If you spot any mistakes, please point them out so I can fix them. I try to get them all out before post, but some slip-through regardless.
I'm sorry this chapter is short, but I hope you enjoy.
Chapter 07 – Trepidation
Abel settled down in the wooden wagon for another night in the camp of the Hawks.
He tossed and turned, trying to find a comfortable sleeping position between the late-night ambiance, the stiff wooden platform, and the horse's braying commentary.
.
"Well this sucks!" Abel tried sleeping face-down into his pillow as a spare blanket separated his body from the hard wooden bed of the wagon.
"I miss my mattress. I think I remember when I was camping, we brought some kind of cushions with us to lie on top of, to prevent this exact scenario. Ugh, my body is going to be sore in the morning!"
Abel tossed himself, grumbling and complaining with each turn and adjustment.
"STAY." The spectral rider's words from the night before last haunted him again.
"And HE wasn't supposed to show up until Guts leaves the Band of the Hawk, so WHAT THE HELL WAS HE DOING OUTSIDE MY WAGON LAST NIGHT?!" Abel muffled his scream with the pillow.
"AND WHY DID HE TELL ME TO STAY?! WHY WOULD HE TELL ME TO STAY?! WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!" He tightened his hand into a fist and struck the pillow like a child throwing a tantrum.
"I never asked to be here! I DON'T EVEN KNOW HOW I DIED! And the first thing that happens is that I lose control over my life! GREAT! FANTASTIC! Why don't I just save everyone the trouble and just-"
*Knock, Knock* "Zombie?"
Every thought in Abel's head silenced. He crawled to the rear of the wagon, untied and parted the curtains.
"You alright in there?" A familiar face asked.
"Oh hey Dante. How's it going?" Abel recognized the hawk immediately.
"Hey, I didn't know if you were assigned a cot or not, so I figured to bring you one." He held out a cotton rollup.
"Speak of the devil!" He reached out and accepted the cot.
"Hey, is it alright if we hang out for a moment?"
Abel thought about the request.
"Eh, sure. Why not?" He shrugged, then helped Dante climb in.
"Thanks, man."
Abel unrolled the cot, laying it down on the wooden floor, re-making his bed on the wooden floor of the covered wagon.
"You know; in the shadows, with the little light that passes through the covering, Zombie… Those scars do make you quite an unnerving sight." Dante smiled, attempting small talk.
Abel rolled his eyes and stretched, greeted by the loud popping of his spine.
"So, I don't know if anyone told you, but we're gonna be defending a castle from a Tudor force, I hear."
Dante continued.
"We're gonna be arriving at it within a couple days, and we're going to be stuck in there for a while."
"Yea, that's how sieges tend to go." Abel nodded his head.
"I didn't want anyone else to know this, but I figured since you were mute, I could tell you-…" Dante paused.
"I'm nervous. I've always been when it came to battles. Lost a share of good friends…"
Abel leaned back into his newfound mattress, not caring too much.
"Did you have a brother by any chance?"
Abel froze, paying more attention.
"There was another kid – he had this toy of a knight that he kept around. You sort-of resemble him – minus the scars across your face, of course."
Abel shot awake and blinked.
"No I don't." Mildly concerned, he recalled appearances and compared.
"The manga may be in black and white and it's been a while since I stared at a mirror, but I'm confident our hair colors are completely different, and our only similarity possibly being ethnicity, but mostly because of the 'not-dark-ages Europe' setting Berserk takes place in, so what the fu-"
"I guess when everybody looks at you, we don't see your twin scars, but a bit of an old friend beneath them." Dante smiled, then his expression turned forlorn.
"But we lost him a long time ago. I guess we didn't move on as much as we thought we did." He looked away.
"Hol' up! You're implying my appearance, or even my body changed while I was swimming around in the goddamn ARMSTICE?!" Abel stared at Dante in complete bewilderment.
"I mean, yeah – that's not unheard of for an isekai to modify or change how the character physically looks, but for a setting like Berserk, which is already pretty grounded, that's a bit odd and somewhat unnecessary, so what the f-"
"Griffith and Casca were talking about him, and your resemblance, so that's why I thought to ask… if you had anyone, I mean." Dante shrugged.
"I mean, yeah, I have a brother, but it's not that kid that died! Cain is my brother. Even if we didn't exactly get along, we're still family. That's how it works, right?" Abel answered in his head.
Dante sighed.
"I guess we've all lost family in some form or another. My condolences, by the way."
"At times like this, I really, REALLY damn wish I could speak!" Abel worked extra hard to not roll his eyes or show anything that could be interpreted as disrespect.
The two sat in silence listening to the crickets for a moment.
"Hey, Judeau and Rickert wanted to take you for some combat training tomorrow after we set-out. We only got a couple days until we reach the castle, so why not get some practice?"
"Damnit, I'm not a hawk!" Abel prevented himself from audibly groaning.
"Also, Errol told me that you did an excellent job helping with the supplies. Excellent work. That stuff's heavy."
"So, I'm NOT the only one who struggled with all that?"
"Anyways, get some rest. Tomorrow, we're not resting until the sun sets! We got a tight schedule after all!" Dante sat up and disembarked the wagon.
"Right!" Abel laid down and threw his blanket over himself.
"Oh, by the way!" Dante climbed back up and poked his head through the exit curtains of the covered wagon.
"Oh for f-… WHAT NOW?!" Abel sat up, annoyed.
"I almost forgot – don't worry about any weapons or armor. We'll go over all that tomorrow."
"… Great." Abel nodded, acknowledging.
"Great! See you tomorrow morning." Dante closed the curtains and departed.
"… I'm willing to bet Griffith had a hand in that! Wonderful. Hope I don't get sliced in half by Guts within the next three-or-so months!" Abel threw himself back into bed, put a pillow to his face, and socked it as hard as he could while screaming into it.
"The plan is out the window. SO MUCH FOR LEAVING, I GUESS!"
Eventually with great trouble, he was able to sleep.
. . .
Before he processed it, Abel found himself back in a familiar bed in a familiar place.
"Oh god, not again. NOT AGAIN!" Abel ripped off the blankets and scoured his room.
Everything in his room seemed to be place, just like last time.
"Oh god, oh no, no-no-no-no." He whispered, slowly opened the door. Abel's mind was full-on alert.
Same hallway, same proportions.
"Mom? Dad?" He quietly called out. No one answered.
"Sis?" He walked up to her door and knocked.
No response.
Abel walked down the hall.
"Ca-" Abel caught himself reaching out to his sibling's residence as he slowly approached his brother's door.
Everything was eerily quiet.
"Cain?" Abel knocked.
No response.
He contemplated opening the door, then felt a chill up his spine.
"No." Abel shook his head and turned around, moving down the hall, past the kitchen.
"Mom?" He paused, seeing the woman in her rocking chair next to the living room.
"Hello, son." She replied.
"… Son?" Abel blinked.
"Did-… did she ever call me that before?" He paused to ask himself.
He notice his mom fiddling with something in her hands.
"I don't think I've ever seen her knit." Abel pondered, doubting himself.
"Never mind." He headed into the living room and took a seat next to the woman.
"How are things thus far?" She asked him.
Abel paused, conflicted on what to say.
"I don't know." He answered.
Abel sighed heavily, feeling a lump in his throat.
"How was your second day at work? I heard that you had to have a couple eyes on you to keep from slacking." The woman asked, smiling.
"I had a job?" Abel blinked again.
"Uh…" He was still tired, trying to reach for answers with words that weren't there.
"It went okay I guess?" Abel softly answered, shrugging.
"I have no idea what she asked me about, but I'm not going to tell her that I was turned down from another job- wait, didn't I already tell her that I didn't get the-…" He couldn't find the answer in his head.
"Did I just lie to her about having a job?" Abel's thoughts spiraled.
"It must be hard for you, considering how different everything must be." The woman paused before continuing.
"But you're strong. You just don't see it yet."
Abel felt the words touch his soul.
"… Thank you, mom." He took a deep breath.
Abel looked around the room. He wanted to believe he was home again, but he didn't want to relive what happened last time. Everything 'looked' in place but never felt in-place. Despite being inside of a building, the temperature was absolutely frigid.
Abel fully and completely expected the walls to just start bleeding out of nowhere; for someone to knock on the door with the subtlety of a lightning strike and yell for him to wake up.
The hairs on his neck were straight and the cold air was not helping. Abel took another deep breath, rubbing his shoulders.
"Am-…" He felt a lump in his throat. His body felt its heat whisked away, leaving him cold.
"I don't want to be in a dream. I don't want to be in a dream! I-I want to be home… I-…" Abel's thoughts started racing.
"I don't want to be in a dream… I don't want to be in a dream." Abel shuddered as he took another breath.
"Yes, son?" The woman's tone was like a soft-spoken teacher out of some sort of fantasy novel Abel had probably read in Elementary school.
"Am I-…" He stuttered on his words.
"I WANT TO BE HOME! I WANT TO BE HOME! PLEASE, GOD, I WANT TO BE HOME!" Abel's mind screamed, barely contained.
"Am-… Am I-…" He stuttered, caught in a verbal loop of his own sentence.
"I-… in-…" He tried again.
"I can't ask the question because I don't want the answer, and if I don't want the answer then I don't want to ask the question, but I don't-" Abel's thoughts collapsed again.
He tried asking again.
"Am I-, am, I am… Am I-, in-… I am…" He couldn't finish.
"Relax. Take a deep breath." She calmly instructed.
Abel obeyed, still inexplicably cold.
"What frightens you?" The woman asked.
Abel took a moment to give his answer.
"Everything."
"Even this place?" The polite woman asked.
Abel paused, hesitant to give his answer.
"Especially."
The woman nodded.
"How so?" She resumed her knitting.
"I want to be home. I want to be here, with you, for real. I want to be back home with you, Dad, Cain, and-…"
"Your sister?"
"Yes." Abel answered, nodding his head.
"Marie?"
Abel nodded his head again.
"Yes, Marie."
"Could you describe your feeling to me in clearer detail?"
Abel took a moment to think, trying to shut out every fiber of his being that screamed the obvious to him.
"I want to be here. I dread that this isn't real. I want to return here as I remember it. It was simpler here. It was better here… but every fiber of my being reels in pain when I remember it. It's like a homesickness that I haven't known before." He tried to give the best description of his emotion as best as he could.
The woman nodded.
"The pain that you're feeling is nostalgia. It's hurting you because it wants you to let go."
Abel shook his head.
"It's all waiting for me. I just have to find a way back home. I just need to find a way back. It's out there somewhere… I just... need to find it, then I'll be home. Everything will be back the way it was again. I know it."
The woman shook her head.
"Your paradise no longer exists."
Abel froze, staring her dead in the eye.
"What do you mean by that? What do you know that I-"
*KNOCK* *KNOCK* *KNOCK*
"WAKEY, WAKEY! UP AN' ATOM, ZOMBIE! YOU'RE BURNING DAYLIGHT!"
Abel awoke just in time to hear Casca banging on the wagon.
. . .
Time: Afternoon.
Another day with the Hawks, another day closer to the Eclipse.
After the morning work and chores, Dante took Zombie for another horseback lesson before Sparring practice.
"You're catching on quick!" He Complimented.
Zombie lifted his canteen, bottom to the sky, ready for another rush of water.
"And of course, it's already empty!" He returned the metal drinking utensil back into his pouch.
Dante offered one of his to the recovering anemic.
"I brought some extra."
Abel reluctantly accepted it, nodding his head in thanks.
"Judeau told me to make sure you have access to lots of water. Blood loss is not a joke - especially since you haven't died to an infection or something else, yet."
They continued riding for a while, passing through the flat grassland.
"Beautiful view. What do you think, Zombie?" Dante continued his small talk.
Abel grumbled at the name. He hated being called that, but he had no way to communicate his distaste.
"I heard you haven't been getting good sleep lately. How bad is it?"
Abel gave Dante a confused look.
"How bad is 'what'?" He couldn't physically ask the question, so non-verbal communication was all Abel had.
"I overheard that you've been struggling to get up this morning, so I was wondering if it was nightmares or something."
Abel took another swig from the canteen.
"So, did you have other family before this?"
Abel nearly choked on his water when Dante asked the question out of nowhere.
"What's with the "did"?! They're just home, waiting for me to escape this nightmare and come back! As long as I don't get sacrificed or die along the way, I'll be back home in my world without-"
The nightmare from previously had barged into his head and interrupted his thought; Cain, wearing the behelit around his neck, Marie crying, Rickert knocking on the front door, telling him to wake up, the house disintegrating, being left in the wake of a lake of blood, with the Eclipse as his only source of light.
"Your paradise no longer exists." The woman's words rang in his head.
"… No! They're home! Everyone is home. They miss me! They want me back, and I'm gonna get back home… somehow!" Abel took a deep breath.
"This is all just a bad dream! It's all just a really bad dream!" He didn't know why, but his thoughts did not feel sincere.
"My condolences." Dante nodded.
"Jxik if!" Abel forgot that he couldn't speak, riding ahead and away from Dante after telling him off in gibberish.
"Zombie? Zombie!" Dante called out. Abel turned off the path and rode into the bordering woods, refusing to stop.
Dante halted in his tracks, feeling a tinge of fault.
"... Maybe I shouldn't have brought that up."
. . .
"Your paradise no longer exists." The woman's words haunted Abel again.
"STAY." The familiar skeletal rider's words from before, followed suite.
"And HE isn't even supposed to show up until Guts leaves the Band of the Hawk! WHAT THE HELL WAS HE DOING OUTSIDE MY WAGON?!" Abel rode deeper into the woods to sulk.
There was no road to continue so he dismounted his horse and caught his deep breath.
"And to think this was going to be how I planned to escape the hawks? A dead end of trees and possibly drowning in a murky bog? Oh, yea! Griffith now probably has eyes on me, which is PROBABLY why Dante never leaves me alone!" He kicked a rock straight into the brook.
"GOD-!" He was not in a right state of mind to deal with this.
"-DAMNIT!" Abel furiously threw a temper tantrum, kicking more dirt around before settling for a rotting stump overrun with moss.
"Why are people I know who are going to die in three seconds keep trying to be 'buddy-buddy' with me?! Who's next? Bazuzo?!"
He paused, taking up more time.
"I don't want to be here! I WANT TO GO HOME! I want to sleep in on Saturday mornings and snack on leftovers in the fridge. I want to watch TV after busting my balls after a six-hour workday! I want to-…" Eventually, he ran out of energy to continue his pointless tantrum.
The sight of bodies and the vivid memory of nearly being crushed to death between the mound of corpses he crawled out of returned, forcing Abel to cool off.
He brushed off his clothes.
"I just want everything to go back to the way it was before."
His mind went back to that image of the bleeding family photograph, then back to the nightmare.
Abel took another deep breath.
If the horse didn't loudly whine behind him, Abel would've forgotten where he was.
"Do I really, REALLY want to know how I got here?"
The image of Cain with the behelit around his neck returned.
"He wouldn't do it!" Abel sought to perish the thought before it could be entertained, let alone take root.
"I don't have the brand of sacrifice on me, so either I was never someone integral to him - which is impossible, we're brothers - or, the easier-to-swallow answer, he never used it. He wouldn't! Cain wouldn't do that! It was someone else. It HAD to be!"
With zero confidence in his rationalization, Abel continued.
"The rule is that you sacrifice someone that's part of you, so that Evil may rush in. That's how the whole sacrifice thing works, right?! Cain would never do that. He went to College to be a surgeon – wait, no. Did he want to be a doctor?"
Concluding his tantrum, Abel got back up on his horse, adjusted his sitting position in the saddle, took another deep breath and struggled with himself.
"He wouldn't do it! Besides, I'm pretty confident Behellits can't jump between dimensions or whatever crazy multiverse shenanigans, so it's just blatantly not an option! It can't have happened, plain and simple! Brothers to the end - Cain told me that. If he really did have anything to do with this, then-..." Abel's eye started feeling more lubricated than usual, so he rubbed it.
"Holy damn, I knew I was upset about everything, but I didn't think I was crying about-..."
He analyzed the liquid smeared onto his hand.
It wasn't exactly tears: More like a mix of a purple and red colored, syrup-like liquid that stained his hand and sleeve as he wiped it away.
"... I didn't feel anything. I don't feel anything. Was it bleeding before-...?" His mental rambling ceased, like a switch being thrown off.
He patted down his face, accidentally smearing it with more of the liquid.
"... What the fuck?"
The twin scars were bleeding.
The hairs on his arm started raising. The sensation traveled to the back of his neck.
He caressed his horse's neck, noticing the hairs on the stallion's hide going straight up.
Abel blinked as another drop fell from his face onto his shirt.
"What... the hell?" Abel looked around, blinking his liquid-saturated eye, feeling something invisible pulse at him; a distinct feeling of what a less learned person would write-off as paranoia.
Nothing.
He looked into the shallow-side of the tree line.
Nothing.
Abel looked deeper into the trees.
Pause.
He couldn't see it, but he swore something was looking at him.
"I think it's time to go." Abel turned the horse around, ready to leave the way he came.
"Hello?" A voice whispered out from deeper in the woods. Abel snapped his head around quicker than a whip, seeking the source of the voice.
There; roughly a football field deep into the thickets, concealed in a brush as wide as the forest, there was a deer looking dead at him.
Everything about it looked wrong: Abel wasn't the best judge of distance, but the size was abnormally large. The fur coat was wrong. The antlers were abnormally red. Even if it was supposedly velveting, there was nothing natural about it.
"Wait, do deer velvet with their antlers? I thought that was moose. Now that I think about it, weren't stag supposed to be-…" Abel took a good, long look at the creature's eyes as those orbs pierced right back at his.
Those were not the eyes of a deer, or a stag, or any prey animal.
The two stared at each other for seconds, but to Abel it felt like hours.
Abel couldn't feel his legs. His hands started sweating as he shakily readied the reigns.
The tingling sensation wreaked havoc throughout his skin.
The stag did nothing. It didn't move. It didn't blink. It just returned the gaze, completely unafraid of the horse and rider.
Every red flag in Abel's nervous system had exploded into a fiery concoction of adrenaline.
The creature took one step closer.
*CRUNCH*
An entire log Abel mistook for a twig was crushed in half under its hoof.
The creature took another step closer.
*CRUNCH*
It was now towering over a tree, dwarfing even a moose.
Abel and his horse stood, paralyzed in its presence. In that moment, he remembered something. He started hearing screaming and roaring louder than thunder, muffled in a space between walls. The experience was like a door being thrown off its hinges as something behind it roared with eager malevolence.
"Scio te…" It spoke.
"Unde… scio… de te?" It cocked its head to the side.
The horse brayed and reared on it's legs, ripping Abel out of his fear-paralysis.
He clutched onto the horse as the beast turned around and broke into a dead-sprint without Abel's input, heading straight out of the woods on the same path the two had entered.
"FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! SHIT! FUCK!" Abel panicked. The screaming had drowned all critical thought out from his head. All he could do was hold on.
The creature had Abel dead to rights. It could kill him right then and there. All it had to do was act.
Abel braced his neck, shutting his eyes as the horse continued galloping out of the woods. He fully expected to die right then and there.
The horse continued sprinting, unimpeded. Sunlight hit Abel's eyes, indicating that he and the horse had exited the woods.
He took a peek through a half-opened eyelid, expecting to have been dead before knowing it, still braced to be pounced upon and ripped in half.
The moment never came.
Abel was out of the woods, his horse still galloping at full speed far away.
He turned around.
Mistake.
The monster was right at the treeline - right where Abel was less than a literal second ago, holding a piece of fabric in it's mouth. Abel looked down at his shirt and noticed a chunk of it missing.
Abel wanted to scream but couldn't. He just kept directing his sprinting horse in the opposite direction of those woods.
Anything and everything else was a blur.
. . .
"Wha?!" Dante blinked as a familiar rider passed him faster than he knew who it even was.
"Zombie! Hey!" He turned around to pursue.
"Hey, are we racing or something? Hold up!" He called out again.
"Geez! When Griffith trained him with regaining control of his mount yesterday, Zombie had no idea which way was left or right. Did he lose control of his mount again?!"
Zombie kept taking shooting glances over his shoulder, much to Dante's annoyance.
"HEY! Slow down! Trying to kill your horse?!" He yelled.
. . .
It wasn't long before a half-blind Zombie and his now-fatigued horse found the band of the Hawk's convoy, with an equally exhausted Dante chasing him.
"H-... Hey! What-... The hell... Was THAT about?!" He caught up.
Zombie simply continued snapping his head in different directions looking for something, like a paranoid lookout keeping his head on a swivel.
"Zombie, what's wrong? Why's your face bleeding?!"
He didn't answer, just continuing to scan wherever there were trees.
"Zombie?" Dante waved his hand in front of his twin-scarred face.
He didn't respond, just continuing to scan the forest edge with one eye open, hyperventilating.
"Zombie? Zombie?" Dante tried again.
It took a moment for him to realize what he was doing wasn't working.
Zombie's pupils were the size of breadcrumbs, the hairs on the back of his head were straighter than arrows, and his horse was in the same condition as the rider.
He took a moment to think.
"Alright, I think I got something." He settled for setting his hand on Zombie's shoulder, parking his horse right next to his in turn.
"I'm right here." Dante spoke in a slow, reassuring voice.
"You are in friendly territory."
Dante waited.
Zombie slowly reached for Dante's hand on his shoulder.
"I'm right here." He slowly repeated again.
At the same time, Zombie's horse was successfully calmed down by Dante's.
"Do you hear me?" Dante asked, firmly.
Zombie looked at him, processed the information, then nodded.
Dante waited until both Zombie and the horse had calmed down before trying anything else.
Several minutes passed before Zombie's breathing returning to normal.
Dante waited a couple seconds longer, just to make sure Judeau's charge was back in his right mind.
"Right!" Dante took out a rag and offered it to Zombie.
"Still got that water I gave you?"
Zombie held the rag, motionless.
"Were you attacked?" Dante's voice remained firm.
Zombie shook his head side-to-side.
"You weren't attacked. Alright. Why is your face smothered in blood?" Dante stared at Zombie dead in his eyes.
He broke eye contact, taking deep, audible breaths, then washed his face with the rag and water Dante gave him.
"... Did your scars re-open?" Dante rephrased the question.
Zombie nodded his head up-and-down.
Pause.
Dante took a deep breath.
"I'm sorry for bringing up your kin earlier. I know it's not a subject to really bring up. I just-..." He paused.
"Never mind. Let's head back to camp!" Dante turned his horse around and started heading back to the Hawk's convoy.
"We're gonna be late for sparring practice, so let's get Judeau to check out your eye before-…" He realized Zombie wasn't following him.
"Zombie?" Dante asked again.
Zombie eventually turned his horse around to follow Dante, shooting one last look at the tree line before trying to process what happened.
"...Was that a demon-possessed deer?!" Abel had returned to his senses.
"It-... It HAD to be! It's too early in the damn story to be seeing-"
A vision of Wyld and Zodd came to the forefront, no longer separated by the illustrations of a manga from within the comfort of an air-conditioned bedroom.
"... That."
If you're reading this, then you've finished chapter 7 of Luck most foul. I hope you enjoyed, and I hope to have another chapter done sometime soon.
If you've caught any mistakes, be free to point them out to me so I can fix those immediately. I can't fix it if I don't spot it, and I tend to fail spot checks very often.
I do update my chapters with fixes and such, just thought I'd let you know!
Thank you very much for your time. Let me know your thoughts. Have a good rest of your day and evening!