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Fiar’s broken leg sat limply on the ground once the onslaught began. He started whaling on Lio endlessly, yelling as each punch made contact with his foe.

Lio was pinned by Fiar’s weight, his only option being to bring his forearms to protect his face from the powerful punches coming his way. He’d already taken quite a few punches to the face at that point.

My feet were stuck to the floor like they were glued. Having two of my friends brawl it out was the last thing I expected of this trip, so I was shocked. I couldn’t move, only watched as Fiar pummel Lio to the ground. He was crippled, but his fists were still more than enough to deal damage.

My master just laid there and took the punches. His forearms grew red from all the hits they had taken, and Fiar didn’t look like he was stopping. He gritted his teeth and hissed like a viper with every breath he took.

Lio was bigger than him, yet he didn’t fight back. He was always the type to hate combat, dreading the day we’d head into dungeons. That’s what broke my heart. He never bothered fighting back, he didn’t want to hurt Fiar. He took the pain for him.

Still, I couldn’t just let Fiar beat him to a pulp. What kind of student would I be if I let my teacher get beaten up? I was sure he’d do the same if I was in his position.

“Fiar, stop! Please!” I yelled at him, but it was futile. My words went into his ears but came cleanly out the other side. He continued to batter on Lio’s face with a scowl. His teeth showed like a ravenous beast threatening its opponent. He was a beast right now indeed.

“Fiar!” My legs still felt heavy, but I managed to inch them closer to him at a turtle pace. He didn’t listen.

Instead, he snatched his teacup that sat on the small table beside them, splashed the piping hot liquid on Lio’s face, then went in to slam the cup right on Lio’s skull.

This wasn’t good, he was resorting to lethal tactics. No way could I stand by any longer. My legs grew lighter out of fear and sheer adrenaline, and I rushed Fiar.

My hands wrapped around his shoulders with the hope that my strength would be enough to throw him off of Lio. But sadly it wasn’t. Fiar ripped my hands off of him then turned around with malicious insanity in his eyes. This wasn’t the Fiar I knew anymore.

I didn’t have time to react. He crawled off of Lio and threw a punch that pierced through the air and struck me in the face.

It stung. The punch was so powerful that the force knocked me over to my ass. That wasn’t the worst of it. Fiar hopped on top of me now, throwing punches just as powerful as the one before. Every hit made me feel like my cheekbone would shatter. The attacks didn’t slow nor weaken, each had the exact same potency.

I couldn’t break free. He was bigger and heavier than me, and the punches prevented me from casting spells to stop him. I was too busy trying to defend myself that I didn’t even have the chance to do so. That realization was what made me finally digest the severity of this situation. I was helpless.

What stared back at me wasn’t my friend. It was a monster, one driven by a singular purpose. Once that purpose was cut from him, he was no longer tamed. Lio and I calling out the absence of his wife struck a chord in his heart that we couldn’t even imagine exploring.

Fiar cocked back his fist again in preparation for another powerful volley of attacks thrown my way. I didn’t know what to do. I just held up my hands and shielded my face from the impending assault.

But it never occurred. His fists stopped dead in their tracks mid flight. Right behind him was the man I’d fondly called my teacher. He had an outstretched hand towards Fiar.

“Stasis!” he yelled. His eyebrows furrowed and his teeth bit into his bottom lip ferociously. His face was all beaten and bruised, but he looked more like a battle worn veteran that was just warming up.

The Stasis froze Fiar, but he immediately fired back, “Disperse!”

Lio didn’t miss a beat with his counter, “Flux!”

Fiar that instant was dragged across the room towards Lio by some magical force. He was unable to walk, so the Flux spell instead dragged his entire body at the command of the caster.

“Stasis!” Fiar screamed, but not towards Lio. It was to himself. He had casted Stasis on himself, forcing Flux to relent control over the victim. I’d never seen Displacement Magic used like this before.

Lio clicked his tongue. Displacement magic was not his specialty, that advantage went to Fiar. But there was one advantage Lio had over him…

“Kreftiya!” He fired off a spell that left me speechless. It was a high level Displacement Spell. That advantage Lio had was experience. Much more battle experience with magic.

Fiar’s movement slowed to an unimaginable extreme. Even his mouth opened up so much slower that it would take ages for him to get words out to counter the spell. That was the power of Kreftiya. It greatly increased the strength of gravity on a single target, making it that much harder for them to move anything. Even if you want to speak, you’d have to fight gravity just to get your mouth open. The only way to counter this was through physical injury, since the spell wears off if any physical alterations are made to the body, such as wounds. I heard there were people who would intentionally fall on their blades to counter this powerful spell.

I stood to my feet and witnessed Fiar desperately try to sit up and put his fist up to punch himself. He knew how to counter it. It wasn’t worth the effort, since Lio did it for him.

He had the face of a killer when he walked up to Fiar and punched him square in the face. The spell wore off, but he didn’t care. Lio punched him in the gut, and Fiar sprawled on the floor gasping. As he attempted to get himself to his knees, Lio kicked him in the face, then to the stomach again.

Fiar turned over and began gagging. Saliva shot out of his mouth, and he desperately gasped for air. Lio was starting to frighten even myself. He ruthlessly grabbed Fiar by the collar, lifted him slightly, then threw him against the wall. A big thud! was heard the second his head collided with the wooden wall. It sounded like a rock was thrown at it. Fiar’s body slid down the wall, and he collapsed to the ground. I walked closer to get a better look at him, and he was bruised all over, beginning to bleed from his cheeks. He didn’t have the strength to lift his head anymore, he just laid flat on the floor.

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“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Lio barked. He stood over Fiar and growled. “I thought we were your friends! Why did you attack us?”

Fiar didn’t say anything but the uttering of pain. He shifted his body on the floor, as if responding to Lio’s anger with a scared twitch.

“It’s Charliette’s birthday, and you assault her? What is wrong with your head?” he continued.

I put my hand to my cheek, and it stung. My face felt bruised all over and my torso still felt the aftershock of all the pressure Fiar applied to it by sitting on me. I desperately wanted an answer too. Why? Why was he like this all of a sudden? We fought alongside each other on many occasions, why would he throw that all away in mere moments?

Then it hit me. His wife…

I inched closer to Fiar, who was now coughing and wheezing. I needed answers, more than anything else. There was clearly something that triggered this, and only getting to the bottom of this will give us our comrade back. Our friend…

“Fiar.” I stared down at him, but he averted his gaze. The short glimpse I had of his eyes showed me that the fire, the passion, still burnt bright in his irises. There was something. “What happened to your wife? Please tell me.”

He was so confounded that his head jerked. I had struck another chord in his heart. Fiar was still mute, but he pointed to the direction of his bedroom door, right towards its threshold. His wife had apparently moved quite a bit.

He genuinely believed his wife was here with us in the flesh. He was delirious. No other women were here, or we’d otherwise notice them by now.

An overwhelming sense of pity overcame me. Fiar was genuinely ill, and we’d never noticed it until now. All this time, he’d been running around with false realities in his head. At the Dungeon of the Dead, he’d cried so much while grasping that ring on his finger, wailing at the thought of being separated from his wife through death. Little did I know that they were separated all this time.

The key to fixing this was bringing his wife to him. Only then will reality kick in, I hoped. The issue was we didn’t know what happened to her. We had to find that out too.

Lio kept watch over Fiar like a hawk, while I did some snooping around in the Doniz home. I walked cautiously down the hallway and came across their bedroom. I peeked inside, and it looked terrible.

Clothes were scattered all over the place. The entire floor was buried in nasty tunics, and some even sat on the bed he slept in. The walls were of dark brown wood, unlike the rest of the building, and a mahogany dresser stood across the bed at the other side of the room.

The dresser was different in a way that I couldn’t pin down. Ah, that was right. The dresser was the only thing without a speck of blemishes, it was in pristine condition. It seemed like he polished it daily. What sat on the dresser was a dozen or small framed paintings of someone that I felt I knew quite well just from exposure alone. It was that same girl with beautiful silky light brown hair that reached to her lower back. Her gorgeous emerald eyes made me do a double take, just staring right into them. It was that same young woman in all the other paintings that were scattered throughout Fiar’s house.

I finally realized that this girl was Fiar’s wife. Why so many portrait paintings of her, though? It puzzled me.

I opened the drawers of the dresser, and all of them were emptied, except for one. At the very bottom drawer was a crumpled piece of paper. After smoothening it out, I plopped myself on Fiar’s bed. I sat down and read the contents of that paper.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Adventurer Quest Briefing

Quest Type: Search & Rescue

Summary: A party of adventurers had embarked inside the Beast Dungeon to recover a matur to bring to tamers in preparation for the Matur Hunt, but two members got separated from the group. Find them and escort them out of danger.

Target Descriptions:

* One blonde-haired male adventurer, athletic build, wearing thick dark brown leather armor and wielding a spear.

* One red-haired female adventurer, petite build, wearing white healer robe and wielding gold magic staff.

Payment: 1 Gold Soaran coin per participating Adventurer. 20 extra silver coins if targets found alive.

Issuing Party: Representatives of the Matur Hunt Organizers

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I read through the page, it looked like a record of a quest that the adventuring industry gives out to participating adventurers. That meant there would be a signature of those undertaking this quest.

I scanned further, looking down at the bottom of the page. Squished at the bottom were two names written in elegant cursive.

Fiar Doniz

Isla Doniz

My eyes were glued to those names. Fiar Doniz, and his wife. Isla Doniz had gone with him to the Beast Dungeon. The Beast Dungeon, known for its elaborate booby traps and fierce predators. It was a dangerous place, which made me wonder…

The date was written at the bottom right of the page, this quest occurred three years ago. I could feel the rough texture of the paper at that spot, as if it was wet but dried.

I had a hypothesis, but I needed to confirm it. It was clear that Fiar wanted to forget whatever was on the paper, which was why he crumpled it up, yet he couldn't toss it out. He kept it for some reason, which was emblematic by it being the sole item in an empty dresser. It was symbolic of something, his wife.

This was the last record of his wife, I assume. Why else would he keep it? If it didn’t have any sort of sentimental value, then it would have been gone long ago. I was sure of this.

I held the paper and made my way back to Lio. Fiar was still on the floor in defeat, while Lio himself looked cooled off. He just sat at the couch and stared off into nothingness.

I placed the paper on the table in front of Lio, and he raised an eyebrow. “What’s this?” He picked it up and began reading through it.

“It's a Quest Briefing Record. His wife’s name is on it.”

“Oh really?” He skimmed through it rather quickly and threw it back on the table. “If this is in Fiar’s possession, then I’m sure the city guard would have records of this quest too.” He gave me a concerned glare.

Lio brought up a good idea. We could ask those involved in recording transactions between the adventuring industry and independent entities, and that would be the city guard. They would surely have info on what went down that day, and what happened to Isla. They also record the deaths and births of citizens too, so we could be sure to confirm her fate.

Fiar wouldn’t tell us anything, so in order to save our friend, we have to go to the city guards to find answers about his wife. But one issue arose. A very large issue indeed.

Only those authorized by the Military Knights would be able to have access to archives of records in the past. So we had to talk to them first. It would be especially hard since we weren’t Isla’s relatives or anything.

Lio and I stared at one another, then at that piece of paper. We knew what our next destination was.

We had to confront the Military Knights, the fierce and powerful protectors of the Kori Soaro Kingdom.