Standing up I start walking around the house and I notice a few things. Yamal’s room is rather clean for a sloppy fellow, and I can say the same thing about all the other rooms, they are all completely spotless and look just as if they had all been brought in.
In the house are books about proper child education, and healthcare for children, and on a rather tall shelve are a bunch of medical supplies, and a list titled Raqiue’s favourite foods. Then on a shelf above, that is another journal entitled my darling daughter.
Opening it I read countless notes from date to date about what Raqiue said or accomplished. This level of obsessive care is rather scary.
Walking through the kitchen I look around and see how messy the organisation of the foods are, doesn’t Yamal know that keeping your food clean is just as important as keeping your body clean?
I also find a loaf of sliced bread, but all the crusts are cut off, “What are you some kind of baby!?”
Next, I find a sheet of what I believe to be musical lyrics and I read them. “What the hell these are so childish, I guess even Raqiue’s genius brain can be dumb sometimes.” Taking another look at the lyrics I realize they are written by Yamal which causes me to laugh.
From there I walk over to the bookshelf, where I see just a single genre of books; adventure stories. “I guess Yamal must really love adventure.” Noticing one of the books, I say, “This isn’t an adventure story.”
The book I now hold in my hand is My Cotton Fangs. Turning the book around I say, “I knew this was familiar it was written by Capti.”
It is the story of how a sheep and a lion become best friends and then eventually lovers but as they continue to indulge in pleasure the lion lost itself in such pleasure and devoured the sheep alive. “This was one of my favourites.”
“You know thinking about it, Capti’s books really did change with time.” His early life ones were wild and unhinged, then when compared to his late-life ones they were calm and serene almost as if you were reading a biblical text.
I guess Capti really did change a lot throughout his life, and I guess Yamal could as well. Should he have died like that? Could he have been saved? Would he have been able to meet an end like Capti? I like to believe so but the evidence I have experienced so far can’t allow me to say that.
I want to believe what Ahmed is doing is wrong from the bottom of my heart, that Yamal could have changed his life around, but I don’t know, I just, don’t know.
And to let my selfishness devour someone’s happiness, no, their salvation, is something I can never bring myself to do.
-Break-
Φ Walking through the street I lower my head and say, “I am pathetic.”
Jollily walking in front of me, my sister says, “Don’t be down Cyrus, you only lost to that kid because he tricked you. If he played fair in the arm wrestling competition you would have walked away the victor.
“I-I-I can’t believe I was tricked.”
Rubbing my head, Pari says, “It is fine, everyone gets tricked, I am living proof of that.”
When my sister says this, my eyes transfix to the scars across her arms and I say, “S-S-S-Sorry sister.”
“Apology accepted, now it seems we have reached our destination.”
Looking around I say, “This is w-w-where I found you!”
“It seems your mental capacity has exceeded itself, Cyrus. You see I like to come up here from time to time to look over the kingdom, it is beautiful isn’t it.”
“Y-Yeah.”
“This country is so nice and fun, every day I spend here is utterly amazing.”
“Our home is much more a-a-amazing sister.”
“Cyrus.”
“Our small village is bigger than this entire country and has much more fancy decorations everywhere, and there are a bunch of pe-e-e-eople we know there, I am sure they are waiting f-f-f-f-or our return.”
“What are you saying, Cyrus?”
“Sister come home with me.”
“Cyrus you know dragons who have lost their horns aren’t allowed back, it is the highest sign of disrespect to the dragon god.”
“S-S-Sister, I am sure if we explain no one will be angry.”
“Don’t be a fool Cyrus, I know your head is full of air, but you should know that there are no exceptions.”
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“Then come with me sister, if we go with Orb, we will be ok I am sure he will take care of us.”
“Cyrus who even is this Orb person, and why do you trust him so much? For all we know he is just some slave buyer who is looking to find two dragons for himself, you have been living on Terrafide for a long time you should know this.”
“O-O-Orb isn’t like that.”
“Cyrus stop being a fool, how often does your judgement turn out to be correct? For gods shake you usually fail at most things so just listen to me.”
Running up to my sister, I grab both her arms and say, “Sister what is wrong?”
“Cyrus let go of me.”
“NO! Sister why have you been acting strange, e-e-e-ever since I saw you, I have seen you acting like a different person the way you walk is loose unlike how refined it was, the way you talk is so mean and heavy it is nothing like your soft and gentle words. I don’t know what this country is doing to you, but I don’t like it. I want my sister back, and this time I will be able to protect you!”
In my hands I feel my sister's body shake as she says, “Cyrus you’re really getting on my nerves.” Breaking my grip my sister throws me away and says, “I am sick and tired of hearing all your whining, I never want to see your face ever again.”
As she walks off I say, “Sister.”
Stopping she says, “I am not your sister anymore Cyrus, just leave me alone.”
-Break-
Φ I have completely lost track of how long we have been down here; the underground city that me and Anto have found is massive, for all the time we have been under here we have barely seen anything.
No matter which direction you look, or how high you look from, you will see it expand endlessly into the distance. It is overwhelming, “Saying this place was bigger than Elpida was an understatement.”
Turning a corner as me and Anto go deeper into this area, I see Anto who was running in front of me jump back in horror. Then turning the corner, I see a giant head, half of the head is dried up like it has been worn away but the sand, looking at it I notice a giant body attached to the head.
“Is this a wonderbeast?”
Jumping on my back, Anto says, “I think it is a sphinx, it is an extinct wonderbeast.”
Feeling Anto shaking, I say, “Does it scare you?”
“NO!” Anto says with a shy vigour.
Taking him from my back I hold him close to my front and I say, “Please don’t start acting coy with me, I don’t need another Orb.”
Freaking out in my arms, Anto says, “I am not acting like anything!”
Pushing Anto closer to my chest, I say, “If you behave you might get a reward.”
Hearing this he calms down immediately, which causes me to laugh a little, but moments later that laugh is quickly erased by shock.
In front of us, as we walk, we see skeletons. Some skeletons are small, some are large, some are so brittle that as we walk past they turn to dust, while some are bunched up together, the only thing they all share is the jewellery they have.
Seeing Antos's sombre face, I say, “Look at all the expensive jewellery, isn’t this where you take your fill?”
Looking away from the dead bodies, Anto pushes his face deep into my chest and says, “No one should feast on the flesh of the dead.”
Patting his head, I say, “I know Anto.”
Walking forward we see the skeletons of people and animals scattered everywhere, the number of corpses are countless. “There are more bones down here than there are people up there. This place must have once been a great empire, what the hell happened?”
In my arms Anto says, “A giant sandstorm hit the country, and most of it was buried underneath, well at least that is what I remember from story books.”
“Where did this sandstorm come from?”
“No idea, but one thing I do remember is that not even a day later the continent of Vicotria froze over and became Fimbulwinter. Many historians have tried to figure out this correlation, but most of the documents of that time were frozen over in Fimbulwinter.”
“The things on this continent are rather strange.”
“Atalanta, I have a question for you?”
“Ask away.”
Φ “Why are we even going down here?” As I say this Atalanta has a rather panicked look on her face, “I doubt many people even know this place exists, yet you were looking for this place, why is that?”
“Well how should I put it, I guess I got lucky.”
Using my legacy, I immediately try to stab Atalanta to invert her mind. “Anto what are you doing?”
“Speeding up the process.”
“Ok, Ok, I will tell you.”
Turning off my legacy, I say, “Go on.”
“You know sometimes you act like a different person.”
“That’s because my sister is asleep right now.”
“In my home country there is a book about this place, and in said book, it told the story of how one of its kings did research on legacies, but apparently he was very secretive about it and hid it all. So, I thought the most obvious place for it was down in the inner palace.”
“So, you decided to go look for it, and just so happened across this area.”
“Yes, absolutely, positively.”
I can tell she isn’t lying but I have messed with enough scum to know she isn’t telling me the whole truth. “Stabbing you is going to be faster.”
As I try to put my legacy toward Atalanta’s head, she dodges and says, “Over there!”
Immediately she runs over to the area she said. Then when she stops, I finally get a good look at where she has dropped us, and I see a giant door, with a strange symbol on it, it sort of looks like a clock gear.
Atalanta's face is incredibly stern, her light-hearted aura has vanished entirely. “Finally, I am here.”
Walking over to her, I say, “Well let’s hurry up and get in.”
“No Anto you should probably wait here; I doubt you would be unaffected.”
“What do you me-.” As Atalanta opens the door a little bit, I start to feel incredibly nauseous as if the entire world around me is spinning.
Running over to me, Atalanta says, “Anto!”
After I regain my mind I say, “What was that.” But looking at her face I see she is staring at something behind me.
Turning my head, I see a small old man with a cane. Walking over to us slowly, he says with a goofy expression, “I went to see my grandson early but to my surprise, I saw him knocked out in front of his room. Do either of you happen to know what happened to him?”
In unison, me and Atalanta say, “We have no idea what could have possibly happened to him,” With stone cold faces
Bowing he says, “Oh thank you for your time.” Turning around the old man walks away, but then with frightening speed, he lunges towards us without his cane.
Reacting to his movements Atalanta grabs me and barely dodges to the side. As she dodges, she takes out her bow and turns it into a sword and tries to hit him the moment she regains her balance.
But the old man parries the sword away with his left hand, and then with his right hand, he hits Atalanta right in the stomach, which sends us flying into a wall.
As our bodies fall from the wall into the ground, I start to cough off blood. I didn’t get hit but I felt a shockwave pass through me, my limbs are shaking I can barely move; this old man is strong.