The village square in the sprawling village was filled with activity. Stalls of food had been set up around the edges and a group had assembled near the bonfire with instruments and had begun playing a pleasant tune. Near the band, a group of dancers had appeared to frolic in the fires' warm glow.
After an hour of talking to people, Lauri had managed to escape from the crowd. Sitting with his back against one of the houses he let out a soft sigh as he looked at the plate filled with food.
A few home-baked pastries, a slice of lovingly prepared berry pie, a few sweet treats and an entire apple.
'All these treats and then a whole, singular apple.'
Resting the plate beside him, Lauri frowned. He had been given so much to eat, but he couldn't bring himself to take a bite. Partway through the party, an uncomfortable feeling had nestled inside his stomach. Butterflies had begun to dance inside his stomach. Lauri played it off as just anxiety.
Talking to people he didn't know was always a little hard, unlike talking to Merry, Richard, Granny or Laurence was easy and a few other people whom Lauri knew. But when he had to speak to someone he didn't know, it felt like an insurmountable task.
'Gods, is it bad, I'd rather face off against Light Stealer again than speak to someone I don't know.'
As he rubbed his jaw, Lauri saw another person removing themselves from the crowd. A very familiar person, Lauri jumped up leaving his plate of goodies behind following after Laurence as he turned down a path seemingly intent on leaving the village.
"Laurence!" Lauri called after his mentor.
Hearing the voice of his apprentice, Laurence stopped and turned with a smile.
"Hey kid, aren't you missing your party?"
Catching up with him, Lauri crossed his arms.
"I was just sitting down for a bit to relax, what's your excuse? Is all this socialising getting too much for you?"
In response, Laurence chuckled as he looked back towards the crowd.
"While it is true I'd rather fight a mountain-sized Fiend, no, no. I'm not skipping out because I'm tired, quite the opposite actually." Turning away from the party, the dim light of the bonfire illuminated the back of his head leaving his face in darkness. "I need to get ahead of the Crimson Vine, we've seen the one which means there's more, many, many more somewhere. So I'm going to obliterate their lair before they get the chance to infect something truly terrible."
Laurence's tone grew darker as he spoke. It was no secret how strong Laurence's hatred for the Crimson Vine must be with everything that happened to Granny. The region the village resided in used to be entirely overrun by the Crimson Vine until it had been cleared by the first awakened protector to allow the first settlers to erect the first walls.
The walls surrounding the village were later decommissioned as the threat of the Crimson Vine diminished. Yet still, the Crimson Vine reared its ugly head. Now and then a Fiend infected by the roots of the Crimson Vine was spotted and eradicated by the protectors. This seemed to be what Laurence was going to do.
Holding the back of his head, Lauri frowned as he looked away. Seeing this, Laurence nudged his shoulder.
"Don't look so down kid, I'll be back soon enough. The hardest part is going to be actually finding where those weeds have taken root. Eradicating them from the face of the realm will be easy." Laurence paused, tilting his head as a thought passed by. "Unless they'd managed to infect something truly terrifying."
Lauri grimaced.
"Nice to see you're keeping it optimistic." Turning away, Lauri rubbed his cheek as he looked at the ground. "Just, be careful. You might be the strongest guy I've ever met but, I'm sure Granny was the strongest person you ever met… Until she wasn't…"
"Lauriiiii," Grabbing his pupil's shoulders, Laurence leant down, a smile firmly planted across his lips. "I'm going to make those plants with they were never brought into this world, and then I'll come back. When I'm back we can have a nice relaxed time free of any worry. Okay? I'm gonna be fine."
Sighing, Lauri shook his head. "That's not really what I'm worried about…"
Raising an eyebrow, Laurence tilted his head to the side with a questioning gaze.
Lauri smirked. "If you spend all night pulling up weeds, you might be really tired tomorrow. I'd hate for my lessons to be negatively impacted by this." Lauri shook his head. "That just would not do at all, not one bit."
Laurence paused for a moment, his gaze turned even more confused before he broke out into a laugh.
"Well, don't you worry, my dear student?" Pulling back, Laurence put his hands on his hips. "I'll be back before the break of dawn."
Shaking his head, Lauri waved away Laurence.
"Well, then you better head off now if you're going to get back so soon."
Master and student looked at each other for a few moments. A comfortable silence settled between the two Awakened, without any more said. Laurence nodded to Lauri, Lauri slightly smiled and returned the nod with one of his own.
Turning around, Laurence began walking away. Lauri watched at first with a sad smile, as he turned away a flash of light burst behind him. By the time Lauri looked back, the light had disappeared and Laurence with it.
Rolling his eyes, Lauri huffed.
"That man, he acts like walking is too good for him."
Unable to keep up the dismissive attitude, Lauri chuckled to himself as he returned to the village centre.
His short but peaceful walk quickly disappeared as Richard spotted him the moment he stepped onto the cobbled stone of the square.
"Lauri!" The red-haired boy called as he skipped over to him, a rabble of kids following in his wake. "The kids want to see your power, Lauri! You know, the knife!"
Stunned for a moment as the mob of kids surrounded him, Lauri put his hands up.
"Okay, okay, just give me some space." Wafting away the kids, Lauri held out his hand. About to summon a knife, Lauri paused.
'Wait a second, I can't exactly give a bunch of kids knives.'
After a second of pondering what he could create, Lauri smiled. From the light of the bonfire, an orange replica of Laurence's staff appeared in his hand. At the sight of this, the crowd went silent in awe, even Richard who had already seen Lauri's Talent in action was amazed by it.
"Alright now," Lauri held out the staff to the nearest kid. "No fighting, you'll get one each."
Over the next few minutes, Lauri dispensed the replicas of Laurence's staff to the kids. Fifteen staffs went out to the crowd of kids – sixteen if you count the staff Richard all but begged for. Nothing went wrong, except for a slight pain in his eyes.
Handing off the last staff, Lauri squinted, watching as the kids ran off swinging their staffs with such vigour they might hit someone.
Rubbing his eyes, Lauri sighed to himself. "I wonder if this will come back to bite me later."
"Oh, I don't know, I think sooner rather than later."
Merry had sneaked behind Lauri as he had been gifting out his power.
Glancing at her, Lauri rubbed his eyes some more before lowering his hand, seeing this Merry took a step forward looking into his eyes.
"What's up? Is there something in your eye? Need me to take a look?"
Suddenly flustered, the pain in his eyes seemed like a distant memory. Putting his hands on Merry's shoulders, Lauri pushed her back.
"It's fine, I'm fine. It's just my Flaw, when I use my Talent too much my, uh my eyes hurt. I thought it would have been my whole body but… The Sun Is In My Eyes…"
As Lauri's words trailed off, Merry tilted her head.
"How could the sun be in your eyes? It's uh," Looking into the night sky, Merry squinted. "It's nighttime?"
Lauri blinked. Covering his mouth, Lauri coughed.
"No, uh, it's the name of my Flaw. The Sun Is In My Eyes. When I use my power too much, it hurts me, at first I thought it was my whole body. Although at a second glance, I guess the name kind of gives it away."
Merry was silent for a minute before shaking her head.
"Is this you now? Talking about all this Awakened stuff that I'm too much of a mundane human to understand." Continuing to shake her head, Merry took Lauri's hand. "Come on, you said you wanted to look at the statue, right? Let's go look at it, I'm sure it's changed so much in the past year."
Lauri and Merry made their way through the crowd to the statue of the beautiful woman. Looking at it, Lauri quickly realised something. At first, he thought this statue had wings, just like the titanic statue at the end of his trial, but no. This statue had no wings, instead, the woman was clothed in a robe, what Lauri had thought were wings, were actually ribbons of the robe held a loft in the air.
Lauri spent some time inspecting the statue, he had hoped there would be something to link this statue to the many winged statue. But Lauri's efforts were all for nought. There was no secret text, no symbols, nothing. Just a statue made of beautiful stone that seemed to glow in the light of the bonfire.
Giving up on his attempts to find a connection, Lauri returned to the party held in his honour.
After a few hours, the party had begun to die down, as some people had started going home. Sunny was sat near the bonfire with Merry, Richard and a few other kids their age. Richard was telling a story of the one time he had sneaked out of the village to see Laurence fighting a Fiend when Lauri's mind was struck with a sense of impending doom.
Holding a hand to his gut, Lauri felt sick. Looking at the warmth of the bonfire, Lauri couldn't tell if his eyes were playing tricks on him. The light of the bonfire seemed to grow stronger, and at the same time, the shadows dancing on the edge of the bonfire's light seemed to grow… deeper.
Lauri suddenly stood up, causing a few in the group around him to lean back in surprise.
Merry reached a hand up to Lauri as Lauri stumbled backwards away from the group.
"Lauri? What's wrong, you look deathly pale."
One hand holding his stomach, Lauri held his forehead, feeling a cold sweat against his fingers.
"I don't… I don't know."
Dread filled his thoughts.
'What's happening, why, why am I so-'
Granny's voice cut through the storm of Lauri's thoughts, bringing his mind to some sense of ease.
"Who are you?"
The moment of ease did not last.
Turning around, Lauri's eyes widened. Granny was stood on the edge of the village square – a handful of men from the village stood near her – the bonfire lit her back as she faced one of the large roads that led to the outside of the village and in front of her a group of people were arranged in on the cobbled road.
Lauri's eyes widened, these people he had never seen before. He had never seen anybody like them. Two dozen men and women wearing full suits of some dull grey metal armour filled the road. Their faces were obscured by their helmets, short black swords held in their hands.
Granny wasn't just speaking to the crowd of strange armoured individuals. At the head of the group, a lone figure stood out from the rest. Where the armour of the dozens of men and women was dull and unsightly, the figure at the head of the group was anything but. Their armour was a deep black. Their helmet depicted a horned beast with deep pits of pitch-black nothingness for eyes. In their hand, a long slender blade was stabbed into the ground.
The dark figure remained motionless, as it surveyed the scene before it.
Tilting their head back, they glanced at the people behind them.
"We are here."
A deep voice growled from behind the helmet.
One of the men of the village stepped forward, it was the same man who Lauri and Laurence had first run into after returning home. At first, Lauri thought about how he never found out the man's name and that he should ask him his name later. But as he gazed upon the dark figure, the sense of dread within Lauri's stomach only intensified.
'No, you fool. Please don't do anything stupid.'
Putting a hand on Granny's shoulder, the man smiled at her.
"Don't worry, let me deal with them."
Granny tilted her head disapprovingly.
"I would not take a step towards them."
The man laughed, "Oh Granny, it's the first visitors this village has ever received. Let us be welcoming." Stepping past Granny, the man held his hands outwards as he walked towards the outsiders. "Welcome, welcome to our home. We were just having a small celebration as one of our own has recently become an Awakened. We could find you all some food somewhere, I'm sure you are hungry from your travel."
The dark figure tilted its head to the side.
"You have Awakened here? How many?"
The man smiled, "Two. One currently as the strongest Awakened of our village went out to hunt some Fiends down." He turned, looking behind him. "Lauri! Lauri! Come meet our new visitor-"
The man did not see what was coming, but Lauri had a perfect view of what was about to happen.
The black knight turned his body slightly as his voice boomed, calling out to those he had arrived with.
"There is an Awakened here… Be careful."
Without any more words, the black knight drew its blade from the ground and took a step forward, plunging it through the sternum of the man in front of him.