Picking the man up, I start to freak out, “Crap I need money if I am going to feed him. Maybe he has some on him?”
Checking his body, I see the man has a bag of coins on him, “This should be good enough.” Picking up Anto as well, I run into the streets looking for food vendors, seeing one I run over to it at full speed. Dropping the bag of coins in front of the vendor I say, “Give me as much as this can buy, throw in some water as well.”
Frightened, the woman says, “Ok!” After that, she hands me heaps of food.
Sitting down with the man I feed him, as much as he can handle.
Munching away beside me, Anto says, “This is delicious!”
That brat has forgotten all the trouble he just caused me; I will have to make up some punishment for him later.
After a little while the man who looked shrivelled up has now returned to looking like a normal human being. He looks to be around the same age as Cyrus, his skin is like Iancu’s just a lot lighter, his hair is gold with some black in it, and he has piercings throughout his left ear.
Poking at his face I say, “You're just as beautiful as Cyrus.”
Wait a second, two hair colours! Immediately I open his closed eyes and see that his eye colour is crimson, he also has heavy bags under both of them. Sighing I say, “Looks like I am not cursed.”
“Good morning!”
Looking down at the head of the man on my lap, I see he is awake. “Good morning.”
Surprised the man says, “You’re no fun, I thought you would get shocked and freak out.”
“I was waiting for you to get up, idiot.”
Sitting up beside me the man says, “You must have saved me, thank you for that.”
“It was no problem, but sorry I had to spend your money to get food.”
“No problem, there is no better use of money than keeping yourself alive.”
“That’s all well and good but I have a question; from the amount of food we were able to get with your money I would say you are quite affluent, so how did you end up in this shape?”
“Well you see, this morning I woke up to go for a walk, and then I quickly collapsed from exhaustion. You see the last time I slept was, during the Rasartine war I believe.”
“Your jokes aren’t funny, that happened five years ago.” Getting up I say, “Well since you are doing well I will head off, take care and make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
Picking up Anto I walk away, but behind me, the man says, “Let's just hope I don’t end up like the orphans of ciel zéro.”
Stopping in my tracks, I say, “Did you say ciel zéro?” Turning around I grab the man’s hand I say, “You mean the orphans who were graciously blessed with Lady Fléau glorious presence, from the masterpiece book Eternity of Hope?”
With his face lighting up he says, “Who else would I be talking about except our gorgeous queen.”
Φ Holding hands Orb and the man beside him start to freak out, so I ask, “What are you two talking about?”
“We are only talking about the main character of the greatest book put into fiction, Lady Fléau from Eternity of Hope!”
“She is the greatest woman to ever exist!”
Turning to me, Orb says, “Eternity of hope stars the daughter of the most affluent Duke in the kingdom of Marxxs. It is the story of how she uses her brains and beauty to get all the things she wants.”
“Which she rightfully deserves!”
Confused, I ask, “What is so great about this lady?”
“There are too many things to name, but a good start would be when her father wanted to spend money on orphans instead of her. She used her smarts to start a mini-war in the area and all of those stupid orphans died, and when her father confronted her about it, she just put on her most innocent smile and was able to cleverly dodge all blame.”
The man beside Orb says, “There was also the time when the man she most recently wanted to have got engaged. So, she drugged his fiancé during a ball and completely ruined her social standing, so their families could no longer get married.”
“You really know your stuff.”
“So, do you, I never thought I would meet someone with such clarity.”
“Me too, I use to read the book all the time when Capti was busy.”
Stolen story; please report.
“I used to spend all my time reading about the story of our perfect protagonist. Our villainess really is the greatest, her fake smile, her ruthless actions, her stockings, and her hungry eyes.”
“Such a creature deserves everything in the world, and she would have got it if only that bitch didn’t exist.”
Suddenly the air around the both of them changes as, Orb says, “She was so close to manipulating the crown prince to become her husband, but then that mistake of existence, the false protagonist Angelica had to appear.”
“Using her stupid genuine smile and her demonic pure innocence, she convinced all the men in the story including the crown prince to turn against our goddess, and it ended up with Lady Fléau execution.”
“Then that devil had the gall to not only cry at Fléau execution but to put off her marriage to the prince right after. Fléau worked hard to get to where she is, and that idiot who couldn’t even count to a million just lucked out and got what Lady Fléau always wanted. I swear, I will never forgive her.”
“Doesn’t Fléau sound like the villain?”
“You lack clarity Anto. The author might say she is the antagonist, but all true readers know she is the protagonist.”
Grabbing Orb's shoulder the man beside him cries and says, “I never thought I would ever meet another human being with such insight, to think you would understand the truth of the story.”
Turning and giving him a hug Orb says, “You must be my long-lost brother.”
“I feel the same way!”
Am I the weird one?
Φ As I continue to chat to my new brother about my goddess I see a little girl, younger than Anto run into his leg.
Looking down, he says, “Raqiue, what's wrong with you?”
With tears in her eyes, she says, “Papa went out for his hourly drink, but he hasn’t come back yet I am worried.”
“Doesn’t Yamal usually drink at the edge of the city?”
Hearing this I freeze up, wasn’t the man I stole clothes from at the city's edge?
Looking at me, the little girl says, “Your clothes look familiar, have we met before?”
With a deadpan face, I say, “There is no chance we have ever met.”
My brother says, “It is probably just a consequence Raqiue. But anyway, I have a good idea where he may be, so I will go look for him.”
“Thank you!”
As I let out a sigh of relief, I start to think about my next few steps. Now that their looking for the people we robbed we have to hurry up before we are found out.
Suddenly I am picked up and placed on the shoulder of my brother, “What are you doing?”
“No way am I going to part with my blood brother already.”
This is bad, I need to get back to work and far away from all of this. Jumping on my shoulders, Anto says, “Giddy up my precious steed!”
Anto, have you forgotten what we are here for! Looking down I say, “Are you sure about this, I think me and Anto here will just be dead weight.”
Tilting his head up at me the man says, “Doesn’t this remind you of when Lady Fléau was executed? Not, a single person rushed to her side when she needed it most. When I read that all I could do was cry and promise to always head to the side of the innocent, don’t you feel the same?”
With tears trickling down my face I say, “I do!”
“Now then let's head off.” With me on his shoulder and with Anto on mine we run off at full speed.
Moving through the crowd of people I notice how quick this man is and more astonishingly how precise his movements are, even with me and Anto on top of him his balance hasn’t slipped even a little bit and he is easily making his way through the crowd.
As we keep running the man says, “Over there is our oldest library alongside Cordum it is probably the oldest library in history.”
“And to our left are the grand churches which have stood for thousands of years.”
Suddenly stopping I look down and ask, “Is something the problem?”
“It seems the rabbits have come to town.”
In front of me, I see a huge wave of rabbits jumping through the town and they all short of look similar to the one which saved us, except they lack the purple tattoos it had and have two horns on their heads.
As they hop around, I see them take objects from people, but the people in question look rather happy and some of them are even wishing thanks. “What’s going on?”
“Those are the wonderbeast Almiraj, from the draconic continent. A long time ago one of them took refuge hear and started to procreate, so its children all come through every now and then.”
As the rabbits take stuff from us, he says, “The rabbits protect us from the other animals and wonderbeasts attacking us and in return, they take some of our objects, an equivalent exchange.”
“What do they even do with them?”
“Apparently they built this shrine in the desert and they pray to it all the time.”
“I wouldn’t want my stuff used in whatever satanic ritual they are cooking up!”
Jumping towards us one of the rabbits knocks Anto off of me and then starts to take his food.
“That’s mine!” Anto says as he tries to take it back.
But then the rabbit kicks him in the stomach launching him far away, then it hops off with his food.
Running over to Anto, my brother says, “Are you ok!”
With tears and snot running down his face Anto says, “They stole my stuff again!”
Getting off the man’s shoulders I pick Anto up, comforting him I say, “It will be all right, there is no way you will be robbed by a rabbit a third time.”
“If you're still hungry Anto I know a place with some delicious food close by.”
With all his sadness fading Anto says, “Really!”
“All you have to do is follow me.”
After a little bit of walking, we eventually end up at where my brother told us about. “Here you go Anto.”
Looking at what he gave Anto with wonder I say, “What is this!”
“It is a special fried dish made from the wonderbeast Tahajalmud. The golden shell grinded up is used to add a special flavour to the rice, while the Tahajalmud meat is cooked in a particular way to bring out all its flavour.”
“Aren’t wonderbeasts really toxic!”
“Usually, but if you have a chef skilled enough to cook them properly it isn’t an issue at all. Nasir family over here has been cooking wonderbeasts so long that if they were a country they would be older than all the others on Terrafide.”
Nasir says, “My family has perfected countless dishes using Wonderbeasts and other animals. Here is some Jackal jerky.”
Taking the jerky, I bite into it then I feel flavour fill my mouth, “What the hell is this it is so tasty. But it is also short of spicy, that can’t be I am not feeling any pain.”
“That is a special meat made from the Anathematized Jackal horn.”
“The lighting wonderbeast?”
“The lighting produced from the horn activates your taste receptors making you able to taste all the flavours of the food more, and it can even invoke the feeling of spiciness on your tongue without causing pain.”
My brother says, “On that note, the Jackal isn’t actually a wonderbeast.”
“Ehh, but it shoots lighting?”
“The animals around here are slightly cursed, so they can do weird stuff such as that.”
“Wait, should I be eating something with a curse on it?”
“It will be alright, just eat up.”
Taking another bite out of the jerky, I scream, “DELICIOUS!”