Chapter 108: 109: They float

Fresh covers her mouth as she lets out a loud yawn, doing her best to suppress it so that she doesn’t wake up her friends. Jubilee and Basil are laying on the grass around the small fire-pit, both of them having long since fallen asleep. The lantern has hung itself on a branch and floats there above their heads. She wonders if it’s sleeping as well? Jubilee seemed to have been exhausted too and simply fell asleep on the spot, as soon as they laid down. Basil on the other hand appears to be an active sleeper and constantly kicks and twitches and mumbles in her sleep. Fresh was sure that Basil was having a nightmare at first and she didn’t blame the priestess for having one. Dying is a fairly stressful life event after all. But judging by her sleepy ramblings about orange fishes, she supposes that the priestess is just dreaming about their dinner, which had turned out surprisingly well, given the circumstances.

Jubilee had caught them a few more fish and Fresh had prepared them like a champion, with Basil helping her by watching the ones on the glass meanwhile. Fresh didn’t want to tell any of them, because it seemed insensitive, But this was her favorite meal here so far in this world. Maybe it was just the experience itself, being out here in the wild with her friends. Or maybe it was still just the dying down of the adrenaline. It almost seemed romantic in a sense. But then she looks at the deep, bloodied tears in Basil’s robe and pinches the skin on her own arm tightly between her nails for thinking something like that. People had suffered. She should feel bad and here she is thinking about fish.

Fresh sits there with her head nodding. Her knees are pulled in and her arms are wrapped around them. She wants to sleep. She’s so tired. But she has to stay awake and watch the fire. The man from the sect, Shamrock, is out there somewhere in the forest. He hadn’t eaten any of the fish, despite Fresh basically shoving a whole fillet into the slits of his helmet and then even ordering him to eat.

He simply said that he didn’t like fish, spitting it back out.

Basil’s foot swings out as she kicks into the air.

“Oh no…” Fresh narrows her eyes, looking around the forest in suspicion. Are there foot-demons here? None of them are on a bed. Their feet are entirely unprotected, they’re right smack-dab in the middle of demon country.

She pulls her legs in tighter, watching her friends sleep for a while. Shamrock is out there in the forest now, killing monsters presumably. After they had eaten, he had gotten up and went into the woods with his sword on his back.

Fresh didn’t want to let him go on his own, but Jubilee told her that it was a good idea. The forest is apparently a dangerous place in its own right. It is absolutely full of small animals, but also low-level monsters. More than one person had apparently taken it too lightly and paid the final price for it. So it’s for the best if someone is walking around close to the camp, killing everything that creeps and crawls in the dark.

She should sleep too, honestly. But she wants to stay awake. Shamrock had promised her earlier that they could talk at night. She wonders why? Maybe he’s superstitious? She supposes that she can’t blame him. As far as he knows, the prophecy of the witch’s sect came true. He killed monsters and a witch appeared. Just like magic.

She doesn’t have the heart to tell him that she was just a dummy who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The bushes rustle. Fresh turns around, but then smiles a relieved smile. “Did you have fun?”

A bundle of gooey monster meat and bits of bone flop down onto the grass next to her. “Tribute,” says the man with a heavy breath, walking past her to the other side of the fire.

Fresh looks at the monster drops and then back to him. “Ah… uh… thank you!” She frowns. “Are you sure that you don’t want a fish?”

He grunts, stepping over Jubilee as he sits down across from her.

Fresh stares at his helmet, tilting her head. She turns to the side, looking at Jubilee’s mask then looks back at the man. She now realizes that she has never seen him take off his helmet either. Even when he drank from the fountain, he opted to dunk his whole head into the water. “How come you don’t ever take off your helmet?”

“I need it,” says the man. Fresh can see his eyes shine beneath the darkened slits of the metal as the firelight tries to push in to illuminate his face. But it never quite seems to reach all the way and simply dots the white of his wet eyes with an orange shine, as if they themselves were on fire.

“For what?” asks Fresh, scratching a cheek, already having an idea.

“To kill monsters.”

Fresh laughs a quiet laugh, holding her hand over her mouth in an attempt to not wake her friends. That was very much the answer that she had expected. She takes a second to quiet down a little and then looks back at him. “How come the witch’s sect likes killing monsters so much?”

He stares at her intently and Fresh isn’t really sure what to feel about the gaze. It isn’t one of fear or reverence. It’s simply a blank, but intense, stare. As if the man was trying to win a staring contest against her. Though maybe the night is just playing tricks on her eyes.

“To fill the well of souls.”

“The what?” asks Fresh. He lets out a heavy breath. The licking flames of the fire push to the side for a moment as if trying to escape him, despite him being their creator.

“Witches float,” he says. Fresh realizes that getting an explanation out of him is going to be difficult, given that he always keeps his words short.

“…Huh?”

“Witches float,” he repeats, his gruff, deep voice booming out despite this apparently being his ‘quiet tone’.

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Fresh stares at him for a moment and then looks around as she thinks. “So… you kill monsters to fill uh… the well of souls and then witches float to the top?”

He nods his head once.

“Huh…” she thinks for a while, not sure if she really understands, though she gets the concept. Sort of. “So why do you like witches?”

“Witches float,” repeats the man and Fresh stares at him, now entirely lost. Her hands press into her legs as she pulls them in tighter. Maybe she’s just too dumb for this? Maybe she should just go to sleep?

“Can… can you explain? Please? I don’t get it,” she asks timidly, averting her gaze and staring down into the fire. She isn’t sure if they were having a staring contest or not, but if they were, then she just lost.

There is a loud clanking as metal strikes metal. Fresh looks up, somewhat startled by the sudden noise. She sees that the man has hit his large gauntlet against his metal breastplate. “Souls are heavy. They sink.” He exhales, breathing loudly for a time before going on. “Witch’s souls are light. They float.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” asks Fresh, pressing her chin against her knees. So her soul is light? Great. That probably just means that even her soul is filled with nothing but air, just like her head.

“Too many.” Fresh looks up to him, raising her eyes but not lifting her head off of her knees. “Too many heavy souls.” Now he looks down and away, averting his eyes from her to gaze into the fire, but keeping the same intensity in his glare. “The world sinks,” says the man. “We need to float.”

Fresh stares at him, waiting for him to lift his head again and for him to say something else. But after a few moments of watching him, she notices that his head is drooping. The man has apparently fallen asleep while sitting upright. She looks at her friends who lie there asleep as well. As she looks at Basil, she notices that the priestess hasn’t mumbled or kicked for a while now.

The girl sighs and scoots over a few feet to the right, laying herself down next to Jubilee and closes her eyes, letting herself float away into whatever dream may come tonight. She pulls her legs inward, bending her knees so that her boots touch Jubilee’s. Maybe four feet are too many for the demons to steal all at once.

Razmatazz

Please choose your complimentary 'floating' reference below -

A) "Hello Georgie!"

B) "Who are you, to be so wise in the ways of science?"

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