5. Trapped
Yami growled to himself as he paced around the room. He just couldn't sleep here! It reminded him too much of the dream or whatever had occurred the night before. 'Was it really a dream? Was there someone trapped in a room like this? Just like me?' Yami thought to himself.
Yami snapped his head up when he suddenly sensed a presence on the bed, eyes glowing slightly as they fell upon a transparent woman sitting on the edge of his bed. "Who are you?" Yami demanded with a frown, looking the girl over. She reminded him of Anzu Masaki, the lady the council wanted him to marry
"You don't remember me, Yamitto?" the woman pouted, feigning hurt. "Wouldn't surprise me though."
The woman is 5'5" with golden tanned skin; soft, slightly round cheeks; a cute button nose; large, round penetrating blue eyes; thick lips; small muscles; c-cup breasts; a petite body with a slight stomach; and long brown hair that falls halfway down her back.
She is dressed in a spaghetti-strapped cream dress that falls to her ankles, slightly hugging her bump with her breasts straining against the fabric. Her feet are bear and scars were visible over her arms.
"I'm not Yamitto. Who are you?" Yami growled, taking a few steps back from the woman. She may be rather ghostly, but he could sense she contained a lot of power. Even the dead could kill if they've been dead long enough to learn how to control their forms.
"I am Teana. And you're a disappointment. How could you let yourself be trapped down here so easily?" Teana responded with a roll of her eyes.
"He'll let me out again," Yami replied with a frown.
"Sure, believe that. My husband wouldn't let me out until I died. Why would someone who isn't even related to you let you out? You're a threat to his people," Teana shot back.
"Someone who isn't related to me?" Yami asked with a confused look and a tilt of his head. "What are you talking about?"
"You don't know?" Teana asked with a frown, sighing when Yami's confused frown deepened. "I guess you don't."
"You better spill the beans," Yami growled. "What is going on?"
"I've already said too much. All I can say is that you need to go. Go as far as you. As fast as you can. If they find out who you really are, they will keep you locked in here until you die. Just like they did to me," Teana replied calmly, not at all phased by the young one's reaction.
"Times have changed. That doesn't happen anymore," Yami responded.
"Then you are trapped in your own delusions. Nothing has changed at all. At this rate, they will cull even the innocents who have the slightest touch of our people in them. They will claim it is for the good of the people, but it's not. It's because they fear us. They always have and they always will," Teana responded.
"You're making no sense," Yami muttered. "Tell me in a straightforward way what is happening."
"There are four others like you. Find them," the woman answered before she disappeared from the room, leaving behind the very frustrated king.
"Four like me? What the hell does that mean?" Yami muttered, growling as a hand subconsciously moved to rest against his bruised stomach. "Atemu will come back for me," Yami added with confidence, moving to sit on the edge of the bed. 'But what if he doesn't? What if he just tricked me into here so that I couldn't do anymore damage… Maybe it's better that way anyway…'
Sighing, Yami shifted to lay down on the bed and closed his eyes. He frowned when he once again heard the sound of a baby cooing coming from somewhere in the area. But the area was empty. And who was the people he could see in the dungeons if the dungeons had been emptied a couple weeks ago?
As Yami tried to isolate the source of the baby cooing, he started to hear the sound of children too. Soon the voices of adults joined in. Men and women were begging for their children to be saved while the kids cried for the parents to come back. They all started to meld together to form the same thing. They were afraid and being ripped from those they cared about. Both sides wanted to protect the other, but they were powerless against their foe.
Amongst it all, Yami noticed a soft humming barely audible over the rest. Focusing on the humming, Yami realised that the tune sounded familiar. It was the same tune his mother used to hum to him when he was frightened or sad.
Yami frowned as he opened his eyes, the humming of his mother getting louder while the other voices seemed to calm. Once only the humming was left, Yami heard his mother's voice for the first time in over a decade.
"Yami, I need you to listen carefully. We can only connect to you because certain things are in alignment at the moment. We only have a limited time so you must hear us. We need your help. You must find the others and find out how to save us. We're running out of time. Some of us have already been taken, so we know time is limited. We may not have another chance to get help. You need to run! Get as far away from the Royal family! Find the other four and only then can you all find out how to free us," Yami's mother said sternly. "We can't tell you how to help us because even we don't know. There is a legend that may be able to help you."
"A legend?" Yami asked.
"Don't interrupt. It's rude," Yami's mother scolded. "It's been lost to time, so you need to find the old temple of our people. The temple can help you uncover the secrets of our people. Only then can you find a way to save us. But don't trust the royal family. They're the reason why we're here in the first place."
Yami frowned, the sound starting to pick up again. "How do I find them?"
"Find the elements!" Yami's mother answered over the noise before her voice was lost to the near deafening crowd.
"That's doesn't help!" Yami responded, trying to find her voice once more. But she was gone. The noise rose to a near deafening point before it suddenly stopped all together, the door swinging open. Yami instantly sat up, turning to the door to see who had entered.
"We have to hurry," a woman said from the door.
"Who are you?" Yami asked as he got up and walked towards her, keeping his guard up encase he had to fight.
"My name is Kisara. Now let's go," the girl, Kisara, answered.
Kisara is 5'8" with pale skin; soft, high cheeks; a cute button nose; sharp, bright blue eyes; slightly thick lips; small muscles; c-cup breasts; a petite body; and white waist-length hair with tones of baby blue.
She is dressed in a knee length cream dress with thin straps over her shoulders and white Egyptian-style sandals covering her feet.
"Where are we going?" Yami asked as he followed the girl out of the room, running to keep up with the fast pace set by the strange woman he had never seen before.
"Tea sent me to get you. She wants me to bring you to her kingdom," Kisara answered as they ran, making sure to avoid the people who were starting to re-enter the palace.
"Tea?" Yami asked. He hadn't heard that name in years. She was a friend of his when they were kids and then she just disappeared. No one ever told him where she had gone or why. It's like she never existed in the first place. "Where is her kingdom?"
"You'll see," Kisara responded, walking into the river right by the palace.
"What are you doing?!" Yami exclaimed as he came to a halt on the bank. "There are crocodiles in there!"
"They won't hurt us. Now stop screeching and get your ass in here," Kisara responded sharply. "We don't have time to pig frig around. They'll notice you're missing quickly and come after us. Then we won't be able to break you out again."
Nervously nibbling his lip, Yami slowly made his way over to the woman. His heart stopped when he saw a crocodile moving towards them. He couldn't help but gasp when Kisara dove under the water and yanked him down.
"No time to be freaking. There are guards on the bank. We can't risk being spotted," Kisara said, chuckling softly when Yami gaped at her. "Yes, we can talk underwater. Haven't you ever tried it before?"
Yami shook his head, surprised to find that he could actually breathe underwater. "W-What is happening?!"
Kisara chuckled again, shaking her head ever so slightly. "So clueless. Come. It's safer if we travel by water until we're outside of your territory. Then we can begin to explain things."
"Why can't we talk while moving?" Yami asked as the two started swimming towards the open ocean.
"Because you leave bubbles every time you open your mouth to talk. It'll draw attention to us," Kisara answered, using her ability to create a bubble around herself that enabled her to move quicker through the water.
Yami tilted her head, wondering if he could also create the bubble. To his surprise, but not Kisara's, he was able to create a bubble around himself too. 'Incredible. How did I even do that?' Yami thought to himself as he used his bubble to propel him through the water faster than a sailboat on a high wind day.
'They've really sheltered him. He doesn't have any inkling of his actual abilities. Are they really that concerned about him knowing how to use his abilities?' Kisara wondered. 'But they're fine to abuse his time-space abilities. Idiotic humans.'
Yami stayed close to the woman, watching with interest as he got to see firsthand what the wild fish did while out in the open ocean. A shark to his right caught his attention.
Kisara looked over at the boy, a smile forming on her face when she saw him staring at the shark with a cautiously curious expression. "He won't hurt you. They're our allies," Kisara said to the boy.
"I have a question," Yami said, turning to her. "How can we speak? Shouldn't the water disperse our sound waves?"
"Huh?" Kisara blinked.
"Well, hearing is more difficult under water. Yet, I can hear you perfectly fine," Yami explained.
"Ah. Right. That's because, while sound is coming out of my mouth, we're actually talking telepathically. You're not trained in it, so the mouth still has to move for it to work with you," Kisara explained. "With training, you will no longer have to open your mouth and expel sound for us to communicate. Same with hearing. You may have had hints of this already. Strange thoughts may pop into your head as you unintentionally activated this untrained ability."
"Oh… I have noticed that," Yami muttered, going back to watch the shark as it hunted a school of fish.