Lazaro shook his head and explained, “I don’t stay with the people I save because I don’t want to hear their worthless bullshit. I don’t like to hear people cry about the victims, and I don’t need people following me around like that stray girl over there. I carried you with me because you have potential. You’re naïve and you’re weak, but you have potential. I can tell that that wasn’t your first meeting with an Interfectus. I’m willing to take you on as an apprentice, but only if you understand that they’ll kill you in the end. No other conclusion.”
“I’ve accepted long ago that pain is inevitable. I’ve come to welcome it.”
“I’m not talking about pain, boy. I’m talking about death,” Lazaro retorted.
“Death is the ultimate freedom, but it won’t happen to me. The universe won’t let me die, at least not until I slay the Interfecti,” said Hatasuko.
[https://imgur.com/hUsqaC1.jpg]
Vaida glanced up from her albapomus with a look of intrigue. She carefully watched Lazaro and Hatasuko with her good eye. With a sigh, Lazaro replied, “You have an inflated sense of self-importance, but I don’t really care. You’re going to die from this whether you accept it or not. It doesn’t matter. I want the both of you to hurry up and finish eating; I have some weapons to show you. Pick up your fruit and walk with me into the woods. The sail-ranae aren’t far from here.”
Without any delay, Lazaro crouched down and picked up his warhammer. He was still equipped with a whip and the odd sack, though the sack looked smaller than it was in the city. Lazaro kept his whip and his sack fastened to his clothes so that he did not have to hold them. As soon as she saw Lazaro preparing to leave, Vaida scurried to gather her belongings. She picked up her short swords and sheathed them in the holster on her back. She hooked her whip to her left side, slung the sack over her shoulder, and then used both hands to pick up the juicy white fruit.
“What is a sail-rana?” Hatasuko asked Vaida as she rose to her feet.
“It’s a vehicle we built. I think it’s really cool,” she answered with a cheerful voice.
Hatasuko looked over so that he could thank her, but he accidentally became distracted by her dead eye. He noticed with intrigue that she could make the same movements with both eyes. They both stared together at an object, and they both created the same expression, though they still looked very different. As soon as Vaida realized that he was staring at her scarred eye, she flinched and covered her face with the albapomus in her right hand. Her fingernails almost looked unnatural because of the dark scars that stained her fingers; her hand became sweaty as she stood there.
“I’m so sorry. I’ll, um, I’ll try my best to hide it,” she said with a quiet, shaky voice.
“Hey! Are you coming or not? I’m not gonna slow down for you,” Lazaro yelled as he walked between the trees.
Hatasuko quietly said to her, “You don’t need to hide anything! It’s my fault. I haven’t talked to any actual people in a very long time; I haven’t heard anything but the screams of lost souls. I don’t mean to stare, and I know I shouldn’t. I will try to stop. It’s just that your eyes… they’re really pretty.”
Beneath the light of the pulsing stars, Hatasuko could see a faint redness appear upon Vaida’s cheeks. Her eyes looked confused and grateful at the same time, but then they turned cold. As she started walking swiftly into the forest, she replied, “I don’t believe you.”
Hatasuko wanted to explain that his words were not a lie; he wanted to explain that he could not tell a lie because he could not think clearly for any amount of time – at least not without an interruption from the tempest of screaming souls. Even now, as he jogged behind Vaida and Lazaro through the forest in the starlight, he heard the voices of restless spirits shouting inside his mind. He was tormented by their anguish, but they sounded calmer than usual. The tempest often fell quieter in social situations, though those were few and far between.
[https://imgur.com/0EDE6So.jpg]
As Hatasuko dodged the low branches while running between the trees, he looked ahead and saw that Lazaro now carried the shield with which he had saved them from the Interfectus. He must have picked it up in the forest at some point. Hatasuko struggled to see the shield since the trees partially shrouded the starlight, but it looked like a rectangle of black-stained glass. He had never seen anything like it. By the time he caught up to Vaida and Lazaro, several tiny creeks scattered the area. They walked through the starlit forest in silence, though they occasionally hopped over these small creeks. This went on for many minutes until they found two vehicles that were hidden in the woods underneath a tree. Hatasuko guessed that these were the sail-ranae that he had heard about earlier, but they certainly looked strange. They were both about the size and shape of a canoe, each with four thin wheels on their undersides. Each boat had a foldable mast with a wide sail at its bow, though the sails were not in the upright position. In the back of one sail-rana, Hatasuko saw a long whip identical to the one that Vaida had used to save him.
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Hatasuko asked, “Is there a reason you two carry whips with you? It doesn’t seem like it could hurt an Interfectus.”
Lazaro and Vaida exchanged an uneasy glance, and then Lazaro let out a heavy sigh. He dropped his weapons into the sail-rana and retrieved the whip from the seat. With a swift and powerful flick of his wrist, Lazaro unleashed the whip against a tree from over ten feet away. When the whip cracked against it and unleashed a burst of wood and bark, Lazaro pulled back his weapon and whipped it again in the opposite direction. He aimed for a closer branch, and when the whip struck it a moment later, the whip enwrapped the branch instead of hurting it. Lazaro sighed again, and then he pulled his weapon back into his hands.
“Did I say something wrong? I don’t mean to underestimate your weapon, it’s just… I can’t even pierce the Interfectus with my sword,” Hatasuko admitted with a hint of nervousness.
“Tell me, boy. Why do you think I chase the Interfecti?” Lazaro asked with a firm voice.
Hatasuko scratched his head and glanced over his shoulder. Vaida returned his glance with an unreadable expression, but he quickly looked away so that she would not mistake his confusion with staring. He anxiously answered, “You chase them so you can fight them, right?”
“That is wrong. As I said before, this campaign is one that can only end in suicide, but at least my sacrifice won’t be meaningless. I may be surrendering my soul to the Interfectus, but I’m not doing it for something as pointless as hope or revenge. I run into the wreckage just to pull people away from certain death. I don’t bother to fight; I gave up on victory long ago. My only goal is to save the lives of those who get caught in the crossfire. It’s as simple as that. If you have no interest in saving lives, then I want you to run now and forget you ever met me,” Lazaro sternly explained.
Hatasuko briefly looked over his shoulder once again. Vaida met his eyes and nodded, though he could feel a confliction in her bright blue eye. She had accepted Lazaro’s conditions long ago, but Hatasuko could feel that she hated the Interfecti as much as he did. Vaida shyly glanced away and looked again in another direction; the northwest wind pulled her hair in front of her face.
After a short breath, Hatasuko said, “I still want to fight the Interfectus, but I can accept that I’m not strong enough. At the very least, I’m not strong enough to defeat it now, so fighting would be pointless. I’d probably just die. I want to help the two of you save lives.”
Lazaro smirked and then tossed his whip through the air. Hatasuko caught it by the rubber handle and watched the weapon bounce all around him. The tip of the whip dragged across the forest floor behind him.
[https://imgur.com/pC4Kl0r.jpg]
“The whip is not a weapon, and you should not think of it as such. A whip is nothing more than an extremely long arm that can fold and take up a small space on our bodies. There will be times when you must pull someone to safety, and if they’re too far away, the whip is the perfect tool. That’s how Vaida saved you to begin with. When you practice more with the whip, you’ll start to get better at grabbing or wrapping something with the far end. I want you to master this weapon,” Lazaro explained with a gruff firmness.
“Yes, sir. I will start to practice as soon as I have the chance.”
Lazaro nodded, but then he approached Hatasuko with an ominous scowl. His large muscles tensed every time his foot fell flat on the forest floor. As Lazaro came closer, Hatasuko tried to see where he was headed, but he was too nervous to turn his head and look.
“Do you need something?” Vaida asked the large, middle-aged man.
“I never asked for your input, girl. This doesn’t concern you.”
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry. I, um, didn’t mean to annoy you,” she mumbled with a shaky voice.
Lazaro stopped walking as soon as he stepped behind Hatasuko. He reached over and unsheathed the sword from the holster on his back. Lazaro held the sword up to the stars overhead and twisted it in his hand so that he could examine the glistening blade. Though it was stained with soot and slightly banged from several slashes, Hatasuko knew his sword was in great condition. Lazaro nodded, placed the sword back into the sheath, and then walked back over to the sail-ranae.
Lazaro went on to explain, “In times of disaster, our achievements become the instruments of our destruction. It’s a cruel paradox, but that is the reality of our world. Our buildings become prisons. Whenever the Interfectus attacks, countless lives are lost because people are trapped beneath the wreckage of their homes or wagons. You may be skilled with your sword so that you can fight, but you must focus on using it to save anyone who gets trapped. Vaida uses her swords for this same reason, as do I with my warhammer. A single strike of my hammer can blow a wall to pieces.”
Hatasuko glanced over to the massive weapon sitting in the boat. In a way, it looked like a brick of steel fused onto a long shaft, but one end of the hammerhead was cone-shaped. The steel in this place came to a sharp point.
“I’ll prove it, too. Just make sure you stand back, and don’t let the stray girl follow me.”
With another sigh, Lazaro leaned down and picked up his warhammer. He looked around through the starlit forest for several seconds until he saw a dead tree in the nearby clearing. Lazaro swung his weapon back like a bat, and then he charged toward the tree with a speed that was impressive for his size. As soon as he came close, he swung his muscular arms and crashed the warhammer’s spike into the tree with so much force that its trunk blew apart. A huge storm of wood and sawdust flew out from the broken tree, and then the trunk quickly came crashing down. Lazaro held the warhammer over his head for protection as broken branches slammed into the grass around him. The sound of splitting wood echoed for several seconds until the dead tree had fallen apart. Hatasuko had never seen anything this powerful in his life, other than an attack from an Interfectus itself.
[https://imgur.com/pfzwxVs.jpg]
“I can’t believe how strong that is. You’re incredible!” Hatasuko raved.
“As far as I know, it’s the only weapon that has ever hurt an Interfectus. I was nearly killed in the process, but I once broke the surface of that bastard’s leg. I don’t think any other weapon could have dealt that much force,” Lazaro said as he set his warhammer down in the sail-rana.