As they continued walking, they came across a small, rustic wooden house. Its roof was made of dry leaves, and it stood a few meters off the ground, with a small ladder leading up to it. The house was around 38 square meters in size.
"Oh, should I go see if anyone lives here?" Mat asked.
"For what?" Sam replied.
"Well... to find out where we are and to see if anyone’s noticed anything strange around here recently."
"Yeah, but…"
"True, we don’t speak Portuguese, and it’s quite late… or early. But, I’m going to try anyway. Maybe the Infini-bag can help."
"Yeah, right?" Sam said. "Maybe it can give us something to help us speak other languages or something."
"..." Roundy and Pointy stayed silent.
"Just go and talk in your own language," Pointy said.
"?" Sam raised an eyebrow.
"Uh… Okay, then. I’ll go."
After that, Mat approached the house. The others stayed where they were.
In that part of the Amazon jungle, there were many animals, most of them small—especially the insects. And why is this relevant? Because Mathias could sense the spiritual energy of all these creatures around him. In addition to this, he sensed that there was only one person inside the house, but something about them felt… odd.
As Mat got closer, he realized the house didn’t have a door, and there was a sort of grave a few meters away.
"Strange... Uh, whatever."
He knocked on the wall, not too hard so as not to scare the person inside, and said, "Good evening, um…"
"Ah!"
"Huh?"
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Someone had made a sound. It was a little girl.
"A girl? Is she alone? Where are her parents?" Mat thought.
He pointed his flashlight toward her.
"What the…?"
image [https://i.imgur.com/SiCtxIu.png]
The girl was huddled in a corner of the house, looking scared. She was the same girl mentioned earlier. Now, taking a closer look, the girl had dark skin and, oddly enough, dark green hair. She had pointy ears too, possibly due to some malformation, but given the other details… maybe not. However, what really worried Mat at the moment wasn’t her appearance. It was the fact that the girl looked thin and dirty, and she was trembling. Oh, right, it was a bit cold. Because of this, Mat shouted,
"Hey, guys! There’s a girl in here! She seems like she’s in bad shape!"
Hearing him, the others quickly joined him.
Once there, Samantha saw the girl too and became quite concerned.
"What? How did this happen? Where are her parents?" Sam asked.
"I don’t know either, I just found her like this. There’s no one else here..." Mat replied.
"I see… Then we need to do something," Sam said. "We should give her something to eat, but... Oh, Mat, you’re good with kids. Do something to gain her trust."
"Yeah, but... I don’t really know how to approach her either. Plus, we don’t speak the same language…"
At that moment, Pointy pulled a roasted chicken leg out of the Infini-bag.
"Here, try giving her this," he said to Mat. "Just get close to her with this. Maybe she’ll understand what you’re trying to do and won’t be so scared."
"Alright…"
"Wait," Sam interrupted. "Don’t you think that’s a bit weird?"
"Maybe," Pointy replied.
"Yeah, but I can’t think of anything else," Mathias said. "Let’s see if it works…"
Mat approached the girl slowly. She was frightened at first, but when she saw he was offering her the chicken leg, she seemed to calm down a bit, realizing he wasn’t a bad person. For context, this girl had been told not to approach strangers. The thing was, she’d never interacted with anyone other than her grandfather.
After a moment, the girl got closer to Mat, took the chicken leg, and began eating… or devouring it, rather.
"Oh, it worked... I think," Sam said.
"T-thank you…" the girl said. Even after eating, she still seemed sad.
"Huh?" Mat and Sam were surprised.
"Does she know English or… what?" Sam asked, confused. "Nah, doesn’t matter."
She got closer to the girl and touched her. She was cold.
"Pointy, give me a blanket or something to warm her up."
"Okay."
Pointy handed over a blanket, and Sam wrapped it around the girl. Mat told Roundy to heal her in case she was sick or injured. Roundy did so, and luckily, the girl wasn’t hurt or ill.
They spent a while with her and gave her more food because she was still hungry. This time, Sam fed her. The girl seemed more at ease now, not as sad as before.
Oh, by the way, describing the house’s interior: it was divided into three rooms—a living room, a bedroom, and a storage room. In the bedroom, there was a bed. In the living room, there was a hammock, a table, and three wooden chairs. The door was a few meters from the table, which was positioned in front of the bedroom.
Mat sat on one of the chairs while Sam sat on the bed next to the girl. She seemed to have taken a liking to Samantha, despite not having interacted much with her.
Pointy and Roundy also tried to talk to her, but the girl didn’t seem to want to speak much. She only responded with yes or no answers, perhaps because they didn’t know how to befriend her. Still, when Sam asked—despite knowing the girl might not respond due to the language barrier—
"Could you tell us your name, please?"
Amazingly, the girl understood and replied,
"A-Aelin."
"Oh, that’s a lovely name," Sam said with a smile. "My name’s Samantha. The guy over there is Mathias, and those two are Pointy and Roundy."
A while after this, Mat sensed a new presence nearby, but he didn’t pay it much mind, thinking it was just an animal. However, Roundy seemed a bit worried.
"H-Hero…" Roundy tugged at his clothes.
"Huh? What’s up?"
"Your mark is….."
"Huh? What?!"
"W-What?!" Sam exclaimed.
Just then, the ground started to shake. Something was causing it—a strange creature.
The group turned in the direction the presence was coming from and shone a light. What they saw, about fifteen meters from the door, was a large humanoid creature with greenish-red fur, one eye, and a huge mouth in its stomach. It had claws and gave off a foul stench.
image [https://i.imgur.com/MJzmk2t.png]
The creature was around 2.2 meters tall. It looked more or less like this.