"Oh.. My by Krainin's tea…" Felix sighed, but Arash was frozen, "Is everything okay, chap? First body seen?"
"Save her." Arash took a single step before collapsing before Felix.
Felix crouched between the two before slouching onto the ground by himself. "It was a matter of time before he passed." He glanced at Arash's corpse. Sunken wide eyes with dreaded pupils twitching.
"I suppose you're right, Fel.." He sighed, "Perhaps this is Zetzino piercing me with his sword."
Feet chipped off bark, bouncing from tree to tree, "I smell blood.." A raspy voice hung to a bow with ample speed, not a quiver on his belt. Throwing him off a branch, he entered the wide trail. Two bodies and a blonde man.
"Out of the way!" His pointy ears jerked back like a Lionside and two arrows materialized in his palm with a shade of red. One arrow in each of their hearts.
Arash jerked his body as his heart suddenly was struck but the woman didn't move an inch. His arms flew high, his popping hand at the top of her left breast.
"Shit.." The elf said, his skin turquoise, "I missed er'!"
He landed before Felix who was blanked out.
"Wake up fool!" His ears waggled to the sound of a second thump. It wasn't Arash's, but the woman. Was the force from Arash that tough to beat her heart?
Felix watched the elf, collapsing into his loose khaki vest with tears falling into his white undershirt. "You saved me! I was a goner!"
"Aswang waits for no one." The elf said, his eyes blacker than Arash's hair. "Now come. The village is a few hundred yards that way."
Felix jerked up, "I hold the curved lady!" He ordered.
"Whatever you want, freak. If you need to call me, just say 'Fedner'."
"Yes!"
".." Fedner picked up Arash with nearly no effort, his cloak pinned to his chest like a painting. "Hurry, this forest is about to be overrun."
A few hours behind when Arash left for Hazelnut Town, Jaakobah crept between two trees. Cobblestone pillars with blacksteel carvings in an infinity symbol.
"It's like three planes are trying to merge into one singular one.." Jaakobah stated, "This is not familiar to me. But that is." His eyes narrowed in on a crown with the bottom covered but white rocks picketed around the top. It dangled on the edge of the pillar. "There's a reason that is here. And it explains why there aren't any mountains yet. But with the rumors of this Lost Generation, all my judgment is meaningless. All I know is that the crown belongs to me more than anyone else. How it got here, Keini. But why would he leave it here of all places? Why did I wander exactly to it?" Jaakobah felt a pulse behind his eyes, "Shit.. What's happening..?"
There was a pattern of three every couple of seconds. "Every time I think of it, it hurts.. Is this.." Then, a sharp pain swarmed his mind, "Who?" He stood up high, "There's a crown. If I put it on, would it bring back the orb?"
Time stopped.
A tail whacked him across the head. But his skin was solid.
"What?" Jaakobah spun around, watching it trail into a bush, "Did I stumble into a hive?" He put his palms out before him, "No use punching, right? And if my water magic isn't manifested.."
A second slap came from behind his neck, slicing deep into his skin.
"No.. I can't." Jaakobah covered the gushing blood, leaning against a tree. "The moment before impact, I should be able to change. They aren't nullifying my magic. Are they just that fast?!" Jaakobah heard sizzling from behind him. He swung at the tree, crushing his knuckles into the bark. Sap covered his palms and the sizzling persisted behind him. "My neck. They're acidic. Poisonous? But on what basis?" He jolted around at the snap of a twig, "Not fully transformed. Or else it would be a leviathan.. With the strength of a dragon. Perhaps more powerful. This isn't something suited for one person. So why was that oaf assigned to this?" He turned once more, "Better yet, I don't think my fighting style is suited for this. There's nothing to scan."
A wiggly figure meadowed before him behind a bush with dark skin and a red scar on the right side of his face.
"That's what separates us." Jaakobah stated, "But if I were to listen to you in this instance, I would risk becoming you."
Jaakobah's heart pounded against his ribs like boiling coffee, he felt his veins surge to the center of his chest. "NO!" He thought, "The poison! Hallucinations.. Anxiety.. All these fears that make me what I hate."
He took a breath, his black hair flew opposite of his face, "I see you all around me." Jaakobah reached into his throat, his elbow caught on his own teeth. Pulling out a soggy paper with ink drizzling down like syrup. "I can still scan everything." With one blink, the area was flooded with water. Jaakobah himself couldn't turn to water, but this was still his own that he swam in. Every vibration, every sneeze and breath. He could feel it.
"Water pulse, Magnitude five." he gurgled as the trees started to fall and the slithery serpents with wide cobra heads emerged amidst the water.
"Five." Jaakobah whispered, "Why haven't they swarmed me?"
Their tongue shot out like harpoons, they fork of their saliva jabbing through the water like a torpedo. Jaakobah dove underneath the raging water, "No. I can't win this." He suddenly felt a wave of magic he's never felt before.
The ground bent like hardened wax, shattering slowly as a silky trail traced beneath everyone.
Jaakobah dodged the serpent's tongues. However, he then felt his hand merge with the water. "Perfect." He then felt a sharp buzz on his head, "The poison is stronger, I can barely keep balance!" He swam to the crown-like object, covering it like a blanket and then vanishing into thin water.
The prism of water that held the area sank into the ground.. And everything went silent. A serpent started to transfigure into a tiny man, "He wasn't after the pillars, then?"
Another one hissed, "Seems the crown was what he wanted. But.. Why was he invulnerable to our attacks?"
Later that night, Jaakobah wobbled his way through the forest, "This crown.. Quake.." He tripped into a pile of thorn bushes. Whilst stuck, he sludged it onto his head, but nothing happened. However, in the meantime. A distant roar could be heard. Similar to the one in Pine Village. Although, was it just another hallucination?
The ground quaked.
Once again, we stroll to the present. To clear any confusion. Jaakobah is still around the middle of the night. Where Felix and Arash just left Chestnut Village a couple hours prior. At the present moment, Arash and the woman are thrown onto the ground before a musty vined sign. 'Hazelnut Town'.
Fedner took the arrow out of Arash's chest and the second one out of the woman's stomach.
"What is that? I presume some magical arrow. But what properties?"
"It's a pulsed type of magic. Rooted from blood manipulation. They're good for things like this." Fedner took a deep breath before picking Arash up once again. "The night is young. And the moon has been watching."
Fog creeped behind them like a shadowing needle, "Oh my! This forest??" Felix scurried the girl into his hands, "The Lost Generation seems to be merging with this part of Dracuhstone! Fascinating indeed! What of the landscape? What if those thousands of years, the surface level was lower or even higher than now?! Would they teleport under our feet? Die of suffocation?! What if!"-
"Hurry you buffoon!!" Fedner skipped under the town's sign, passing by a graveyard and miniature cathedral with a broken door. A lady's silhouette, defined by her beasts, could be seen standing from a grave, dragging something out and into the deeper fog.
"What is that! An Aswang?" Felix pointed, almost dropping the woman, "Oops! Why would they be interested in corpses?!"
"What?!" Fedner sharply threw his vision through the fog, "No.. What the hell is she-?!!"
A woman sniffed the air of her home. "It's foggy.. Silver fog.." She tilted her glasses down, "But what is that scent of blood?" Her dark brunette hair fell from her makeshift ponytail, "And Raegan still isn't back.."
The door swung open and her teeth sewed shut in that instant.
"Rachael!" Fedner groaned, "Get these two healed up. I'm setting a rune around the town. I need any arrows you have as well. This one is 200 and the other is 30 thirty beats a minute."
The woman's glasses snapped off her face, "Go. I'll take them, ok?"
"You!" Fedner glared at Felix, "Come with me."
"What?! Why me??"
"Take this." He tossed an orange tipped wooden arrow, "Use it if you feel a tingle on your back."
Total blackness. Then there was a gag, vomiting reality into his vision. His tongue rubbed against the sourness around his face, sliding around the taste.. Fortunately, there was a sweet honey-like sensation on the tip of his tongue. Jaakobah could smell the putrid liquid beneath him.
"Right.. That bottle of mead." He threw his body upwards, shutting one eye as he tore his shirt. But even through his eyelids he could feel the world twisting like a strong current. Can nothingness even twist? How long has it been since he passed out? The stars twinkled. And he wiped his face with his khaki prisoner shirt. Leaning through the forest, he reached the outskirts where trees were sparse. "This isn't.." He gagged out vile. "Not where I came from.."
A large mountain before him, right inside Chestnut Village.
"The sign is there though.." He walked forward, "The ground is wet. Like an incestial baby.. I can't think… How strong was that drink? Why was it so delayed?
Jaakobah fell to the ground, "I've done it before.." His feet planted firmly on a rock and the ground shook violently as his hands levitated high in the air. "In and out", he breathed.
One foot, feet ahead of the other, Jaakobah reached the outskirts of the forest. He held the crown on his side, not even wincing as its sharp horns scraped his skin. His eyes widened.
"Okay.. Either I'm plastered more than that innkeeper when rent is due, or… That's… By the Wielders' broken testicles.." he scowled at an enormous crown embedded into the ground. Coincidentally, identical to the figure of the object scraping his skin. It was the color of a darkened bone. Once a mountain, now something unrealistic and incomprehensible.
"So… Quakeside Crater isn't a part of 'The Lost'..? So that must be where an orb is. Viola's? With all those bones, it must be.." Half of the village was decimated by the structure, including the inn, which was nowhere to be seen.
Jaakobah couldn't sense the presence of anyone within Chestnut Village. It was as if all life vacated the area. "Those serpents were from 'The Lost'. But the Crown wasn't.
As he walked the dirty roads, he came across a small hut with a bruised elf fixing his supplies.
"Elf." Jaakobah walked up to his wooden stand, "Have you seen a black man here?"
"He your friend?" The elf growled.
"Sure. So now that you know who I mean, where is he?"
"That way.." The elf pointed to the direction of the forest. And as Jaakobah waltzed away, he grimaced. Eyeballing everything Jaakobah had before jotting a picture with a knife onto his palm.
Now, an hour later, at the present, Felix sat on a twisted and rocky metal chair. Balancing on the two hind legs as he watched the foggy night sky. The moon was nearly full it seemed. And the fog was rising higher and higher. Like he was reading a painted fairy tale with his mother back in Giastone.. Every few minutes when the clouds passed and let the sky breathe in the tera, he would see a certain line of stars running across like a bridge connecting the clouds. Each one shining so golden like his hair. He couldn't stand it. His cowardice crept on his shoulder, whispering melodies of trauma into his ears.
A door creaked, sliding dust across the floor as it hit the wall. Marington walked out with goggles tightened around her neck.
Felix looked on as the stars hid again. And watched as they revealed themselves. It was that color. The golden aura looming onto him. "Could I ever redeem myself?" He thought as the demon on his shoulder gave him a tap.
The legs of the chair slid sideways, collapsing him on his back. Marington peaked over, "Are you okay, kid?"
"Why yes!" Felix assured her, "How are those two?"
"They're fine now. But I found a uh crystal or something on the dark one, Arash, was it? You almost made him have a heart attack with that."
"Really? I thought I helped him!"
"Nope." Marington fixed the metal chair by the window, sliding the glass cover shut, "He collapsed because his heart was overwhelmed. He was breathing too fast so not enough air could circulate his body. The opposite was for the girl."
"And she's fine as well?"
"Physically? Yeah. She'll have no scars and neither will your friend."
"No scars?" Felix tilted his face like a stray dog, "How did you manage that?"
"I'm a doctor in Hazelnut Town, hun.. I can do things others can't because I'm immune to most diseases. Some things risk passing over to the specialist. But in my case, even if saliva is swapped or any fluids, I have an extremely high immunity."
"That's strange.." Felix sucked on his bottom lip, "So are you from 'The Lost'? There are some mythical species that can hold an ability like that, but you are no demon, that's for sure."
"Actually, I am." Marington chuckled, "Not born a demon. But I do have some of it in me. There's no point in hiding it either. Everyone knows."
"Truly?!" Felix felt his skin pop out of his pores, "Is it contagious?"
"Only by sexual contact and genetics, it's why I refuse to have another child. Not only would it hurt whoever I mate with, but it will also corrupt my child."
"Another child? So you must have one already!!"
"Yeah.. But she's…" Doctor Marington sighed, "She's more like her father.." There was an awkward silence between the two before Marington clapped her hands and led Felix out of the building. "I gave them some very rough medicine. I call it 'Foreign Filter'. So they'll be good by morning."
"Very well.." Felix looked at the sky, not a star in sight, "Is there a common house I could stay at..?"
Marington laughed at his politeness, "I wouldn't go there! Whores and cheesy men are there."
"Cheesy!?"
"Yes. Cheesy. In both senses. Trust me. Raegan and I got into a feud and she left for there. Almost sliced a guy's genitalia off.."
"Raegan? I presume your daughter?"
"She may be home." Marington added, "But I appreciate your demeanor. Would you like to sleep under my roof tonight?"
"Truly?!"
Felix's accent made her giggle, "Truly!! If Raegan isn't home, you can take her to bed for the night."
Drugged up like Jaakobah, Arash stared at the ceiling in disarray. But no amount of dissociation could keep him from realizing where he laid. But instead of his voice, he heard a familiar rasp from beside him
"... I.. hate hospital beds.."
The ceiling was colorless. Arash wouldn't bother looking at the voice. "Telling me that?" He struggled to even chuckle, "I don't even know how I got here.."
She cackled loudly as if butterflies kissed her stomach, "Wow!" She laughed out with a snort, "I can see through the roof!"
"Yeah?" Arash chuckled, "What do you see?"
"Stars!" She yawned, "I see so many of them. They make out two sheep!" There was a shuffle coming from her side, "look!"
"I can't. You're just hallucinating."
"Ugh." a slap sounded in the room as if now hanging her arms off the bed, "You're boring."
"Boring?" Arash felt his arm start to fizzle, "You know how many books I've read?"
"Booooo~ooooring!" A flap pushed wind onto Arash's lifeless body, "I'm going for a walk."
"What..?" Arash twitched his head slowly to her as he noticed the room was nearly empty besides them and the two pitiful beds, "Walk where?"
"Dunno. Does it matter where I walk?"
"Shouldn't it?" The woman wrapped herself in her blanket, "And I'm booby naked!" She wobbled around on her torn up legs, "Are you coming? It's cold here, isn't it?"
"It's from the outside, though. How would that be warmer?"
"Sometimes you just have to do and feel instead of ask so many questions.." She looked at him as he threw his arm to the right, rolling off his bed, mumbling against the ground.
When he lifted his head, she was gone. Her pint sized footsteps coloring the gray stone floor. The door handle was golden in the shape of her handprint. And the path she walked was marked by a verdant carpet of grass seen only through her steps. Picking his body up, he followed, stepping over the colors perfectly. Exiting the building, he could see the achromatic world. But the green footprints led to a brick wall overseeing a winding river. Atop of it, the girl sat, kicking color into the air with her toes and swaying her head left and right as if listening to a bard in her head. Arash felt the cold air slide within the gown he wore. And the pain in his leg had gone numb.
Getting closer to the colorful woman with her sun kissed peach skin and long eyelashes. Her nifty shoulders poking above the blanket and her long spruce hair wrapped around her neck like a scarf.
Climbing onto the wall, the river started to race, slapping against the rocks that guided it and pushing colder wind to the two.
But she was warm. And as she trailed the brick wall with her seemingly soft fingers, the ashy red color of the bricks and the material that connected them were so.. There. And when she looked at him in the air, her barely filled rosy lips stretched apart as her eyes glistened. The heat that came off her wrapped the two in a cyclone of calmness. The woman's brown eyes were so vibrant, the world felt so vivid. And the palette carried with his eyes, so vast; there were too many colors and shades of those colors to count.
Her stretched lips formed dimples. And the entire world lit up.
!!!!!!DRACUH-SHORTS!!!!!!
"No." Doctor Marington towered over Felix with deviled eyes, her chestnut hair levitating over her ears, "That's not how you play.."
Nonchalantly rolling the dice, Felix scored a six! "Oh my! Somebody pour that tea because the ~~kettle isss~~~whistlinggg~~ And he went on five squares ahead of Marington. "And to score a two?!" Felix rolled the dice, "Give me a two Krainin!!!" He blew onto the dice in his palm and scored a two.
"DAMNIT!" Marington snapped the table in half with one strike. "Go to bed! And NO hanging with your friends!!"
"What???" Felix's face blew backwards in a flavorful distressful disaster, "You shall NOT be my mother's role!!"
"Under my roof?! How dare you even say that to me?!"
A few minutes later, Felix lays in Raegan, Marington's daughter's, bed, reflecting on what he had done.