“I still think leaving them alone was a bad idea.”
“It was definitely a bad idea,” Leopold said with a smile as he helped Lana climb over a fallen tree. She struggled to pull herself over as one of her hands was raised high maintaining a barrier of light illuminating their surroundings allowing them to walk forward. “But what choice do we have? We needed to stalk up on meat for the next few days and I was tired of carrying a torch. You’re a much better nightlight Lala!” Leopold said with a laugh, tussling Lana’s hair till her blond curls stuck out at every angle.
“Stop doing that! You know how hard it is to straighten my hair after you do that! And be serious, do you really think it’s a good idea to keep moving so soon, I mean the kid's hardly ready for it.”
“Look, Lala, Rick’s been getting more and more restless the longer we’ve been sitting here. And to be honest with you, I’m not the biggest fan of being stuck on the mountainside either. You said the kid's back was practically healed, so now you just need to focus on his leg!”
“I did not say he was practically healed; I said he was stable! And you and I both know his back wasn’t the problem. The skin may have been flayed but most of the muscle underneath was fine. His leg… I’ve never seen anything like it. It was cut so cleanly down to the bone. I’ve never seen a monster capable of that kind of damage. His whole leg needs to be completely reconstructed; he isn’t ready to move yet.”
“I know Lala, I know,” Leopold said his tone turning serious the gentle smile fading from his face “but we have no choice. The longer we stay here, the more likely it is we'll get swarmed. Three days is already pushing it, and Rick is just getting twitcher and twitcher. It took every bit of charm I had to convince him to wait till tomorrow.”
“You have no charm,” Lana said with a sigh “Alright fine, I'll let it go for now. But you get to tell Rick we're bringing the kid with us.”
Leopold let out a laugh as Lana pushed past him, before shooting a worried look back behind them up the mountain trail where their camp was set. In truth, he was also worried about leaving Rick alone with the kid. Rick struggled with meeting new people normally and he seemed to especially be struggling to accept the new kid’s presence the longer their journey was delayed. But, as worried as Leopold was for them he had to think of Lana first and his sister had been getting more and more haggard over tending to her patient.
Sleepless nights and unending hours of exhausting, high-level spell craft Leopold couldn’t begin to understand. Leopold hoped that this short break would help relax her, or at least distract her for a bit and give her mind a much-needed break. A grin returning to his face, Leopold turned back towards Lana with the determination to be as annoying a distraction as possible.
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When Jake next awoke from his magically induced sleep, neither Lana nor Leopold were by his side, or anywhere nearby that he could see. Instead, sitting across from him polishing something glinting in the light of a low burning fire was a new person Jake hadn’t met before. He was thin and wiry, wearing a black leather cloak that covered the rest of his frame. His face was gaunt and set in and he had heavy black bags under his eyes. His hair was long and black, with an oily sheen, and reached just below his ears before looking like it was wildly and randomly cut giving him the look of an insane person.
Seeing Jake start to stir, he glanced over before saying in a low, gruff voice,
“Lana lent out hunting. She told me to tell you to stay still, and not move. So, stay still, and don’t move.”
“Alright, got it. Thanks,” Jake said with a nod before adding “You must be Rick, right?”
Jake’s comment went ignored without so much as a grunt in response. Still, dying to get some answers to what he’d heard about yesterday he pressed on asking,
“So, yesterday Leopold mentioned the sky was stolen? How does that make any…” but he was interrupted by a sudden woosh followed by a cracking sound. Above his head, the knife Rick had been polishing had been thrown and embedded into the wall. Rick stood up and cracked his neck, before walking forward towards the stunned Jake.
“Look Kid, I don’t know who you’re trying to fool, if you have some grand plan to disrupt us or just think where idiots but let me make something clear. I don’t buy your ‘forgetful little stranger’ act for a second. I delivered the message I was asked to deliver out of respect for Lana, but if you keep pushing me just know I made no promises about your safety.”
Reaching Jake who was pressing himself into the ground now to get as far away from Rick as possible, Rick crouched down and bent over slowly before roughly pulling his knife out of the wall sending a sprinkling of brick dust falling onto Jake's head and chest.
“So stop talking to me, and just know, I’m watching you.” With that, Rick turned around and retreated to the fire away from Jake to begin polishing his knife again. Jake was left stunned, not expecting such a violent reaction to simply trying to ask a question. Not wanting to aggravate Rick any further, Jake simply lay back in the dirt, taking deep steady breaths till at last he felt like his heartbeat was returning to normal.
Jake wasn’t sure how much time passed like this but eventually Lana and Leopold returned. Leopold was dragging a large, boar-like creature behind him which was oozing black, tar-like blood across the ground behind him while also having a fox-like beast thrown up over his shoulder. The fox was also oozing what looked like black tar all over Leopold's armor, but he didn’t seem to mind. Lana was also carrying animals oozing black blood, carrying two rabbit-looking things in one hand each.
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When the two returned to camp, Rick jumped up and took the Rabbits from Lana before helping Leopold drag the boar the rest of the way to the campfire. Then he and Leopold sat down and began butchering the animals while Lana washed the black blood from her hands and made her way over to Jake. Propping him up and examining his bandaging she said,
“Good, it looks like your wounds are holding stable. Please hold still for a bit.”
Jake nodded, staying quiet for now as Lana worked and deciding he would bring up the questions he was burning to ask after she was finished. It got harder and harder to stop himself from bursting with questions the longer she worked through, the questions he was dying to ask were so distracting he barely noticed the soothing sensation envelope and numb him.
By the time Lana had finished her work, Leopold had stopped butchering, leaving Rick alone with the animals and saddling up next to Jake with a friendly wave.
“Heya kid, how are you feeling”
“I’m fine, what do you mean the sky was stolen?” Jake asked, the question exploding out of him in a hurried frenzy.
“Oh, that’s right, I forgot you brought that up yesterday,” Leopold began before being interrupted by Rick who, with a loud grunt, threw down the rabbit he had been butchering and announced, “I’m going hunting.”
Jake expected Leopold or Lana to object since they’d just come back from a sizable hunt, but no objection came. Just a friendly wave from Leopold and Rick slinked off out of sight into the dark.
“Don’t mind him, he hates this topic. He wasn’t any trouble, was he?”
“No,” Jake said shaking his head and deciding that starting problems amongst the group who’d saved him wasn’t the best idea “No problem at all.”
Still, despite his objections, Lana traced her fingers along the scar left in the rock by Rick’s knife before elbowing Leopold and saying an annoyed whisper that Jake could clearly make out,
“I told you it was a bad idea!”
“And I agreed!” Leopold said with a laugh, before looking down at Jake again with a more serious look in his eyes and asking “You really can’t remember anything about the day the sky was stolen?”
“No, I don’t know anything about it, honest.”
“Where to start, it was five or so years back we think. Clocks got a bit misaligned at some point and it was hard to realign them with no day or night passing by.” Leopold said, a sad chuckle escaping his mouth almost involuntarily as he began reminiscing “It was, well it was horrible. The corruption had always been a problem, seeping into people’s dreams and out from the dark caves and crevices of the world but when it consumed the sky the world fell into chaos.” Leopold said as the joy he usually kept slowly faded the more he talked.
“The corruption?” Jake asked, hoping to prod Leopold into explaining further.
“You really can’t remember anything, can you? Surprised you remembered your name; you do know your name, right?”
“It’s Jake,” Jake replied feeling a little embarrassed and annoyed at how Leopold seemed to be dodging the question.
“Alright alright, good to know kid,” Leopold said with a small chuckle. “’ The corruption is all that is evil in the world incarnate. It breeds in the dark and the evil of mankind, spend too long embraced in it and you will be lost forever’ That’s the standard definition every parent tells their kids. For most, it was just a scary bedtime story, a boogeyman to keep you up in the dark.”
Jake watched as Leopold's eyes seemed to almost glaze over in remembrance as he thought of the past, a slight smile twinging his lips and a quiver in his voice. Then his face darkened, and his voice became downtrodden as he said,
“Everything changed when the sky was stolen. Under the unending dark, the corruption propagated unchecked, and chaos ran rampant as people, animals, plants, hell even buildings fell to its ever-spreading effects. The death count is still unknown to this day, and the list of the missing is unending. As of now an estimated fifty-five percent of the planet has been lost to the ever-growing influence of the corruption.”
Beside Jake, Lana who had been sitting still and silent as a statue began letting out trembling shakes and soft sobs as Leopold began recounting the devastation wrought by the corruption. Leopold himself had a look of dark remembrance on his face unlike any he’d ever worn before around Jake, and Jake couldn’t blame either of them. As a total stranger to the situation, just hearing the cliff notes of the tragedy was rough. He couldn’t imagine living through and enduring an apocalyptic event on such a large scale.
“Then, is that it?” Jake asked, feeling a sense of despair well up inside him at the prospect of being trapped here forever. “No more sky, no more sunrise or sunset or anything, and the world just ends?”
“Not if we can help it, isn’t that right Lala?” Leopold said, his face brightening as he elbowed Lana's side.
“Yeah… Yeah he’s right” Lana’s voice however sounded muffled and shaky, she seemed to be crying and she was still trembling.
“You, kid, are lucky enough to be in the presence of ‘The Final Hero's’” Leopold said a note of pride in his voice “We’ll return the sky to its proper place, banish the corruption, or die trying!” Following that Leopold let out a large laugh unfitting for a conversation about his potential impending death before saying “The question though, is what to do with you?”
“What do you mean?” Jake asked, still confused as to how the three he’d met so far planned to rescue the sky. Jake could tell that neither Lana nor Leopold felt like discussing the issue any further, however, and let the topic be changed.
“Your back is stable, but your leg remains a problem,” Lana said her voice was shaky as she took a few deep breaths to steady herself before continuing to speak.
“I had to reconstruct your leg from nothing, and over the last few days have had continuous magic arrays cast on it to stop the bleeding and slowly try and repair as much as possible. We are out of time though, and tomorrow we need you capable of at least somewhat walking. That means today and tomorrow I’ll need to manually speed up the process, and unfortunately for you with this level of damage there will be a fair amount of pain.”
Jake nodded and gulped at seeing the serious looks both Lana and Leopold were looking at him with.
“Should I go back to sleep then?” Jake asked, hopefully.
“You’d just wake up again from the pain in a few seconds, I’m sorry but at this point, this is the only way we can keep you alive.” Lana said, before handing Jake a folded-up piece of leather “Bite down on this please.”
Jake nodded again, and dreading what was to come bit down hard into the leather gag. Then, seconds later he felt the magic numbing his leg dissipate and new magic begin to course through his body. It felt like every part of his body was being struck by electricity all at once, over and over and over again. Jake’s muffled screams filled the area as under the bandages wrapping his leg, flesh and muscle began to slowly reattach themselves.