Ducky here :)
Thanks to those who have voted in our poll so far! The community seems to have died down a bit, unfortunately we've only had a couple of people voting, it's a tad disheartening, so any future projects are up in the air at the moment. If we get enough responses, we'll start working on it soon ^^
That being said, here's chapter 7, enjoy!
Chapter 7
"What in El…"
"My head hurts!"
"I'm not in my tent."
"Why are you spooning me?"
"My toes are frozen!"
Grunting noises.
"The tents! Where are they?!"
"Pugsy probably burnt them down eh?"
A roar of laughter erupted through the patrol team who all lay in a tangled mess, as did a large collective yawn.
"It's still so dark, we must be early."
"No the sky is overcast, sunrise passed hours ago," hummed the elf who watched them with amusement from the doorway of her tent.
"How are you here?" a soldier asked while rubbing his head, clearly in a hungover state. "How are we all here?"
"Question is, why are you all still there?" she teased.
One by one they sat up, accompanied by a low chorus of groaning voices. Peering through the opaque screen of clouds was the sun, which wearily shone its lacklustre rays on the scuffed dirt ground and sat on the sagging tops of their tents. The remains of the fire hissed in the cool morning, wisps of smoke snaking upwards towards the grey sky. Raven joined Rena in spectating the group who were just beginning to notice that they had spent the night asleep in the open, having been too disoriented by the previous night's drunken festivities to find their own tents. Their confusion and the way they scrambled to collect their thoughts made Raven smirk and the elf stifle a laugh. "Rise and shine sleepyheads!"
Another round of grumbles and complaints echoed through the troops.
"SHE SAID RISE AND SHINE SOLDIERS! UP UP UP!"
With a jump they leapt to their feet, tripping over each other to retrieve their backpacks and begin their morning run. Lowe followed hot at their heels, reprimanding the slowest ones who had suffered the most from the night before. Pugsworth skipped in leaps and bounds over the logs towards the training field, too merry to notice that each of the people he passed stood over their own tent defensively until he was out of sight. "They're an interesting bunch, aren't they?"
Raven looked at the elf, who was gazing at him expectantly. "You seem rather fond of them."
"Well they're cute", she replied, "And don't act like you aren't too. I saw how happy you were last night."
He feigned a grimace. "And how much you drank", Rena pointed out smugly.
"It became quite clear to me last night that we're both able to hold our liquor well." She elbowed him in his side. "It takes a lot for an elven beauty like me to lose my dignity."
"This hardened ex-mercenary could take you on any day. I have many hidden talents, and one of them includes drinking."
"Oh please, Raven, you're still hiding things from me when I've been stuck here and putting up with you for so long?"
He dropped his head to the ground. "So why are you still here and putting up with me?"
"Hmm?"
"You heard me."
"I've met stranger humans in my lifetime," she giggled, "You can't be much worse than an alchemist who accidentally turned himself into a dog."
He smiled for a fleeting moment. "Besides, I have all the time in the world," she said.
"And you think I do? I...I've been training every day and I still can't get anything right."
"I know, Raven, I saw that yesterday."
He sighed. "So you were watching me."
"You've progressed a lot farther than you think you have."
Turned away from her, Raven could see the burnt logs that now remained in the pit, dead with their outer layer of bark shriveling up like a peeling coat of paint. Morning dew still rested on the stiff grass, the sun seemingly absent behind the haze of clouds that hovered over the campground. In the distance he could hear Lowe shouting commands at his soldiers and the dull thuds of swords hitting leather bags, accompanied by half-hearted grunts. Perhaps it was the warmth in her eyes, or the gentleness in her touch when she placed a reassuring hand on his arm, because something about the elf made Raven feel so vulnerable and...human.
"What do I do?" he asked.
"I can help. I know someone who can. He's as ol-, well, as experienced as I am, and he's a trusted friend. He'll come," she said in her melodious voice.
"Here?"
"Yep! Right now!"
Rena pulled out a small, wooden whistle from her belt and ignored the bemused expression on her companion's face as she blew it .
"Trust me, it'll work!" she laughed.
Silence followed.
"You have to give him a while though, he can't teleport." Raven coughed and looked around, not sure of what to expect. "Let's talk while we wait! How's th-"
"Rena," he interrupted, his amber eyes staring intensely into her green ones, "I need to tell you something about me."
"O-Oh! Of course," she sat down and patted the ground beside her, "I'm happy to listen to whatever you need to talk about."
He joined her and the two faced each other, both noticing that their knees were touching.
"You deserve to know my whole story, it's not fair of me to keep it from you any longer," his words came out grave and unfaltering, "I'm a murderer. I'm a monster."
"Why don't you start from the beginning?" Rena requested softly.
He paused to take a deep breath and nodded. "As you may recall from what I mentioned a few weeks ago, I was born in Velder, and my one dream as a child was to become one of the esteemed Crow Mercenary Knights. I worked really hard to achieve that, and I did at a very young age. But after attaining the position I realised that I wanted more; I wanted to be Captain of the Crow Mercenary Knights. For a commoner to attain a status so high was almost unheard of, but somehow, years later that was the rank I found myself in. For a short time I was so happy - I had everything I wanted; my dream job, trusted comrades who respected me, a fiancee to whom I was engaged...she was..."
"Seris."
"Really beautiful," he closed his eyes, "Seris was so sweet and lovely and delicate, but holy El she was stubborn and would always get her way. She loved nature too, you know? Especially flowers, she had a flower shop of her own. We were going to be married this spring."
Rena felt an unfamiliar pang in her heart. She could tell by the way he smiled and the tone of his voice that Raven loved Seris very much, so much that losing her would've broken him completely.
"But not long after I became Captain, one of my closest friends, someone I saw as my brother, betrayed me. You see, I was nothing but a peasant to the nobles of Velder and having someone like me in that kind of position was a huge embarrassment to them. A disgrace. So I was sentenced to prison and would've stayed there for life if not for my fellow Crow Mercenaries who broke me out that night. I was lucky that Seris had kept her promise to stay safe while I was gone and didn't join them even though I know she would've wanted to. Everything went so well until we got into the forest. Not this one, but the one on the other side of Velder. We were surrounded by troops belonging to the nobles and one by one, I watched as my friends were slaughtered right in front of my very eyes."
A shudder wracked his entire body as he struggled to hold down the bile that was burning in his throat.
"I-I was beaten, stabbed and so close to death when some Nasods found my body and transported me to one of their laboratories, where they attached this darn arm. I was just an experiment though and this arm was a faulty prototype so it malfunctioned and I managed to break my way out. By then, my only reason to continue fighting to survive was to see Seris again and kill Alex. I did see Seris again actually...but…"
He broke off, choking on his words and blinked back hot tears.
"I know, Raven, I know."
"The reason why Lowe and the troops are here? Velder being almost completely destroyed? That was all because of me," he said.
"No, it wasn't. That was all the arm's doing," Rena placed a hand on the side of his face and turned it so that he only saw her eyes. "I know you, and I know what it's been doing to you. You're Raven, okay? Not a monster. Not a murderer. A strong, brave man who has been through enough pain in a day to rival what I have experienced in my centuries of living and still have the will to keep fighting. That's what I admire about you."
Taken aback, he couldn't think of any way to reply to what Rena had just said so all he did was gaze at her as she lightly brushed her thumb over his jaw.
Without any warning, a mound of dirt appeared in the grass and bumped into Raven's shoe.
Upon impact, it sank lower and lower, compressing until it was almost completely flat.
Rena pulled away and he moved his foot slightly to inspect the patch where the mound was a second ago. There was nothing.
'Tap...tap...thump!'
Frowning, he looked again. Still nothing. "Tap..thump...thump…"
The sounds became louder and louder, each round more hollow and deep than the last. Raven tilted his head at the elf only to have her give him a knowing look before glancing down expectantly at the ground. "Thump...thump...THUNK!"
"Adel!"
"Hello, it's me," Adel sang through the dirt, wriggling his way to the surface.
Raven jumped back in surprise; was this waist-high rodent the old man Rena was talking about?
"I was wondering if after all these years we'd meet again, pong," he continued, attempting to pat the dirt off his cap and ears only for it to land on his moss-green jacket. With a little curtsey, she beamed brightly at him.
"To what do I owe the pleasure, pong?"
"It's for my friend, this is Raven!" she said, gesturing towards the man who was still somewhat stunned by the appearance of the animal in front of him. "Raven, this is Adel, Chief of Altera Village and the oldest Ponggo to have ever lived."
Blinking through the white tufts of fur covering his eyes, he looked the man up and down. "That arm isn't good news, pong."
The subject of his attention grumbled in reply.
"It's been giving him some trouble," Rena said.
"Difficult to control, pong."
"Yes, exactly that!"
He silently thought to himself for a moment before reaching out to take the man's arm in his paws, instantly feeling the pulsating heat below the metal exterior burning through his fur.
Meanwhile Raven was wondering why the elven lady had summoned an anthropomorphic pet with the voice of a grandpa but as she had mentioned, Adel knew what he was doing, and she clearly trusted the raccoon-hamster enough to bring him here to help.
"I've seen something like this before. It's a dangerous weapon both to enemies and the user. Nasod technology, I'm assuming, but it's faulty…pong."
"See Raven? He's a wise one, if anyone can fix it, it'll be him."
"Yes it will be," the creature nodded, "but it'll take some work. When you go out of control it is quite destructive, pong?"
Before Raven could reply, Adel had already begun to speak. "Very well, we must move further from the camp, pong."
"Further?" asked the elf.
"Yes, we will have to push him to the farthest boundary, pong. Is there any way of restraining him?"
Raven shifted uncomfortably, already feeling a sickening sense of dread building inside of him.
"I can."
"Wonderful, pong! You must come with us, Rena."
She never had any intention of leaving him anyway.
The pair walked away to the outskirts of the settlement. They arrived at what was noticeably the same area that Raven had trained in the day before, as the absence of life and trail of destruction formed an ugly, charred void. A head popped up from a new hole in the ground, though this time, covered with ash.
"Oh my," said Adel, "destructive indeed. But this place will do, pong."
Pushing himself up from the ground and taking the man's arm in his paws again, he leaned in to peer directly into Raven's eyes before giving Rena an assertive nod.
"You wish revenge upon a person, pong. Gather their image in your head and attack Rena as if she was that person."
His eyes widened. As angry as he was at Alex, he could not even bear to touch her. "No way! I can't attack her."
"It's fine, you're not the only one who trained all day. I can hold my own," she reassured while gently resting a hand on his bicep.
"No."
"It is okay, pong," Adel piped up, "If you try to forget that you are attacking her, it will come to you easily."
Raven frowned and shook his head, afraid to even lay a finger on her in fear of hurting his companion. Giving his arm a small squeeze, she smiled. "Trust Adel, he knows what he is doing. Besides, you won't be actually attacking me."
"But what if it all goes wrong?"
"Nothing will go wrong, pong. We will make sure of it."
He screwed his eyes shut and blindly launched at Rena.
"I'm sorry Captain, we failed you."
And with a final cry, the last of his comrades threw himself into the nearest sword which belonged to none other than Alex. He flicked the blood off his weapon with a look of disgust.
"How does that feel?" the traitor sneered.
"You bastard!"
Alex ignored him and continued in his cold voice. "Raven. A scavenger bird picking off scraps on the street became a figurehead for leadership and righteousness. How ironic."
Raven spat at the noble's feet and glared at him but he knew.
He knew this was the end. There was no weapon in his hand with which he could defend himself, nothing left for him to fight for.
Seris.
Seris. The way her eyes seemed to twinkle when she smiled, the way she would hum to herself without realising it, the way her silvery voice would sound like music to his ears, the way she would leave him feeling warm inside every time she looked at him, the way she would tuck her green hair behind her elven ears with the most graceful flick of her head.
That wasn't Seris.
That was…
"Rena, why did he stop, pong?"
Raven's arm was lifted above him as if he had frozen mid-strike. The elf was unable to move at all, her feet planted to the ground and breath hitched in her throat. Her heart was beating so loud it seemed to echo through the clearing, and all she could see was the pair of golden eyes that had been staring intensely into her own for the past minute.
Adel observed the pair thoughtfully. He noticed that Raven was close to passing out, trembling violently with beads of sweat forming on his furrowed brow. "That will do, pong. That will do."
It was a while before they broke eye contact and their bodies relaxed. The rodent scratched at his furry ear in thought. Nobody spoke, not even the usually chirpy Rena, who now alternated between glancing at Raven and the ground. Unlike the day before, where from this very spot an explosion of energy shattered through the air, in this moment not even a single gust of wind blew. Adel stepped backwards, his soft feet hardly breaking the silence, and returned to the small hill in the ground from which he had come.
"Pong," he whispered quietly to himself, before disappearing downwards.
Raven blinked at the hole in the ground in confusion, moving the jagged talons of his Nasod claw back and forth between a fist and an open palm. Although still close to him, Rena barely flinched as they cracked and hissed, instead only breathing calmly where she was, waiting for the creature's return. Neither moved, looked at the other, or even made a sound until a rumble rolled through the ground and a familiar face appeared in Adel's molehill.
"This time I brought a friend, this is Abbi pong!"
Behind him stood the smallest Ponggo Rena had ever seen. She was much shorter than Adel, despite the fact that she wore platforms on her feet. Her dirty-blonde fur was messy and hardly brushed, only pulled back by rusty hairclips and a pair of brassy earmuffs that sat, rather fittingly, over her disproportionately large head. Around her waist, much like the other creatures of her kind, sat a brown belt over which tools of various shapes were clipped onto. She beamed at Raven with an extremely wide smile, quickly beginning to tamper with his arm before he even had a chance to acknowledge her presence. Her small hands reached to her belt and pulled out a strange device, quickly fastening it to the limb screw by screw. "What's that?"
"This, pong? It's the Rage Preventer! It will help, it's only temporary, but it will help, pong."
"This is the best that can be done on the mechanic side of things, Raven, the rest is up to you, pong." Adel added.
"But don't worry, everything will be much easier with this attached, pong!"
All the while, Abbi had a distinguishable look of joy on her face as she worked, as if she were elated to do what she did best. Her paws moved skillfully, and Raven became more and more fascinated as she carried on quickly. It seemed Rena had found someone as cheerful as herself; she and Abbi continuously asked each other questions with voices equally sweet. The air was filled with chatter and laughter from the two, as well as the squeaking of metal against metal, sloshing of oil and the clanging of a large hammer in between words. It was clear why the small rodent wore earmuffs as she worked, but still she seemed to hear every word the elf uttered.
"All done, pong!"
She stepped back, wiping her flaxen paws of grease and flakes of metal. Not once had she stopped smiling, and now her whiskers were twitching with excitement. "This will turn all your anger into power, and you'll be able to control it, pong!"
"How exciting!" Rena exclaimed. Raven examined his improved weapon. The so-called Rage Preventer seemed to be attached at the very top of his arm as the pauldron on his shoulder was now enlarged and armoured with spikes that curved dangerously outward. Clearly Abbi had fulfilled her aesthetic desires by covering the whole limb in some foreign coal-black metal and adding touches of her own, although they did have a purpose as they seemed to insulate the burning heat that the Nasod core emitted. However, the most impressive part of her masterpiece had both Rena and Raven gasping in a mixture of excitement and awe. Part of his upper arm was reinforced and still attached to the machine, but it was his. Skin, bone and muscle.
"How did you-?"
"Oh! Well they left a bit behind for the claw to detect the control signals sent by your nerves, so I decided to expose that since it'll help you move it a lot smoother, pong!"
He smiled at the tiny rodent. "Thank you. I'll make sure all your hard work doesn't go to waste." His thoughts darkened quickly, ruminating over the uses he had for his new, modified machinery. Yet, almost as quickly as they had come, the feelings disappeared as Abbi beamed at him, rocking forwards and backwards on her platforms as she held her paws together behind her back. "Well, if that's all, I'll be off now, pong!" With a small skip she turned away, though not without turning to wave goodbye to them both. "I'll talk to you again, pong!"
The older Ponggo placed his paw in the palm of Raven's human hand. "I see both dark and light in you. Please, don't use it for the wrong purpose."
With that, the two scruffy animals disappeared down the hole with a "pop!" and the man collapsed onto the ground in exhaustion.
Adel and Abbi are good fun aren't they? Thanks for reading ^^
Stay tuned for Chapter 8! - Ducky