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The Storyteller
Chapter 35 - Changing Tides

Chapter 35 - Changing Tides

Kaisel was supposed to be in the same general direction as Typhen. And that was to the opposite of the throne room that Jillesha was probably in. We had been making a lot of noise, but the layout of the cave was such that sound got broken off very quickly due to the uneven terrain. There was no way to confirm if Jillesha knew of our presence or not. As Sylvia and I reached the place where two routes diverged, I took a quick look at the one which led to the throne room, hoping that he hadn’t heard us yet. Then, we ran into the opposite corridor.

We got deeper into it, and the sounds of the struggle got louder. I heard Kaisel shout something, but it was incomprehensible due to the other screams overpowering it. Based on the reply that he got, it seemed like he and Typhen had combined their forces in the same area, and were having a large fight. I looked at Sylvia and she nodded with confidence. We got ready to join and took out our weapons.

The corridor reached a dead end. To the left and right were two doorways that led to different rooms. Sounds were coming from both of them, but we Kaisel’s voice from the left, so that’s where we went. As soon as we entered, though, we saw something fairly unexpected. Kaisel was lying on the ground, panting heavily. In front of his feet was Jillesha, lying unconscious on the ground. Beside the two of them stood Typhen with an arrow nocked on his bow.

“Sylvia.” The two of them looked up at us.

“What the hell is going on here?” She asked.

“This is where he sleeps, I think.” Typhen said, dragging the arrow further to tense it, “Kaisel changed the atmosphere of the room to knock him out, but he won’t let me kill him right here.”

“We are going to subdue and capture him, Typhen. This is Hess’ fight, and she is the one who needs to end it.” Kaisel glared at him, before turning to us, “Sylvia, find Ginzari and tell him what has happened. We might be able to end this all right here.”

“Yes.” Sylvia nodded and took a step back, getting ready to run away.

Stage Directions (Day 31) –

MAIN: Witness – Before You Embark on a Journey of Revenge, Dig Two Graves

SUB: Help Jillesha Wake Up

Sylvia stopped. I looked at all three of them.

“What?” Kaisel asked.

Looked like the two of them hadn’t gotten any updates. I turned to Sylvia and our eyes met. I nodded my head just slightly. She rolled her eyes and came back to stand beside him, looking inside the room.

“Step aside. Both of you.” She raised her hands and they began to glow purple. Did she know atmosphere magic too?

And if she was doing that, then what was I supposed to do? I would die if I didn’t do anything. Just helping was enough, so maybe I could just convince the two of them to move away from the unconscious body.

“Trust us, and please move.” I said, sheathing my sword to give them confidence.

Kaisel caught on to it somehow, and pushed himself up. He put his hand on Typhen’s arm and looked at us, “You’re going to wake him up?”

Sylvia nodded, angry.

Typhen looked up at us and loosened the arrow, “What do you mean?”

“We need to wake him up.” Sylvia answered.

I nodded, “It’s all we can do, Typhen. Please just step aside and make it easier on all of us.”

Kaisel groaned and kicked Jillesha in the chest before pushing past the two of us and going back into the corridor. Typhen did not move, and he did not remove the arrow from the bow. I asked him to move once more, but he was looking at Sylvia, who continued to build up the magic in her hand. Even if she knew how to use it, she was definitely not proficient at it. Her eyes slowly began to grow red.

“Typhen,” She spoke as if it was heavy on her throat, “Get out of the room. The bandit I fought…he told me. Jillesha invoked a devil after he lost a fight about ten years ago. Slowly, the devil fed on Jillesha’s power to learn it, and then made him stronger all at once very recently. At the same time, it took over his mind. The bandit leader cannot think clearly. He isn’t someone to fight. He’s someone we need to try and save.”

“You’re kidding me.” Typhen muttered, removing the arrow from the bow and putting it back in his quiver. He looked at me with broken eyes, and went away just like Kaisel, into the corridor.

There was nobody in the room anymore. The mercenaries in the room behind us also came out, having won their fights, and Kaisel explained what was happening to them. Everyone was shocked to hear it. But that was what the story had decided. It did not matter who Jillesha was in reality. For all we knew, he had been taken by a devil who changed his personality. Now, he needed to be saved from it.

“Get ready to run.” Kaisel said, putting his hand over my shoulder. I looked back at him.

His eyes looked worse than the others. His face carried an expression that I had never seen on him before. Tensed forehead, gritting teeth, bulging eyes. His grip on my shoulder was slowly increasing, getting almost painful. Kaisel was angry. There was no hiding it. The man who had always been calm, who had told us to keep our heads to ourselves just yesterday, was losing all of his composure. There was no reason to blame him, though. I would feel the same. To a smaller extent, I did feel the same.

A purple wisp began to grow out of Sylvia’s hand as it made its way to the unconscious body. The wisp slowly disappeared into the air, leaving a ghastly trail behind. Then, small outlines of a gas began to appear all over the room. They danced and twisted along the edges, taking a more substantial form. Sylvia put her hands down, and all of the purple air swooped down towards Jillesha’s head. It crawled towards his nose, and then entered it.

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“Let’s go.” Kaisel patted my shoulder.

All of us began to slowly move, wishing to just see him get up before we started to run.

He began to move just a little. His head twitched to the left and right. He raised his fingers one by one, circling them in the air to check. Jillesha’s legs began to convulse in an irregular manner. And then, his eyes shot open and landed on all of us. Taking a long breath, we all got ready to run, gathering our energy.

“Don’t move.” The bandit leader said. His voice as passively authoritative as ever. I felt a chill down my spine. My hairs rose on edge. Everybody else relaxed their bodies too.

Stage Directions (Day 31) –

MAIN: Witness – Before You Embark on a Journey of Revenge, Dig Two Graves

SUB: Talk to Jillesha and Hear His Plea

I could hear Kaisel faintly growl behind me. I turned and saw his eyes twitching wildly. All of us had gotten that this time.

“I’ll go and call Ginzari.” Typhen whispered, looking down at the ground and walking away slowly. He must have been asked to do that, maybe.

Jillesha pushed himself up and looked at all of us, a bit dazed. This was supposed to be the scene where we heard his sad past, and what he wanted us to do to help his people. I was sure of it. But there wasn’t a single person in this room who did not know this man’s true self. All of us were more than aware of what was going to happen once the unmonitored time began. Outside, I had forgotten to check the sky, so I couldn’t even guess how long we had left.

“Follow me.” He ordered and started walking. We made way to let him pass, not wanting to touch his body at all. He started moving through the corridor and all of us followed.

As we walked, the bodies of multiple bandits were lying all around. Jillesha looked at them, and bent his head down in what looked like shame and sadness. I bit my tongue, and rolled my hand into a fist. He probably didn’t even care about a single person who had died. Stopping at one of the bodies, he bent down and raised the woman’s head up.

A tear fell down from his eye. I turned to Kaisel, who had returned to a more expressionless face. But the hate in him was still obvious. Jillesha put his hand on her eyes and shut them. Then, he moved his hands down to her neck, and held the necklace that the bandit had been wearing. Whispering something, he took the necklace off, and wore it himself. As he stood back up, he looked at us with a tear-filled face.

“She was like a sister to me.” He croaked before starting to walk once more.

We reached the area where the paths converged, and got into the opposite corridor.

After some more walking, we reached the supposed throne room.

The place was just like I remembered it, except that there were no chairs there at all. Standing in the middle of the place, surrounded by bodies on all sides, was Ginzari. His axe was out, and the back of the handle was on the ground. His two hands rested on the top of the axe. He snarled as Jillesha walked in, but gave him way to move to the upper center of the room, where he went and stood. Ginzari walked back to us and stood right beside Kaisel, giving him a single nod as he did.

“I am bound in a way that I cannot reveal its location,” Jillesha started, “But somewhere in this room is a grimoire that houses the devil that has taken over me. It won’t be very long before it is able to complete the takeover and I lose myself forever.”

Nobody replied to him, nor did we react. I was pretty sure that this was going to end up being a forced monologue from his side.

“It was my mistake to call the devil. After what happened with Hess and Hike,” His eyes landed on Kaisel, “I lost myself. The people of our group, however, did not abandon me. For some reason, they found me and believed that I could still go back to being who I was. And they tried, no matter what, to help me. In the end, I killed all of them to prove my strength too. Then, I was defeated by a swordsman whose name I had never even heard. I couldn’t believe how weak I had been even now.”

“Just tell us what you want us to do, and spare the sob story.” Kaisel shouted.

Jillesha cracked into a warm smile, “I know, Kaisel. No matter how much I apologize to you, I cannot change what you saw that day. What Ginzari saw too. All I can do is recognize my folly in it all. Even after making a contract with this devil, I was weaker than one of my own people. She was the one who held this necklace. That, of course, means that you can kill me very easily. And that’s what I want you to do.”

“Kill you?” Kaisel asked.

He nodded, “Even now, I cannot stop myself from loving this contract. I can’t hate it completely. The pursuit of strength has left me empty, hollow of all emotions. That’s why when the devil takes over, I want you to kill me and end this once and for all. Otherwise, I myself know of the horror it will unleash due to the composition of my body. I thought myself blessed to have come to another world and gotten this chance, but this is the worst curse imaginable.”

“We’ll do that.” Kaisel replied nonchalantly.

“Thank you.” Jillesha peacefully looked down and brought the necklace up. He kissed it and held it in a fist before closing his eyes and whispering a prayer.

He looked back up, his eyes sad as ever, and continued, “Once I am dead, the devil will try to return to the grimoire. By then, you need to destroy that book to make sure it dies with me. If you do that, then the book itself will be free. It is a strong grimoire. It can provide you with a lot of knowledge. Take it and be better.”

Kaisel sighed, “Sure.”

Jillesha smiled at him, tilting his head just a bit.

“I have a very small question, though, Jillesha.” Kaisel said.

“Yes, Kaisel?”

“What will happen to you if you break the contract with the devil by telling us of the location of the grimoire?”

“I’d die.”

“Isn’t that what you want in the first place? What’s the problem with telling us the location and saving us a grueling fight, then? Or do you really, really want this fight to happen? Just tell us the location and save us all.” Kaisel smiled.

Jillesha’s smile grew too. Corner to corner, sincere. And then, a little sinister. His eyes came closer together, and slowly grew thinner. Through the opening of his lips, I could see that he was pushing his teeth closer together, grinding them into each other.

“That’s a great question, Kaisel.” His entire tone had changed. He seemed annoyed of what had been asked of him. Then, he returned to his sweet smile in a split second, “The answer to that is a simple one.”

An arrow whizzed past my ear, leaving it ringing for a second, and scratched past Jillesha’s cheek before hitting the wall behind him. Instinctively, feeling something on my right, I moved left, trying to avoid it. As soon as I did, a familiar face jumped past me, holding a dagger in each hand, and ran straight towards Jillesha.

The bandit leader jumped back and picked up a sword from the one of the dead bandits below him, and right as Hess reached him, he parried her and pushed her away. She flew all the way to the wall to our left. Before hitting it, she pushed herself down and fell to the ground. But she stayed on her feet.

“Hess!” Ginzari shouted, his eyes burning with anger.

Hess smiled, unwilling to look at us. Her eyes were locked on Jillesha, who was smiling too, in his earlier, unhinged manner. He hissed at her and changed the way he was holding his sword to match her daggers.

“The time for acting’s up, Jill.” Hess growled, “How about we end this once and for all?”

Jillesha laughed maniacally, screaming, “Is that so? Well then, you and Ginzari in the same place. What a wonderful night to be a part of. I’ve been looking forward to this.”

“Yeah, me too.” Hess replied.

“You shouldn’t be here, Hess.” Ginzari shouted.

“I’ll die?” She asked, “That’s alright. But that’s not going to happen until I take him down with me. What were the exact directions you got, Ryworn?”

“Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.” I answered.

She burst into a smile, tightened her grip around the daggers and changed her stance just slightly, “We need someone to fill that second grave then, don’t we? Do me the favor, Jill.”