Fantasia
Arc1: Battle of villages
Chapter4: Zolu & Kura
Roné managed to capture one of the ragons, who's shortly revealed himself to be Zolu Kura, Juan's pen-mate, the ragon seemed to be different from his clan that he offered his help to the beastmen.
"So you are Juan Rocux…the guy who sends me all those letters? Aren't you supposed to be more beastman, and less human?" Zolu asked.
"Um…Yeah, I know it's strange but yup that's me" Juan answered.
"Enough of the chitchat! What do you want fish head?!" Roné asked roughly.
Zolu ignored Roné and asked Juan" So this is your brother…what was his name again? Roby? Lony? Loki?..." finishing his question with a fake naive tone.
"Roné! And you better stop with this crap!" the angered young man said.
"Zolu please we are not in a time for laughter, you said you wanted to help us, I believe you can, but as you see the others can't fully trust you." Juan said in a polite accent.
"I know that, but believe me, I know a secret passage to the prison where you can free your friends, we too didn't like how the new king acts, since lord Sayoh died, our life became less safer than before as lord Ramusus announced more taxes, and banishes all those who refuse to obey his orders" Zolu said.
"And what makes us sure that you aren't an agent for him, and you won't betray us?" Roné asked.
"He sent me a message to warn us a night before the attack, I think this is more than enough to trust the man" Juan answered.
"Nah…am not feelin' any good comin' of him, we should ask dad" Roné suggested.
And so Juan and Roné had to take their "hostage" to the camp.
"I dunno, we can't trust'em ragons, even if he was your friend" Rocux said.
"But please believe me, you don't have a chance if you decided to face us directly, you'll loose your freedom like many villages did before!" Zolu said.
"We still can't trust him…" a beastman said.
"Well then I do" Juan interrupted the conversation.
"Brother?!" Roné questioned his brother.
"Juan you stay outta this!" Rocux said.
"No…I think this might work either ways" the young man said in confidence.
"How so? What am I sayin'?!...I ain't lettin' my li'l boy risk his life!" the old man shouted at his son.
"Isn't this what a man does?" Juan said with a light smile then he added: "I shall risk my life to save my family…Ardneria, and if they caught me or Zolu was really fooling us then they only caught a wimpy useless beastman."
"Enough! I said you ain't goin'!" Rocux shouted at his child.
"But dad…" Juan eyes got filled with tears, but he wiped them quickly to complete his words: "I really want to be a help, I always felt that I'm a burden to this village, I couldn't even run to warn you, I never was able to carry a hammer to help you on forging weapons, I never was able to swallow flames nor eat rocks, I knew that most villager disgust me, and this is my chance to prove that I can be as a beastman as everyone else, and if I failed then at least I was a man enough to try!".
And so Juan walked away with Zolu toward the shore leaving his father in silence, Roné on the other hand couldn't hold himself: "I'm going too dad! You guys wait here and when we free the prisoners, I give you the signal and you crush them fish heads! Ok dad?!" Roné told his father while running to catch up with his brother.
"Like father like son, eh Rocux?" and old beastman told the blacksmith.
"It seems that I'm gettin' old…faster than I thought" Rocux said with a smile.
And so Juan and Zolu reached the eastern shore, this rocky edge is mostly used by Sumerian for fishing, but now since it's a war era, the place became abandoned.
"So what' your plan?" Juan asked.
"That's our plan" Zolu answered while pointing to a faraway whirlpool surrounded by sharp pointy rocks.
"And…?" Juan said.
"It seems as a normal vortex in the middle of the sea, but it's actually a teleportation path, we usually use it to load our merchandise toward the main storage in Sumeria, of course you need to be a ragon to use it or at least to be in contact with one" the ragon explained.
"So this where you bastards hide your fishes?!" Roné asked when he suddenly appeared behind the two men.
"Roné!" Juan said in joy then he added: "You followed us?!".
"O'course I did, I can't let my bro go in an adventure all alone! We are family in the end" the beastman said with a grin.
"Oh this is just great!" Zolu said showing no interest, which made both of the beastman and the ragon to exchange stares of disrespect.
"Guys!" Juan shouted at them: "We need to focus on our mission!".
"As I was saying, when we pass through the vortex, we'll be able to reach the main storage, which is nearby the castle, from there we can sneak into the castle, then to the jail dungeon, then we free your families, we make an escape for the women and kids, and then we send a signal to your rebellion forces, my clan will be trapped, you defeat them…and this is the plan" Zolu explained his plan with confidence.
"Stupid plan as I expected…fish head!" Roné commented.
And so the two entered another futile argument, to be interrupted by Juan who yelled at them to stop, and started to explain the flaws in his friend's plan:
"Ok, first of all we are heading to a storage; meaning that there're guards surrounding that place, and probably they are there all day long"
"That's no problem, my old man's taking care of this!" Zolu said.
"Great, then the second flaw is the way we are going to sneak into the castle; me and Roné are very noticeable, and easy to be caught, if we count that I can't fight"
"Don't worry about that, I can make you enter the castle easily, because I work there at night…a part-time job" the ragon said.
"Well, um…that's great! You planned all this, but there still something…Roné you tell him" the young man said while blushing.
"Oh that thing…" Roné added while holding his laughter.
"The hell! Tell me what is it?!" Zolu shouted.
"Okay, okay the whole idea is…Juan can't swim" Roné said before laughing.
"That's not funny!" Juan said to his brother then he turned to Zolu to tell him: "I apologize, it's some problem I have since birth, I cannot tolerate water surfaces, I feel terrified by just being a knee length drown in water…it's lame I know".
"That won't be a problem" Zolu said, then his mouth bulged like a toad's, to release a huge water sphere, that transformed immediately into a large bubble: "Here you go this will help us to travel toward that whirlpool".
"Amazing!" Juan expressed his surprise.
"Meh…not a big deal!" Roné complained while scratching his ear.
And so the three young men rode the bubble that led them directly to the teleportation passage, where they managed to pass into the main storage of the ragons village; a vast room where walls, floor, and ceiling are molded with magic ice as it with everything in Sumeria, illuminated by a shining blue crystal, piles of fishes of all sorts are seen into that room, but our heros didn't care so much as they headed toward the large steel door, after several knocks from Zolu, an adult man's voice is heard on the other side of the door:
"Who goes there?" the voice asked.
"Father it's me, I brought them…" Zolu answered.
The large door opens slowly and a ragon enters the room, he was Kura Ness; a tall ragon with short messy black hair, a rectangular face like his son, black eyes that seem to reflect sadness, small beard, he wears a dirty white shirt, with some ragged black loose pants, with his hands wrapped in bandages, he seems to lost his left leg as he replaced it with a wooden one.
He gave Roné and Juan a cruel stare, which was responded by the beastman's salutation: "Hi ! cool leg you got there! It looks so badass!".
Juan was shocked of his brother's rudeness, he tried to scold him but Kura responded by "Um, Yeah…I think".
"Follow me" he added, leading the three young men to another room, which appeared to be a workers room, there he served them some grilled fishes and soup.
"This is so generous of you , thank you" Juan said politely.
"But back to think why do you help us? Why would you betray your clan?" Roné said while stuffing his mouth with food.
"Roné! Stop being so nosey!" Juan scolded his brother.
"It's okay kid…he's right, yet he's wrong" Kura said, these words made the beastman confused.
"I'm not betraying my village, I'm helping it to return to its golden age as before" Kura said while removing bandages from his right hand revealing a sever cut.
"Father?!" Zolu showed surprise.
"It's okay Zolu, they need to hear the story, after all it's fated to youngsters to learn from the elders' mistakes" the old man calmed his sons.
And so the old man started to tell his short tale:
"As you beastmen may know, we ragons are rulers of the sea, we lived since thousand years on this land in peace, our civilization was growing better and better into a golden age, as it was perfected in the era of his majesty lord Sayoh, because we always lived in peace, but time has changed…lord Sayoh died three years ago, and from that day his son Ramusus took control over our land, we thought he will be like his ancestors, but alas…he was a power crazy man, he engaged his people into endless wars against villages, some we've won, others we've lost..."
"So you lost your leg in one of these wars?!" Roné asked.
"The story is a bit longer than that kid" Kura answered, then he completed his story:
"One day the new king's insanity led him to challenge king Zoldeo…"
"King…Zoldeo! This is insane!" Juan interrupted.
"And who's this Zoldeo?" Roné asked.
"He's the strongest village's leader, he's the leader of Arcadia, they say that his land authority is still growing until today because unlike most of the villages, he colonizes a village every year, his army is simply undefeatable." Juan answered.
"True…however despite the rumors, Ramusus insisted on war, and forced us to be in his army, even if we aren't familiar with battles…and that was my big fault; I had once a twin brother, he wasn't able to fight because he was badly injured while he was whale-hunting in the sea, so I replaced him, I entered that war, and we loose it, I lost my left leg as you can see, and when I returned, my brother couldn't hold his wrath over Ramusus so he challenged him in a royal battle; if my brother won the king would give up on wars, and if the king won, my brother shall loose his life…" and Kura couldn't complete his tale because of tears that filled his eyes.
"Father enough! I told you to forget it!" Zolu said.
"Gah! That bastard! I'm gonna…"Roné shouted while igniting both of his fists.
"Calm down brother, they may hear us" Juan said.
Suddenly the door lock started to turn as someone spoke from behind it: "Hey you, hurry up we'll lock the storage!".
"Damn it! if he found out about you guys, we'll be in trouble" Kura warned Juan and Roné.
To be continued