Urn stared at his outstretched hand nonchalantly, watching the blood leak between the gaps in his fingers. His wounds bled nonstop, producing more blood than he even knew was in his body; the entire cave was filled with blood, and Urn was sitting knee deep in it. This is pathetic. Urn thought, staring emptily at his reflection in the pool of blood. I’m going to die by drowning in my own blood. Man, that is so not cool.
He was hoping that he’d at least be able to have fun while he died; it would have been much more exhilarating if he had died fighting Zeadra, or those two bone lions; but drowning in his own blood? Lame. He sighed. But I can’t say I regret anything. Everything he’d been through in this past week; it felt much more like living then being trapped away in that mansion. Even during all the times when he’d nearly died, each time, the overwhelming fear also came with an abundance of excitement. He’d fought magical beasts and magicians, using magic of his own! The sort of stuff he’d only dreamed about!
It was awesome, really.
And I got to make friends. Urn smiled at the thought. I hope Ralph doesn’t beat himself over the fact I died too much. I had fun, and that’s all that mattered.
“Is that true?” Called the same shadow that had visited him before the ordeal, floating out of a crack in the wall, and gracefully landing on the surface of the blood. “Did you really take the locket just because you wanted to have some fun, and then die right after?”
“It’s you!” Urn sat up, stirring the blood in his sudden movement. “Am I dead? Did I mess up somehow- or was there something in the ordeal that I missed?”
“Yes!” The shadow flashed its bright white teeth at Urn, pointing finger guns at him mockingly. “You are very dead! Do you want to see your corpse? It’s pretty ugly!” The shadow outstretched a hand, a ball of white light emerging from its palm and flattening into a screen, with an image at the very center of the screen.
The image displayed Urn’s decapitated head, bobbing up and down at the foot of the waterfall, while his legs and arms were pinned up against the sides of surrounding trees, leaving a mess of blood all over the place. Urn’s eyes darkened at the gory sight, and he lowered his head, staring into the blood dejectedly.
“So, it really is over.” Urn took in. The sight of his mutilated body was a horrifying one, that was to be sure, but the worst part about it was realizing that despite all the fun he’d had, it was only a taste of the world. After being locked away in a lonely mansion for years, forced to hide his heritage and identity due to the danger it came with, he finally got to have a taste of the world of magic; but before he could take another bite, he’d died.
“Oh? I thought you were fine with dying! Changing your mind already?” The shadow said, floating across the pool of blood towards Urn, and taking his chin in its hand. “Don’t worry. Death has no place in our destiny.”
“What?” Urn asked, his eyes lighting up at the shadow’s words. “Does that mean I’m not going to die?”
“You see, you had the right idea.” The shadow said, waving off Urn’s question. “Trying to use the rush of life energy from awakening to immediately revive after being killed. Yet your timing was nothing short of horrendous, you know? If you’d killed the two lions on their first initial charge, you would have been able to pull it off. But you failed, because as smart as you are, you still have a long way to go.”
The shadow let go of Urn’s chin, floating away from him, and with a single gesture, all the blood in the room vanished. Snapping its hands three times, three bright white orbs appeared behind it, orbiting around each other like tiny glowing planets. “So I can’t entrust this power to you just yet. I’ll use it to bring you back to life; but from then on, you’ll have to get stronger by yourself.”
“Power? Are you talking about my awakening?” Urn asked, and the shadow wagged a finger at Urn mockingly.
“Of course not. Don’t worry about it though; it’s not like you could bear the weight of time at any rate.” The shadow outstretched both of it’s hands, and two of the orbs floating behind it vanished, leaving only one left behind. It drifted through the air towards Urn calmly, stopping just before his face. “Grab onto your fate, Urn Creshun.”
“I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about,” Urn said to the shadow, smiling cheekily. “But if it means I get to keep on living, I don’t care!” Urn grabbed the ball of light, and it exploded in his hands, the light expanding and illuminating the entire room, driving away all the darkness. Closing his eyes to shield his eyes from the intense light, by the time he opened his eyes again, he was lying on the floor…and Ralph was shaking him frantically.
“URN! URN! URN, WAKE UP!” Ralph said, shaking Urn intensely- and then stopped after realizing that Urn’s eyes were open, letting out a heavy sigh of relief. “URN! I thought I’d lost you when I saw your limbs go up into the air, but then I felt a rush of energy and realized you’d awakened which meant you were still alive, so I rushed over here but you were sleeping and there was a lot of blood! Like a lot!” Ralph rambled.
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“Don’t worry, I don’t plan on dying anytime soon. Not till we make it out of the forest and prove those hooded freaks wrong.” Urn said with a grin, and Ralph returned it uneasily.
“I’m never letting you out of sight again! What the heck were you thinking, trying to go up against a high-ranking magical beast like that? You could have died!” Ralph lectured. “God, I know this is exciting for you, but man, act like you have some sense!”
“That’s hilarious coming from the guy with a fish brain!” Urn joked, pulling himself to his feet, and Ralph quickly followed, grabbing onto Urn’s shoulders and stared him dead in the eye. “Ugh, what?”
“I’m serious.” Ralph said. “You need to promise you won’t ever pull something like that ever again. I know that this is fun to you, but don’t you forget that your life isn’t something you can risk just for fun. There are so many people who’d be-”
“Sad if I died?” Urn finished, peeling Ralph’s hands off his shoulders. “Like the entire tribe of warriors in this forest who all despise me for a crime I never committed?”
“No, of course not.” Ralph shook his head. “Like your sister!”
“Right!” Urn said with a nod. “Wait, the one that tried to kill me as soon as I crossed her? Or do I have some other secret sister who loves me from the bottom of her heart?”
“Well-”
“I don’t, huh?” Urn finished with a smile. He didn’t blame his sister in the slightest for what she’d done; her fears weren’t misplaced at all. Ever since he’d taken on the locket, he’d been learning left and right about all the misfortunes it’d caused people, all the grudges it had helped steel. It truly was something to be feared; her trying to stop him at any cost was perfectly understandable. But it did hurt.
Just a little.
“...Sorry.” Ralph said.
“Don’t be.” Urn said. “I can promise that I’ll be a little more responsible from now on, so just relax, alright?”
“I’ll try my best.” Ralph said, though deep down, he knew that relaxing was not an option. Seeing Urn’s limbs fly into the sky was a horrific experience; he’d let Urn down when the boy had needed him the most, goofing off in the forest while Urn was fighting for his life. He’d let Urn down as a guardian, a mistake he’d be sure to never make again. Otherwise, he might as well just let Repo cleave his head off his shoulders; what use was a guardian who couldn’t even protect the person they were supposed to?
“Now with that out of the way, you won’t believe what happened to me while I was alone, it was insane!” Urn walked over to the waterfall, looking for any residues of the mangled corpse the shadow had shown him, yet saw absolutely nothing. No decapitated head, no mutilated legs, no crudely pinned arms.
Not even a drop of blood in the water.
What happened to my body? Was it pieced back together by that shadow? How is that even possible? Urn had never heard of such an intense healing magic skill; healing type magic skills were quite rare, and even when they surfaced, he’d never heard of a magician so powerful they were able to bring a destroyed dead corpse back to life in perfect condition.
“Don’t just leave me on a cliffhanger, what were you going to say?” Ralph asked, jolting Urn right out of his thoughts.
“Oh, right.” Urn shook his head. He’d have to think more about it later; there were more pressing issues at hand at the moment. “I met a mysterious magician with a sword who had some sort of vendetta against me. My grandfather must have done something to him or whatever, and he’d tried to kill me.” Urn honestly couldn’t be bothered with whatever his grandfather had done; he didn’t even know the old geezer! The sins of a stranger who just happened to be related to him had nothing to do with him. “And so, we fought! And he was strong, way stronger than me, but man, it was so fun! I got to do so many cool things, and I felt so cool and smart, but then he tripped me up, and nearly killed me!”
“What the- you nearly died TWICE?” Ralph asked, and Urn waved him off.
“No, because this warrior from the Epe Clan saved me; his name was Asime. But the thing was, he didn’t actually save me. He purposely teleported me into the domain of Zeadra, and yet I managed to escape and awaken at the same time.” Urn concluded. “And now I think we have a real shot at figuring out how to leave the forest.”
“So, you unlocked another magic skill?” Ralph asked, and Urn nodded his head, walking over to a nearby boulder in the clearing surrounding the foot of the waterfall.
“I did. And it’s nothing flashy; it’s downright underwhelming, but it’s perfectly suitable for getting us out of here.” Urn grinned, pulling up his sleeves excitedly. Vibrant purple magical energy shrouding his body, Urn lifted a hand, and his black eyes began to shift in color, taking on a vibrant purple. The eye of his locket also turned purple, the eye within it tilting upwards to stare at the sky above…and then Urn’s hands began to move at a terrifying speed. Concentrating his magical energy into his hands, the light in Urn’s eyes vanished as he tore at the boulder before him, sending chunks of the boulder flying off as he repeatedly swung and chipped at it with his hands. Dust began to billow from the boulder and cloud up the area, yet it did not deter Urn in the slightest, who continued to pound at the boulder with his bare fists with the efficiency of a machine.
Finally, Urn’s hands stopped moving, and he pulled his hands backwards. His eyes shifting back to black, the eye of the locket closed, and Urn flourished with both hands, sending the cloud of dust flying away. Standing before Urn was a cube, a cube broken down to individual units by the lines running through it. What seemed like hundreds of arrow engravings ran through the sides of the cube, starting at one unit and then circling around the entire cube towards another, the arrows pointing and starting from so many various units the arrows seemed more like spiderwebs.
“Is that a rubix cube?” Ralph asked, scratching his head, and Urn slapped his forehead.
“No, doofus.” Urn sighed. “It’s a model. A model of the barrier surrounding the forest.”