𝕵𝖆𝖈𝖐, 𝕭𝖔𝖗𝖎𝖘, 𝕳𝖆𝖓𝖓𝖆𝖍, 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝕭𝖆𝖚𝖇𝖑𝖊
Jack caught the coin with a swift downward snatch of one hand, though his now queer look was stuck on Cheryl.
There is something really wrong with youHer response wasn’t altogether what he should have expected from anyone aside a few bad people he’d met in life. She didn’t seem to care at all that someone wanted her dead, but that wasn’t the only thing irking him at this point. How did she not show the slightest trace of appreciation that he shared the death request with her openly, even at the possible cost of seeing his daughter? Sure the whole thing seemed suspiciously moot, but still. So much for winning over even the slightest amount of respect. Then again, she did just hand over a gold coin to the man who had been asked to kill her. So that was progress. Okay, maybe not, not necessarily. Not with this girl. She was just plain weird.
Unable or unwilling to discuss matters further, he gave a nod to thank her for the coin and turned away. ‘Weirdo’ He muttered loud enough for her to hear, and started up the road past the empty stalls of the marketplace.
Woman needs to lighten up. When was the last time she had a good – ‘Fuck!’ He bit his lip – train of thought broken when he stumped his toe on a raised cobblestone brick, causing him to stumble a few feet.
A professional thief, and a damn good one. That’s Jack. He’d raked in more cash than he could count by way of his uncanny ability to keep cool and avoid mistakes. He had always been the suave and collective guy, the man’s man, and he had a reputation to match, at least, that’s the way things were back in his own world – but this place, this world, wherever the hell he was, was getting the better of him. His frustration was mounting. Never in all his life had he managed to act like such a complete imbecile so frequently. He suddenly got the notion this place had cursed him to be a fumbling idiot – that is, aside from all the other shit it was throwing at him. Or maybe it was Cheryl, some people just manage to bring out the worst in others, and hey, she
was some sort of witch, and by the way things were going he wouldn’t be surprised if she was the one to have hexed him. He could feel her watching him walk up the street. Well, she might not have been watching, but it sure as hell felt like she was. He wasn’t about to look back to confirm.
Strange. Travius had been expecting him. The hefty blacksmith stood in the doorway of his home, a grim frown expressing both his lack of surprise and disdain for the late-night caller.
‘You’ve come for your weapon?’ He snuffed, shaking his head as if appalled by something, and reached behind the door to produce a sheathed sword. It wasn’t a big piece, little shorter than most swords Jack had seen in his life but, admittedly, his experience in medieval weaponry was rather limited. Before Jack could say a word, Travius had shoved the sword up against his chest to take it. ‘Now go.’
Jack clutched to the sword with one hand, looked down at it, up at Travius confused, and then regarded the gold coin in the palm of his other hand; ‘You don’t want –‘
‘There is no charge!’ Travius snapped. The flame of the porch sconce flickered madly as if incensed by the man’s blunt mood. ‘The Old Hag was here. Told me to give this to you when you arrived. You just missed her, actually…’ He crooked his jaw to one side, ‘…why she couldn’t have just given it to you herself….’ He sighed as though a great weight was supressing his ill feelings towards what was apparently an old
hag? ‘No, just go, please. If only you and your kind would leave my family in peace. I want nothing of this, you hear?’
With the door slammed shut, Jack stood very confused on the porch, eyes peering to the side to watch the reducing flames of the sconce. Just when he thought things couldn’t get any stranger. Now he was thinking he hadn’t even scraped the surface of the oddities to come. He turned slowly in thought then descended the three stairs to where he stood on the road and took a few moments to assess the sword. Sliding the weapon a few inched free of its finely stitched leather sheath, the blade gleamed like milky steel in the descending glow of the three moons. What sort of steel was this? Certainly wasn’t iron. Wasn’t silver or platinum either. It looked soft like liquid metal, yet definitely hard to the touch – and light… Like a feather. In his experience, at least in most cases, the heavier the item the more value it held, like gold for example, but something was telling Jack in this instance that all he knew about value meant nothing anymore.
While exposing a few inches of its blade in the moonlight – unable to help but admire the faint iridescent spectrums reflecting in waves off its surface – his peripheral vision caught sight of someone nearby. His head snapped up, eyes widening on an old woman haunting the shadows on the opposite side of the road. She was dressed in a dark robe, hair straggled, her bright and piercing blue eyes immediately sending shivers up his spine.
‘Who are y…’ Jack’s voice breathed like that of a fading ghost call while everything around him began to change. The town itself began to transform, yet not quite. The buildings that were there remained as they were, yet another image was superimposed upon and around them. It was as if he were viewing the same town from another place in time, or possible an alternate reality – some sort of parallel existence? He stood there stricken by an invisible force, and the old woman remained in her position too, just glaring at him with those piercing eyes as the imagery of another town like Sonarlis came alive. All he could do was watch as the event took place around him –
It was daylight. Morning. But there was nothing pleasant to see. The world seemed to have turned to hell and demons, or be them dragons, were raining havoc upon the small mountainside town of Sonarlis. Across the way, the recently bustling marketplace had been torn apart, a great deal of it going up in flames – and so were some civilians; flesh melting from their bones as they frantically attempted to douse themselves, while other people, or most others, were scrambling and screaming in terrified attempts to find safety.
On the far side of the market, Jack could see the large man that was with Hannah in the previous apparition. He was a large brute of a man, now standing near a different young girl with a sword. These two being the only ones not fleeing in terror like the rest of the townsfolk. But the brute, holding some type large glowing bone in hands, was visibly filled with rage. Face red with intensity, he was looking across the market at Hannah.
Jack’s heart leapt in his chest at the sight of his daughter. Her arms were bound. She was kicking and struggling to escape a man dressed in a dark cloak and hood who was carrying her over his shoulder to where he proceeded to mount a massive Dragon that had landed.
The brute took off running towards Hannah, those tree trunk legs moving at unbelievable speed, while the girl he left behind suddenly shot upward, rocketing like a bullet into the sky like superman’s offspring.
Mounted on the base of the dragons neck, the cloaked man was struggling to lay Hannah over his lap. This struggle was causing a delay that could have provide the brute time to get to them, but the brute didn’t need a delay. He had hardly taken a few pounding steps in their direction when he teleported, and in that split second before vanishing from one spot and arriving next to the grounded dragon, he seemed to appear in two places at once. Now sliding to a halt next to the dragon, the brute swung his weapon down on the dragons head before it could even consider a defence. The dragons head exploded in a gruesome burst of scales, blood, teeth and brain matter, accompanied by a beastly cry that emanated from the brutes weapon.
The body of the dragon slumped lifeless as the brute turned his furious attention to the cloaked man who was still mounted on the neck of the carcass and still struggling to subdue Hannah, until he realised what had happened by the spray of dragon’s blood that covered his person. Raising Hannah as a human shield against the brutes pending assault, the cloaked man dismounted and started running towards the bridge out of town.
Quickly the brute gave chase, only now he too was being pursued by another dragon swooping down from above with the intent to attack the brute from behind – though it never got the chance. Just a moment before wrapping its open mouth around the brute, yet another dragon appeared. This new arrival looked different to the other hostile dragons. It was smaller, younger - its features told Jack it was of a different breed - and its scales were the pale green colour of the bushes that it suddenly emerged from beside the stables –
This younger dragon shot out from hiding like a cannon and rammed the hostile dragon with a powerful body slam that sent it off course; tumbling through the air and across the ground and into flames of the marketplace. From the flames it hastily shot upwards while the word ‘ARIST’ boomed like thunder from its mouth.
The incredible speed of the young dragons sudden attack had caused Jack to jump in surprise, but in the following moment he saw that the brute had caught up to his target, swinging his weapon at the cloaked man’s legs. Even amid the sounds of all the chaos taking place, the sickening sound of his knees being shattered could be heard. He went down bellowing in agony. Hannah was flung from his arms and rolled into a stall of a nearby horse tied up in the stables. The horse was frightened by all the commotion, narrowly missing Hannah’s head with its stomping hooves before the brute stooped in and swept her up into the grip of one arm. Although Hannah’s arms were still bound, she gripped her legs tight around the brutes waist while the brute himself, now wielding his mighty bone in the grip of one hand, strode up to the cloaked man writhing in pain on the ground and popped his head, just like he had the dragons.
All of these events took a mere few seconds to unfold. It all happened so fast, and now - apparently alarmed by the word “Arist”, or be it the young dragon that had appeared so conveniently - the few remaining hostile dragons quickly turned from aggressive to panicked behaviour. They no longer seemed willing to continue their attack. They called out in some strange language to each other, but they didn’t flee either. The three of them quickly regrouped above the town, circling like curious but apprehensive scavengers, while the young Arist dragon perched itself upon the headless dragon carcass like a content kitten, the colour of its scales turned from pale green to various shades of clay, and it raised its mellow stare to the predators in the sky… or maybe it was looking at something else up there.
It was then, while the townsfolk continued to run about in terror, while the hostile dragons began circling in the sky, while the brute started to free Hannah from her binds, and while Jack tried with all his might to call out to his daughter, but failed, the transparent play-through of the alternate reality faded away.
Jack was back again, standing on the cobblestone road in the night and turning his awed and troubled expression towards the old woman who, right at that moment, spoke before vanishing, as if she too had been an apparition.
‘Take my sword, it will serve you well. Let the soured bitch Cheryl lead you. Come to me.
It is all about the journey.’
Jack had been gone for less than five minutes so Cheryl would have likely still been waiting. He didn’t actually know if Cheryl had also observed the vision he had witnessed, and he didn’t really seem to care. Jack’s demeanour was noticeably different now. His sheathed sword was strapped to his back, he was void of expression, he was walking with a strut like a man with confidence and purpose, and he didn’t say a word or even look at Cheryl until he arrived beside her horse, ready to go.
‘Yeah, I’ve ridden before,’ He tells her, ‘so let’s get this show on the road.’
Days,
Harrington,
Vampiretwilight,
Krasnaya,
Carnelian,
WhiteAngel25,
Makino,
Jen,
Riley Hart,
Lotus Moon
