Nayleen took a deep breath and held it as she lay prone in the tall grass, her eyes unblinking. The string of the bow and the contact of the arrow against the wooden frame made the quietest of creaks from the tension of the string as she slowly notched it and pulled, lifting the weapon up with it aimed sideways to not make contact with the ground. Slowly, she closed her left eye and centered her right eye to be parallel with the arrow itself, slightly tilting her head and sticking her tongue out between her lips—an old habit, but it did help her feel how the wind was blowing. It was nothing but a faint and gentle breeze. She could aim right on target.
She slowly moved her aim, tracking her target as it moved, waiting until it eventually stopped for a moment. She released the arrow with a *THWCK* from the bow, the projectile sailing through the air until it pierced into the werebbit right through the head, its body sprawling from the force of the arrow along the ground.
“Aha, got it! Just like that!” She hissed in victory as she stood up. Sairek and Cyial stood up with her from where they had been prone just behind her, observing how she hunted. Both boys dusted their clothes off from grass, twigs and leaves.
“I’m not sure Sairek would be able to hunt so well with such colorful clothes, though. Fuyiki’s school uniform is a little bit more subtle, but…” Cyial muttered.
“I don’t even know how to fire a bow…” Sairek grumbled. “Last time I did it, the arrow flew back and butted me in the face. At least Cyial got the arrow to shoot forwards.”
“Hey now, it doesn’t matter if it’s a bow or not. Hunting doesn’t always require a bow, you know.” Nayleen shrugged as she put said bow on her back and began to walk to retrieve the arrow and their dinner. “Maybe you just want to stalk something, or keep yourself hidden. It’s a good skill to learn.”
“...To learn to do what, exactly?” Sairek pressed with a sidelong glance.
“Err…” Nayleen hummed. “Well anyway—”
“Don’t avoid the question!” Sairek protested.
When they reached the werebbit, Sairek glanced at it and frowned. It looked like half between a rabbit and a… well, something else. Everything about it aside from the head looked like a rabbit... and the claws it had. A bit bigger than a rabbit too, but still smaller than a dog. “Are we… seriously going to eat that?”
“Yup. I’m going to teach you just how to do that, too. You said you wanted to learn to cook, right?” Nayleen asked him.
“This… wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.” Sairek said.
“Oh don’t worry. Werebbit meat can be tasty when seasoned properly. Don’t judge before you’ve even had any!”
“...If you insist.” Sairek mumbled, unconvinced.
“Come on. You said you love chicken. Do you look at a raw chicken and go ‘mm, that would look tasty to eat’, or do you just go, ‘hey, it’s a chicken’ instead?”
Sairek blinked at her.
“I’m waiting for an answer.”
“Well, for one, chickens are an animal.” Sairek began, then pointed at the corpse in front of him. “That however is not an animal. It is a monster.”
“So? What makes them so different?”
Sairek sighed. There was a big difference. Monsters may be partly animal or even wholly animal at one point, but either way, they were still a manifestation in the corruption of magic. “I just—we never had any monsters to eat at the castle before, okay?”
“Don’t avoid the question!” Nayleen protested.
“Oh yeah? Then please, you answer mine first.” Sairek smirked, placing his left hand on his hip.
Nayleen looked at him in silence for a brief pause, then looked between both of the two boys. “So anyway as I was saying—”
“Nayleen..!”
Cyial just chuckled softly, shaking his head at the both of them.
“Okay, fine.” Nayleen sighed with a shrug. “I won’t teach you this time. I’ll win you over with taste first.”
“If you insist.” Sairek said to her again.
“Insist I do. Now help me carry this thing back so I can begin to skin it.”
“U-Urrgh…” Sairek groaned. He still wasn’t used to dealing with… dead things, monster or not. Sure he had his gloves, but it still made his tummy do flip-flops just being near a corpse, let alone having to indirectly touch it like he was doing now, carrying it by its back paws.
"Why do they even call these things werebbits...? That sounds like the 'rebbit' belongs to a frog or something."
"What do you mean? They are part frog." Nayleen answered him.
"...W-What?" Sairek halted in his tracks.
"Hey c'mon, why did you stop?"
"I... s-sorry. Nevermind..."
Oh boy. He looked back at the... thing they were dragging with him. His stomach began doing flipflops for real now, very much telling him 'DO NOT WANT'.
It was even worse for him when they got back to camp and Nayleen literally indeed began to skin it. Not only did she not seem disgusted by the guts, blood and whatever else she was pulling out of the thing to harvest it for the meat, but she almost seemed to enjoy it in a way. The sight and blood got to him and he had to step away from the camp for a while until she was done. He busied himself looking for wood for their fire. A task not hard to do when you were at the edge of a forest, even if the trees in these woods were fairly apart from each other and sparse.
An hour later, they got the fire started. Nayleen also showed them how to build a make-shift grill during that time. After that, she began laying some of the meat into thin strips on the grill.
“We’re going to use these strips here as a sort of jerky.” She explained. “These are gonna cook pretty fast, so make sure to watch them carefully. For the main part, we’re going to cook the werebbit steak off to the side in this plate here with the fat. This’ll take a while, so the jerky will hold us over until the main course.”
“Why cook it with the fat?” Sairek asked.
“Glad you asked! The fat is used to make the meat extra juicy. The juices from fat when cooked along the steak will not only make it tastier, but it actually helps make the meat more filling and nutritious because it will be absorbing that juice inside of it.”
“Huh.” Sairek mused. An interesting neat trick indeed.
Nayleen moved to grab their small pot of water and wedge it under the grill but over the fire, allowing it to hang by the lid with their grill set up. “While we are waiting for that to be done,” she began, pulling out a large pewter bowl in front of her and unsheathing one of her daggers, “time to begin cutting up some vegetables to help add some flavor into the stew.” She finished. She started first by chopping two carrots into small little slices into the bowl. She then peeled and chopped a singular potato.
Sairek and Cyial watched her work over the minutes with an astounding amount of expertise despite her age. She had gone shopping three days ago—the day before they left, buying a bunch of ingredients and Sairek had put everything she had bought all out for her. She still continued to impress him ever since that time at the monastery. Perhaps he was easily impressed back then simply because he didn’t know she had the knowledge to cook, but watching her cooking like this, even with just a simple campfire was almost elegant. Dried mushrooms, a little bit of cabbage, celery, turnip… not to mention some herbs she soon was putting on the steaks of meat as well so they would begin to melt into it.
“She really goes at it, doesn’t she?” Cyial whispered quietly towards Sairek, keeping his voice very low so as to not distract her.
“Uh-huh…” Sairek blinked with his eyes as he nodded in agreement.
She poured all the contents in her little bowl she was using into the small pot so it would begin to cook. She still wasn’t done as she began adding a pinch of salt and pepper onto everything as well. Sairek heard his stomach began to growl hungrily as he sniffed in the aromas before him.
“Not feeling so disgusted now, are you?” She smirked, clearly having heard his stomach.
Sairek just glanced away, struggling to stop color from filling his face.
“Ah, the jerky is done~” She sang, pulling the thin strips of meat off from the grill. She pulled out a loaf of bread and began to slice it. Sairek and Cyial continued to watch her work her own version of 'magic'. She made six slices of bread. To each slice, she blanketed it with a thin layer of butter, then put in a slice of tomato, a couple of lettuce leaves, a tiny pinch of salt and pepper, a few bits of the jerky, and a small amount and a couple of thin sliced strips of cheese which with the heat of the jerky, began to gently melt into it. Finally, she finished by topping each one off with another slice of bread to complete the sandwich. “Appetizer completed!” She announced, grabbing two of the sandwiches out to both of the boys.
“Sweet Lands.” Sairek blinked at the sandwich.
“What?” She asked.
“How… How are you so good?” He asked. He pulled off his gloves from his hands before grabbing the sandwich. “Watching you is like watching… uh,”
“Like watching what…?”
“Uh, I dunno. There’s nothing quite like it. You’re... just really good.”
“You’re not crushing on me, are you?” She asked in a suspecting tone.
“W-What? No!” Sairek blushed. “I just wish I was as good and passionate about something as you are with cooking.”
“Aren’t you passionate about magic?” She asked, with a small tilt of her head.
“Passionate, yeah, but I’m hardly good at it despite going at it for a few years.”
She waved her hand dismissively. “Give it time. It’s not like I started a couple years ago. My parents began teaching me how to hunt and cook for practically as long as I can remember. Besides, I wouldn’t call myself passionate about cooking. Eating good and right, making the most out of the animal... or monster, is the least you can do to respect it after killing it.” She explained. “Now eat the sandwich so I can rub it in your face on how good mystery monster meat tastes.”
Sairek rolled his eyes at her with a soft smile, while Cyial off to his side covered his mouth in a failed attempt to stop himself from laughing as a couple of sounds was still escaping through his hand. Sairek glanced at the sandwich again, then briefly eyed Nayleen, before he took a bite into it and was not disappointed by the flavors that soon began to flow into his mouth.
Yeah, she was very good.
* * *
“*pant… pant… pant...*”
Varhi put his left arm in front of his face to shield himself and dipped his head down so his helmet visor would somewhat protect him, sprinting through bushes and branches, forcing himself forward through the densely packed forest. He grunted now and then as a few branches still managed to scratch along his cheeks or would still get a good poke at him through the leather armor he was wearing. He still didn’t stop though, despite how much pain he was in and how exhausted he was.
Those things were relentlessly aggressive and even though he had slayed the entire area, there had been even more of them in the mountains and beyond. Way more than he had expected. Now all of the work he had done to clear the previous areas was bloody infested with them again—and maybe more. Which of course meant that they were getting dangerously close to his camp and spreading the infection along even further towards his little 'safe zone'.
So he tried to kill some, but without his bridge limiting their options for movement and being able to deal with them one on one, or one on two, trying to kill them proved to be a… painful transaction of getting slapped around.
A lot.
Even his ass hurt.
So he instead was now trying to herd them back away. They had begun to follow as he predicted, but now having to lead them away and back towards the mountains, he needed to out distance them again, circle around them while giving them a wide berth, and then find his way back to his camp… All this, while it was rapidly becoming more and more dark as early evening sank into dusk, and all without getting lost somehow or running into anymore of those things by accident. He doubted he could take on another one right now and live to tell about it at a later date, especially in woods like these seriously hampering his movement.
Them? They didn’t seem to care about the trees. They would trample through any brush, or outright bend some of the thinner trees just out of the way, if not outright snap them out of the way to continue on their warpath to reach him.
Varhi kept sprinting for a little more before his lungs were burning so badly that he needed to stop to take a break. He rose both arms to cover himself in a ‘X’ over his face as he barrelled through one last barrage of bushes before half stumbling towards some tree and bracing both of his hands ahead of him to plant the brunt of his weight against its trunk for support, leaning into it completely as he half slumped, wheezing, coughing and gasping for breath, droplets of sweat dripping down his face.
Varhi understood the human body well. Even though studying wasn’t exactly his kind of thing, he wanted to better understand how it functioned so he could better understand how he would and could perform under stress as well as understand parts of his body he could improve. In his studies, he found out that the human body was actually quite amazing...
The body transformed carbs into energy by a process called “Adenosine Triphosphate, or abbreviated down to ‘ATP’ for short.
ATP was performed by the body in three steps: Glycolysis, Krebs Cycle and the Electron Transport Chain, in that order. The Glycolysis cycle creates the stuff that the Krebs Cycle needed to create what the Electron Transport Chain needed, which then converted what the body needed as energy to be able to move. Those three functions all ultimately performed "ATP"—the stuff required to make one’s muscles actually be able to move.
The Electron Transport Chain was the one that created almost all of the ATP needed to perform most actions you’d normally ever need under normal circumstances. Walking, moving your hands, blinking… all the things you’d normally need to move any part of your body from point A to point B, to move to eat, to drink, give someone a hug, or even more laborious tasks like lifting something up or even sprinting.
However, when performing a laborious task like sprinting for a long time, it was obvious that you would run out of the ATP needed to keep moving before too long. The body uses up more ATP faster than the body can produce. While the other first two steps also created ATP, they were more byproducts of the process and were far more inefficient than the Electron Transport Chain was.
However, that’s where the human body was amazing.
In times of emergency where ATP was exerted but the body still needed to move, the body could use Glycolysis as a back up instead of ATP. However, because Glycolysis is part of the respiratory cycle in the body, it was why anyone who began exerting themselves began to breath harder when they sprinted or performed other actions which exerted a high amount of energy for an extended period of time.
Of course, there was a limit to how much of this you could pull out of your body before you ran out of that too. Oxygen was required to serve other functions of the body as well after all. Eventually, the body hits a point where it can no longer use Glycolysis to give the body a boost to keep moving because the oxygen levels start to become too low and using anymore would cause problems to the rest of the body's functions.
...That’s where the human body became even more amazing.
Varhi had learned that the human body was so awesome, that it had a second backup system where if it finds itself running out of the necessary oxygen to perform its functions but is still in a situation where it still needs to perform an action, such as an instance where you were running for your life from aggressive hulking mushrooms that wanted to kill you, it will start a process called “Anaerobic Glycolysis”. That was basically a fancy term for saying that your body starts working VERY hard to keep up with the demand. The body begins to perform the whole ATP process, without exerting any more oxygen, while increasing the speed of the whole process in attempt to keep up with the demand. This all has a drawback, though...
In the normal process, the Glycolysis produces Pyruvate in the Glycolysis chain, but in times of exertion when it is being used to substitute ATP, it produces a high volume of “Lactate”, which releases into the bloodstream.
In reality, the human body is producing Lactate all the time, however the body is good at mitigating it to keep it at appropriate levels under normal circumstances. When Anaerobic Glycolysis kicks in though, the body produces Lactate even faster and its levels in the system could increase and spike dramatically.
These high spikes of Lactate were the reasons for muscle fatigue in the body, causing burning sensations, muscles seizing or more. It was the reason where if you run yourself silly without rest, eventually you reach a point where you cannot go on any further and will just collapse on the ground, struggling to even move.
Exercising and training regularly was useful because the more you trained yourself, the less tired you’d get. Training yourself hard can actually work your heart muscles to be stronger. A stronger heart will pump more blood at once through your system and because the heart is pumping more blood in less time, it is able to clear the Lactate faster in the body, allowing you to perform under extreme stress for longer and recover from fatigue in less time. One can also simply just train their body to be able to handle higher conditions of Lactate as well.
Varhi had exercised and trained himself regularly. It’s not like this line of work was physically easy, after all. At the same time, he needed to know how his body worked so he could use it as efficiently as possible and for as long as possible. It had saved his life a couple times now just in this damn forest alone already.
All of that information however was why he knew that right now, he was at his absolute limit. He doubted he could run for another thirty seconds more even if he tried without simply collapsing. It was about all he could do to support his weight against the tree. He was practically hugging it for support. His body literally could not handle much more of this level of physical demand, even if it was being fuelled by the adrenaline of being in a 'fight or flight' situation.
This constant level of exertion was doing him in and worse, he had already run out of real food already yesterday and he had been rationing it since day one. Foraging had only gone so far and it seemed the large vast majority of his area in the forest was affected by the infection. He couldn’t go too far without running into it, even if he stuck to the southern mountain walls of the forest where he came in from. He couldn’t find a way back up to get out of here in his little “bubble”, either. The path back was his closest bet, but it was just too difficult to try and jump for his rope. He had climbed back up to the nearest tree earlier, but there was no way he was making such a jump—even if he took off all of his armor. Heck, even if he climbed along the thinnest end of a branch that he dared and it could support all of his weight for a proper jump. It just wasn’t happening. He was for all rights, stuck here, unless he somehow managed to push his way through all of the monsters that threatened him.
There had been a couple of mushrooms he found that should have been edible, but given the situation so far, he wasn’t about to put any damn mushroom he found anywhere near his mouth. He’d probably have a phobia of eating mushrooms for the rest of his life, if he somehow managed to survived this shit. He'd rather starve to death than take the risk.
“...Y-Yeah… That’s not working out great so far either… Just look at yourself, Varhi… You’re doing real great, aren’t you…” He huffed to himself.
Even when it came to talking to himself when he may very well be about to die, he was still a sarcastic asshole to himself. Sigh…
And yet... he still couldn’t stop himself from grinning despite his current state. Getting out of this alive by himself was going to be a challenge for sure… However, all of his training and preparation was for desperate situations just like this. If he somehow made it out of this alive, it would only serve to make him even stronger and more experienced.
...That was a big “if”. About as big as these damn mushrooms.
Varhi pushed himself from the tree, stumbling for a moment until he held out his left hand to balance himself momentarily against another tree. He took two more gulps of air before he pushed himself off again, beginning to weakly walk his way through the thicket, smacking branches away half-heartedly. He walked straight ahead for two minutes, mostly looking down at his feet but occasionally glancing up ahead of him.
Thus, it was because of his lapse of looking up ahead of him and his lapse of paying attention to his environment was why he did not immediately notice that some of the branches on one of the bushes he was walking by had suddenly moved, before they abruptly lashed out, smacking him in both the face as well as his gut with two separate limbs.
Varhi let out an exerted grunt of pain, launched right off of his feet and and flinging backwards in the air to half spiral down to land practically face first into the ground with a heavy thud. Momentarily dazed and somewhat out of his senses, it took nearly all of his remaining strength he had left in him to push his face up from the ground and get to his hands and knees. He looked behind him to see what asshole of a tree had just whiplashed him.
His eyebrows creased when he saw a tree moving—no, it wasn’t a tree exactly. It was something that looked very tree-like though, moving through the brush to emerge. It looked like a sort of bush, except with all the leaves removed and it had some of those damn mushrooms, small versions of them, the orange spotted ones, dotted all over its surface on one side of it.
Varhi had always assumed that those mushrooms were able to not only control people and assimilate them, but were able to transform trees as well. This more or less definitely proved that. The thing looked much smaller than the others he had seen so far, only reaching a little more than three and a half feet in size, but it was considerably more “tree” or “bush” than it was mushroom. Even though he never always saw human faces in the others, their 'shape' was still vaguely humanoid in nature. This one's shape was just distinctively 'tree-like'. It was the best he could do to describe it to himself.
If these mushrooms were able to control the very forest he was in itself and all of those large trees he had seen that were becoming mushroomized were also potential candidates to be controlled then… then…
Oh…
Oh Sweet Flaming Lands, no.
Those things were terrifying enough when they were double his size. He did not need the entire forest with trees several times his size being on him…!
That realization gave Varhi enough adrenaline to push himself back onto his feet with some haste and shakily draw his sword, resting most of the weight of the sword at the tip against the ground. He literally did not have the strength to even hold it up properly.
Rather than coming to attack him directly though, there was a gurgling hissing sound. It was different, but whenever these things made any sort of hiss, it usually meant some type of spore attack was coming his way.
Varhi proved to indeed be correct. The thing suddenly spat a fluorescent green glob in his direction that let out its own hissing sound as it sailed through the air. Varhi, wisely having already begun to shift his weight from hearing the creature hiss, dove out of the way to his right, crashing onto the ground with an exhausted “Umph…!” He looked back to see where the projectile landed and it splatted right on a tree, which immediately began to become ashen in color at the bark at the area of impact.
Well, he most definitely did not want to get hit by that. Just why were each types of these things innately terrifying in their own blasted way?
He turned back around to face the creature, only to just catch glimpses of it. Instead of continuing to attack him, it was now literally sprinting off back into the forest with an uncanny amount of haste, almost completely undisturbed by any of the thickets with its movements. He watched it carefully as it retreated back further into the woods, almost losing it completely before it abruptly stopped completely still, blending in extremely well into the environment.
Varhi couldn’t believe it at first. He blinked his violet eyes several times in disbelief, watching, waiting, but it didn’t show any sign of movement aside when the wind blew and the branches on it rustled with the rest of the trees.
The damn thing was camouflaging itself!
“I fucking HATE this forest…! Are you shitting me right now–?!” Varhi cried out in frustration with a weak wheeze. He pushed himself back up onto his feet again.
Now with the knowledge that those things existed, he couldn’t even trust his surroundings anymore. At least they were less directly aggressive than the hulking brutes but they also seemed to be much more cunning as well. Bushwhacking through the forest once he got back was going to be off the table now, too. That spore spit attack was way too dangerous. All that would need to happen is that he would approach one like he apparently had just done and it attacked him in a blind spot without him noticing with that spit. That would just be it. The end.
At least with the hulking brutes they were obvious and slow and generally not stealthy. That... ‘thing’ was quick, smart and stealthy. He didn’t like any one of those traits one bit.
“I’m—I’m just… gonna stay here for a while… until I get my breath back… Y-Yeah… let’s do that…” He sighed to himself, moving back against a tree and sliding his back down the trunk until he sat, leaning all of his weight against it, with his sword resting on his lap. He closed his eyes, facing towards the sky panting for a few moments while he felt trickles of sweat beading down his face and neck, before he once more lowered his gaze back down to look towards where that tree… thing was and…
Uh, where was it again?
Oh, there it was.
...No wait, that wasn’t it…
Um… Was it that one bush over there?
Or that one…?
No, definitely that thicket over there.
Wait… what if all of them were those things and they just hadn't moved yet...?
“Aaaagghhh–!!” Varhi yelled in frustration, flailing his arms and legs in a very short-lived temper tantrum. An almost unforgivable waste of precious energy at this point. He growled out loud to himself, grabbing his sword off of his lap back into his right hand and pushed himself to stand back up with a grunting heave. He was too unnerved to stay seated any longer with not being able to find where that thing was or may have even gone.
At the very least, he wasn’t exactly lost. The one benefit to having a small bubble of forest he was more or less confined to made it pretty easy to find his way back. All he had to do was get to the mountain wall, hug it like his life depended on it; because it very much did, and make his way back to his rope landmark. From there, he could follow the path back to his camp.
He had thought about moving the camp back to the wall, but decided against it. One, it was further away from the nearest water source. He at least still had access to water before it entered and flowed into the infected area from outside, so at least he could still procure fresh water as it flowed in. Had it been the other way around, he would have been screwed.
Secondly, he was taught to never have your back against a wall. At least with the location of his camp currently, he had options in the directions he could escape in if the time ever came where he ever did need to abandon it. That also allowed the option if he was really desperate to just escape back there instead as a fail-safe. He’d lose his tent of course, but at this point he was practically sleeping outside anyways just because he wanted to be able to see or hear any threats immediately. Sometimes that meant sleeping even without the bonfire, just so it didn’t give him away or make any noise so he could hear the woods.
He had gotten really paranoid lately. Rightfully so, he supposed.
Still gasping for breath and dragging himself along the rocky outcrops of the wall for support, he finally made it back to his rope and used the log he had jumped over on his entry into this blasted deathtrap to sit down and take a much needed breather. It was pretty dark at this point, with almost all light from the sun having gone and the sky was starting to overcast heavily as well with the threat of rain soon. The moon still shone through the clouds dimly, but it was doing little to help light his surroundings.
*grrrwwwllll...*
“Ughh…” Varhi groaned, his left hand moving to his stomach. Bruised, exhausted, hungry, thirsty, sleepy… He was barely able to keep his life from being lost from day to day. At this rate, he’d be lucky to just survive the two weeks or so before any of Ceareste’s cronies were to report to that... that asshole and make their way here, let alone somehow make his way to Karvadean in one piece… Well, intact was par for the course at this point. He was already miserably in shambles...
“Gotta… get back to camp… before it rains... no time... to rest...” He grunted to himself, forcing his body to move up and off of the log. It took far more effort than it should have. He stumbled forward, needing to use his sword for balance as he stabbed it downward into the dirt to keep himself from toppling over.
“Dammit… I can’t even see straight… everything’s… gotten so woozy and… huh, the woozy is—kinda fun…” He huffed to himself in a weak chuckle. He was using his sword as an oversized and heavy walking stick, or the best he could anyway.
He didn’t get far at all, only a dozen or so steps, before he stumbled again and fell face down into the ground, his breath escaping him upon the impact.
"Maybe… Maybe resting here for now… isn't a bad idea… after all…"
Before his world faded into pitch black, Varhi could hear the distant rumble of thunder approaching on the horizon...
* * *
Sairek rolled his head to look around at the interior of their small tent as lightning flashed outside and then was accompanied by the typical low rumble while the torrent of rain pelted the exterior of their shelter.
“Ugh…” he groaned, rolling over onto his back, while Cyial lay in the tent with him, reading into his book as usual. “It’s going to take forever for me to sleep like this. I could have brought books or bought some in town and I still didn’t.”
“You have that book Fuyiki gave you.” Cyial reminded him.
“That’s… not really entertaining reading material. I can’t handle anything in it anyway.” Sairek frowned. “Little to no point in reading it right now.”
“Well, I guess it would be hard for you to read in this light anyways. I can only do it because of my eyes.” Cyial reasoned.
“What does it look like for you when it’s this dark? I can only vaguely make out shapes and everything is nearly pitch black.”
“Um… I suppose if you just imagined how it looks now for you if it was bright, but the color to everything being mostly muted, then that would be accurate to how I see things... I think. Honestly, it’s not too different to how humans can adjust to dark in low light conditions to see better. I guess mine is just more effective and the adjusting happens a lot more quickly than for humans.”
“Does that have anything to do with your glowing eyes?”
Cyial shook his head, then realizing Sairek probably couldn’t see him shaking his head aside from the glowing of his eyes, said; “No, it’s not because of that. I think most demons see better in the dark and I think Underworld demons can see in the dark even better than even I can. I’m honestly not sure why my eyes glow. I know some demons have glowing eyes, but most actually don’t. I don’t know what it might mean, or what’s the difference.” He explained, looking up from his book towards the roof of the tent.
“To me, I see normally, but maybe my interpretation of ‘normal’ might be different to everyone else. After all, if you saw my ‘green’ as ‘blue, and my ‘blue’ as ‘green’, how would you describe it to someone else who saw it differently? If you both pointed at something like your shirt and said ‘that’s blue’, you would both agree, right?”
Sairek thought about that. You couldn’t just say ‘it looks green’, because people would still interpret that as actual green. You couldn’t describe it as an item like ‘it’s green like grass’ because they still would agree. For all he knew, someone could see his blue shirt as a red shirt, and neither would be none the wiser.
“I don’t know…” He sighed. “I just—I hate these things.” He said, flicking a finger to tap at the walls of the tent behind his head.
“...Tents? Why?”
“Too small. I feel more comfortable sleeping out in the open. When it’s not raining, anyway. Doesn’t help that it’s humid tonight again, either.”
“Sorry that we had to share. Nayleen was smart to test it out first and then buy another one. I guess she wouldn't mind sleeping with us boys, but they are pretty small.”
Sairek shook his head. “Sleeping alone in these things would make me feel worse, even if it would give me more room. I don’t know. I don’t need much. That tiny room at the inn was still fine. It’s just… I can’t even stand up and stretch if I wanted to, it’s just… uurrrgh.” He whined, squirming and displaying his obvious discomfort.
“Well, at least it’s warm enough to just sleep on top of the sleeping bags. You’d probably feel even more confined in those wearing your clothes to bed and then be inside the bag on top of that.” Cyial noted, closing his book again and putting it in the corner of the tent to roll on his side to face Sairek as thunder rumbled again in the distance. “I know I don’t sleep much, but maybe you can try the trick I used when I was little.”
“...You aren’t little now?” Sairek could see the glowing eyes of the demon roll at him from his comment, which made him crack a faint smile. “Okay, sorry. What is it?”
“Just listen to the ambiance of the rain, let it pull you in and drone everything else out.”
“Oh, I already know about that. It doesn’t really work for me with rain, though. I’ve often been doing it with your breathing though at the inns we sleep together in.”
Cyial blushed a little. “My breathing?”
“Well yeah. You’re a quiet sleeper. You don’t snore.” Sairek said, then blinked. “...I don’t snore loudly and disturb you, right?”
“You snore, but it’s fairly gentle.” Cyial smiled. “I’ve been listening to you too to help me sleep, but it’s with your heartbeat, not your breathing.”
“Is that why you always lay on my chest?”
“Well that, but it's also pretty warm and you've got a nice firm chest. The workouts may be working to fill it out even more nicely or maybe it's just how you're growing.”
“C-C’mon, not in the tent… Nayleen is not that far from us...” Sairek cautioned him.
“Eh? I was being serious.” Cyial blinked, before rolling onto his back and interlacing his hands behind his back, staring up at the roof of the tent as he spoke. “It’s not my fault your mind has constantly been interpreting things I say to be lewd when—ouch.” He let out as Sairek gently kicked him in the shin. It didn’t actually hurt, it was just more a reactionary exclaimanation.
“Is your hunger better?” Sairek asked with a sigh.
“The nibbles help but it’s not real sustenance, Sairek. It… does help take the pressure off though. A lot, actually. I will be fine. Don’t force yourself for my sake. I will seriously never forgive you if you did that.”
Sairek nodded in understanding, interlacing his hands behind his head too, more or less copying Cyial's posture unknowingly. “If we’re lucky, we’ll reach the border by tomorrow. I’m surprised how north Nayleen has taken us though… we’re only a few days away from the Masirean borders as well.”
“...But isn’t that off by itself from the rest of the mainland?” Cyial asked. "How are we close?"
“Well yes, but the boats that lead people to and from are stationed pretty nearby. Then there’s a small island they use as a middle ground and a checkpoint. People from the first sets of boats go onto that other boat to take them the rest of the way, and vice versa when coming here. The boat rides from one kingdom to the other take cumulatively two days depending on the weather. That’s what Laure had told me one day anyway when I asked her. I think the boats going to Masirean end up in… ‘City Cylvolta’ or something like that."
“Huh, even I didn’t know that.”
“I wonder how they’re doing now. Before I left the castle, I was having to do letter duty as a punishment.”
“What for?”
“Oh, I ran away from the castle into Marid somewhere. I got in an argument with my father. So I ran away. Again. That’s how I met Nayleen for the very first time.”
“Ah.”
“Anyway, the letter was from the King himself requesting reinforcements because apparently Kior spies were lurking about or... something. I don’t quite remember. I wonder if they’re still doing stuff. Masir and Ceareste are allies, so I wouldn’t be surprised if in my father scheduled some men to go check it out and provide backup.”
“If that’s true, wouldn’t Kior be provoking a war?”
“They already have been for a little while as far as I am aware. My father didn't exactly keep me in the loop though. Said I was too young still to be concerned with military affairs. Ironically, that wouldn't be the case now that I'm officially twelve.”
“And yet, we’re still headed there.” Cyial lamented.
“War is the last thing my father wants. It’s the last thing any nation should want. Besides, war over something petty like that is… well, I mean, I can understand Masir being angry for it obviously. Rightfully so of course, but to spark a war between the nations? The cost of human life would be too high for everyone. Even though Masir would and should be pissed off, I don’t see them starting a war over it. Besides, when it comes down to it, Masir’s military power is honestly the smallest between the four kingdoms. It's probably why they’re allied with us, to be honest. Not that my father minds. Aside from keeping the peace, it’s good to help trade and has other economic benefits for both countries.”
"And Malodia?" Cyial asked.
Sairek shrugged. "They've always remained neutral, even during times of war. They just want to be left alone. They're very tribal and have their own rituals and stuff. They don't bother nobody, and nobody bothers them, I guess."
“...Well, I suppose we’re just going to Yggdrasil and saying hi to Nayleen’s parents along the way. I would be more worried if we were still heading towards the city.” Cyial sighed, shifting his position.
“It’ll work out.”
Cyial nodded, but he still felt a bit uneasy about the whole thing. “It would be nice if the country that worshipped Yggdrasil the most actually had a cave that led to Yggdrasil in its territory…” He sighed in an uneven tone.
“Yes, the irony has not been lost on me, either.” Sairek smirked.
* * *
“Ghn… uhn... ungh…”
Varhi’s fingers twitched, then abruptly clenched inward, grabbing fistfuls of mud into them as he came to. The rain was beating down on him heavily. He slowly rose his upper half off the ground with the aid of one hand and elbow pressing himself against the ground, coughing and spitting mud that had gotten into his mouth from having passed out practically face down. His steel visor slid off of his head onto the ground with a light metallic clang as he spat.
“Unnhh… O-Oh man... Heh... Th-This just… i-isn’t… my d... day…”
He didn’t know how long he had been unconscious for. Based on the fact he still felt bruising in his body just as badly as he had been before he had collapsed, it didn’t feel like too long. Maybe an hour, maybe three…? It was practically pitch black out now, regardless...
He was half covered in mud and was soaking wet to the bone. If he wasn’t careful, he would pass out again. The last thing he needed to do was die not because of mushroom tree people, but because he passed out and drowned in two inches of mud during a rainstorm. Based on the taste in his mouth, that had very well almost happened.
He reached out for his visor with a shaky left hand and slowly pushed it back onto his head, then reached for his sword that had fallen next to him at his side and pulled it back downward to support himself again. Thunder crackled loudly above him, making his ears ring. The weather sometimes got pretty nasty in this country… He guessed that’s what happened when said country was surrounded by the blasted ocean on all sides. At least it wasn’t particularly windy. If it was, he was certain that a decent gust of wind could very well be able to topple him over back onto the ground.
"Damn… don't this... just beat all...? I'm seriously—gonna die..." He huffed through gasping breaths.
How did it come to this point? The point where he was too weak to be able to even handle some wind...?
As weak as his body was, his mind was still relatively clear. He needed to think about what to do next, and to do that, he needed to brainstorm his current situation.
So the negatives of his situation right now:
He was nearly dead,
He was hungry and had no food remaining,
He was thirsty and didn’t have water on hand,
He was wet,
He was cold which was already sapping what little energy he had left,
He was muddy and learned that said mud was unfortunately not edible and would not work as a substitute for food,
There were monsters in the forest that wanted to assimilate him into their fungal religion,
There were new monsters that could camouflage themselves from him, were quick and could attack from a distance,
He was badly hurt,
It was night and he couldn’t see,
He was incredibly weak and next to helpless right now,
Finally, he was currently stranded from his camp and had no immediate shelter from this storm.
What… What were the positives again...?
He was not immediately dead,
The storm wasn’t windy,
He technically still had access to fresh water... if he could somehow drag himself there,
And… and… um...
Varhi sighed. These wasn't exactly good odds going for him. How could it get any worse than this?
“No... don’t forget... your most important lesson, Varhi…” He spoke to himself through wheezing breaths and chattering teeth. “The terrifying truth about reality… is that a situation.... can always become more terrible… than you can imagine it… to be...” He huffed, then spat mud from his mouth again.
In other words, while he wasn't capable of imagining how it 'could get any worse than this’, some way or somehow, it always could be worse. Reality often always found ways to do just that if it so desired.
“Flaming Lands... I know I’m starving... but mud seriously tastes like shit… definitely not a fan...” He grumbled to himself, dragging himself along, practically blindly along the path. At least shortly after when this rain storm is over, any worms underground would dig up and come to the surface, seeking air to reprieve themselves from the moisture that had fallen into the soil. Maybe he could eat some of those without having to spend too much time or energy to dig them up...
Aha! One more ‘positive’ to add to the list. Wonderful. From stuffing his face with mud to stuffing it with worms instead. He was moving on up in society! At this rate, he would make the list of negatives against positives even in number in no time at all.
“Ugghh... who am I—who am I kidding…? I’m totally going… to die out here…” He grunted. His sarcastic wise-ass jokes to himself weren’t working to distract him from the reality of his situation anymore. The realization he was going to die and there was nothing he could really do about it at this rate was setting in…
It was setting in hard.
He always figured he might just up and die on one of these jobs. It was always a risk, even on the more simple ones like delivering a message. You never knew when a highwayman or some monster could pick you out for a target and it would just be something you were unequipped or incapable of dealing with it, perhaps even just due to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Many people died that way.
However, he never thought his end would be such a slow, miserable, insufferable death that he’d have far too much time to dwell on it as he struggled his best to survive for just that glimmer of hope of being able to make it right to the bitter end, because he wasn’t a quitter. He still wouldn’t quit, even now. He would go down fighting to his last breath.
...But there was no escaping the fact that the cogs in Avotash’s plans were turning and that the bars of the cage surrounding him had already fallen neatly in place. He was getting incredibly close to the point of no return.
“Sorry Jim… Looks like… you’re going to have to get yourself… a new mercenary… very soon…”
* * *
“Ugh… That storm last night seriously sucked.” Nayleen grumbled when Sairek and Cyial got out of their tent to greet her for the morning.
“I barely got any sleep…” Sairek said, holding back a yawn. He pulled off his right glove with his left hand and pinched the inside of both his eyes with his thumb and middle finger to wipe the sleep from them.
“The road is all muddy now. This is seriously going to slow us down…” Cyial noted, looking at the path in the distance from where they were at just the edge of their sparse forest they had camped in.
“Damn, I was hoping we’d reach the border today.” Nayleen frowned, crossing her arms. “Oh well, it can’t be helped. Maybe it’s better if we cross the border early tomorrow anyway. Less time Sairek’s there the less attention he will draw.”
“You’d think me visiting would draw attention? Cyial and I agreed to say no to the city for now.” He asked.
“Well, I’m sure the border patrol would still report your visit to the higher ups. Realistically they’d have no reason to deny you, but your visit would still be known.” Nayleen replied.
“It wouldn’t count as spying, would it?”
“No, it couldn’t be if you announced your visit by coming in through official channels.” Nayleen said.
“Ah, but didn’t you…?”
Nayleen shrugged. “Well, I guess I could have, if I were connected to the Kior military in any way. At least until we met Lavian anyway. Now it’s all official!” She grinned.
“Ah, so that’s how it works. I guess that just made you an uninvited guest, then.”
“Sure, if you want to call it that. Now, let’s eat breakfast, do our morning deeds and pack up, shall we?”
“I’ll just take a lazy quick breakfast today if you don’t mind. Too tired to cook.” Sairek huffed, before letting out a yawn, unable to fight it back this time.
“Works for me. I don’t like sitting around when it’s wet.” Nayleen nodded. "Let's just go until we find somewhere dry and go the rest of the way when it's less miserable."
When they ate and packed up, the three of them stepped back onto the path and began to walk again. Sairek frowned. He hoped none of the mud would get on the bottom of his pants or cape. It had already been a few days since they’ve had a chance to wash any of their clothing at all, or have a proper bath in general and he was starting to feel it. Unfortunately, there had been no inn along the road as he and Cyial had hoped.
They had been walking for the better part of twenty or so minutes when Nayleen spoke up suddenly. “Wait, stop for a second.” Both he and Cyial stopped at her order and turned to look at her as she was facing her head to the side, one hand cupped to her right ear, her expression strained in concentration.
“What?” Cyial asked in a hushed whisper, looking at her in confusion, then he looked behind her and blinked. “Wait, is that what you are hearing?” He asked her and pointed down the road.
Sairek and Nayleen followed the direction of Cyial’s finger. In the distance, they could see something traveling quickly on the path, kicking up mud behind it in its haste.
“Is... Is that a wagon?” Sairek asked, narrowing his eyes as if to help him see in the distance better. “Why is it moving so fast? There seems to be nothing chasing after it.”
“If it’s moving that fast, it’s got to be empty. Maybe a merchant late on their deadline or just someone just in a hurry?” Nayleen questioned.
“It’s headed this way. We better step off to the side. We would not want to get trampled or splashed on from the mud by that thing.” Cyial warned them.
“Yeah, good idea.” Sairek agreed.
They moved to step off the path together and gave the wagon a generously wide and distant berth before turning back around to watch. However, instead of the vehicle passing by them, it instead slowed down to a stop in front of them. Nayleen immediately frowned at this.
“Wait, please wait! I beg you!” An aging and older man, with graying hair and a pointed beard on his chin yelled from the wagon. He didn’t look too old, but the wrinkles on his face were starting to show that he was certainly well into his middle age at least. His crooked nose showed that it had been broken at least a couple of times in his life. Despite the man's apparent age however, he outright vaulted off of the driver’s seat of the wagon that was being pushed by four horses with a surprising amount of dexterity. The trio instinctively backed up a couple of steps, but the man stopped his approach at seeing them retreating back from him.
“Can… Can we help you?” Nayleen hesitated in a stern tone. She put a hand in front of Sairek to signal him to back up a little bit further, while she moved to step in front of him defensively. The action warmed Sairek’s heart a little under his apprehension at the unusual and sudden circumstances. It was heartwarming seeing her so protective of him.
“Please, is that Prince Sairek Ceareste with you? I was told that he departed in this direction a few days ago and that boy there matches his description perfectly.”
“Y-Yes I am—” Sairek began.
“What is it to you?” Nayleen cut Sairek off. “Who are we speaking to and why?”
“My name is Jimmy Eskog, ma’am. I am a captain of the Masirean Mercenary Association. Please, I am here unofficially.”
“The… The who...?” Nayleen blinked.
“Masirean Mercenary Association!”
Nayleen turned around to look at Sairek and Cyial, who just both shrugged. This was definitely unusual, and neither had the foggiest idea of what that was.
The man let out a frustrated sigh. “L-Look, it’s an association in Masirean which allows volunteers to do jobs that the kingdom doesn’t have enough manpower to deal with themselves, people who do the jobs get paid and other benefits. It’s like being a voluntary part time soldier for the kingdom.”
“Okay…” Sairek glanced back and forth for a moment as if expecting an ambush to come out at them. He placed his left hand gently on Nayleen’s shoulder as if to keep her there and let her know to hold steady for now. He took a minute to think about his response, then he spoke slowly to the man. “So… if you are from the Masirean Mercenary Association, then pray tell, just what are you doing here, in an unofficial capacity? This is Ceareste. Not Masirean.”
“I—I know that! That’s why I’m looking for you! Time is of the essence!” Jimmy pleaded.
“Sairek, I don’t like this, this is getting really weird.” Nayleen whispered to him.
“I… I agree…” Cyial whispered back. “He does seem genuinely distressed, though… That’s not an easy act to do...”
Sairek thought for a moment before he called out back to the man. “Well I am sorry to say this, but you and I aren’t getting any closer to each other until you explain why you are looking for me, because I’m not joining the Masirean Mercenaries Association if that’s what you wanted.”
“No, no.” Jimmy stammered, shaking his head. “Please, tell me, did two or three weeks ago, did you at the castle receive a letter from King Avotash Masirean?”
“...Yes? I read it personally. It was my father’s job to answer back, though. I only read the letter and then delivered it to him.”
“W-When did your father say he would be sending troops?” Jimmy demanded.
“I don’t know? My father doesn’t show me letters he writes back in reply. I may be the Prince but that’s still his own business. I’m not currently involved at all with the country's military affairs and to that end, they're definitely not your affairs.”
“Shit… shit!” Jimmy cursed, pacing back and forth. Cyial and Nayleen glanced at each other and to Sairek in concern. Nayleen smoothly moved her hands towards the hilt of her daggers, ready to pull them out if need be in case the man charged them or something.
“What in Yggdrasil’s name is going on?” Sairek demanded, beginning to lose his patience.
“That letter… it’s not real, well no, it is real, but it’s a lie. A set up! Your father is being deceived by Masirean!”
Sairek’s eyebrows creased tighter together. “...What? Surely you understand the type of accusation you are making right now and how severe the punishment would be if you are lying–?”
Jimmy stopped pacing and took a few deeper inhales to calm down, to gather his thoughts to help him reply more coherently. “Please listen. About a month ago, a few men in the Masirean Knights came back from a routine check-up mission on one of the villages—or rather, only one of them came back, despite having sent six knights, which is already way more than necessary. They had gone out on the check up. The one man who did come back was raving mad, plagued, or infected by something we’ve never seen before and died shortly after. No matter what medicine the city tried to use for whatever his illness was, his body practically deteriorated until he... expired.”
Sairek abruptly felt goosebumps on his skin and his breath came out as if he was inflicted by a terrible bout of cold chills. He took a stumbling step back, until Cyial reached a hand to his back to steady him. Jimmy continued.
“One of my mercenaries was sent to deliver the letter that was to be delivered to your father. That letter was supposed to be to request reinforcements from you guys asking for help in studying what this disease was through autopsy, but well, uh... Varhi never was good at listening to authority... He told me when he came back from the delivery that he had opened and looked at the letter and that the reason for requesting for the reinforcements in the letter was 'total bogus'. It didn’t make sense. There should be no reason for Avotash to lie for a request for reinforcements if there wasn’t some sort of ulterior motive involved, let alone framing Kior for breaching border security. He’s trying to downplay it and hide the true reason behind the request for reinforcements for some reason...
"Varhi read the letters and the King found out about this. However, according to Varhi’s own words, instead of reprimanding him, the King instead 'allowed' Varhi to investigate the problem on his own, but had to do so by himself. Varhi warned me, although jokingly before he set off that if he didn’t come back after a certain date to warn—”
“I get it.” Sairek stopped him as he looked down at the ground at his feet. He breathed in deeply and exhaled it all at once slowly, gathering his thoughts and trying to process all of this information he was being told. “Let me see if I have the facts straight… One of your guys was sent to deliver a letter, breached law to read the letter and noticed that the reason for the letter didn’t match with the actual reason the King stated or at all of any of the situation that was actually going on, but he delivered it anyway... But breaching the secrecy of the letter was found out. However, instead of being reprimanded for spying, he was instead sent off to investigate on his own and hasn’t come back since, which is bad, because going there already has five Masirean knights missing which shouldn’t happen on such a simple mission to check up on a village..." Sairek moved to look up from his feet to eye the man. "Am I correct so far?”
“Y-Yes.” Jimmy nodded.
“Okay. So, that means you’re coming to me, sneaking beyond the border, because you think the King of Masirean is up to something and that he is deceiving my father and I, because there’s actually not Kiorian spies up there disrespecting Masir’s borders, but because…" He paused. "...because of what, exactly? What is Avotash supposedly attempting to achieve by doing all of this?”
“Varhi was not sure… I admit, he never liked royalty or following rules in general. He hated working for the King, but he said he’d suck it up and deal with it because he needed the money. I believe his usual distrust with royalty was probably why he probably opened the letter anyway, although maybe it’s just because that’s how he is. Varhi is… very difficult to explain in a short amount of time.
“He admitted he was probably being paranoid, but he still has not come back… Varhi isn’t the type to just go missing like that. He makes sure the job is done and to be honest, I would trust him to perform better alone than even six knights. He even had the King write and sign a contract. It's a simple mission to check up on the village. He said the King was acting fairly suspicious and even offered him five-thousand seru to check it out by himself. I even have the official document with me. He told me to keep it safe for when he came back.”
“E-Excuse me? D-Did you say five-thousand seru?” Nayleen repeated in disbelief.
“Err…” Sairek let out, glancing towards her and whispering quietly. “Is… Is five-thousand really worth that much?”
“YES?” She let out much louder than he wished and he winced. “That’s like, a year’s worth of salary if you have a job like Lavian’s! Probably three or even four years worth of salary for the more common folk! You can easily buy a house without rent for that much…!”
“Oh…” Sairek simply let out.
...Oops. Maybe he paid Fuyiki a little bit more than he thought. Well, it wasn’t five-thousand, but it was five-hundred. That man probably made the equivalent or possibly even more just teaching him in a little more than a week than he probably would get from teaching an entire classroom of students for the year, if the shoddy state of the food he had to eat was anything to go by.
“...What’s with that face?” Nayleen pressured him.
“N-Nothing.” Sairek stammered and cleared his throat.
“I believe that man over there more than I believe you, right now.” She accused, squinting her eyes at him.
“That hurts, Nayleen... I said it was nothing…!”
Maybe it only hurt him because she was right, but now wasn’t the time to get lectured by her. He realized his mistake now, anyway. He’d need to be more careful with the money in the future. Well, at the very least, it went to a good cause. He knew that much.
Nayleen sighed and turned back to look at Jimmy. She relinquished her hands on the hilts of her daggers finally, feeling more at ease as she crossed her arms in front of her instead. “Assuming this guy isn’t making any of this up, then even if this Varhi of his knew for a fact that the mission wasn’t real, the opportunity for five-thousand seru would be really hard to pass up, even for a mercenary. You couldn’t retire with that kind of money, but you could move to a different country to live in a reasonable high-end property and still live a very comfortable life for a good couple years without even needing to work.”
Jimmy sighed. “It would have been tempting for him for sure. Not only that, but even on the off-chance that the King was indeed lying, his curiosity would have gotten the better of him anyways. Varhi is just like that… If the King was lying, he would want to expose it through any means necessary. Either the mission and the pay was real and he got an easy huge sum of seru, or the King was lying and he had a chance to expose him for his crimes. Avotash more than likely knew this, he knows Varhi pretty well at this point. There was no way Varhi would have said no.”
“To expose him for his crimes? Isn’t he loyal to his country at all?” Cyial asked.
Jimmy shook his head emphatically. “No, no, Varhi does not originally hail from Masir. He doesn’t know where he hails from, actually. I’ve… found him over a year ago in Kior. During that time, he was in a comatose state and dressed merely in a blanket of some kind. He became more lucid several days later abruptly, but he didn’t remember anything about himself other than his name. He has remembered a little bit more since then, but most of his past is still a mystery even to us both.
“It turns out however that he is very strong and tough as nails and picked up the art of the sword quite quickly. He’s practically a prodigy at it. The rest is history.
"If he died because of me bringing him into the association though, I would never be able to forgive myself…” Jimmy sighed, before going on his knees in the mud and planting his hands and bowing down to the three of them. “Please Prince Sairek, I am begging you! Please if there’s anything you can do to help make sure Varhi is safe…!”
Sairek bit his bottom lip and glanced at the other two, unsure. "Before—Before I decide anything... I want to see that contract. I've seen Avotash's signature a number of times by now. If it's a fake, I'll know he's making all of this up." Sairek demanded.
"Yes, certainly." Jimmy replied without hesitation, digging into his shirt pocket. His willingness and ease of acceptance of showing him the document made him uneasy. It was unlikely that he was lying. "The King had this delivered to me after Varhi had already left. He probably waited until after he departed just to make sure I wouldn't have an opportunity to convince him otherwise."
"Cyial... could you...?" Sairek whispered.
"M-Me? U-Uhm... Okay..." Cyial replied meekly. He apprehensively stepped up towards the man, who held out the paper which was, folded between his fingertips. Cyial gingerly grabbed it from him, and with much more haste than his approach, returned back towards the other two, handing the paper out to Sairek.
Sairek tucked his staff under his arm as he unfolded it and began to read it. His teeth began to grit even tighter together the more he read it.
It was the EXACT same handwriting as Avotash in the letter... the EXACT same signature... all talking about a place called 'Karvadean', how this 'Varhi' would investigate it alone to do a routine check, for five-thousand seru—literally hundreds of times more seru than such a job should be worth, given how much he knew his father paid the castle guards anyways for similar jobs, and that was only a couple hundred at most which was already fairly generous in pay, though, they could afford it. The economy in Ceareste was excellent, ironically thanks to Masir's willingness to trade over the past few months. It had only climbed since then.
Still, for a mercenary no less to be paid this much? This did not make sense at all. All those times he had been punished to do menial paperwork were ironically paying off in knowledge right now... Sairek growled under his throat as he began to fold the document back together again.
"Well...?" Nayleen pressed him.
“...It's the exact same handwriting and signature as I had saw in the letter at the castle. Everything he has said is real in this contract..." Sairek whispered. “I... I..." He stammered, then shook his head. "I—don’t know what to do…” He managed to get out finally, shaking his head and squeezing his eyes shut. “This document even explains why he was sent out to investigate, to find the cause of the disease of that guy and to find the five missing knight's status, as well as find out the status of the village, but if what happened is true, it... it sounds a lot like… like…”
“Your mother…?” Cyial whispered and finished for him. Sairek gulped and nodded.
“I still don’t like this…” Nayleen whispered back to him. “Sairek, this sounds extremely dangerous and doing so would seriously be meddling with political affairs…!”
“But—”
“Sairek, no! Come on! Finding out what happened to your mother won’t matter if you end up dead!” Nayleen hissed, before looking back to Jimmy. “Hey, why don’t you just send some of your other guys to look into it?”
“I don’t have many people working for me and those that are, are currently not available...” Jimmy sighed in frustration. "The association doesn't have dozens and dozens of people. Even if you include myself, we still aren't even ten people."
“What do you mean ‘not available’? The heck are they doing?!” Nayleen seethed angrily.
“The last of the few men I had went off to bodyguard a merchant headed into Ceareste towards Lamen and then trading from there to Kior capital before making a return trip to Masirean from there. It will probably be another month or so before they arrive back and that’s far too long. Besides, if any of my men defies orders from the King by abandoning a job like that, then they could be reprimanded as well and it could be traced back to me and then I would be in deep trouble too. That is why I am here unofficially. I’m already breaking a lot of rules just being here and the longer I am here the more at risk I become.” Jimmy explained.
“Ugh… damn politics…” Nayleen swore through clenched teeth.
“So because I’m a third party if I were to sneak in and bear witness to any wrongdoing myself, I could call him out on it…” Sairek muttered, then glanced at Nayleen. “If I did do that though… then wouldn’t that make me a… a spy…?”
“If we went with you it would make all three of us spies...” Nayleen warned him carefully. "Just because the two kingdoms are allies does not make one above the law from the other."
“She’s right Sairek…” Cyial warned him as well. “Technically, because of your status, you are still a part of Ceareste’s military. You’re second in command of the country after your father, Sairek. You would be breaching so many rules on politics and war… I—I don’t even want to think what kind of storm us getting caught for this could potentially bring… It would be the end of the alliance, for sure.”
“But if he is hiding something and we go in officially earlier than expected, that would be setting off major flags to him that something is up, especially me, the Prince showing up at his doorstep announced…” Sairek growled, looking away from them. Those reinforcements... they haven't arrived yet, have they?" Sairek asked, looking up at Jimmy, who shook his head no.
“Does it even matter? You shouldn’t go!” Nayleen protested.
“I can’t just ignore this.” Sairek argued, holding the paper up in his hand for emphasis.
“Sure you can! Just say ‘no’ and we go along on our merry way! I’ll even do it for you!”
“No, I cannot ignore this! If you don’t want to go, I’m not going to make you. I understand.”
“Oh, please. Don’t even start with that Sairek. You know that’s not what this is all about!”
“If you know what this is all about then you’d understand why I’m going!”
“Because of your mother–? Your country–? Sairek, this is dangerous!!”
“It’s more than just that!” Sairek raised his voice against her. “If the King of Masirean is up to something, if in fact someone is out there, possibly in grave danger or possibly dying because of this," He said, flicking the contract with the back of his fingers for emphasis before continuing, "...and I can do something about it, then I very well just can’t ignore it! I couldn’t live with myself if I found out later that if I had just tried, I could have done something to change things!”
“B-But–!”
“By Yggdrasil’s grace Nayleen, you know just how much I despise my role, yet regardless of how much I hate it, the end result is that I do have it and that means the responsibility of that role falls onto me.” Sairek said, shaking his head and looking away from her. “If something is going on that even puts the people of this country at the slightest risk, I can’t just not look into it. That’s… just my responsibility. And honestly, it’s just how I am. If someone is in deep trouble and I have a chance, even slim, to help them...? I have to try…!”
“Dammit…” Nayleen sighed turning away from him. “Fine! Do whatever you want...”
“I’m sorry...”
“But if you’re going, then I want some conditions that you will follow.” She demanded, turning back to Sairek.
“...Didn’t you just tell me to do whatever I—”
“First,” she said, raising a finger and cutting him off. “You’re staying in the back, Cyial will stay close with you.”
“Um… okay...”
“Second, we go back to town and kit ourselves out completely before we set off.”
“...Okay? That sounds reasonable.”
“Third,” she continued and pointed at Jimmy, “After this is done, you work for him.” She said, hooking a thumb back at Sairek. “That ‘Masirean’ part of your association or whatever is going to turn into ‘Ceareste’! Understand?”
“W-Wait, Nayleen, don’t I get a—” Sairek began.
“If that’s what you want, I will do it.” Jimmy interrupted him.
“Please wait a sec–!” Sairek pleaded.
“Fourth,” Nayleen pointed at Jimmy again “You’re going to help transport us into Kior after this. Legally.”
“Sure. I can do that” Jimmy replied.
“Can I please–”
“Fifth! You're going to give us the five-thousand seru!” Nayleen continued with the demands.
“Deal.” Jimmy agreed once more without hesitation.
“Sixth–”
“OKAY ENOUGH.” Sairek yelled out over her. “You want it to be worth our time, we get it! He already said he would be indebted to us earlier with whatever demands we wanted, let’s just get on with it! We’ll work out all the gritty details later!”
“Fine…” She grumbled, crossing her arms again. “I still don’t like this.”
“Nobody does...!” Sairek reminded her as he looked back towards Jimmy. “..Yet with all that said, surely you must have some sort of plan for this?”
Jimmy nodded. “I came here on my own boat. It’s how I bypassed the border patrol. Since we’re close to the west side, I was planning on sneaking you in by traveling along the west coast all the way up to the north and—”
“Sorry,” Cyial cut in, “but do you have a map that we can follow for this?”
“Ah yes, of course. I’m sorry.” Jimmy replied. He pulled out a small turquoise crystal and held it up to the sky, then tapped it hard with his index finger three times.
The trio each jumped as the crystal flashed and then a beam of light emitted from it, projecting a 3D image of the Masirean continent into the air. Jimmy lowered his hand holding the crystal, which moved the image, until it was projecting it down near the ground so they could see it better.
Nayleen whistled, impressed. “Well I wasn’t expecting that.” She admitted.
“I guess Ceareste doesn’t have all the magic down after all...” Sairek blinked. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
“The mainland is down here.” Jimmy explained, pointing to the bottom left corner of the image. “We'll go back to my boat which I've stowed and hidden away some distance from town along the coast to the west. Once we get to it, we'll sail along the west coast of Masir here, making sure to give it a generous berth so none of the border patrols posted along the coast catch us.” He said, trailing his finger upward. “The village Varhi was sent to is Karvadean. It’s located at the very corner of the Masirean continent in the north west just here where this ring of mountains are. There should be no border patrols anywhere along here, especially not if there’s something wrong with the village. Besides, last I heard, they were already lacking manpower to cover the entire border anyway. Most of the force is covering the south, east and a bit of the west side.
“So we’ll come in from the north side, which will put us near a place called 'Osha'. That will be the chance to do any last minute supply run. From there, there is a path that will lead straight into where the village should be. If I knew Varhi, he probably took this very same path. Chances are if he’s still alive, you will find him somewhere along there.”
“Or his corpse if he’s dead.” Nayleen chimed in helpfully.
“...Yes. Or his corpse.” Jimmy repeated in a flat tone.
“Okay, so assuming we find him and he’s alive, then what? Get him out?” Sairek asked.
“Yes. That’s all I care about. I’m sure he’ll have plenty to recount once he’s back safe.” Jimmy nodded. “We’ll disguise you three, especially the Prince, to look more natural and like simple travelers in Masir when we beach the ship, just to play it extra safe. Once you’re in the mountains though, you should be safe to change back. Just make sure to disguise yourselves again if you come back out on the Osha side of the mountains again. We don't want anyone to see you enter and we don't want anyone to see you leave. When we get back to the boat, I can give you guys proper maps each of Masirean, just to make sure you don’t get lost.”
“So if we are going, then what about you?” Nayleen asked the man.
“...I… cannot stay unfortunately. If I’m gone for too long, then the King will definitely suspect me of playing hooky. I am already cutting it thin being here and will be doing so even more with bringing you to Osha before I have to sail back. When you get out of Karvadean, whether Varhi is alive or gone, I want you guys to loiter near Osha where I will have dumped you three off. It may be a few days, but I will return again as soon as I can to pick you guys up. Hopefully it will be with Varhi...”
“Sounds simple, I guess…” Cyial muttered. “We only have to go as deep as he did, find out if he’s dead or alive and just come back the way we came to get him out.”
“Yeah but if it's that easy, why didn’t Varhi do the same?” Nayleen asked.
“Maybe because for some reason he can’t?” Cyial asked.
“Well obviously, but other than being dead, then why?” Nayleen pressed.
“We’ll figure that out when we get there.” Sairek replied. “There’s no point with assuming things right now. We’ll get a better idea of what’s going on when we get there.”
Jimmy grabbed the crystal and clenched it hard in his fist, blocking the image and when he opened his hand again, it was no longer projecting anything. He put it back into his pocket. “I cannot thank you all enough. Really. I know this request is insane, but I didn’t know what else to do. It’s hard to explain, but when you’re in this kind of business for decades, you just get used to noticing how something smells off.”
“How did you even find us anyway?” Cyial asked.
“I just asked around in town for directions to where the King or Prince may be reached to deliver a message. They told me that you departed this way a few days ago. I’ve been racing to catch up ever since.” Jimmy explained, walking back towards the wagon. “I rented this thing and these horses in the off-chance that if I did find you, I could get back to my boat as fast as possible.”
Sairek moved from where he stood, following Jimmy up to the wagon as he examined it. “Gonna be a bit of a rough ride if all three of us are in the back when this thing is moving.”
“You should sit in the front then. Will be less bumpy there.” Cyial suggested.
“Eh, I prefer the back anyway.” Nayleen said, hoisting herself up over the side, using the wheel to get her initial footing. Once she was inside, she turned around to hold a hand out to Cyial, who blinked at her for a moment, then walked away, just moving to get in from the back like normal person. She booed sadly at her gesture being ignored.
Jimmy climbed up to the side into the driver’s seat, then turned around to help Sairek up as well. Sairek shimmied his bottom more inward until he was seated next to Jimmy, but keeping a bit of distance between them as he held his staff in his lap, with the contract still gripped in his other hand, folding it tighter and pocketing it inside of his shirt.
“I still can’t believe we’re going to actually do this.” Nayleen called out behind them both.
Jimmy took the reins, giving the horses a gentle whap with the whips. They began to move at a slow walk and he steered them back around, before whipping them harder and sending them off into a full gallop back towards the direction that the trio had already spent the last few days walking. Sairek turned his head to look back from where they had been going towards and couldn’t help but sigh.
They had been so close… and now with his ‘executive decision', they would be even further away than when this journey had even started in the first place. He couldn’t help but feel doubt in his mind and wonder if he was truly doing the right thing or just being stupid again, but what could he do? His mind was apprehensive about the whole situation, but his gut feeling was that this is the right thing to do. There was no winning answer for him to this problem.
“Sorry mom... You’re going to have to wait a little bit longer before I can visit you...” Sairek mumbled, before turning his head back to look ahead of him once more.
He just hoped he wasn’t leading his two dearest friends who would probably follow him into the Underworld itself, into a death trap...
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