Chapter 14.1 - Summoner

Name: Trey Bon

Level 5

Class: None

It had been two days since Trey and his escapee-followers had made their way out of Negaizer. The stairway out of the prison had led upwards, seemingly for miles, until they found themselves in a cave. The cave had then led out into another barren wasteland.

With Farthom to navigate, Trey was just along for the ride… but the group looked to him as the shotcaller. From what he had been told, the culn had domesticated some type of small drake that they used in their armies. Trey didn’t want to be spotted from the air, so he was constantly on the lookout and had their group keep near rocky crevices and places that had some sort of cover whenever they could. There was even one instance where they came upon two gigantic, gray dragons fighting one another in the sky - shooting bolts of lightning and fire at one another before disappearing over a nearby mountain.

According to Farthom, there was a very big difference between drakes and dragons. Drakes weren’t usually very intelligent and were smaller, weaker cousins of dragons. Meanwhile, dragons were very intelligent and vastly more powerful. Pointing out how big those two monstrous dragons had been, Fathom pointed out that no drake would ever reach that size.

For miles out in any direction, semi-flat wasteland could be seen with boulders littering the charred ground. Crevices were also frequently strewn about, snaking their long deep cracks randomly to create pits or ledges that occasionally made traveling difficult. Once in a while, giant holes were seen in clusters... but they didn’t seem to be caves. Trey wasn’t sure what they were, but to be on the safe side he and the others avoided them completely.

Eventually their traveling took a turn for the worse. In the not-so-far distance, a series of mountains stood climbing into the sky to point up toward the two red moons; and an active volcano stood amongst them to their right with lava gushing down the slopes while creating rivers of fire and molten rock. The air was thick with occasional clouds of black sand that battered the travelers as they made their way toward the mountains in front of them. Purple patches of small shrubs were seen every once in a while, but they were few and far between. Just looking around made Trey wonder how anything survived here at all. And that night for the very first time, as darkness descended, Trey saw thick rain clouds with lightning blazing violently in the distance… Unfortunately the storm clouds were directly in their path, and the bad weather was heading their way.

When it finally hit them, it was the most violent storm Trey had ever witnessed. The wind blew so hard that it nearly knocked some of the smaller travelers off their feet and the people had to cling to each other to keep them down. A black torrent of mixed rain and soot whipped, soaked and pummeled the travelers violently. Lightning struck close by, and then again soon after, and to top it all off it began to violently hail.

Amidst the berating storm and thunderclaps, Trey yelled back loudly and pointed to a cave entrance against an outcropping of rock. “LET’S MOVE INTO THE CAVE!”

“I CAN’T HEAR WHAT YOU’RE SAYING!” screamed Farthom as he tried to shield his tiny granddaughter Inis from the storm with her head buried against his chest. Trey motioned and pointed again and Farthom seemed to understand. It took them another five minutes to get there but eventually the entire group had made it inside a large opening in the mountain. Quite a few of them had minor injuries that they attended too and they had lost some of their food rations in the storm, but they divided some of it amongst themselves and did the best they could to get comfortable.

“Well, at least I got somewhat cleaned up…” Trey moaned and shook his hair about like a dog. It was starting to grow longer as he hadn’t had a hair cut in two months now and the wavy locks were just barely beginning to curl. He sat down next to Farthom and Inis, taking some strange yellow fruit that looked like a cross between an apple and a lemon. Biting into it, it was very sweet... and he savored the flavor before swallowing with a satisfied look on his face.

Inis said something to Farthom and glanced curiously Trey’s way.

“She wants to know if you like eating fruit or demons more!” asked Farthom with a laugh.

Trey turned to look down at Inis with a grin. “Tell her I like to eat little girls the most.”

Farthom chuckled and turned to tell Inis. Inis frowned and stuck her tongue out at both of the men who just laughed even harder. From across the room, Trey caught an attractive brunette looking his way. She was outfitted in a short-cut linen skirt and long tan legs sitting with some of her friends across the cave wall. When caught his glance, she blushed and looked to the floor sheepishly.

“She’s hot,” said Trey nodding her way. “What’s her name?”

Farthom shrugged and smiled slyly. “Why don’t you go ask?”

“Can’t speak her language.”

“Oh yeah.”

“That, and she probably thinks I’m a monster. I did some pretty disgusting things back there, eating those demons in front of y’all.” Trey chuckled and bit into his fruit again. “Maybe I should get you to teach me how to speak… whatever it is. What language do you all speak?”

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Farthom swallowed some of his food after chewing and stated: “The language they all speak is the Human tongue, which is why I was surprised you didn’t know it and thought you to be a demon at first.”

“Huh. Ok well why don’t you teach me. I’d be in your debt.” Trey exhaled an exaggerated sigh and stretched his arms out.

The old man scoffed. “I am in a life debt to you if you get us out of here Trey. You will never be in MY debt. But yes I can definitely teach you the language. Should we start now?”

Trey raised one eyebrow and bit into the fruit one last time before putting it down and swallowing again. “I really don’t know what this life debt business is about but we can talk about that later. Yes though, let’s start now. And thanks. I sincerely appreciate it.”

The time spent trying to undertake this learning of a new language was for the most part a flop. 3 hours later and Trey was seriously struggling. He hadn’t expected to learn it overnight, but he was getting almost nowhere.

“This language is difficult. This is why I cheated my way through Spanish class in highschool.” Trey stated with a snort and an irritated look on his face. The old man snickered and he patted his sleeping granddaughter’s head as she lay on his lap.

“What a bad pupil you are.”

“Oh shut up!” Trey laughed. “I’ll have you know I was one of the top students at my school! Even if I did cheat through one class!” He looked outside and it had grown dark, the storm was still going quite strong and it didn’t look like it would end anytime soon… not that they were going to travel in the middle of the night anyways. They had used flint and steel from one of the storage rooms they looted earlier to light a couple small fires with some of the shrubs they had collected along the way. It was quite cold, and most of the people had gathered around the fires or huddled against one another for warmth.

“Let’s take a break, I have to go take a leak.” Trey stood to his feet and took off his shirt. It was still damp from earlier and was only serving to make him colder. He threw the cloak down too and began walking to the back end of the first cave chamber where people had been relieving themselves. On his way he caught the brunette looking his way again, her eyes scanned his toned body and he winked with a soft smile as he passed. She smiled back and waved, causing him to grin even more widely as he continued forward to his destination.

Perhaps he still had it. Perhaps people didn’t care about his scar as much as he’d thought. But who was he kidding? It was hideous, that much was obvious. Maybe she’d overlook it though. Many of the girls back home overlooked it after realizing who he was. However, was that really how he wanted to go about things now? Using his position as this group's impromptu savior to hit on chicks wasn’t necessarily a thing his mother would have approved of.

Regardless, in his own personal experiences with women… they fell in love with what you were, not who you were. Perhaps that was cynical, but after all… one of the reasons Amanda had cheated on him was because he wasn’t ‘successful’ enough. It’d been a bogus reason, he’d had more than enough money, but he’d also partially attributed it to her manic episodes.

If only she’d known what he really did for a living. Then she’d have left him far earlier than she actually had.

His lips began to tremble as he remembered the last time he’d seen Amanda and wiped a tear away before it could fully form. Clearing his throat and blinking his eyes a couple times, he tried his best to calm down and instead think of the hot brunette he’d just passed by. If not anything else, it would serve as a good distraction.

“I wonder what her name is…” muttered Trey thoughtfully as he pulled down his pants and stood to relieve himself against a wall. Maybe she wouldn’t mind if he just went for it and sat down next to her. Or would that be creepy? Too forward? And what would he say? It’s not like he could speak her language yet. But maybe she’d think that’s sexy. Who knew, women were like aliens. Then he thought back to Rachel, the redheaded rebound he’d been seeing. She was probably back in Dallas, and he kind of missed her over the top compliments - yeah… But he didn’t really know her all that well anyways. She was really hot, but they’d just started seeing one another before he was sent to this damnable place.

He sighed loudly and began to wonder what his family was up to. He got a bit sad every time he thought of them. They were definitely freaking out by now, especially his mom… but his brothers would be too. He hoped his father missed him, but he really couldn’t be sure that was the case.

He just wished he’d lived up to his father’s expectations, that he’d made his dad proud before he’d left them all behind. Now that he was gone, his regrets were at high tide. Maybe, just maybe, if he’d been the person his father had wanted him to be…

‘Master, I do not mean to interrupt but I believe I heard something from deeper in the cave.’ Sithis pinged a location to Trey’s left, indicating a passageway that let further in and twisted downwards. It was a lot further back than any of the group had ventured thus far.

Trey calmed himself down and wiped the tears from his face. He sniffled once and exhaled. He looked down to his white -old ring, twisted it around his finger twice and looked back up to the passage. “I didn’t hear anything. Are you sure Sithis? It may just be the storm. It’s pretty loud out there.”

‘I would not have mentioned it if I wasn’t nearly certain of it. I think we need to investigate, it would not be wise to stay here if hostiles are nearby.’ Sithis pinged the location again in Trey’s vision. Then he pinged it repeatedly in quick succession after Trey was unresponsive.

“ALRIGHT, alright, chill out my dude,” Trey threw up his hands and grinned. He was already in a better mood. “No need to freak the fuck out, Jesus Christ!”

Sithis let out a deep guttural laugh and they began to move forward. Trey crouched into a sneaking position when they were a few feet into the passage, and soon a brilliant green glowing moss could be seen lining the walls, ceiling and floor of the passageway. Pools of crystal clear water littered the ground with stalactites and stalagmites jutting about into the rooms. Trey had passed quite a ways in, with four large rooms cleared and was about to turn back, when he heard a shriek. Next thing he knew, a large boom sounded from the next room over. The stagnant pools shook nearby with the force and drops of water sprinkled down onto Trey’s head from the ceiling. Deep guttural growls were heard and the sounds of a brawl reached Trey’s ears.

Trey unsheathed his claws, mask, and sword before his sleek body crept its way forward to peer into the next area.

“NO! NO! GO BACK! VOR TEREK DON MONITH!” a small, hairless, sleek, pitch black monkey the size of a house cat was screaming at the top of its lungs with a strange high-pitched voice as it shot out a firebolt and scathed the side of its opponent. Trey recognized some of the language as Ancient Demon, but was unable to decipher the rest.