08- Rock Bottom

“Uh… Ahhh!”

Scrambling out of the bed, Fíle stood up as straight as he could, giving a clumsy salute.

“N-Nice to meet you, sir,” Fíle yelled with an eccentric tone. Seeing this, Pierre couldn’t do anything else but put his head in his hand.

“Ugh, every single time… Kid, let me make it very clear. Do. Not. Treat. Me. Like. Your. Superior,” Pierre stated very clearly, pointing at Fíle, “is that understood?”

“So what… you want me to treat you like my dad or something? That’s kind of weird Mr. Pierre,” Fíle semi-sarcastically stated.

“No that’s not what— Ugh, kid you know what I mean. Just Pierre. Understood,” Pierre flusteredly explained.

“Yes sir. Uhh…” all of a sudden, Fíle started feeling a bit odd, as if he were about to collapse.

“You know kid, you really should get some rest. You were pretty sick a few minutes ago. Anyway, think about my offer for a bit and tell me what you think next time you see me… what?”

Apparently noticing something odd, Pierre turned his head, facing a wall. Sniffling, he made his way over to the door before a very concerned look flashed across his face.

“Why is there so much sediment in the air,” he muttered before slowly opening the door. Seeing this, Fíle began to become more confused.

“Sir, what is going on,” he questioned.

“Hold that thought kid, I’ll be right back,” Pierre murmured before walking outside and creaking the door shut.

Deciding that following Pierre would do no good, Fíle crawled back into his bed before once again entering a state of slumber.

…

“No…”

Stunned, all Ándras could do was look at the scene before him in terror. As his knees started shaking uncontrollably, the man who had just killed his brother started barking at the crowd that had formed. However, this didn’t seem to do much good until he started threatening to run them all over with his carriage. Soon enough, a hoard of people who looked like they had just seen a ghost started running away in all different directions, leaving only three people left; a huffing, rich looking man with golden teeth, a shaggy, black haired man with dark brown eyes, and a brown haired servant who looked extremely perturbed.

But eventually, even these three hopped into a nearby carriage, not even sparing a glance back at the hole that had just consumed a child.

“No!”

Finally snapping out of his state of paralysis, Ándras stumbled over to the glowing hole, which appeared to get more ominous by the second.

“No, no, no, no, no! Brother! Brother, please! Talk to me! Please, tell me you’re alive! Nazarius. Nazarius!” However, no matter how hard Ándras screamed, the only voice that relayed back to him was his own echo.

Falling onto his knees, the only thing Ándras could do was despair.

‘Oh, god… Mom…’

Remembering the other person who would be affected by this, Àndras fought the urge to puke. However, he lost fairly quickly.

“No… Mom… how could this have happened? This isn’t real right? Maybe that was just a kid who looked like Nazarius… this isn’t possible, right?”

Mumbling like a madman, Àndras eventually shakily stood up.

“Who were those men?! Why did they do that?! They had a carriage, so… a noble? But why would a noble kill my brother? Why would a noble be here in the first place? What is going on?! Dammit!”

Slamming his fist onto the rocky ground, Àndras cursed not only his lack of knowledge, but his incompetence as well.

“Why?! If I wasn’t so useless… so weak, this wouldn't have happened… I could have done something! Dammit!”

Trembling, Àndras turned around and started to walk, his gaze not leaving the ground. Before long however, he quickly stopped.

“What do I do? Go home? What would I even say to Mom? ‘Hey, by the way, you’re other son’s dead too?’”

Standing in silence, Àndras eventually decided to go back to the tavern he had slept at the night before. Step by step, Àndras walked away from the monster that had consumed his brother, stepping through a giant puddle of blood without even noticing. Soon enough, the only evidence that Àndras had even been there was the trail of tears that seemed to follow him no matter where he went.

…

“Sniff Sniff, blood too? What the hell is going on? Wait, this isn’t another trypa, is it? Ugh, god dammit.”

Running at an above average speed, Pierre was browsing through the residential areas, trying to find the source of the problem.

“Damn, all this clay is making it hard to find anything.”

Looking around, Pierre eventually made his way to the Main Street, sniffing around for any more hints to where the source of the problem lay. Wandering the place, Pierre eventually noticed a collapsed house that sat on the end of the street.

“Blood,” he muttered as he ran closer and closer to the residence. As he grew nearer, he was able to spot a woman digging through the rubble. By the time he arrived, the woman had stopped rummaging and had broken down into tears.

“Uh, ma’am are you okay,” Pierre asked softly.

“My husband! He’s still in there,” she uttered before she started wailing uncontrollably.

“Oh.” Realizing the woman’s problem, Pierre walked over to the clay house and started grabbing large chunks of rubble off the top of it and setting them down in the street. “Ugh, this is harder than I thought it’d be,” he grunted.

Eventually, most of the rock was cleared out, leaving only what appeared to be a dismembered corpse. Seeing this, the woman who had been crying ran over and stared at it in shock.

“No! Epipléon, talk to me! Are you okay?! No, no, no, no, no! Aaaaugh!”

Wailing into the corpse of the disfigured man, the woman didn’t notice Pierre, who was walking behind her. Taking up the other side of the man, Pierre put his hand on the corpse’s neck.

“Hm… looks like he’s still alive somehow, which means… ugh, not again…”

Sighing, Pierre tried whisking the woman away only to find out that she was stronger than he thought she’d be.

“Ma’am, please step back for a second. I’ll give your husband back to you in a second, okay?”

“Wh-what are you going to do with him?”

Stepping backwards, the woman questioned the silent Pierre as he put one of his hands on the man’s chest.

“23 broken ribs, cracked skull, concussion… Actually, pretty much every bone is either broken, shattered, or fractured and his lungs and liver have been punctured. Ugh, gods dammit… this is way worse than that kid… Uaaagh!”

Flexing his muscles, Pierre started grunting as he inserted his hand into the man’s body. Like quick sand, the man’s skin easily absorbed all of Pierre’s arm as he stuck it deeper and deeper into his body. After about five minutes of shifting his arm through the man’s body, Pierre’s hand suddenly shot out of it, launching him backwards about a meter.

“Hah… hah… I fixed his lungs and liver as well as a good portion of his broken and shattered bones. I’ve also temporarily removed his sense of pain, so before it comes back, go to a doctor and try to get the things I couldn’t fix healed. Anyway, now that that’s out of the way, ma’am would you mind if I asked you some questions?”

Sitting up, Pierre turned to face the woman who was staring at him with a look of shock. “Uh… yeah, sure,” she responded.

“So, do you know where the source of all of this came from,” Pierre asked, getting to the point.

“Do you mean that hole that just appeared in the middle of town? Sir, do you know what that was? Was it responsible for all the shaking?”

“Uh, yeah, pretty much,” Pierre answered, gliding around the woman’s question. “Anyway,” Pierre continued, “did you notice anything odd about the hole? Like, for instance, did anything crawl out of it?”

“No, nothing crawled out of it. But there was something odd that happened…”

“Well, what was it,” Pierre pushed. As the woman thought about it, she began to look quite troubled.

“… there was this guy that was there. I don’t know who he was or why he did it, but…”

The woman took a deep breath.

“… I’m pretty sure he threw a kid in there.”

Letting what the woman said settle in his mind, Pierre sat there with his mouth agape for a few seconds.

“He did what!?”

Quickly standing up, Pierre quickly stepped out of the debris and into the street.

“Ms., where did you say the hole was,” Pierre asked, urgency coating every single one of his words.

“It was around the end of the marketplace. Anyway, thank you very much for your help sir.”

Nodding his head at the lady’s display of gratitude, Pierre looked down until he spotted one of the full leather waterskins he had kept tucked in his belt. Swiftly grabbing it, Pierre poured the contents out into the middle of the air. However, instead of falling to the ground, the water stayed still in the air until every drop had been emptied from Pierre’s container.

Tucking the now empty waterskin into his belt, the floating water suddenly flew towards Pierre’s feet, wrapping around his sandals.

As Pierre started running, his movements started changing. At first he was standing straight up and moving his limbs moderately, however as he started to gain some speed, he began to hunch over. His arms also began to make more exaggerated movements and his legs extended further and further out. His hips, which were previously inactive, now swayed side to side as Pierre started zooming at a speed more than twice that of a horse’s sprint.

As his speed increased, the water on Pierre’s feet also underwent changes. First, it started taking the shape of a path in front of him. When Pierre was about to run over the water, it would suddenly become hard and cold before once again going in front of him and repeating the process. The shape of Pierre’s sandals also changed to where there was now a small blade barely longer than his feet sticking off of the bottoms.

“Shit, where is it?! Wait… Sniff sniff… horses?”

Slowing down a bit, the ice beneath Pierre’s feet started warming up and becoming more liquid, causing his skates to sink in the water, slowing him down drastically.

As Pierre looked closer into the distance, he was able to notice a carriage driving in his direction. Not wanting to get hit by it, Pierre decided to walk by it slowly and see who was inside. By the time the carriage had arrived, Pierre was able to see that it most likely belonged to a noble seeing how fancy it was. However, the extreme decour of the carriage wasn’t the most bizarre thing about it.

“Sniff Sniff… blood and gastric acid… did one of the people in the carriage just impale someone? Hm… I have bigger problems right now, but I’ll remember those smells.”

Now concerned, Pierre thought that it would be a good idea to hurry up and find the trypa. As he started skating again, he began to notice an increasing amount of destroyed houses. Looking around, Pierre took another breath of not so fresh air.

“Doesn’t seem to be anyone stuck under any houses. Damn, I need to hurry!”

Looking around, Pierre finally reached the marketplace in which on the immediate left was the source.

“There you are. Sniff… Wait, blood and gastric acid again?”

As Pierre started to slow down once again, he noticed a trail of blood that led to a hole in the ground.

“Yeah, I smell the same three scents that were in the carriage which means… Son of a bitch!”

Displaying more emotion than he had in a while, Pierre looked down at the trail of blood as he approached the trypa. Getting close, Pierre reached for another waterskin that was tucked on the inside of his belt, spilling the contents around the hole.

“Dammit, I’m already tired enough, now I have to deal with a human sacrifice! What the hell was wrong with that noble?! Doesn’t he know that they’ll feed you hemlock for doing something like this?!”

Authors note: hemlock is a poison that was used back then to kill those who were sentenced to death.

“Ugh, what do I do? At this rate, they’ll be trying to break out within the hour and if I’m really unlucky, something big will come knocking,” Pierre complained as a chunk of ground fell into the pit, causing it to become a bit bigger.

“Ugh, this is gonna be a pain in the ass. I can already tell… Sniff sniff… Hey wait, is that Àndras?” Looking back at Main Street, Pierre noticed a faint but recognizable smell. “Sweat? No, there’s no oils or hormones. No enzymes either, so saliva is also out, which means tears?”

Looking down at the ground, Pierre followed the thin trail of tears from the trypa all the way back to somewhere else.

“Damn, I keep missing him… well, now’s not the time for a chat anyway. Should I go back to the tavern and find that other guy and get him to tell them to send someone? No, he wouldn’t be fast enough, which means I don’t really have any other option than to fix this myself, do I? Ugh, gods what a pain in the ass…”

Crouching over the trypa, Pierre decided that it was time to get to work.

…

“Another one.”

“Um sir, don’t you think you’ve had enough for now?”

“Shut up and get me a drink, old man!”

Sitting on a barstool while slumping over, Àndras was screaming at a bartender. By the time he had gotten back to the tavern, he was so out of it that when the bartender offered him a drink, he accepted without really thinking about it.

“But sir, this is your sixth cylex. Don’t you think it’s time you go get some rest,” the bartender proposed.

Author's note: a cylex is just a Greek cup. It’s like a short goblet with two handles on the side of it.

“Didn’t you hear me?! I said shut up and get me a drink!”

Slamming his fist down onto the bar, Àndras was freely venting his anger.

“I understand sir, but please calm down or else I’ll have to call the guards to throw you out,” the bartender stated calmly, as if this was a normal sight for him.

“Throw ME out?! Do you even know who you’re talking to, old man?! I’m a Sergeant Major of the Army for gods’ sake, and you think you can throw me out,” Àndras boasted, which was quite unusual for him. Hearing this, nearly everyone else inside the tavern quieted down and turned toward to look at Àndras, including a certain woman who was especially interested.

“While that is quite something sir, I have to ask you to stop yelling. You’re distracting all of the other customers.”

The tavern Àndras was currently in was a bit bigger than a house with about ten tables with four seats and a main bar that you could sit at. It was sufficient to say that fifty people could be seated at once as long as they were willing to sit next to strangers.

“Yeah, whatever,” Àndras snickered, giving up and chugging down his newly refilled cylex.

As the atmosphere went back to its rambunctious tone, Àndras’s mind started replaying the events that had transpired earlier that day. However, before his brain could properly contemplate on anything, the alcohol would wipe any trace of a proper thought away.

But what Àndras didn’t know is that while he sat there drinking his problems away, a woman was silently approaching him. As the woman arrived behind Àndras, she started tapping his shoulder in an attempt to get his attention. However, when it became clear that this wasn’t working, she decided that it would be better to try sitting down next to him.

Not caring in the slightest, Ándras solemnly looked down at his once again empty cylex.

“Hey,” the lady asked, “you really in the army?”

“Huh? Yeah why,” Ándras responded as he finally noticed that someone had sat next to him. As he looked over to see who it was, his eyes widened and his jaw dropped.

“Well, if you don’t mind, I have a few questions to ask you. What’s your name,” the woman inquired.

“Ándras… and you,” Ándras answered without a second thought.

“Hm… I suppose I wouldn’t mind telling you my name. You’re pretty cute after all,” she stated, causing Ándras to blush.

“The name’s Skyla. Anyway, let’s get started.”