipsy.
"That man was none other than a failed prodigy.." Tanya smirked in her room whilst Jaakobah walked close to the ground.
She continued, "A failed prodigy's quest.. One of the highest ones to ever exist."
In the present, Arash walked the forest, which was in his vision shades of gray, with Felix, who was jotting down all the green spikes coming from the plants, plucking them into a jar. Arash's vision panned left, which was odd. Why was all this gray distorting? Like a stream gatghering into an ocean. Was this a palette? An ocean of colors? Where the gray broke off from?
A white leaf grazed his chin, and calvary bells sung in a dreamy melody with echoes and yells. A sensation left by the leaf right under his neck. But it didn't matter. Because there was brown. A chocolate sweet timid brown. Frizzed and thick hair. It flashed with color before going back to that single shade he lived with for so long. It was as if the scene was sketched out in a journal with just the white of the page and the black ink of a feather.
The first color he had seen in years, gone.. *snap*
Just like that.
"Do you know what it's like to live without something for so long, having it teased right in front of you, but you were too late to grab it? Now, living in fear and regret, thinking if that moment was the last chance you had that you were able to retain what you had lost."