Chapter 8: Crazies Find a Way

Fortunately, due to it being so late, the way was mostly clear for us to make it to the staircase leading to the guest rooms. As we walked, Jassen tried to remove our new “hat” by swatting it at. Xanrei would laboriously bound above our reach, letting Jassen ruminate in his inadequacy of reach. Coming back down, she perched herself on my shoulder, her talons burying into my leather and ruby shoulder piece, and her body leaning heavily against my cheek. ‘You wouldn’t swat me away would you? You wouldn’t you’re nice *hic*’ her words were alcoholic with a hint of fruit. Jassen wanted to beat her, but I stayed both mine and his hand. I could tell he was angry with me, but I felt almost sorry for her, she’s barely able keep lift in her state. I was quite fortunate too with my choice of clothing, had i not worn anything as jassen does, her talons would have me made a different choice.

Leif leads us up the stairs. The air shifted to a cooler and more controlled atmosphere as we ascend. His body had so much fur, I thought my eyes played tricks on me, making shapes of things other than fur. But this creature was strange to Jassen and I, and I think if Xanrei had more sense about her she might have felt the same.

Once we fully transitioned from the tavern below to the inn above, I realised how this town truly felt about guests. The air was chilly, there was little noise, and no one around to guide us to Leif’s stay. The first door we passed was closed, with darkness keeping its cracks. In most other towns, the first room was always in use. It was easy to get too, usually the one best attended to, and the easiest one to get too if inebriated. Yet even the door was neglected with dust lining the tops of its bevels.

The second room had its door open, a humi passing through the way. Before he closed the door, I observed two other humi having a quiet conversation among themselves, neither looking the most happy. Rather than having the spring mechanism close the door, the humi forced it shut. As the humi passed, he grumbled obscenities to himself. He didn’t even seem to notice us, and was focused on leaving more than anything.

Leif stopped when arrived at the third room. He lifted his paw to the doors latch. After pulling down, the door spring open, zipping into the wall. After watching him, I finally realized why they truly had springs in doors, for beings without telekinesis, thumbs, or any other means of pulling a door open.

He bade us to go inside, bowing again for us. The room was dark and unkempt, the sleeping cushion having stuffing poping out, and the windows tinted in grit. The room wasn’t his, but it wasn’t welcoming either. This seemed to send Jassen over the edge, and he stood fast outside the door. He didn’t say anything, I could sense his mind rushing for an excuse to not go in. I thought it too, we had no reason to go into a room, alone, with this stranger. The more I thought about it the lese sense it made that we even went with him in the first place.

Xanrei, somehow already coming back from her drunken stupor, seemed to come to this conclusion too. She looked him dead in the eye and said, ‘why should we go in there, give us a reason to trust you.’

We stand in silence for what seemed like minutes, neither party willing to challenge the other, until finally he spoke, ‘I-I… I th-think you are an outcome of Ova-Ovaldian in-influence. I wished to sp-speak about this with you in private so as to not draw at-attention, but I realized n-now how fooli-ish you would be if you were to fo-fol-follow.’

That was it, this Isynx was nuts, we had to get out of there. But Xanrei, flipping from suspicion to infatuation in an instant, asked for more information. Though unlike us, Leif seemed to be more forthwith. After glancing around, looking for any immediate eavesdroppers, he begins his story.

He had grown up far away, in a small poor commune to the east of the Akua mountains. He had been born into a clan who had an enchanted oath place upon the:m to protect Kald from Ovaldian creatures. The village was placed right outside one of the pillared bridges between Kald and Ovald, overlooking Ulinta’s abyss that separated them. He had grown up with the abyss, like Jassen had with the forest outside his village. But the abyss was far more dangerous and influential on the village's inhabitants. I promised death to any who fall down, yet an eerie power still lured some into its bottomless chasm. That was only one part too, when he had grown old enough, he was to wage war with the twisted Ovaldian creatures trying to cross the bridge. A war that has been ongoing since time immemorial, something that Jassen and I had only ever read about in books. But after looking to his face full of scars, the pain inflicted by those monstrosities must be true.

Or at least I might have given credence to his story, had he not continued. He said that after years of service, he had noticed something strange. Ulinta’s abyss, bottomless, had a darkness that stretched further than the eye could see. He asserted that he had noticed that the darkness seemed to be growing closer to the surface over the years. At first he did not belive it himself, and asked his fellow clan mates if they noticed it too. They disregarded it as fatigue and had him stationed as lookout for the time foreseeable. Over years of watching, he became more and more sure something was wrong. This compounded with the fact that there was a record number of attempts by the corrupted Ovaldian’s trying to cross over. And even some of the weather pheromone of Ovald leaking over the abyss. He pulled his tail around to show a bald and scarred spot on his tail, claiming that it was when fired had rained from smoldering clouds.

Despite all the happenings, and Leif’s claims, the villagers still did not believe him, young and old. So he left, traveling from Aiaoiv to nation to country, trying to get someone to listen to him. His next stop was Modyr, his hope dimming the further he got from the border between worlds. But upon seeing our quandary of a being, it reassured him that Ovald’s chaos was truly leaking into Kald. He wanted us to go with him, as his means of proof of the dire tidings.

Jassen and I were dumbfounded at his story and request. Ovaldian creatures, raining fire, darkness coming up from Ulinta’s abyss, it was all too far fetched to believe. Xanrei herself burst out laffing, but Leif’s staunch face did not betray what he truly believed.

This Oo was truly nuts, and we had to try and escape while we could. So we turned around to leave, only for me to get a sense of an aura of anger heading our way. The sense spilled from up the stairs, and soon we heard arguing among several Oo.

Jassen put his hands to were a spears would have been, unfortunately we had not yet purchased anymore. Xanrei whisperes into my ear, ‘why did you stop, this guy is nuts, we need to get away, come on, move.’ We shouldn’t have, something bad was about to happen, so we held our place waiting for the noisy group to meet with.

The turbulent bunch finally made it up the stairs, it was a mob of humi and a few other Oo. Upon seeing Xanrei, one of them shouts, ‘that’s ‘em that’s the wyvern that stole from me down at the well. Look, it has three tails, just like I said!’

Another, with a sword drawn, shouted over the other, ‘those must be its accomplices, yall will pay what ya’ve done.’

From the back of the crowd another voice shouts, ‘they’ve been stealing from us for long enough, I say we should kill ‘em!’ The crowd roared in approval, others drawing more swords and some even drawing trez, a device that launches molten pellets faster than wind in a storm. The start towards us, not even give a chance for us to explain ourselves.

We back up, bumping into Leif who refused to move. Leif shouts to the crowd, that we had a right to a trial in Modyr. But the angry crowd shouted in incoherency, not caring what the foreigner had to say.

Still not in her right mind, Xanrei tried to flee by flying towards the open door. Dozens of thundering explosions erupted from the crowd, and I knew that that meant, we were about to drop dead from the holes they shoot through us.