A stagnant pool of water was coupled around Aldweck’s body. The moon was risen over the darkness laminating the spot where Aldweck laid. Out of Aldweck’s body came Mitch’s who felt himself detaching from Aldweck. His eyes opened and he looked around in the darkness. His body was translucent.

“What’s going on?” Mitch’s voice echoed and reverberated as if he were in an underwater bubble. He looked up at the moon which felt more like a distant sun peering into the depths of a deep-sea, which he was sitting at the bottom of.

As he felt his body leave Aldweck’s, he started walking toward the door of light that was in front of him and in the distance far away.

“Finally, I can go back.” His eyes could peer into the door of light and see the cities of Earth. Traffic and life abundant and present. He was about to walk through the door when he heard a snapping sound. A thorny vine pierced out of Aldweck’s body and into Erick’s body. He felt like coughing up blood but he couldn’t.

He stumbled backward and looked down at the vine that had pierced his chest. There was no blood as a rose sprouted from the vine and outward from his chest.

“What? What kind of sick prank is this? No...don’t tell me.”

One of the five petals on the rose began to grey and wither away into dust. Four petals remained on the rose as the vine rapidly drew him back into Aldweck’s body and his soul was converged into Aldweck’s once more.

The light of the moon was replaced by a more blinding light of the sun that seared Aldweck’s skin. Mitch gasped for breath as he felt himself floating on a piece of debris from the ship. He rolled over gasping for air as he looked around in all directions. There was nothing. No one was in sight.

“No...I’m not the only one left am I?”

“Erick! Where are you?” He scrambled into the water and started swimming. It didn’t matter where he swam. In all directions it was an endless horizon with nothing in sight. The piece of debris he had been resting on was drifting away, causing Mitch anxiety as he swam back to it and got back on the debris.

Mitch thought back to what had just happened to him. He tried to understand the meaning of it all. There was a door back to Earth? But it seemed like whatever brought him here wasn’t through with him. What did it mean if he lost the rest of his petals? Mitch didn’t know. Mitch was afraid to find out. Had he died? It was hard to say. It felt like he had died, but at the same time his body felt strong and restored.

He wondered in his thoughts aimlessly as the piece of debris he was on drifted on the waves for what was an eternity in his mind. Hours passed as the sun rolled across the sky. Aldweck’s skin had begun to burn and his lips were chapped. His voice was hoarse as he continued to call out weakly for Erick who had been by his side since the beginning.

The night was cold. He had been drenched and it was hard to stay dry on the piece of debris. He held tightly to himself as he shivered. The moon was bright out at night. It was a source of light in this fearsome darkness. It was more terrifying than being submerged deep in the sea. Looking at it from above and realizing how deep it could be, and what kind of terrifying creatures could be lurking in this world that Mitch didn’t know anything about.

Mitch scoured Aldweck’s memories and found that Aldweck surprisingly did know something about the wildlife in the sea.

This had been a tale from Aldweck’s childhood from his mother.

“Don’t swim in the ocean at night! The creatures are much more fearsome at night. The creatures from the deepest parts of the sea come up and feed on low-hanging fruit like the children who play in the sea at night.”

Great. Mitch had somehow wished he hadn’t scoured Aldweck’s memories. He had gotten a better grasp on how Aldweck’s memories worked in unison with his own. Certain things could trigger a memory from Aldweck or Mitch could think of something really hard and find bits and pieces of information from Aldweck’s memory. It wasn’t some dictionary he could access at all times, which made it an inconvenient asset.

For better or for worse, Aldweck was not taken by any sea monsters or terrifying serpents that wanted to eat him. The sun rose once more and the coldness of the night dissipated away with the darkness.

The sun stared at him once more and he stared back.

Time drifted by as his body felt weak and ready to perish. There was no sign of Erick or anyone else. Had Aldweck been the only one to survive or had he been separated from everyone else, fated to die from thirst and the sun’s unforgiving rays.

Night came again and his skin became ice to the touch. The air was so dense it wanted to take the breath out of him. He struggled to breathe as drifting ice started to become more frequent. Eventually, all he could see ahead of him was ice and everything behind him was water. The moon was not present tonight, covered by the clouds of an emerging storm it had begun to snow heavily.

Aldweck was cold as he took his first step onto the land of ice that spread out in every direction in front of him. He walked and walked until he couldn’t anymore. He collapsed and everything felt cold.

“What do we have here?”

Aldweck could hear something shuffling closer to him.

“A human? Ahh...not just any human. You are from another world it seems.”

Mitch looked up, his eyes clasped together with snow as he managed to raise his head to look at the person above him.

What he saw was not a human, but instead a penguin.

This penguin was similar to the appearance of an Emperor Penguin, but instead, it had a red dot in between its eyes. It looked down on Aldweck with eyes of knowledge. Its eyes were profound and its composure was strong.

“So, what are you doing here? Get the hell off my lawn. Ice-lawn.” It chuckled.

“Please help my friends…” Aldweck grabbed hold of the penguin’s foot.

“I don’t care.” The penguin sighed, “Fuck off.”

The penguin slipped his foot out of Aldweck’s grasp.

“Please, I’ll do anything.”

“Anything?”

The penguin’s head turned in curiosity.

“Anything.”

“Ah, fuck.” The penguin turned around. “I do need to do one good deed per month as per my contract, fine. I guess I’ll lend your friends a hand.”

The penguin cast some sort of magic that made the ice around them crack. At the speed of sound, two figures flew in at high speeds and dropped from the sky next to Aldweck. Aldweck turned over and saw Zaya who was awake and Erick who was not.

“They were the only two in range. If those aren’t your friends, fuck off. I’m not helping you anymore. You’re welcome.” The penguin started to shuffle away.

“Wha--?!” Zaya shot up.

“How are you alive? And how did you cast magic to move us so far?!” Zaya shouted.

“The penguin did it, not me,” Aldweck muttered.

Zaya turned to look at the penguin. The penguin opened its mouth and started cawing, exposing its proud chest and running around in circles flapping its wings as it waddled on the ice.

“Feast your eyes upon me: the all-powerful, talking penguin, Alex!”

Zaya raised her brow before looking at Aldweck, “Aldweck, I understand you’re an idiot, but penguins cannot speak. Do you genuinely expect me to believe you?”

“He just spoke! Are you blind!?” Aldweck pointed at the penguin, a sheet of ice falling off of him.

The penguin started laughing, “Hey, idiot. They can’t hear me. Only you can cause you’re from another world. Sucks for you. Looks like she wants you dead.”

“You asshole!” Aldweck clenched his fists before realizing that Erick was still not moving.

“Erick!” He rushed over to Erick, ignoring Zaya. He shook him but he didn’t wake up. He checked his heartbeat and breathing. He was alive.

“Don’t worry about the servant. He’s alive. But I’m taking him back with me to the Harbright Empire. He’ll be trained into a proper knight, unlike you who should have already died once. You are a strange man. First, you run from me, then you bring us back here?”

“I didn’t bring you. The penguin did.”

“Like I could believe that.”

“What did you do to the bitch?” Alex laughed, his penguin caw made Zaya wince.

“See? It can’t even speak.”

“Just forget it. If you’re going to kill me then do it.” Aldweck said.

“I’ll deal with you later, Aldweck. Even though I hate your guts, I have to make sure this boy lives. He almost bested me in battle because I was careless. Now that I see his potential, he could be even stronger than the best knights in the world one day.”

“You’re not taking him with you. Let the boy choose himself. Don’t insert your selfish ideals into a boy who isn’t even twenty years old.”

“You gonna fight me for him?” Zaya said.

“Finally...now things are getting interesting.”

“I don’t want to fight. I just want you to let him make his own decisions. Isn’t that an important part of being a knight?”

Zaya looked at Aldweck with a wrinkled face, “What would you know about making decisions that aren’t selfish, Aldweck?”

Zaya took Erick and started to fly up.

“Aww, after all that trouble I went through. Things were just getting interesting.” The penguin sounded sad.

Aldweck didn’t know what to do. He was powerless. He couldn’t stop Zaya himself but he needed Erick more than anyone else in this world.

Alex waved his hand and Zaya smashed hard into the ice, knocking the breath out of her, “Can’t have you just ruin this fun event for me now after I’ve done something good for this month.”

“So you do want to fight!?” Zaya screamed out from her ice cavity, holding Erick from getting hurt.

“What? No! That was the penguin!”

Zaya summoned two fireballs as she stood up and aimed them at Aldweck with brows furrowed. Aldweck held his hands out as if to say stop when Alex extinguished Zaya’s flames with ease.

Zaya’s eyes went wide.

“A-Anti-magic?” She took a few steps back.

“You’ve made a contract with the God of Hell?!”

Aldweck was perplexed, “What?”

Then it came back to him through Aldweck’s memories. The God of Hell was someone the dark cultists worshipped and tried to obtain power from. It’s said that the powers obtained from the God of Hell are an antithesis to the laws of the world. Anyone who can contract with the God of Hell is an extremely dangerous and powerful person, and there are only two instances where someone has made that contract that is known publicly.

“I-I’m not!” Aldweck’s chest fluttered.

“Don’t act like a fool. You can keep the boy! Just let me go. I want nothing to do with your blotted soul, you devil worshipper!”

Zaya flew in the other direction without Erick and was immediately restrained and forced back to the ground by Alex.

“You are bad news aren’t you!?” Aldweck screamed at the penguin.

“Something like that,” Alex said, chuckling.

“Stop talking to that damn penguin and let me go, you bastard!” Zaya was on the verge of tears, it was evident that she feared the powers that were restraining her.

“Let’s restrain her powers for a bit and make this more interesting.” The penguin clapped his hands together.

As soon as Zaya tried to cast a fireball it shrank to a barely visible flicker of light.

“W-What!? What happened to my mana?”

Zaya tried to cast magic over and over again but all she could produce were almost invisible sparks that immediately dissipated into the air.

“What did you do to me, Aldweck?”

Alex touched Aldweck and started to speak through him, but it was as if Aldweck was speaking, “I restrained your magic capacity. You are basically a normal human now.”

Zaya’s face turned white as she fell to her knees. Her blonde hair fell over her face as she looked down at the ground, “A normal...human.”

Mitch was tired of this penguin making his life harder, but he had saved Erick so he couldn’t complain too much. He just sighed, and let the reality sink in. Alex, the talking penguin was someone only he could communicate with and he was bad news.

“Well, now that we have that established. I think I’ll join you...Aldweck! On an adventure!” Alex said with a weird chirpy smile as he clapped his wings together.

“No...no-no! You’re joking right!?” Aldweck grabbed hold of the penguin and looked him in the eyes.

“Not joking.”

“Why the fuck do you need to come with us, you’re an all-powerful penguin!”

“Because I want to watch funny shit happen, get your hands off me, you nasty boy.”

Aldweck dropped him.

“You really have gone nuts. Talking to a penguin, making a contract with the God of Hell....what happened to you Aldweck. When you left me...you changed this much?”

Alex’s eyes widened, “And she’s your ex-girlfriend?! This is about to be funny as hell! No way I’m not coming with you guys.”

“Fuck me…” Aldweck facepalmed.

“No way, you whore!” Zaya screamed.

Mitch sighed, this was going to be a long journey, wasn’t it?