{Night 02: Zaria and Hassan}
"Malik! Mal! Hey Mal!"
"Malik, wait up!"
I stopped, turning around to wait for my friends.
We look really different, and our personalities clash a lot too. Some of the adults say we exemplify Rotters in all their glory, each of their three sides.
My skin is fair, my eyes aquamarine leaning towards green, and my hair falls to my shoulders, starting off light blonde at the roots before fading into yellow-orange and then red-orange. I only really wear baggy black pants held up with a rope and wooden sandals. I'm not exactly laid-back, energetic and often rushing into things headfirst. I'm rather volatile, my emotions changing quickly and easily, but always revolving around some sort of goal or base thought. I'm told that I'm really smart, especially for my age.
Hassan is two years older than me at fifteen. His skin is light brown, his eyes golden. His hair is cut into a sleek bob that always falls in his eyes, starting a little lighter than his eyes and then fading into a rich brown. While I'm fairly average height for my age, he's already pretty tall, even if he is older than me, with a lot more slender of a build. He wears a loose sandy-brown tank-top and brown canvas pants under a way-too-big leather vest with brass buttons. He wears soft hide boots held shut with twine, and a string of dark wooden beads around his neck. Since he's training as a magician, he carries around a metal rod to serve as his wand until he finds something better. He's a more cautious guy, somewhat timid and laid-back. While energetic, he's better at channeling it than I am, directing himself towards work and his studies while I just run off to play and sulk about not having anything to do.
Then there's Zaria. She's the same age as me, two months younger, and is only two inches shorter than me. Her skin is peaches and cream, her eyes a vivid, captivating purple with navy blue rims around her irises. Her hair starts out a peach-color and fades into hot pink. It falls to her hips in feathery layers, and she keeps a small pony of the side of her head. She only wears linen wrapped around her chest and a pair of black shorts so small they might as well just be undergarments, and prefers to go barefoot. On each ankle, she has a slight silver chain with bells, so she jingles as she walks. Like Hassan, she carries around a stick until she can find a better wand to use. She's even more rash than I am, often bolting off before you can finish talking, and tends to get hurt a fair bit. That's why her knees and elbows are constantly scuffed up and at least one bandage on her face. Her sadistic edge makes her kinda scary, but she's genuinely sweet under the sadism, almost motherly. She's also a slight bit of a bubble-brain, and has a slight speech impediment that can easily be mistaken for a Rotter-accent since plenty of us use slang like her.
Really, we aren't at all alike. It's kind of amazing we get along so well, but it's Rotter-nature to be amiable towards everyone until it is made clear that they're an enemy. So I guess it isn't too surprising.
"Mal, y'know that thing in Partevia? The dungeon?" Hassan huffed as they finally caught up to me.
"What about it?" I asked, examining the knife I'd found in the sea. Now that is was cleaned off better, it was really simple, black ebony with a single cracked red gemstone inlaid in the pommel of the hilt. There was a little silver decoration on the hilt, but it was tarnished and a little damaged.
"Apparently some lucky sonovabitch only a bit older t'an us went an' came out alive! People say that th' guy has a sword of lightning, wi' a monster at his beck and call, an' came outta the hole wi' mountains of booty!" Zaria declared enthusiastically. "Th't must be so fuckin' cool! Yeah?"
"I can't say I'm particularly interested in the treasure, but the monster and sword of lightning sure sound awesome. I don't want or need treasure." I replied, giving the knife an experimental twirl. "Ow!"
"Eh?! Ye should be more careful!" Zaria told me as I leant down the pick up the knife, pretty much ignoring the shallow gash down my stomach. "'Ere! 'Old still!"
Gripping her stick with both hands, Zaria took a deep breath and uttered a command. My bleeding slowed and the pain in my muscles faded.
Zaria is a life-specialized magician, so she's good at working with plants, and the healing-magic derivative is one of her favorite magics. Hassan is a light-type magician, but apparently that means he's also good with strength-magic. He prefers the light, though.
"Thanks, Zaria." I smiled, thwapping her left shoulder lightly with the back of my hand. That was a typical Rotter gesture of gratitude, just like how touching two fingers to the right temple before flicking them away was our greeting. "Anyway, I've been thinking—"
"Ooh! Dangerous!"
Hassan rolled his eyes at Zaria.
"Well, y'know that old tree-stump near the border? It's huge, right? I wanna see trees like that grow here again. With a sword of lightning and a monster, I could fix this place up no time flat!"
"That's an awesome idea, but... well, dungeons are starting to pop up everywhere, yeah, but none even relatively close to us. To get something like a lightning-sword an' a monster, we'd have to leave Rotter-turf and run our asses off across the world looking for one. An' even then, we're just three kids, four if you include Chaya from the other village, and no one listens to kids, especially kid-Rots." Hassan mumbled, fiddling with his metal rod.
"Then we'll have to grow up real fast and find one before they're all claimed."
Zaria clapped her hands, nodding enthusiastically.
A lot slower, Hassan nodded in agreement.
Nodding in approval, I tucked the knife into my waistband, jammed my hands in my pockets, and asked, "So whaddya guys wanna do? I just got back from the beach 'bout an hour ago..."
"Lessgo t' th' depression!" Zaria squealed, clapping her hands. Before either Hassan or I could offer our opinions, she'd already charged off.
"Well, the depression it is..."
The depression was this huge spot in the middle of Rotter-turf that was thought to have once been a water-hole. It was a large flat area about six feet below the surface of the surrounding land, and there were lots of plant-skeletons around it. The depression was actually great for playing in, and there were some great finds there, too.
By the time Hassan and I had reached the depression, Zaria was already making a fort out of debris so we could play sludge-ball. It was a game all Rotters knew and loved playing, where a fort is created by each player or team, and then balls of mud and sludge are hurled back and forth. The depression is always spongy and muddy, even during droughts, so it's one of the best places for sludge-ball.
The rules of sludge-ball are simple. Once you build a fortress, you cannot go farther than three feet from it. You can use your fortress to protect yourself or provide better sludge-throwing grounds. These forts can't be within twenty feet of each other. Once everyone has built their fortress, you throw sludge-balls at each other until someone cries uncle. The last one standing is the victor.
I quickly staked out a spot near the wall of the depression, about twenty-one feet away from Zaria's fort. Hassan chose one closer to the center of the depression, which was close to twenty-nine feet away from me. Dammit, that was far... could my sludge-balls make it past Zaria and to him...?
Gritting my teeth, I set about building my fort. I always went with a simple design, pretty much just walls for me to duck behind, with sort of notches in the top for me to throw sludge from. It always worked out in the past, I saw no reason for it not to this time around.
Once we'd all finished with our forts, I automatically ducked down behind the wall of my shelter. While Zaria and Hassan went at each other, I got on my knees in the muck and started making an ammo-stock, rolling up sludge-ball after sludge-ball. That was my usual strategy, to allow my opponents to wear themselves down while I prepared myself against them. And it usually worked. I was by no means sludge-ball master-champion, but I was a nasty opponent, according to everyone who played me.
A heap of sludge-balls made, I peeked out through a crack in my wall at the fight. It looked like Zaria was whupping Hassan's sorry ass. So I decided to focus on helping her take Hassan down, and once he surrendered, I should be able to easily take her down...
I waited for them to both duck down and retrieve another sludge-ball to come up myself, aiming carefully for Hassan's fort. Once he popped up, I hurled my sludge-ball as hard as I could at him.
"Ackthpft! M-Magl!" he yelled at me as I nailed him full on in the face, filling his mouth with sludge. Zaria howled with laughter, and just for the heck of it I splatted her back with another sludge-ball.
"Don't turn your back on me, your greatest enemy! I will vanquish all who challenge me!" I roared before ducking back down to dodge their sludge-balls. Hassan's fell short, audibly exploding on the ground somewhere outside my fort. Zaria's grazed the top of my wall, spraying gook all over my back, but didn't actually hit me. Grabbing another sludge-ball, I stood up again and hurled it hard in Hassan's direction with a wild yell. As I flattened myself to the mud to avoid Zaria, I heard him yelp, but not in the way that said I had hit him. I grinned, gathering up two more of my ammo-pile's stock.