With no other living soul in sight, Daniel spent most of the next half of an hour trying to talk with the ogre, with mixed success. The language barrier turned out to be not as drastic as he thought – she understood quite a few words and he made up for the rest with gestures, however the communication didn’t work all that well since her extremely limited English vocabulary prevented her from expressing any complex thoughts herself. There were also some questions she refused or wasn’t able to answer – Daniel couldn’t really tell the two apart. Those questions included the reasons of her and her partner’s presence in the town as well as the purple fog he could still clearly see all around him.
Finally Sara came back, holding a few sheets of paper filled with handwriting. She gave them to Ana, who folded them and hid in the back pocket of her pants.
“All right, let’s start this over,” Sara said with a sigh, turning to Daniel. “What’s your business here?”
“I have no business here at all,” he answered. Haven’t they been through this already? “I’m lost, I have no idea where this is nor have I ever heard of that Silverline Mediation Company of yours.”
“Silverfield Mediation Services,” she corrected him. “Fine, let’s go with that. You’re also from some remote place I have never heard of, what was it?”
“Leicester.”
“Lester, right. Any bigger town close to it?”
Daniel gave her a dubious look.
“Birmingham. London’s less than 100 miles away. I doubt you’ve heard of either though.”
Sara groaned.
“Look, I could tell Ana to snap your arm or leg right now, it’s no problem for her, trust me. I’m not doing that because I’m trying to be friendly with you, so work with me here, OK?”
Daniel couldn’t stop himself from taking a glance at Ana’s huge arms. He could definitely believe that she was able to break him like a twig if she wanted to. If only he had his ID card or any other means of proving his identity... If he remembered right, it should be in his car, wherever it was now.
Anyway, they didn’t believe him. He couldn’t really blame them; if just yesterday he heard some random guy saying he came from Rivendell, he’d have a hard time taking him seriously too. What else was there to do? Trying to act insane? Fake amnesia? Not like he didn’t have an equivalent of amnesia already, assuming it was a different, unfamiliar world.
“Straszysz go,” Ana said suddenly, breaking his line of thought.
“Straszę go,” Sara replied with a nod, then went back to him. “Let’s leave breaking your limbs aside for now. You said you can see creeping death, right?”
“I can see what?” he blurted out, startled. Creeping death certainly didn’t sound very healthy and was fitting disturbingly well with the ghost town and dead bodies.
Sara rubbed her eyes with a heavy sigh, stifling a nastier comment.
“Hey, wait a second!” Daniel panicked as the conversation seemed to be heading towards a painful end. “I’m completely honest with you! I mean no harm! What am I supposed to do to make you believe me?”
Silence fell for a good few seconds. The shorter woman crossed her arms again; Daniel already noticed it was a natural go-to pose for the blonde.
“It doesn’t really matter, does it?” she finally said after some consideration. “I don’t feel like wasting any more time here, I’d prefer to wash this disgusting smell off me already. Let’s forget this ever happened.”
With these words she turned around and went her own way. The ogre looked confused for a second, but then waved a goodbye to Daniel with a brief smile and followed her partner. It seemed the crisis was averted.
So he decided to renew it.
“Wait, let me come with you!” he shouted after them.
Something weird happened with the fog around Sara. For a split second he saw it being pushed away from her forcibly, then whatever force did that moved to her right hand. He couldn’t see it per se, the only indicator was how the fog was moving away from it. The blonde didn’t give him any time to analyze the situation, as she took a heavy swing, as if holding a large ball, and threw it towards him. There was no thinking involved, he dodged it on reflex. What he did wrong though was instinctively holding his arms up to protect the face; the force grazed his left arm. Daniel howled in pain as his knees buckled under him and he fell on the hard setts covering the road in the town square.
There was a logic behind his last request – he was alone in what could be an unknown world, in a town possibly full of dead bodies. He needed a guide, there were no other candidates in sight and he already showed that he’s not a threat. Why the hostility then? Daniel did not have the peace of mind to reconsider his options right now though as all he focused on was the pain.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
Sara readied another attack, but did not fire it. She mumbled something under her nose and took a few steps towards the man lying on the road, then started circling him, wanting to see his face. The wound on Daniel’s arm wasn’t that bad; it stung a lot and bled, but after the initial shock wore off, he noticed it’s only an abrasion, even if quite a big one. It seemed as if the initial impact somehow hurt more than it did damage. He managed to look up and saw Sara was already close and inspecting him.
“Trying to play chicken? Crazy bastard,” she spat out, rising her hand in preparation for a throw. Daniel’s eyes widened; the chance he’d be able to avoid anything from this position and distance was minuscule.
“Czekaj!” Ana shouted from a few steps away. “A jeśli on naprawdę nie ma aury? Zabijesz go.”
Sara shrugged in response but lowered her hand.
“No to co sugerujesz? Mamy go wziąć ze sobą?” she asked with a sarcastic tone.
“Tak,” Ana replied with a straight face. A heated argument in the incomprehensible language ensued.
Daniel could only guess it’s about him and entertained a rather surreal thought – the good cop and bad cop routine would work better if they switched their roles around. Nonetheless, he was glad there was any good cop at all.
He tried to piece together what happened so far. The fog could be what Sara referred to as creeping death. It sounded like a disease, but they were walking around the town without any care, which meant that they either didn’t see it, weren’t affected by it or it wasn’t harmful on its own. Sara seemed to be the most interested in the fact that he could see it, so maybe she herself couldn’t?
Looking at his grazed arm, still holding it firmly with the other hand, he wondered what made him call out to them. He’s been around only for less than an hour, at least when conscious. No matter how bad the town looks, you’d just take any road leading out and eventually reach somewhere else. Even if people out there won’t speak English, interpersonal communication isn’t limited to words, he’d probably be fine. So why these two? And what the hell was he hit with? It obviously has been some kind of a projectile, but he never saw Sara hold any weapon. Did she really just throw something? The wound looked awfully nasty compared to what the throwing motion looked like, as if he got grazed by a large blade or a big block of concrete instead.
Well, if they have ogres around here, they can have invisible balls of something too, why not?
The heat of the discussion between the two women that Daniel did not want or dare to interrupt was finally dying. Reaching a conclusion, they both approached him again. Sara did the talking, but her tone was much more neutral now; she seemed pacified enough.
“My friend thinks it’s fine for you to come with us and I’m no longer going to object. I do have to ask though – why would you want to?”
Good question, thought Daniel.
“I’ve already said it. I’m lost and apparently I don’t know nearly enough about what’s going on here. Going with someone who has a better understanding of basic things would be better than wandering alone.”
“Why did you not defend yourself when I attacked? Do you have a death wish?”
“I have no idea what you did,” Daniel answered frankly. He was sure dodging out of the way was already a proper defense, but there might have been something more to it he didn’t know about.
“Are you a hybrid?” she continued her interrogation.
“What do you mean?” he asked, then cursed himself for doing that. Returning question with a question of his own seemed to irritate Sara before. She sighed heavily as if to confirm his suspicions.
This continued for a while. Sara inquired about more and more things Daniel had no idea about. Aura, portal beacon, service assignment, other pioneers, none of that really held any special meaning to him. Sure, he understood the words, but he was certain there was more behind them than he could infer from his own common sense.
“You,” Ana, bored with the exchange leading nowhere, interrupted suddenly, drawing the attention of both of them to her. “All… no know?” she asked Daniel, trying to awkwardly piece a sentence together.
He wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that. Did she ask if he knew nothing? That would make the most sense given the current situation, at least. He shook his head in response.
“Head… bad?” she continued, tapping the side of her head with her hand to complement her choice of words. Sara gave her a disapproving look, but didn’t say more.
Daniel considered that for a second, then smiled apologetically. “It might as well be true, I think. It really feels like I hit my head too hard.”
“Widzisz?” Ana smirked towards her companion. “Wystarczy zapytać wprost.”
“Fine, fine!” Sara said waving her hand in a dismissing manner, then she turned to Daniel again, folding her arms. “You hit your head or maybe someone else did it for you and now you don’t remember anything. I’ll go along with this farce, but you will help us in return.”
“Help? How?”
“With your eyes. You will tell me what you see and how you see it, that purple fog of yours. And if it turns out you’re lying, I’ll make a mincemeat out of you. Try to attack us and we will answer tenfold.” she almost hissed the last sentence.
“Fair enough,” Daniel blurted out, put off by the threat. It looked like things were going fine for a second, but maybe he wasn’t doing that great after all.
“We’ll stick around for a bit longer, I want to check the portal before we leave. After that we’ll hang around nearby villages for a few days, that’s where you’ll help. Done with that, we’ll leave for Wittermer. Is this fine?”
“Sure,” he answered right away. Her plan certainly sounded better than having no plan at all.
As they shook hands, Sara gave him a smile lacking friendliness or sincerity but full of confidence.