Rays of light showered Reinhold as he set forth on his journey only occasionally blocked by the shade provided by trees around him. This wild forest was filled with chirping birds and swaying trees, making it hard to fathom that a mansion was built in the middle of such a dense forest.
The slow methodical movements kept repeating themselves as Reinhold limpidly traveled across the beaten path, the very same path he took with another person.
Reinhold reached out towards his pouch and pulled out a brooch, its fake gold frame started to have signs of fading clearly showing its age or poor craftsmanship. He tightly grabbed onto it as he kept on moving.
He practiced his words.
“Miss Howards, I’m sorry but I let your son die.”
“I’m sorry, I let you and Liam down.”
“There was nothing I could’ve done! Nothing!”
Some small mutated-looking woodland creatures gazed at him for a moment and went about their way.
He punched a tree right beside him, shaking it but ultimately only causing a few leaves to fall. Reinhold took a deep breath to recompose himself.
He kept moving forward.
“I can’t say these to her…”
He slowly moved as he kept getting lost in his thoughts.
“Because there was something that I could’ve done. That’s the scariest thing to me. There were so many opportunities to prevent this, but I didn’t do anything.”
His eyes stopped focusing on the road anymore, his body just going through the motions.
“Taking this job was the first one.”
His slow steps halted.
“Inviting Liam was the second.”
He crouched down and leaned beside a tree, resting for a while.
“Not letting him in was the third.”
His eyes looked up towards the skies and with nothing but the guilt eating away inside of him. Feeling unbelievably empty. He didn’t know how long he sat there but it was enough time to know how many people he let down.
A small snake slithered in front of him with a very distinct red sac under its gullet, Reinhold remembered this snake as it was notorious for its venom.
Reinhold’s cloudy eyes gazed at the small snake getting ready to pounce on him. At this moment when their gazes interlocked, Reinhold swiftly pulled out the knife from his pouch and grabbed the snake by its throat, avoiding the dangerous fangs on its mouth. With one swift motion, the snake was headless.
“I could’ve just let it kill me but… I don’t want to die… at least not like this.”
He pulled out the fangs from the snake and used a piece of leaf to cover them, making sure not to let its venom touch any open wound. The sac on the snake was useless, it was too toxic to deal with, not to mention he only had a knife on him right now. The tear ducts, however, were also toxic but much more bearable to handle than its venom sac. The tear ducts were the only antidote besides magic and alchemy that could be used to treat its own venom. Reinhold took out a bottle of pills and emptied them immediately gulping it down and then placing the tear ducts in them. These tear ducts were the result of one weird mutations of the many strange changes that occurred throughout the animal kingdom.
He got up and cleaned the sharp edge of his knife by rubbing it against the trunk of the tree beside him, creating a sizzling noise as the organic matter decomposed in real-time.
He stuffed his knife and the rolled-up fang in his pouch and continued forward.
The once bright sunlight now turned dim red, signifying the setting sun.
Reinhold finally brushed away one last branch in his way and saw the towering figure of Green City. Even though it was much smaller in scale compared to the greater cities beyond the horizon, it still had a kilometer high great wall surrounding its inhabitants.
The lively main roads towards Green City had numerous merchants, mercenaries, visitors, and other professions going in and out.
The setting sun, as if it was an alarm of sorts, had the whole city lit up with torches and candles filling the entire city with light.
He managed to get in front of the city gates when a few guards stopped him.
“Halt! State your business.”
“Relax, I’m a local, let me through.”
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“Your address and name.” The guard brought a mystical looking orb, a shining light shined within it as he waited for Reinhold to speak.
“Reinhold Wyres, I live beside the guild house, 4th Avenue Building No. 14.”
The guard read the logs and soon enough let Reinhold through.
Reinhold kept bumping into people, or rather people kept bumping into him, the very obvious crutch supporting him did not deter people from causing him trouble.
He didn’t mind as much as he was used to it but this current situation really troubled him. He felt a hand shift through his waist, and he immediately reacted.
“Stop! You thief!” Reinhold quickly shouted to attract everyone’s attention.
The robed thief had no choice but to immediately run away, immediately running out the vicinity before the guards could apprehend her.
“It’s just one thing after another.” Reinhold checked his pouch filled with noux and sighed in anger. If he had both his hands, he could’ve stopped that thief from getting a single noux. Granted if he really wanted to, stopping that thief at when he felt her touch was easy, the hard part was keeping all his noux hidden from prying eyes.
As he was nearly home, he saw a very normal-looking villager from a distance, her only distinguishing features being her wrinkly face and white hair. Normally one wouldn’t assume that there was anything wrong with her but in Reinhold’s eyes, he couldn’t bear to meet her right now.
She was talking to her friend, full of smiles.
“Humph! Just wait until little Liam comes home, I’ll treat you to something good!”
“Ooh? You mean the new restaurant that just opened?”
“Err. Maybe not that good.”
Continuous laughter echoed beside them with a very calm atmosphere. Reinhold’s heart ached in guilt.
His neighbor, Miss Howards, the person whose child he killed.
He hid behind an alley, letting her cross beside him. His heartbeat in trepidation but there was no danger involved, only the sad reality of what’s to come. He didn’t want to face her right now, if given the choice, he would’ve run away at this very moment but where could he go, home was the only place he could go to right now to soothe his soul.
After letting the old woman pass by, he grabbed his crutch and held himself up. Finally, tears fell down his face, the first time ever since he went through the entire ordeal. He stood there, only held up by his crutch.
He wiped away one round of tears, but another round came, and another round, and one more, until he realized he couldn’t stop the tears anymore. He stood there in silence as the tears poured down nonstop.
A mother-son duo leaving a forge saw him.
“Hey mommy, what’s that guy doing?”
“Ignore him, he probably gambled his life saving away. Listen Johnny, never be like them.”
“Yes, momma. I’ll never be like those people.” The boy had a triumphant expression on his face.
This scene jolted his consciousness awake as he just moved forward towards his home.
He arrived at the front door and saw droplets of water on the leaves of the plants in front of his home. Turning the doorknob, the expected dust didn’t appear as everything seemed to be cleaned out, very different to when he left his home days ago. He went upstairs and saw that his laundry had all been sorted out and placed into their proper cabinets.
Everything was cleaned and he wasn’t the person who did it, not to mention his lack of social life, which meant there was only one person who did.
“Miss Howards, you really… shouldn’t have…”
He sat at the foot of his bed and ruminated about the past few days. Too many things happened and far too many things to think about. His house was still unlit since he was afraid Hiss Howards would come knocking asking where her son was.
Despite the threat of a supposed holy war, in Reinhold’s eyes, meeting that old woman was the hardest thing he would have to face.
He dropped back and closed his eyes, far too many things to think about. The coins, Gerald, the camp, the holy war, the trials, the…
He finally had one restful night’s sleep. No dreams, no nightmares, no thoughts, just emptiness.
The rustlings of the outside slowly caused a young man to wake up. His belly rumbled as he got out of bed. He went downstairs and prepared a meal for himself. Having to use a crutch to move around made life much more unbearable to go through.
As troublesome as it seemed there was one part of his morning routine that has never failed to calm him down. A technique in brewing that his father personally taught him led him to explore the wonderous hobby of brewing coffee.
This one sip of bitter dark coffee let his heart calm down enough to use his wits. All the troubles which darkened his mind were put to rest and he rationally looked through his options.
He put the pouch on his waist down on the table to reconfirm his current assets. A sharp knife, a modern flashlight, a bottle of a sedative, a few more bottles of pills, roughly 2600 noux, and the bottle with the snake’s tear ducts.
Oddly enough, there was something missing…
His spoils were laid out in front of him, he touched a silver ringed noux coin and felt it within his hands. He took most of his coins and went to a special secluded area behind the bookshelf that his father frequently used to store his collection.
After inputting a passcode, he opened a safe and saw five golden-ringed noux coins, roughly fifty silver-ringed noux coins, and countless bronze-ringed noux coins. He mentally counted the total value in his safe fifty thousand plus five thousand plus roughly three thousand.
“Totals to roughly 58,000 noux. Adding on the 2,600 noux from this trip gives me 60,600 noux. I can afford the ticket, but I don’t think 600 noux is enough to let me travel to ship.”
Reinhold, a 22-year-old young man, saved so much money to run away from his life. If 1,000 noux was enough to let a family live on with small luxuries for a few months, then 60,000 noux was enough for Reinhold to live out his life in luxury in this small city.
Closing the safe, he went back to the table with 600 noux on hand, enough to live on for a while. This amount of money would let him recover just enough to keep working odd jobs. He couldn’t do anything risky anymore since his leg was unusable.
He may have been 22 years old but the amount of abuse and damage he did to his body was beyond anything a person his age should’ve gone through.
Reinhold closed his eyes.
“When will I ever be able to escape?”
He used his crutch to lean on as he stood up, glancing at the book his father put his whole life’s work into.
He brushed the cover with a somewhat heavy layer of dust on it.
“She even remembered how much I treasured these books.”
He read the cover, ‘Old Gods: Encyclopedia.’
He browsed the tattered book casually, he let the pages run until he instinctively stopped on a certain page.
“Goddess Uyioh, the goddess of dreams and nightmares. Note: A devilish goddess that tempts its believers into worship with promises of blissful dreams for all eternity. Although its believers do experience dreams that bring upon whatever the dreamer wishes, their body deforms and becomes a rampaging monster. These monsters can only be described as ‘Nightmares’ with their strange and mystical abilities relating to dreams. Under no circumstance should any person submit to her will.”
“Goddess Uyioh, let the troubles that lay before me be as ephemeral as the nightmares at bay…”