OBI
"No, no," Dex tries, already exasperated. "We don't want to buy a hammer." The store clerk's forced smile remains intact, and she pushes the hammer toward him again, making him groan.
"Think he'll give up soon?" Jonah asks, sipping on his tea. "I didn't think he had that sort of persistence in him."
Slamming his hand on the counter, Dexter attempts to come up with a few words we've picked up, but they fail to reach the woman's ears. "That's an ich, not a uch," Yukiji corrects him, and the Apostle turns to face her.
"I know my iches and my uches just fine."
"No need to be such a butch about it."
Jonah spits out most of his tea upon hearing this, and I can't help but start laughing as well.
"I don't like you," Dex whispers, face turning red.
Yukiji merely stares up at him, eyes as dead as her heart. "I'll get over it." Turning around to face us, she offers Jonah a small smile. "Can we go?"
"W-We still don't know the way," he responds, wiping the tea from the table.
"Who even sells hammers in a bar!?" moans Dex yet again, then approaches us and sits back down. Raksha, who's been silently judging the company around us, suddenly stands up, and I can only describe the look in his eyes as one of sheer determination. He takes a deep breath, braces himself, then approaches the woman. I hear him say a few words, and the woman responds with a nod.
"No way," whispers Dex.
"Who knew he had it in him?" I add.
"Wait for it," Jonah whispers.
The four of us watch the exchange intently. Leaning forward, the woman says something back. She then hands him the hammer.
Raksha smashes it against the counter. "Do I look like a repairman!?"
Jonah sighs, taking out some of the money Yukiji stole while we were walking through the streets. "Time to go."
"He blew," Yukiji mutters, nodding and jumping on her feet. I follow after them, leaving Dex as Raksha's temper-manager. I'd hate to be stuck with that job.
"You're better off talking to Count Slugheist," one of the men around us says in clear Valski, and I turn around, trying to locate him. Gone already? Couldn't have been my imagination.
"I'm here," the voice says again, and I glance down. Lo and behold, there's a tiny figure there.
"Aren't you a little young to be-" He punches me in the gut before I can finish, and I nearly puke my guts out. Jonah immediately rushes to my side, and the feeling of his mana is enough to paralyze me without even being directed at me. Just another reason not to tell him about his family. If he's already gotten this dark, then the news of what likely happened to his brother and father might turn him into that thing he briefly became. I've seen some pretty disturbing shit in my day, but nothing has scared me as much as that.
"Watch your tone, you brat!" the short guy growls. "It's rude to point it out!"
"You need to take a step back," Jonah replies coldly, and Yukiji already has a dagger in her hand, slowly circling the man. From this angle, she looks like a wildcat going around a baby deer. "Tell us what you know."
Pulling the hood off, the man reveals he's actually an adult, with his beard covering most of his neck. "You wanted to get directions? Count Slugheist rules this province. His house is the biggest in town. Can't miss him. Now hurry and get out of here, before you bring trouble to us all."
"And what trouble would that be?" I ask, standing up and pretending my stomach doesn't hurt anymore. In truth, I'll probably be feeling that all day.
"That stench on you makes it clear; You've been marked."
I take a sniff of my shirt, but it seems fine. "What're you talking about?"
Taking a step back, the dwarf looks around himself. Is it dangerous to speak to us? What're we missing about this place? "You've been marked by the Hunter. We know of him here, and know well enough to fear him. I don't know who it is, but one of you is marked. Probably when he hit you. He'll follow you to the ends of the world, where even the Great Sands don't reach. There's no escape, so you just take your business elsewhere, before you bring him here."
"You know about Risk?" Dex asks, suddenly interested. I had a feeling those two weren't gonna let the counter in Rook go, and I was right. Their egos must've taken quite the bruising during that fight. Hell, all of us were humbled. It was like facing a God.
"Do not speak his name!" the dwarf suddenly yells, and the chatter around us dies down. "Get out of here! Go! Find Slugheist, then leave this town!" He turns around and stomps away just before Jonah can grab him, disappearing into the still-silent crowd.
"Maybe we ought to go?" I suggest, and Jonah quickly agrees, pulling Yukiji along. As soon as we leave the bar, we immediately notice the drop in temperature.
"What the hell?" Dex asks. "It wasn't nearly this cold before."
Putting his arm around a shivering Yukiji, Jonah starts looking around. "We need to get better clothes than these, or we'll freeze long before we reach their king."
"Do we really have to reach him?" I ask. "I mean, surely someone else can get word to him. We simply need to make him aware of the Demon King's release. There's no need for us to travel through the whole damn Jotunheim."
"Maybe this count?" Jonah offers, though Dex seems against it.
"Counts and lords will tell us whatever we want to hear to be rid of us. The only way is to approach the king directly."
"Well, there's always a way to force their hand," replies Jonah, pulling open the back pockets on his shirt.
"Is that wise in here?" Raksha asks him. "Their reactions will likely not be positive."
"If they're fine with dwarves, they're gonna be fine with fairies."
Dex and Yukiji wince immediately, and I am probably no better. Raksha just stares at him, completely dumbfounded. After a few seconds, I start laughing, while Yukiji and Dex just shake their heads in judgment. Suddenly self-conscious, Jonah blushes, and starts looking around the group. "What? What is it?"
"O-Oh my God, Jonah," I manage to get out, bending over from the pain. "You â you didn't just..." I start wheezing before I can explain it to him, so Yukiji takes the reigns.
"He was a dwarf," she tries.
"Yeah, I just said that."
"No, no. He is a dwarf." The determined look in her face makes the poor explanation even funnier, so my laughter intensifies to the point of tears. Doesn't take me long to start gasping for air.
"Jonah, he was human. He just happened to be a dwarf," Raksha finally says, and the fairy's face turns completely red. Without another word, he sprouts his wings and flies upwards.
"You can't run from your shame!" I yell after him, and see him giving me the finger from the air. "Well, that happened."
"What is he doing?" Dex asks, and Yukiji already seems to know.
"Finding the Count's house."
"How long will it take?"
"He's done already."
"How can you tell?"
"He's coming down."
"Fair point."
"Enough of this fascinating conversation," Raksha snaps at the two a mere moment before Jonah lands before him. "Was it easy to spot?"
"Can really only be one," replies Jonah, then turns toward me. "You and Yukiji need to get us some money. My lungs nearly froze up there."
"That's not normal," says Dex, seemingly deep in thought. "The sudden cold â there's no way that's a usual thing. We were only in that bar about half an hour. No way it would've gotten this cold already."
"Magic?" Jonah asks.
"I don't know what magic would be strong enough to affect an entire town so quickly. It would take even me longer than that."
"Doesn't seem too hard," Raksha adds, and then the wind around us picks up. It doesn't start blowing heavily, but it's more than what it used to be. I look around, and see the clothes and hair of everyone around us swaying along with it. Damn. I'm really way behind these guys when it comes to magic. If it comes down to fighting the devils, I won't be able to do shit. One poke from Risk, and I'm dead.
"How?" Dex asks, truly mesmerized. I guess he's not top dog anymore.
"If it's something weak like this," Raksha explains, holding his hand up to feel the wind, "it's not hard. I still can't cast a strong spell to cover the whole town, but the cold isn't so bad to count as that. It's slow, and it can't really hurt anyone."
"Instantly," adds Jonah. "Even the colder nights back in Valhalla used to be enough to... to..." Oh boy. Is it coming back?
My legs tense up on instinct. It's what we were taught to do; Run instead of fighting. A captured spy is a dead spy. We have no use if we can be caught. Only fight if victory is guaranteed. If he goes dark on us, I doubt the rest of us will be able to survive.
"Are you alright?" Raksha asks, reaching out toward him. "Are you thinking about-"
"About how damaged his memory became because of all the power he gained," I cut in, and Raksha shoots me a glare. I shake my head at him. Don't do it. Don't remind him. Our survival depends on his memory being gone.
"His memory?" Raksha asks, more himself than me. I nod vehemently. Yes! Get there already! "Oh â OH!"
"The people of Polaris are dead," Yukiji comments. Attagirl! You always were my favorite!
"I guess I can't remember," Jonah finally says, but his eyes are hazy. If clarity hits him, I'm turning tail.
"Well, either way, you're right," I interject again. "The cold may not be that much of a pain right now, but it'll slowly start to affect us. We could get sick and die long before it reaches the level of power where it can freeze us. I think we can all agree it isn't natural, yes?"
Yukiji looks at Jonah, who gives me a nod, and then nods herself. Guess she's got a ways to go.
"Pretty damn obvious," Dex says, then gestures toward Raksha. "But it took a djinn to cast a spell on the whole town. That means that another magical creature is responsible, and we know there aren't any djinn or fairies around."
"A devil," Jonah concludes, pointing at one of the passengers and whispering something to Yukiji. She gives him a thumbs up, then sneaks her way toward the man. I watch her casually pass him buy, and pay close attention to her hands. The moment she touches his pouch of gold, it vanishes from sight, and so she slowly circles around and makes her way back.
"You should pretend you forgot something if you're gonna do that," I tell her. "It looks suspicious if you turn around for no reason."
"I bet you can't do it," she challenges, and I proceed to prove her wrong. Walking up to the weapons' shop nearby, I pretend to trip and slam into the man looking at the assortment, then quickly reach into his small satchel and yank out a few gold ones. He curses at me in their language, but I just sheepishly smile, looking as innocent as possible.
"Donkeys taste better when cooked with carrots," I reply, trusting he wouldn't understand a word. Looking startled, the man quickly scurries away, and the shopkeeper rushes back inside, slamming the door behind him. "Rude."
Showing Yukiji the coins, I notice Jonah rolling his eyes. "Play on a man's ego, and he'll be your puppet instantly."
What? No way. I look at the girl, and see her smiling coyly, Oh, you cheeky minx. "Okay, you win that one."
"Now let's go buy some bloody coats already," Jonah complains, and Raksha gets on it immediately. Wow. Talk about whipped. "Why'd they run from you, Obi? Did you say something weird?"
"Why is that always your first assumption?"
He simply narrows his eyes, waiting for me to answer.
"I did nothing. Just muttered gibberish in Valski. They flipped out when they heard it, and got the hell away from me."
"Think the dwarf mentioned Risk's mark?" inquires Dex, slowly starting to follow after Raksha, gesturing us along. "How'd he know we were marked, anyway? I don't sense anything different about us."
"Might be dwarf magic," I suggest, then look at Jonah in amusement. He can't do much but sulk and pretend he didn't hear it. "But yeah, beats me. I don't sense anything either."
"Maybe they just don't like strangers?" Yukiji suggests. "I know I don't."
"You don't like anyone but Jonah," I point out.
"That's not true."
"Oh?"
"I like Raksha, too." Ah. Figures.
"Your parents don't count," I tell her, and she immediately turns red. Jonah picks up a rock and throws it at me, but I just catch it. "The physical might of a caterpillar won't let you actually hit me, Jonah." He picks up another rock, and I feel him enchant his arm. "H-Hey now. Let's not do something we might regret."
"No regrets," he replies, throwing the stone at me. I dive down before it can hit me, and it breaks through the wooden house behind me instead. I hear a scream inside, and then an old woman comes rushing out, mad as hell.
"Look what you did," I tease. "We're in trouble now." However, as soon as the woman sees us, her eyes widen, and she runs back inside. "Okay, there's something off about this town."
"The people at the bar didn't seem too insulted at first," Jonah says, looking around. Almost everyone has locked themselves inside their house already, even closing the windows. "Did the info of us being marked spread that quickly?"
"Couldn't have," I reply. "The only way to do that is magic, and, well...."
"Yeah, I noticed it, too."
"None here," says Yukiji, and she's right. Not a single person we've come across in this town has magic, which is strange. Even if most people in Polaris didn't have the ability to use it, at least some of them were born with the latent ability, and every human, without exception, has a trace of mana in them. That's what led to the belief that the djinn created us with magic. These people, however, don't give off that same feeling. It's almost as if....
"They're like corpses," Yukiji speaks up again. "Whenever I'd kill someone, they would feel like this."
"I was gonna compare them to the shades in the Labyrinth," I tell her, "but I see what you mean."
"You don't think that's possible, do you?" Jonah asks, and only as he does do I notice that the barely visible silhouette of the sun is setting. What in the world? It's still pretty bright outside â well, at least as far as this place goes. It's murky and grey, but it's definitely not night time.
"Hey, Jo. Did you happen to be keeping track of time?"
He blinks a few times, clearly taken aback by the question. "What brought that on?"
"Look ahead, in the far distance."
I give him a few moments, and then his reaction comes. "Fuck me. Is that-"
"The sun," I confirm, and see Raksha entering one of the stores.
"Guys," Dex suddenly says, giving me a start. Oops. Kind of forgot he was here with us. "There's no one here."
"What?" Jonah asks as I snort.
"Yeah, we noticed the streets are empty."
"Houses, too. I can't feel anyone anymore."
"What do you mean?" I ask. "Is it the mana thing?"
"No," Jonah tells me. "There's no presence around us. If they were to move anywhere where there's mana, they'd at least slightly disturb it. That must be why the cold is spreading so fast."
"I don't follow."
"Mana is all around us," Dex tells me. "You have to know that, right?" Once I nod, he continues. "Well, although it really can't be felt, since it's the regular state of the world, it shifts around as people walk through it. The people in this place don't move it, though. That's probably why it seems so peaceful, even though it's just a regular place. This is the kind of location people would choose for meditation. There are absolutely no disturbances, aside from Raksha, though he's hardly enough to make all the manites shift."
"Manites?" I ask, looking at Jonah. He shakes his head, too.
"It's just an old belief," Dex reiterates, and his hand goes to the silver necklace around his neck, grasping the pendant. "You know of the Children of Sol, yes?"
"The religious group?"
"Yes. We believe that the god Sol is responsible for teaching us magic, and giving us warmth, not the djinn. Rick and I were raised in a convent of them, and were taught that manites are tiny particles mana is made up of. The ones here aren't moving at all."
Rushing back toward us, Raksha immediately goes to Jonah's side. "I just realized why I don't like this town."
"Is it the vanishing people?" Dex asks, opening the window of a small house next to us, revealing nothing inside. "The furniture disappeared, too."
"What is it?" Jonah asks, ignoring the Apostle's commentary.
"They're spirits," Raksha says, and I can't help but wince a little. I don't do so well with dead things. "They were kept here by a spell, but it only lasts during daytime."
"Isn't night time the usual haunting preference?" I ask, and he glares at me, inadvertently sending a gust of wind at me. It makes me take a step back, then stops.
"They are not regular spirits. They're only half in this world, and half in another. The shifting between the worlds could only be caused by someone with at least Ishtar's level of power."
"A devil?" asks Jonah.
"A powerful one. Risk has no such magic, and neither did that weird blob. Juno is a healer and a scientist, yes? I do not believe having magic this powerful is possible, given her proficiency with the other attributes. A third royal must have come here recently."
"How recently?"
"Most likely? A day or two. It wouldn't be possible to keep this spell up for longer than that, even with all that mana."
"And the furniture was put in the other world, too?" Dex asks.
"I suppose that's possible," the djinn tells him, crossing his arms. "I thought the caster could afford to discriminate."
"But the houses..." I point out, and then Yukiji jumps away from Raksha, pulling out a dagger, then turning invisible. The moment she does, the pressure strikes me, and I fall to my knees. I hear clapping, and the others turn toward the source of it. I just barely turn my head to see who's doing it, and see a man with grey hair and incredibly wide eyes standing there, wearing what seems to be a black outfit of a court jester, with the exception of the hat. He's very thin and lanky, and stands taller than any of us. The power he's giving us leaves no room for doubt.
"The houses were left alone," he says, grinning wildly. His voice is pretty high-pitched, and playful, going perfectly with the grin he's sporting. "We'll be needing places to live, afterward. No sense in destroying them all. The other things had to go."
"Y-You killed everyone... in the entire town?" Jonah manages to get out, doing surprisingly well against the pressure of the guy's dark mana.
"Oh, no," the demonic jester says, chuckling. "That was the work of our King. You see, he's got a talent for leaving things in a state of un-death. If it were up to me, they'd all be corpses."
"You already have Jotunheim?" Dex asks, summoning a few papers in preparation. "How? It's barely been a month, if even that."
Spreading his arms, the devil, who appears to look entirely human, looks up at the sky. "It's the Undying Mist, of course. Our King's personal favourite. Takes all it touches and swallows it up, bringing it to his world."
"Loose lips sink ships, Rem," an all-too-familiar voice says, and we all look up into the air. "We're not villains from an adventure novel. Either capture them or let them suffer once the Mist catches up."
Cackling, the jester raises his middle finger high, directing it at the fairy above him. "Don't give me that shit, Ozzie. You're our ally, but that doesn't mean you rank as highly as royalty. I'll fuck with 'em if I wanna fuck with 'em."
The former leader of the Apostles sighs, and then his eyes zero in on Jonah. "You aren't human, so I'll make you this offer: Come join us. This is the winning side, after all. There's no doubt about that. They'll welcome you if you pledge your soul to the Demon King."
"Like you did?" Jonah snaps, his mana starting to darken. It takes mere moments for me to become uncertain about which of them to run from. "Sorry, but gloom and darkness just don't do it for me. I'll be siding with the humans for now." Spreading his wings, he flies up into the air, facing the other. Their wings are like a perfect opposite of each other, as is their mana. Ozymandias, ever elegant and bright, feels warmer, despite his allegiance. Jonah, seething from his anger and confusion, is almost as dark as a devil, his pitch black wings making him look all the more intimidating.
Just when I think a fight between the two of them is about to break out, Ozymandias vanishes, leaving no trace behind.
"Coward," hisses Jonah, then looks down at the remaining opponent. "I don't suppose you'd be willing to do that?"
"Not on your life, kid."
"Oh, well. You had your shot. See ya."
Frowning in confusion, Rem suddenly gasps, spitting out a good bit of black blood as his mana vanishes. A hole opens up in his chest, though nothing seems to have caused it. Reversing her spell, Yukiji takes a step back, checking out her work. Without a word, the devil's body hits the ground, and the girl starts making her way toward us.
"Well, that was fast," I say, but then the dark pressure of the mana returns. Yukiji's eyes widen as she starts to turn around, but she is punched and sent flying by the now-standing devil. Her impact is cushioned by Raksha's wind, but the front of her body is clearly messed up.
Grinning at us as a pair of horns sprouts from his head, Rem performs a mockery of a curtsy. "I'm sorry. That was rude of me; I had neglected to introduce myself!" Moving his hands through the air, he creates several silhouettes around him, and I quickly recognize them as shades. "I am Rem, the royal devil who goes by the epithet Living Deadman. I'm afraid killing me isn't going to be possible." With a snap of his fingers, the horde of shades starts pressing forward.