“Breaking already?” Zero exclaims, springing out of a tree. I tense, ready for him to start his usual annoying habits. To my surprise, he looks at the group. At last, he turns away, saying, “Zero will scout out the perimeter.” With that, he vanishes into the woods. The relaxing sigh whispering through the party complains more about the strain of the day than we could ever put into words. Still, one determined companion tries.
“Do you think we’ll get lucky and he’ll get lost?” Queen asks. A boisterous laugh bursts from G. He leans forward, his face almost between his legs as he holds his stomach in laughter. Queen smiles. If only the pair could get along so well all the time.
Aurora sits with her back against a tree, resting with her eyes half-closed. I try to sit as close as I can to her, without it being too obvious. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see the slight rolling of Queen’s eyes. Ignoring her, I turn, asking Aurora nothing. I cannot form a decent conversation in my mind. No matter how much I’m with her, finding something to talk about is a constant struggle, and I wish I could blame it on how tired I am.
“How was your day?” I ask at last, using the last option. As soon as I say it, a slight blush rushes to my cheeks. This is a terrible topic. We were together all day. My day was the same as hers. I already knew what happened. Why ask her? After a month, is this the best conversation I can offer her?
“It was fine,” she replies, without a second thought. “How was yours?”
“Fine,” I reply, turning away. I rub the back of my neck. It’s a little surprising that she would humor such a silly topic. Perhaps, she likes me, I hope. Turning back to her, my grin vanishes as I see a stern expression on her face.
“Felix,” she says. “Show me your arm.” As soon as she says that, I wince. Thanks to my practicing with Zero, my body is far more bruised than I was yesterday. These will go away in time. There’s no need to waste time healing them. Aurora is using her magic for nothing. Still, if I show her even an inch of skin, she’ll notice the blue and black marks, and want to heal them. She has the heart of a healer.
Sighing, I obey her request, knowing that there is no point in hiding it. The only reason we’re having this conversation is because she already noticed the bruises. Too late to hide them now. She pulls up my sleeve. A pained gasp slips from her lips. “Felix,” she exclaims, shaking her head. “What have you been doing?”
“Just a little training,” I explain, forcing my voice to downplay the injury, even though the slight pressure makes me want to scream.
“Well, stop doing it,” she chastises me. “We have enough to deal with right now. No one needs you hurting yourself just so you can hit monsters harder.” She reaches into her pouch with her free hand and removes her sav.
“Aurora,” I murmur, not wanting to seem weak in front of her. “This is unnecessary.”
“Everyone’s health is my job,” she replies. “Stop arguing with me and let me help.”
“I’d listen to her,” Queen chimes in. I grimace. Couldn’t she stay out of this?
Sighing, I give in. She rubs the sav on the bruise. The sav glows, and the bruise vanishes. “There,” she says, satisfied with her handiwork. “Are there any more?” She pulls the sleeve back further and lets out a groan. Without waiting for an explanation, she grabs my other arm. I yelp at the tender pain, and she jerks the sleeve back, revealing the rest of the bruises, or rather, the ones on my arms.
“What kind of training leaves you like this?” she cries.
“I’m fine,” I insist, but deep down, a small part of me longs for her continued attention, even if I look a little pathetic.
“No, you’re not,” she insists. “With this many injuries, there’s no way that you can fight as you should.” Her hand takes a large scoop of her sav and reaches toward my arm. “Just stand still.” She would spend all day taking care of me if given the chance, but all at once, I notice David, and this doesn’t seem as important anymore.
The adolescent man holds the map in front of him. Watching him, I have a slight feeling that something is off, though I cannot place what the problem is. David is not his usual self. Eyes scrunched up, he bites his lip. He bounces his knees, jostling his waterskin around. Springing up to his feet, it slips down the front of his pants. The water spills from the skin, seeping into the ground. Maris doesn’t try to save it, just as anyone would expect from her Though water is a valuable resource, David pays no attention to it as he paces back and forth, studying the paper with intense focus. Yes, he isn’t his usual self; that much is certain.
“David,” G. calls as he tries to start a fire for an early lunch. “You’re gonna see cross-eyed if you keep staring at that paper all day. Why don’t you take a break for once?” Our strategist keeps walking around, not heeding his friend’s advice.
Harva gets up but keeps her distance. I lean forward with interest. Is she going to talk with him? Does she have the courage? “David,” she calls in a soothing voice. She looks like she’s about to shake out of her skin, but she presses on. “Please sit down. We’ve walked all day. You’ll tire out too easy if you keep this up. Let’s sit and talk.” Again, he didn’t listen. His hands grip the sides of the map as if he is only a moment away from ripping it to shreds. She looks down in disappointment. My heart aches for the poor child. A flat rejection.
Queen rolls over and glances at me, raising an eyebrow. Without her saying a word, I know what she is about to do. Before I can warn her, she says, “David, if you’re lost, just admit it. No one’s gonna get mad.” At once, he whirls around, his wide eyes attempting to bore a hole into her. Raising her arms in a defenseless pose, she adds, “If we’re not lost, you can tell us that too.”
“Don’t make fun of him,” Harva yelps in his defense. “He’s doing the best he can.” She looks down again as his eyes cut in her direction. Her slight comfort does nothing for him. He looks around, huffing. The map shakes in his hands.
Reaching above his head, he hurls the map with both hands. “It’s hopeless,” he yells. The paper flies up and floats back to the ground. He runs his hands through his hair, gripping both sides. His body gyrates in different directions. In the upheaval of emotion, his spectacles fall off his face.
“David. What’s wrong?” Harva exclaims, her voice thick with worry. She rushes over to him. There is no fear nor courage in her eyes. Only love. Her small hands reach out to comfort him, but he pushes away from her. She falls to the ground, next to his spectacles. Her little face looks up at him, tears welling up. Paying no heed to his warning, she grabs the glasses and gets up to extend them to him again. His shoulders arch and my heart races.
With last night’s training burned into my mind, instincts take over. Springing up, I rush between them. Placing a firm hand on his shoulder, I glare at him. My cheeks burn with rage. “If you keep that up, whatever problem you have now will get far worse.”
David’s eyes meet mine. An icy anger pierces into me. How could he have so much anger directed toward us? Why did he push Harva? These questions make me want to back down and see if there is a way to help, but I can feel my own rage beginning to swell. “Apologize to her,” I insist. “Do that, and we’ll act like none of this happened.”
“Do you think I care about hurting someone’s feelings?” he replies in a voice so cold I’m sure it could freeze my skin. “None of it matters.” He glares past me, and for a brief instant, I see a flash of shame in his eyes. He looked at Harva. There’s no chance of him looking at that child and not regretting how he is acting. He spins on his heel and stomps away.
“What’s the problem?” Aurora demands, displaying her stern tone. “Tell us.”
David looks from one questioning face to another. His lips tighten as he wonders whether he should tell us or not. “I don’t have a clue where we are,” he laments at last. “No matter how I look at this map, I can’t make heads or tails of it. For all I know, we’re about to walk off a cliff.”
He squats on the ground, grabbing at the
grass. Pulling it out in clumps, he tosses them about in his fury. Harva draws back, hurt in her eyes. It drives me to say something, but Aurora beats me to it. “There’s no need for all of this, David,” she says, her tone sharp. “You’re acting childish. It’s fine if you don’t know where we are. Let me look at the map. Maybe I can understand it.”
“That won’t make a difference,” he retorts. “Look if you want, but I’ve looked at it from every angle. I’ve climbed trees to calibrate our position. None of it has helped.”
Ignoring him, Aurora strides over and picks up the map. Standing by herself, Harva turns to me. Though her face is full of pain and fear, I smile at her. I reach down and pat her on the head, saying nothing. To my surprise, her head is hot to the touch. I grin through the fiery sensation, pulling my hand back. She glances at me and forces a grin, but moist tears well up in her eyes. Poor girl. I understand how she feels. If Aurora treated me like that, I don’t know if I could handle it. If our argument continued, would I be the one about to cry?
Our healer looks at the map for a long time. She hunches down, rubbing her forehead. Queen walks over and glances at it. The artist shakes her head, giving up in a matter of seconds. She stuffs her hands in her pockets and waits for the verdict.
Leaving them to their own devices, I keep my attention on Harva. “Are you okay?” I ask at last. She doesn’t answer. “Hey, don’t let it get to you. He’s under a lot of pressure. Once everything blows over, he’ll apologize, and everything can go back to normal.”
I hope this will help her, but I don’t know for sure. With her lips trembling, all she says is, “I just wanted to help.” Her head turns away from me. This time, I let her be. There’s nothing I can do. Just like David, once everything blows over, she’ll be like herself, and it will be like this day never happened. I look at my hand, noticing a slight redness to it, which is subsiding. Strange, but I give it little thought. We have more important matters to discuss.
“I don’t get it,” Aurora announces, her voice weary in defeat. She looks at me. “He’s right. No matter how much I study this map, I can’t figure out where we need to go.” She directs her gaze to David. “I thought you said that we were going north. You claimed that we needed to find a way across. How long have we been lost?”
At that moment, David gave the worst answer imaginable. He says nothing. Queen sits up and glares at him. “Are you telling me you didn’t even know where we are going?”
“You see,” David starts, but Maris doesn’t allow him the chance to explain himself.
“A lie,” she interrupts, her calm tone never wavering.
“A lie?” Queen repeats, her voice rising in growing rage.
“Of course it was.”
“You see,” David yells, jumping back into the conversation before they left him behind. “I didn’t want to tell anyone because then you’d panic.”
“Really?” Queen retorts, her head cocking to the side. “And how did that work out for us?”
“Don’t be so harsh on David,” G. steps in, defending his friend.
“G., stay out of this,” Aurora orders, shooting him a look.
“You’re just as bad as him,” Queen accuses, jabbing a finger in his direction. “How long did you know that he got us lost?”
“I didn’t know,” G. insists, not backing down. “Just give him time to explain.”
“Okay. Fine. Explain David.”
Eyes narrow in David’s direction. The childish man’s face flushes. His lips open as he struggles to explain what happened. As I watch this, I realize what is happening. His role as the strategist is slipping from his fingers. Until this point, he hadn’t proven to have any true weakness in his judgment. Despite knowing what could happen, his emotions got the better of him, and now everyone knew his secret. He has to tell us what happened.
His lips continue to stammer, but no words exit. Watching him, everything makes sense. He doesn’t know. Of course, he wouldn’t tell us if he himself didn’t know what was wrong. It explains the outburst because he realized that he was lost. However, that leaves us in a terrifying position. If David didn’t know, how could any of us understand what happened?
At last, Maris answers for him. “It’s because the forest is enchanted.” All eyes turn to her, eager to hear what else she had to say. She pays no attention, remaining quiet at first. “The Rakan part of the forest is enchanted in some places,” she says. “They have a magical barrier around them, keeping all from exiting once entered. Get a cheerful look at these trees because we will see them for the rest of our lives.”
“What is she saying?” Queen asks, a hint of worry appearing in her tone.
“In a barrier,” Aurora explains, astonished and confused. “The contained area has no end. For example, if a barrier is within a room, whoever is inside cannot escape.”
“But there’s a door,” I point out.
“Yes, there is,” Aurora agrees. “But you can’t pass through it. You might open it and walk through, but you will find yourself in another room just like the one you left. If you leave through the next door, you will continue finding yourself back in that same room.”
“I remember someone telling me that Raka had extra defenses near the border.” He pauses, mulling over the problem with his hands folded. “But I didn’t see a boundary.” His face gives a slight flush. No doubt, this realization would hurt his reputation as a superb tracker, woodsman, and adventurer. This slipup was one that G. wouldn’t forgive himself for.
“Of course you wouldn’t,” Maris replies, her voice taking no pleasure in this discussion. “It’s a magic barrier. No one in this party has the capabilities to notice it. No matter how powerful we are, only a mage could see a spell barrier.” She pauses, turning her head to face everyone. “There’s no need to feel bad. It could happen to anyone.” Though her words attempted to comfort, her tone was far from that effect. I’m not being ridiculed, and I feel offended.
Aurora looks around, realizing the tension and intervenes. “If you had to guess, when did we enter the barrier?”
Maris turns her head back to face the canopy. Her hum buzzes in my ears. She’s loud for someone making so little noise. It’s as if she is standing right next to me. The noise stops, and she says, “I’d say around the time we fought the Orthrus.”
“You mean we’ve been stuck for the last month?” Queen exclaims. Her voice cracks in shock. My blood runs cold while my knees buckle. It’s hard to keep standing with the weight of this awful realization on my shoulders. We lost an entire month and there’s no way of escape? This is too horrible for words.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” David asks in a cold whisper that makes me tremble.
She shrugs, unaffected. “Both you and your large friend acted like you knew what you were going. It would seem that I was wrong.”
At this, he grabs his slingshot and aims it at Maris. “You know, I’ve had my doubts about you from the beginning. The only reason I agreed to let you in is because G. insisted on it.”
“Then you’re no less moronic?”
Watching him, I know he would release the bolt, if given the chance. Preventing him from making a terrible mistake, G. steps in, grabbing the weapon before David could hurt anyone. “She’s just the messenger,” he says in a soothing voice. “There’s no need to be angry with her.”
David’s childish face looks no older than Harva as he looks up at G., tears in his eyes. His shoulders droop, allowing G. to take his slingshot. He drops his head, not looking anyone else in the eyes. I doubt he would find any welcoming gazes at the moment.
“You know my brother got lost in the Rakan forest,” Maris says, talking more to herself than us. “At least, I think so. It’s so hard to know. Either way, he never came home.” She pauses. A sudden gasp escapes her. “You know, if we walked around long enough, it’s possible we might find my brother.” She cuts herself off. “No,” she continues in a sadder tone. “He wasn’t too bright. The poor guy died a long t
ime ago. Little chance of finding him being an expert hunter of the wild. Forget I said anything.” Too bad we couldn’t ignore what she said.
There’s no way to ignore the problem we’ve walked in for the last month. Looking around at those present, I see hopeless faces, drained from the terrible knowledge we received. It’s insane that we’ve gone this far to find out we’re in a never-ending cycle. With three Mementos, my dream is so close but still so far away. I feel the hands of hopelessness ensnaring me, but I muster up what determination I have left. We can’t give up yet. There has to be a way out of this mess. All we have to do is find something.
An idea comes to mind. “Wait,” I interject. “Let’s calm down. There has to be a way out of here.” Everyone’s eyes fall on me, and I realize that this was a mistake. Eyes of terror and fury bear down on me, seeking an answer. “We could see if Zero can fly us out of here.”
“That’s all you have?” Maris asks, shooting me a condescending look. “If he could fly out of here, our buddy wouldn’t even be here. Isn’t that right?”
I turn to find Zero leaning against a tree. He stands with a somewhat cross expression on his face and arms folded. How long was he listening? “That might be Zero’s case, but it might not be,” he answers in an unfriendly tone.
“Whatever gets you through the day,” Queen mutters in a not-so-quiet voice.
“Zero only goes wherever the rest go.”
With a start, Queen whips her head in his direction, eyes sparking with sudden excitement. “Wait a minute,” she says. “Maris claims that we entered the barrier sometime around when we fought the Orthrus. You showed up at that same time.” A thin smile crawls across her lips. “Could the great, powerful Zero only be a part of this team because he’s stuck too and needed to find someone that could let him out?”
What happened next was one of the most bizarre things that happened in the last few weeks. Zero’s eyes grow wide while his lips closed. He is at a loss for words. That was all anyone needed to have Queen’s answer. It was then that the arguments truly break out. Reeling from all these revelations, I stand in shock as I watch everyone yelling at one another. Queen and G. stand almost nose to nose, shouting until their faces redden, close to exchanging blows. Aurora laments how they ended up in this situation. Zero tries to maintain his dignity, yelling about how great he is. Not a single one of them are thinking. All they want to do is take out their month of frustration on someone. Harva and David stay where they were and only look down, neither being able to look at anyone, most of all, each other.
Mind's Journey 2: Of Monsters and Men (A Gamelit Fantasy Adventure - Book 2) Page 9
