Abiss walked over to Minima, hiding the weapon in his jacket again.The moth, Mimi, fluttered down and landed on top of Minima’s head. Despite her unseeing eyes, Minima still tilted her head up to ‘look’ at Abiss as he approached.
Still shaking on the ground, she furrowed her brow and asked, “did you... kill that thing?”
Abiss stopped a few feet away from her and cocked his head to the side, pursing his lips, “not sure. That would’ve killed any person but that thing wasn’t exactly human so,” he shrugged, “who knows.”
He took one more step to close the distance and offered a hand to help her up. Even though the moth was looking right at him, she didn’t take his hand. She just hugged her knees tighter to her chest and asked, “what is that weapon? It doesn’t use Shards.”
The gun in its holster felt heavy against Abiss’ chest. He shrugged again, “no clue.”
“What do you mean, ‘no clue’!?” Minima raised her voice for the first time, possibly in her whole life judging by how it cracked. She slammed her fists ineffectually into the dirt, “I demand you tell me where that weapon came from!”
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Abiss retracted his offered hand and rubbed the back of his neck. Then he cracked his neck, looking down at her with cold eyes, “sorry, Princess. You aren’t paying me enough to answer personal questions.”
*
Kesi stumbled away from the road, cradling Lark to his chest. The black ‘blood’ that spilled from Lark’s head was hotter than a human’s and was quickly starting to burn Kesi, even through his shirt and jacket.
Kesi wished that Lark breathed because then he’d be able to tell more clearly if the stillness in his arms meant dead and gone. Really he wished he understood anything about how Lark’s body worked.
After walking for quite a while, Kesi smelled Shards. No... it smelled almost like a full Crystal, almost like Lark. Like always, Kesi followed his nose.
Soon his nose and his weary feet brought him to a dip in the ground, to a valley with a run down, falling apart cabin nestled in it. Kesi’s hopes of finding a person who might know how to fix Lark deflated. All the wind knocked out of him, Kesi finished stumbling to the cabin. He walked through the doorless doorway and followed his nose to the backroom where he found the nearly complete Crystal.
On a moldy, moth-eaten bed laid a pale unconscious girl with short pink hair, her shirt was cut away from her stomach, revealing Shards of a Crystal embedded in her skin in an intricate pattern. Kesi took another step closer to her and her eyes snapped open.