image [https://imgur.com/MCQ1Ei4.jpg]
Four red streaks of light ripped across the twilight sky, as if it were the will of an unhallowed knife to divide it into four cardinal sections. Wine coloured veins splintered out of the rips in the fabric of reality, spreading further across the expanse and crashing down to the surface of the ocean water.
Where the blood red veins landed spread a black tar, the very same that spawned demons. In fact, a fishy variety of dark spawn began populating the ocean.
The demonic sea creatures circled around our boat. Fins like a shark just barely peeked out from the water. “It looks like Belphegor's control is getting stronger,” I commented, standing at the edge of the boat and brushing my hand nervously on the railing.
“No kidding.” Indena poked at my back. “At least we don’t need to swim. How are your wings doing?”
As I materialized my wings, they hurt a lot. I took on way too much shrapnel protecting the humans. And seeing as that was the most vulnerable part of me, it was miserable. But at this point, I wasn’t expecting anything to pull its punches. I would have gladly taken that damage all over again, especially seeing as my friends were saved by my actions.
Humanity needed a guardian angel, and if that was me, then I knew I'd have to be ready for anything. I only prayed God would spare me from worse.
“I hate to ask, but do you mind giving me a little first aid?” I requested of Indena, having trouble preening the very back of my wings.
“Yeah, yeah.” Indena started sifting through my feathers, using a pair of tweezers to pull out splinters of metal and lead.
“Ouchy!” I yelped out. “Ouch! Yeep!”
Those noises naturally cooed out with every pull. It didn’t hurt as much as the last time with that arrow. Not that comparing them was a particular fun contest.
“Stay still.” She put a tiny hand on my shoulder to hold me steady. “You don't want me to mess this up.”
The longer it went on, the more unbearable this felt until finally she claimed it was over. Believing her was difficult, as my wings still felt very sore. Hopefully not sore enough to keep me from flying.
*Creak!* went the helm door, and out came Marek holding a rolled up piece of parchment paper.
“Am I interrupting something?” he asked.
“Yeah, Christmas,” Indena joked.
He shared a disapproving frown with her.
“Do you have any good news, Marek?” I asked, trying to keep them focused.
“Well, I can't call it good news…”
He unrolled the parchment on a barrel and revealed that he had been looking over a map; An animated map at that. All kinds of unique symbols and pictures were dancing across the water, which was full of moving waves itself. Clouds on the map mirrored those in real life, which I confirmed by simply looking up.
“So cool!” I called out. “What's up with this though?”
Marek’s finger came down and landed at the center of the map, which happened to be a spot where an island was. Next to the island were Nazalian words that were bobbing along with the map's ocean tide.
“Na Inanoa to yuna…” I read out loud.
“The Island of Dreams,” Marek translated. “I assume that this is where the demon lord is, no?”
Tons of other islands were scattered around, but none of them seemed more perfect of a place for a dream demon to set up shop. Not only that, but those red rips in the sky were coming from that direction too, meaning it was definitely going to be our destination.
I marked a waypoint over the island, which gave me the readout that it was just under 20 kilometers away. That wasn’t very far at all on sea.
“Are we going that way?” Marek asked, a hint of dread in his tone.
“We're the heroes,” I replied. “We always go ‘that way.’”
As if on cue, a bolt of red lightning shot across the horizon, further giving us a terrible omen to contemplate over.
“That's what I thought…” Marek sighed.
He might not have been excited, but we all knew what we needed to do. Soon enough we'd be on the shores of Belphegor's island fortress, and then we'd finally be able to confront him and get things back to normal.
~☆☆☆~
“How are the repairs coming?” I shouted below deck to Marek.
“Terrible,” he replied, followed by a *Clank!* sound. “Oh, never mind… It’s even worse than that.”
He was trying to fix up the generator so the boat could take flight again. These waters were getting rough, and those demon fish looked very hungry. It felt like it was only a matter of time before they realized those sharp teeth could tear apart our boat.
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“You sure you don’t want my help?” I asked.
“No no…” he called back. “I have experience working on boats. Let me take care of this…”
*PWOOOF!* *KEEEK!*
-...-
Something about that sound didn’t give me much confidence in his skill.
“Alright… Come down here…” he submitted.
The mana generator he was trying to fix was really really old, we’re talking a technological stone age artifact here. But it had a similar design to the one back in the Urnan valley I activated before. I placed my hands on the surface of the rusty machine and diagnosed several problems with it. For starters, it was old and needed to be replaced. Lucky for us, most of the other problems were temporarily fixable with some elbow grease and duct tape. Some minor repairs alone increased the efficiency drastically, but that wasn’t saying much when it wasn’t even working right to begin with.
Those pirates must not have taken very good care of their equipment.
“Is there anything else we need to fix?” I asked.
“We took a lot of damage from the battle, but I’ll keep making minor repairs here and there.”
He’d been pretty busy fixing things up. I had to give him credit, he was an engineering type for sure.
“Guys!” Indena came running down the stairs to the generator room. “You have to see this!”
She was holding the animated map and placed it on the ground, pointing to something snaking across it very quickly.
“What is that?” I asked.
“I think it’s a dragon.” She pointed back up to the deck. “It’s passing by us now!”
We all ran back outside, watching what appeared to be an eastern style dragon slithering through the sky, heading right for Dream Island. The impressive magical beast left a rainbow like contrail behind him, which caused the twilight sky to distort ever so slightly with sparkles.
“Hey!” we all shouted and waved to it, but we failed to get its attention.
“Are we sure that thing’s friendly?” Indena asked.
“No idea,” I shrugged. “But it doesn’t look like it’s trying to kill us, like the one from your dream was.”
Reminding her of that irked her quite a bit. “Don’t remind me.”
None of us knew for sure what that dragon might do if he saw us, but we needed to take to the sky soon, or these waters would be unbearable for us to cross along. Both the sea and its now demonic dwellers were rejecting us.
Marek took to the helm again, getting us some speed before pushing forward on the altitude lever. With the repairs done to the generator, along with other parts of the ship, mana power was able to flow through it once more. Like before, a radiant green and blue energy spread across the ship and pulled up enough water to allow the boat to reach new heights. The boat surfed along this magical wave and closed distance on the dragon.
“We’re flying again!” I announced “Full speed to the dragon!”
Marek had some reservations about going full speed, since our boat didn’t have a lot of power to work with. The dragon however was far faster, so keeping up required a bit of strain on the generator.
When we were in more proper shouting distance now, all of us began yelling as loud as we could to get its attention. When that failed, I made a finger gun and shot off some stardust flares into the air, which flew right by the dragon's face. It couldn't ignore that.
Instead of the dragon turning back to see us, something on its back began to shift around. It looked like a blanket, or some sort of cape.
From under the blanket, a figure clad in heavy metal armour rose up and turned to wave at us. He had to have been a knight.
“Yo ho!” I shouted.
“Yo ho!” Indena followed.
“Yo ho!” Marek joined in.
Whoever that knight was, he was shouting something back at us that we couldn’t hear.
“Shrimp, why don’t you fly over there and find out what he’s saying?”
Her calling me shrimp right now seemed very ironic, since she was the smallest one here at the moment.
“Yeah, I’ll head over.”
My wings spawned and I leapt off the boat, flying fast toward the knight on the dragons back. When I landed, I was surprised at how stable standing on this mythical creature was.
“Excuse me…” I spoke up to the knight, “Are you heading to Dream Island too?”
“Why yes we are, Young Mistress.”
I know that voice!
The knight raised up the visor of his helmet and revealed Uncle's smiling face. I ran forward and gave him a big hug, almost causing him to topple over from my new found size and strength.
“All grown up, but still the same girl I remember.” Uncle accepted my embrace. It was so good to see him again, especially with all the crazy dreams and memories we’d gone through. Now I felt even better about our odds against the demon lord.
He had a leather bag at his side, and I only noticed it because it started to wiggle about on its own. Then out came the head of a little purple cat.
“I’m here too, in case you were worried,” said Melpomene, forcing as much of a smile as a cat's face could.
Not that I wasn’t happy to see her too, but Uncle took priority here, especially since I didn’t question his loyalty to my cause. But just for good measure, I gave Mella a nice scratch behind her ears.
“That’s quite the vessel you’ve commandeered,” Uncle said, noticing the boat flying up next to the dragon.
“I mean, it’s not nearly as cool as a dragon.” I gave a rub to the dragon's scales. “How did you get a hold of this guy?”
The dragon let out a roar, then looked back at me with sad eyes, as if I’d offended him for not recognizing who he was. What was even more odd was that I almost understood what he said.
“Wait…Who is this?”
“I thought you’d recognize your own pet snake, Young Mistress.”
Oh… My… God…
“Samael, is that you?!”
Upon hearing his name, my former snake, now pet dragon apparently, made a very positive sounding groan. Such a change completely stupefied me, but in the absolute best possible way!
“Wow!” I cheered. “Why is he a dragon?”
“Why are you older?” Mella retorted. “This dream has altered our realities, making us appear different from how we once were.”
I couldn't say she answered my question completely. but Uncle had some further wisdom to offer. “My best guess is that these versions of ourselves are based on our subconscious perceptions.”
He might have been right. With all the weirdness here, anything was possible. I didn’t think it was right to mention that to Indena though, since she might have not liked hearing that she was mentally a toddler.
But now that most of our group was back together, our strength more than doubled. Soon we’d be at Dream Island for our final confrontation with the demon lord, Belphegor.
So hang in there, Yamin. We're coming to save you and your home!
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