Chapter 22: Chapter 20: Blood Smells Like Iron

Soon, we’d arrive at the top of the first finger. My stomach was grumbling.

 

“Al- sir?”

 

“Can we make a stop once at the top?” I asked.

 

Hagrid, with a look both perplexed and annoyed, said. “Master is already being too lenient with you. Know your place!”

 

Before I could answer, Albert looked at Hagrid, a soothing smile on his face.

 

“Hagrid, Hagrid, calm down; I reckon that this kid is getting on your nerves. Isn’t that a good reason to make a stopover? And breathe some fresh air?”

 

“Also, I am famished. Let’s go along with the kid’s idea,” Albert added, laughing.

 

Hagrid just harrumphed, not opening his mouth anymore.

 

Franky arose from his sleep as if he had been waiting for this and stretched his whole body so hard his soul seemed to leave his body.

 

“OOOOH that was good,” He said, drool still on his chin.

 

“So, when do we arrive?” he asked.

 

The masked man replied, “in about 20 minutes”

 

20 minutes later -- exactly -- we arrived.

 

There it dawned on me. How do we get down from the mountain? After all, it would be idiotic to pull something down a hill.

 

“Sir,” I said to Albert, before disembarkation.

 

“How do we get down the mountain?”

 

He looked at me, and scratching his chin, he said, “How do we do what?”

 

The structure implied a question, but his tone seemed to hint at something else.

 

“Uh..?”

 

He left me in my daze and called on the rest of the group.

 

“Alright, we leave in an hour.”

 

We disembarked from the cart and I could see the 4 others who had embarked in the other cart get down too. They weren’t interested in me and just went their own way. I took my food and went as far as I could while still having the carts in my line of vision.

 

Running is something you take for granted.

 

After finishing my meal, I jogged around, getting some blood pumping. Getting high off the metallic air. As I wandered, I could see that the ground was flat, weirdly so.

 

It was dirt, but under my feet, it felt hard and when I crouched to touch it, it felt like a slick rock -- or like glass; its color a deep crimson. Another weird thing was that as far as I could see, there was no landmark. No trees, no rocks, no relief of any sort.

 

This was less interesting than expected.

 

Weird bug-like creatures sometimes flew around -- looking like overgrown mosquitoes. While repugnant, they didn’t bother us; just minding their own business, their straw-like beak foraging the ground.

 

 As I was contemplating about this place, Hagrid came behind me.

 

“S-so this red is beautiful, you say?” he stuttered.

 

This question left me a bit surprised, but I answered, “Yes, I find this shade of red soothing.”

 

“I see...” He sized me up.

 

“Would you be interested in learning about the legend of this mountain range?”

 

“Yes, for sure!”

 

“I see.. well, alright.” He coughed as if thrown off by my enthusiasm.

 

I think I saw a smile appearing, a smile that he quickly hid behind his large hands.

 

“You see how flat this mountain is, the vibrance of its red.. how do I tell that.”

 

He sat down and invited me to do the same.

 

From there, I figured it’d be a long story.

 

“Eons ago; a race of beings who lived in perfect harmony with magic walked this earth. They didn’t have cores or affinities, but could somehow use the magic of any element. Since these individuals were extremely long-lived, they didn’t see much need for..”

 

He coughed again, this time his cheeks clearly blushing.

 

“This is most likely not something I should tell a kid.”

 

“Anyhow, they were powerful, but few in numbers. One day, because of a disagreement about the way they should use their natural abilities, these few in numbers but unified beings split into two factions..”

 

He paused for a bit, looking at the horizon.

 

“One yearned for absolute control over this world and its resources, to place themselves as the absolute rulers and so doing to erase suffering from the face of this planet through their superior intellects; the other side leaned more towards non-action, considering suffering an essential part of life and, preferring to let life develop as it saw fit.

 

“Many battles were waged, and the legend tells us it was in this mountain range that the two last warriors of these two factions died. The red of this soil a sign of the violence of war that was waged

 

“The color of blood”

 

What?

 

I thought dazed, “Then how big were they?”

 

He looked at me with a warm smile. “Hahaha, right?”

 

“If you are to believe the legends tall enough to touch the clouds... still existences and creatures that are beyond our understanding are too many to count; but virtually immortal beings with no limitations to how they use magic are a bit much to swallow. Even gods are not that powerful... If such things existed, I wonder what kind of technology they had? Would they even need it?”

 

“Whoah!”

 

“Indeed, anyhow we have to go back to the cart, as much as talking about legends is fun, we still have somewhere to go.”

 

His face then reverted to the stony face he had when we were in the cart.

 

“Then would it be possible for you to tell me more later?” I asked, curious.

 

While at first I wasn’t too sure how to talk with Hagrid, thanks to the laid back conversation we had just had, I could see he wasn’t a bad guy. He looked scary, with his rough looking face, the star-shaped scar he had on his forehead and his bushy unkempt beard; but he seemed more scared of me than I was of him.

 

At my question he answered, “You little- alright, maybe later don’t get too comfortable!”

 

I guess he is just not too good at speaking

 

I thought as I shrugged my shoulders and smiled.

 

#

 

When we returned to the cart, I had a chance to better look at the other party that was traveling with us. In their group there was an old man walking with a metal cane, looking to be carrying the weight of his years on his back; a bald tall man wearing a pristine white vest and a fake mustache, looking a lot like the wings of some black creature; a shorter man with long hair going all the way to his waist walking with his eyes closed; and an individual who wore a face mask and glasses, who looked in any way unexceptional.

 

I didn’t want to bother them, and talking with adults I had no connection with was weird, so I avoided them. I was about to go inside when a voice came from behind me.

 

“Hey kid, won’t you give us some face?” The unexceptional man spoke.

 

The bald man jumped in. “Leave him alone, Scar.”

 

“What do yo mean leave him alone? He has the honor of journeying with us and he won’t give us face? Also, why the hell is he even here!?”

 

The bald man answered as if used to this kind of situation, “This is none of your concern. Albert said so. If you don’t want problems, just leave him be.”

 

“TO HELL WIT-“

 

BAM

 

A metallic cane bashed in the face of the obnoxious youth.

 

The unexceptional man was sent flying so hard that his face mask ripped, revealing a nasty scar running all the way up his ears.

 

“You can be as obnoxious as you want, but watch what your mouth, you upstart.”

 

Urgh, I brought my hands to my mouth, preventing myself from puking.

 

 The skull of this man had been caved in by the hit, even then, as if nothing had happened, Scar said, “Argh-- fuck you too!!”

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A view of a mangled skull speaking was more than I had signed up. I wanted to run, but my feet were stuck in place, paralyzed by the shock.

 

As he was talking, his caved-in skull recovered; soon enough, besides the gnarly scar on his face, there was no sign of having been hit.

 

What.. the hell?

 

From afar, as if sensing my distress, the short man who had his eyes closed turned in my direction said, “Look what you did, he is about to pee himself.”

 

“Hey no way I’d do that,” I yelled as my legs shook beneath me.

 

“Well...” the long-haired man continued

 

“Excuse this circus, these idiots have a bit of trouble controlling their nerves”

 

The bald dude interjected, “Hey! what did I do?”

 

“Anyhow, we will embark now, if you will excuse us, prince of the Balmungs,” He said before going inside the cart. His group followed without delay.

 

The scarred man embarked in with an annoyed “chet” not sparing me another glance; I was left standing in front of the cart like an idiot.

 

What the hell just happened?

 

##

 

While traversing to the other hill of the mountain, I just stared in the void, wondering about what I had just witnessed.

 

His skull was broken?

 

Right?

 

And the old man, how is he that strong?

 

What the hell?

 

Franky saw me and asked, “What problem are you trying to solve with that pea brain of yours?” flicking the side of my head.

 

“Ouch.. ah nothing, it’s just..”

 

“Ahh, is it about the other guys?”

 

“Oh, yeah... how did you know?”

 

“I am just that smart!” He said as his nose seemed to elongate, “and there’s also not much else you could be worried about, anyhow don’t worry about them. They all got a screw loose.”

 

“Because you don’t?” I almost asked, but he continued.

 

“But they are not bad people,” He said with a smile.

 

“I see.. “

 

Still, the thing I was more concerned about was their abilities. As far as I knew, each family of the Dark Heavens had magic abilities that were highly potent but specific. The thing that made the Galvrungs totally unfit for battle was the fact that their specific magic was highly biased towards the usage of sensory magic. Their sight, hearing, and olfaction were much more sensitive than other mages. And while there’s an argument to be made about the usefulness of their magic, it obviously paled in comparison to the Grimmjaws and their ability to “lycanize” or the Balmungs and their abilities to both boost ourselves and affect our surroundings.

 

Things such as regeneration, or super strength, were not things that would be expected from the Galvrungs. The only one who seemed even remotely Galvrung-like in capacity was the long-haired man, that seemed to see even with his eyes closed; however his mana pool was so profound that for the first time in my life, I actually double guessed what I had seen.

 

This guy, he might even be stronger than father…

 

Not only no one would expect the Galvrungs to have such firepower, but seeing someone that could actually rival with father in terms of mana reserves was a shock.

 

I.. guess the world is much wider than I imagined.

 

Wait no…

 

What?

 

The world might have been bigger. But a man stronger than the head of one of the Seven Great Families. The Strongest at that?

 

There was something wrong.

 

I pushed away the thought. My only comfort was what Franky had said that day, about the Galvrungs being linked to us by fate.

 

Still, a more pressing issue was the fact that we were about to go down a cliff.

 

“Albert.. how do we go down?”

 

“We don’t,” He said with a mysterious intonation. As we got closer to the edge of the cliff, I could see shooting out from the side and going as far as my eyes could see, two scaly and thick tubes.

 

What are these?

 

As if he could read my mind, Albert said, “These things are what we call a dragon bridge.”

 

“Dragons are long, wingless creatures that can float. For a long time, we assumed this was just because of their control of wind mana, but one day, we captured one. A whole new facility had to be developed for it; one thing we realized was that they could fly not because of some greater control of mana but because their scales had the natural property to float. Which is the secret of these bridges: combining Evonite trees and wrapping them in dragon skin allows us to make these floating bridges.”

 

“But how did you get down the mountain to go to our place?”

 

“I already said it. We didn’t.”

 

“Uh?” yet again he left me hanging.

 

As he said that, we embarked on the floating rail. The herdrics engaged on this perilous trail without a sliver of hesitation and walked straight ahead for what felt like an eternity. I did not look out the window, as the simple concept was enough to make my stomach churn. It wasn’t like climbing the mountain where the goats seemed to have some magical ability to stay hooked; here all would be required for us to go tumbling in the air and free falling for a few minutes before crashing pathetically on the ground would be some rapacious bird or a misplaced storm gale.

 

It suffices to say that I was livid in my seat.

 

Franky, for once, didn’t mock me and seemed out of it, too. Which, funnily enough, reassured me.

 

“Looks like you aren’t that tough after all,” I said.

 

“Shut up.” He glared.

 

He glared intensely but didn’t bother answering.

 

This reaction differed from everything he had shown until now. Usually when he got teased, he would clap back even harder or playfully come to hands. Even thinking back, while I had known Franky for all of 2 days now, he had shown no signs of being afraid of height, so something was already off.

 

Albert and Hagrid both didn’t seem to care either way, with Albert sleeping and Hagrid writing in his diary.

 

After some time, after Franky had calmed his nerves and fell asleep with some tears in his eyes.

 

Hagrid closed his huge tome and waited for a bit. By that time, I had calmed too, and was even finding the ride soothing, and after worrying for a few hours I didn’t even have enough energy for it anymore. After all, besides the prospect of death, the view here was breathtaking.

 

Franky snored like a goat bleated.

 

Which, while grating, proved he was asleep.

 

Hagrid that until now had been in his own world, once convinced that Franky was really sleeping, said, “It’s not my place to tell you that.”

 

He paused and then glanced at Franky with sorrowful eyes.

 

“He lost... something extremely important here”

 

“I know you didn’t mean to hurt him, but what you said was...”

 

He stopped, as if searching for my eyes for a glimmer of understanding.

 

I couldn’t quite grasp what exactly had happened here, but for it to have such an effect on him it had to have been, as Hagrid said, something that was extremely important.

 

“Oh--” was all I could say.

 

‘I really said something bad..’

 

Hagrid looked at me with understanding. “As long as you understand”

 

He went back to his notebook and continued to write things in it.

 

I went back to looking through the windows.

 

‘What could he have lost here?’

 

The rest of the ride to the top of the second mount became a lot less amusing.

 

 

 

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