I'm glad I got to finish this chapter today, I was pretty busy and it was a time to relax during Christmas but finished it I did. Hope you enjoy, also I don't own Marchen Awaken Romance.

Small talk was not Andrea's forte. So far she was talking about their aunt who hired her cousins son to work on her kitchen. Instead of getting an estimate of how much it would cost he asked her to pay him hourly. What should have been a one month renovation turned into a three month job.

"So she regrets hiring him over this aphorism?" Adena asked?

"All I know is it's none of my business, but socializing is good for the brain..."

While the two women were being catty, the Andrew with genteel manners showed up with a cookie of lemon icing crammed in between two salty crackers. Adena thought maybe. She decided no.

"More trees are being cut down to build a casino and gas station. Although trees will be cut down, I think the three of us should try hiking...up a mountain older than this town."

Adena smiled in a coy and calculating way before sipping her tea cup.

"Are you sure? When?"

She looked at her Andrew who shook his head. He raised two fingers to look like bunny ears; a signal.

"Two days from now."

-I-

The person was called the Pan Piper, but he preferred to be called Pou. He, Andrew, Alice, and Dorothy were walking to the next town. Andrew wanted to ask, but he was hesitant to draw attention to himself when a stranger was around.

Pou really liked to play his flute every time he passed animals on the way including orcs who dressed like a normal person and nymph's who mimicked the tune with their serene chiming.

"That's a pretty nice ÄRM you got there." Dorothy said in a tone someone in court would use before indicting someone of stealing. "Where did you find it?"

Pou looked at her before he lazily shrugged his shoulders and played his flute again. This time his music helped a squirrel with four eyes scrabble down a tree before stopping at the midway point and look at the piper. It scurried away when Dorothy got in front of him.

"Well?"

He just blew his mouth into the holes on the left side of the flute before reversing his flute playing on the right side.

Andrew, finding all of this to be disrespectful treatment to sweet Dorothy, used his ÄRM wrapping two vines around Pou's heels. He was stuck in place, but he didn't stop playing his flute. If that flute was a sugary drink he'd drink a whole barrel of it.

At last the lulling music stopped as Pou lowered his flute.

"I bought it...at fifty percent of its asking price." He said nonchalantly.

That answer was very vague but it was still an answer acceptable enough for Andrew to let him walk freely.

Pou didn't go back to pursing his lips through the holes of his flute to make timbre music. His eyes flitted from the road to Andrew back to the road, seeming like he was wavering his attention every thirty seconds until Dorothy followed up the question she had with another question:

"You sure seem to like it. What does it feel like when you play it?"

Ironically she was asking that question while he was being coy and keeping his ÄRM squeezed tightly in his palm rather than playing on it again. However, he answered her:

"I taste blueberries both on my lips and in my neurons."

This was the first time Andrew heard the word "neurons" in a fantasy setting.

Andrew couldn't repress his grimace.

This guy just really irked him; and he was still following them even when they made it to the village.

They were standing near a trapezoidal trail that would take Andrew from the entrance to the mayor. With a reverence in his steps, he pushed forward...

Suddenly, metal cables in the sky stretched taut in front of his face. He glanced up, saw a dragon made finicky out of metal and other iron hovering above. It's nostrils and mouth were trimmed with gold but its eyes resembled actual human eyes, green irises with lots of white which looked nothing like a dragons' eyes.

From the side of the dragon's body a door opened, steam roiling out. When the steam cleared a man stood in a way that pontificated his armor. His armor was onyx, sparling with transparent wax keeping it cleansed, a prism etched in the torso of his breastplate, and he had a sheath for a broadsword around his waist but no sword inside it.

"Andrew." The knight spoke with salinity. "I am your next opponent, Docytus. I have given you ropes to climb up and join me. Our fight will be in the greenland away from the litany of your comrades. Can you climb my rope? If not you can use your vine ÄRM to entangle me so I can pull you up."

Andrew couldn't tell if he was an honest foe or a dishonest one. In the cartoon he watched the antagonists like Docytus would start out as an enemy but then divulge their sad backstories which would lead to a heel-face turn (switching sides).

He grabbed one wire about to take his enemy up on his offer with pride.

"Wait Andrew!" Dorothy jabbed him by his shoulder before turning him around to get a glance at her red eyes. "I've seen enough lattice work to know when someone is trying to trap you. Don't go in that dragon."

Andrew couldn't deny seeing how quick she was to deny him the choice of going up to face the knight in his dragon was making him second guess his decision, but all that mood was ruined by Pou.

"Opulent little boy. Maybe he knows you know you wouldn't take him up on his offer so he came up with a plan for being on the ground, and I'm not to say "psychic" or "oracular", but I think it has to do with his dragon. If you don't follow him where we shouldn't follow..." Pou eagered his head up before playing a sorrowful melody on his flute.

Andrew was still in agreement, Dorothy's warning was veraciously convincing. What he did next on the other hand was start climbing up the wire.

Wait!"

Andrew stopped, Dorothy's action after stopping him was to fumble her arm in her pocket. She pulled out an ÄRM in the shape of a ladybug pendent before tossing it like a softball, for Andrew to catch—something even he couldn't believe he did.

"We might not be there but remember us when you hold it."

Andrew nodded his head looking like a clown with wet paint dripping down his eye.

At last, he climbed, wishing he had a camera to take a pic he could show to his gym teacher, but shivered when he remembered he was going to be in a closed space adjacent to his enemy. Like a good enemy maybe turned good, he extended his hand before helping Andrew climb aboard.

"Remember what I said: Docytus" the knight said to Andrew's lack of understanding. "I know that name doesn't mean much to you, but it meant something to one of your friends down there.

Before Andrew could ask which one, the engine of the vessel roared to life and started moving.

Andrew was not as balanced on his feet as he believed himself to be, falling down but getting caught by his own enemy. It was when his ears touched the metal plate did he have an epiphany or more a better understanding of his enemy.

Down below, Dorothy, Pou and Alice watched the sanguine spectacle of a large dragon vessel flying away towards the sun. Then she had the temerity to meet Pou's gaze.

"How could you trick him into following that guy far away?"

Pou looked calm, his gaze flitted to his flute before running his finger on the tip.

"I just think when dealing with people its best to be flimsy; act like your going to give them what they want."

He started playing again, this time his playing a more soothing, tranquil note. While he was playing a bird veered from its flight path, soared towards the sky, and kept flying after the vessel. Whatever the plan was taking control of an animal left Dorothy's brow shimmering with sweat.

"Please be safe Andrew."