The darkness of the deep chasm felt almost familiar to Floyd.
He sat there imprisoned in a tent with two troll guards standing just outside it.
He could see the images flash through his mind.. being stuck in that diamond for months on end. Slowly losing his essence, his very being.
He wanted to be back in the light, but he wasn't frightened.
Everything would be alright, he just had to believe that. Things always came out well. This would come out just as well.
He knew.
He hoped...
~x~
"We have to go back down there!"
Branch screamed this as he and Poppy stood on a jutting-out ledge of the cliffy chasm walls.
"I know, I know, Branch!" Poppy shouted back at him, the two of them panting heavily but before he was about to jump off the ledge and scale the cliffs, Poppy pulled him back so fast as she said in a worried voice.
"But."
He looked at her, panting heavily, his chest rising up and down quickly.
"We need more than just us."
Branch gulped, closing his eyes in pain before nodding in sad agreement.
The two looked upwards to the sky, the bright above so very far away. But not impossible to get back up to.
As the two began their climb, there was a sudden thought that passed through Branch's mind.
"How...?"
Poppy looked down at him because he was a few metres above and repeated back confused, "How what, Branch?"
"How come WE weren't infected?"
That very question made the two of them pause for a moment, before Poppy uttered back weakly, "I... I don't know,"
This was a very big conundrum. Something that Branch now had to have answered, but not right now.
They couldn't go back down to ask Clarity without backup. They needed their uninfected family with them. To survive down there... to fight if they had to. To protect themselves...
The two continued their journey upwards, the darkness being left behind for now.
~x~
Floyd sat there, feeling the ropes that tied his two hands together. It was so silent in that tent, but after a few minutes, the fabric door was pulled open and in came two trolls.
Clarity, he knew.
But the other girl troll... he had NO idea.
"You," Clarity said to him, her voice harsh but still having a softness to it somehow, "They will come back for you..."
"Please," Floyd begged her then, the young girl troll approaching him and tightening his ropes, "You have to understand! Your ancestors' bodies are poisoning our kingdom!"
"So why aren't YOU poisoned?" The young girl troll asked him suddenly. She sounded angry but also slightly frustrated over this fact.
"I... I don't know why."
He caught her gaze with his own as she blinked open her eyes and glared right at him.
It was then, seeing her face that he realized just how pretty she truly was.
For a second his heart hurt him in a big banging beat in his chest, and he closed his eyes in pain.
It was like, for a split moment in time, that his heart had cracked in half.
For Viva was one half... but this troll girl... he had never felt such an immediate attraction.
That was wrong. THIS was wrong.
But Viva was infected, and not only that... he knew she loved Clay.
But he would not give up on her love until he knew for sure.
The girl troll caught his empty stare as he was deep in his head with his many worried thoughts. As she looked at him, she peered at his ruby eyes and only uttered coldly.
"Sherah,"
He blinked coming back to the moment and uttered out confused, "Huh...?"
"My name. Sherah."
"Floyd..."
"Good." She said back and nodded her head. She had deep red hair that was overflowing upwards and light orange skin. Her eyes though were blue. Swimming in colour like seeing an ocean when seeing into her eyes, her soul.
He knew then that she was a good person.
"Hmm!"
The two glanced away from each other back to Clarity, who walked over to Floyd as well, and she said in her harsh warm voice, "This is my granddaughter, and also my apprentice."
Floyd slowly nodded his head, as if to show he understood what she was getting at.
"In this tribe, the female chooses the partner... and then, the male has to fight."
"Why are you telling me all this..?" Floyd asked flabbergasted and Clarity only smirked, gazing deep into his core, as if almost as a warning.
"Because you don't belong here... that's why. SHERAH!" The two of them jumped when Clarity suddenly shrieked this. Sherah bowed to her grandmother following Clarity as she left the tent first.
Sherah, though, looked back one more time to Floyd and gave him a soft kind smile, Floyd not able to control himself as he smiled weakly back.
"Sherah," Clarity said to her then as the two walked through the village and Sherah straightened herself, saying back quickly.
"Yes, Grand ma ma?"
"Stay away from that troll... I know you saw it in him..."
Sherah gulped afraid, nodding her head sadly as she replied in a sad answer, "I know..."
What had Sherah seen when she had looked into Floyd's eyes... the future.
A gift she had inherited from her mother, and her mother's gift from Clarity and so on backwards all the females in her family tree.
That is what made them the leading family of the tribe.
What Sherah had seen when she peered into Floyd's eyes... a family... a daughter... and knowing that this daughter was meant to now exist, she understood now why Clarity had let the bodies poison the land.
To find the one Clarity had seen in a dream, a prophecy... one prophecy that was now slowly coming true.
"He wasn't poisoned like the rest..." She uttered weakly to her grandma and Clarity nodded her head carefully in response, "You knew he would come..."
"Yes," Clarity replied.
"Why do you torture me, Grand ma ma?"
"Because... I know what happiness will be for you." Was all Clarity replied with and Sherah swallowed heavily, nodding her head.
She looked back behind her to the guarded prison tent and felt her heart speed up at just the thought of him...
"So what do we do now, Grand ma ma?"
"You have chosen... but before that, know him... and really see if he will fight."
"I know he will..."
"Yes," Clarity said softly, looking up at the sky so very high above their dark chasm. She turned to Sherah again and smiled at her weakly, "But HE doesn't know that he will do this... not yet."
Her granddaughter nodded in compliance and glanced back over to the tent.
She understood so completely that fate was happening right now...
But would Floyd choose her back?
Because she had the cure...
The cure for all of this.
~x~
Branch and Poppy were careful as they swung with agility and stealth back to the bunker's top lid.
But there was just one problem.
The whole area was covered with infected dancing trolls.
Though their minds mustn't have been functioning well, as none of them seemed to have the intelligence to open the damn lid.
"There's a code," Branch then whispered to Poppy as they looked down below to the metal lid, the two of them high up on an overhanging branch.
"Huh?" Poppy asked in a quick confused gasp and Branch rolled his eyes, quickly replying.
"To get in." He then looked Poppy right in the eyes as he said, "You distract them, and I'll go down there, open it up, and we'll get back into the bunker."
"Great idea, Branch, but can I suggest something?"
"What, Poppy?"
"WHY CAN'T YOU DISTRACT THEM?!"
"C'mon," Branch only replied blankly, looking her up and down as he continued, "You are always so distracting with your beauty and grace and-"
"Are we still talking about me?" Poppy just chuckled and he shrugged his shoulders innocently, a teasing smile on his own mouth, "Okay. Okay."
He winked at her and she smirked back at him.
She then leapt from the branch, swinging over the infected zombie trolls and calling to them as she passed them by.
"Looking for a pink royal snack?!"
They all saw her, moaning as she swung on by and Branch quickly dropped down to the bunker's lid, as they all followed after his wonderful fiancee.
He got to the circular lock and spun it to the different numbers in the code. Finally, he could hear it crack open and he put two fingers to his mouth as he gave out a loud whistle in Poppy's direction.
She heard him instantly and began swinging with the tree branches over to him before dropping into the opening of the bunker and Branch pulled the metal lid shut tightly, cranking it back to its lock code and the two stood there just below the world above... the sounds of the zombies above coming back to them as the trolls moaned and groaned, rapping desperately in hunger and pain...
Branch was huffing, before closing his eyes and froze up when he felt Poppy place her hand on his shoulder, directing him to look at her as he slowly opened back up his eyes.
"We will fix this," She said to him gently, a tearful smile all she could give, "Everyone will be saved..."
"Poppy..." Branch whispered back to her, touching her hand with his own shaking ones as he took her touch off his shoulder. The two looked silently into each other's eyes and he only responded, "I'm so afraid we mightn't be able to-"
"WE WILL." She told him, smiling now more hopefully as she gripped his hand hold in her own, "Because we always do..."
He closed his eyes in deep emotional pain then before nodding his head.
"Now let's go get your brothers, my dad... and we will SAVE Floyd."
"Yes," Branch said, opening his eyes with hope again and nodded to her gently, "Yes,"
The two got on the lift, lowering deep to the underground rooms at the very bottom of the bunker.
But when they got there all they saw was inky goo covering the ground.
"Bruce! John Dory! Where are you?!"
"HERE!"
The two looked over to a cupboard as the two other brothers and King Peppy were on top of it, trying to avoid with all they could, the inky goo that had flooded the ground.
"We have to get OUT of here!" Branch yelled then to everyone, and the three others on the cupboard agreed, quickly using their hair to swing from the light over to the lift.
"But what about Viva?!" Poppy yelled desperately to Branch and he gazed at her, fear in his eyes.
"Poppy... she's..."
He became quiet, not able to finish his sentence when he saw Poppy's upset eyes.
"SHE'S MY SISTER."
"-don't!" Branch yelped at her as Poppy swung over to the locked door and opened it with the key that was still in the door's keyhole, "POPPY!"
~x~
"Clarity..."
Floyd's eyes were heavy as he sat there in the tent, but with the strength he had left, he gazed upwards, seeing who it was that was entering his jail.
"No,"
He woke up completely when he heard Sherah's voice instead and he sat up properly looking at her in silence.
"Tell me..." Sherah asked him, and he blinked his eyes confused yet still tired, not understanding her question.
"Huh?"
"Were you once in BroZone...?"
He looked at her mystified. How did she know this?
"Yeah... I was... but how-"
She then held up a record album paper case, showing that the name Brozone was labelled on it with his face, as well as his brothers on its cover.
"Where did you get that..?"
"The junk heap..."
"Oh," Floyd said weakly, feeling a bit hurt at that answer, "Yay..?"
"Can you still sing?" She asked him gently and he nodded his head, beginning a song.
"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine-"
Sherah watched him in gentle quietness as his voice lifted her soul.
"You make me happy when skies are grey..."
"You never know dear," She then began to sing with him and he froze for a second before she nodded to him and he continued.
"How much I love you..."
"Please don't take my sunshine away..." The two finished the last lyrics together and silently looked into each other's eyes.
"You have a beautiful voice," Floyd said weakly, his heart hurting again as he looked at her.
"I know," Is all she replied with, before handing him something and he looked at what it was that was in his hands, his wrists still tied up by rope.
What it was... was a... diamond...
"I know why you weren't infected," She then said to him and he slowly glanced back up at her.
"Why?" He asked and she smiled weakly only up one side of her cheek.
"You performed the perfect family harmony... and that... that made you strong enough to resist the plague in the dirt..."
"But Clay, my brother still got infected!" Floyd yelled back worriedly, and Sherah only looked at him, smiling sadly as she added.
"Immune from the ground... but not from an infected bite..."
"Please," Floyd then begged her, almost holding his hands up in a plea for her to hear him out, "I have to go back up there! They need me!"
"I need you," She then said and he looked back into her blue eyes, "And if you stay here... I promise they will all be cured..."
Floyd couldn't understand. He just couldn't...
But being around Sherah... well, he did know something.
She was telling him the truth... but this darkness, he didn't know how long he could cope without seeing the sun and daylight.
"Why do you all hide deep in this darkness...?"
She looked at him slowly, blinking her eyes in an empty blink before pulling open the tent's door and just before she left, she said.
"Are you afraid of the dark...?"
"No," Floyd replied, but added quickly, "Just what's hidden in it,"
She smirked at this, and waved goodbye, leaving him again.
"Goodbye..." He whispered back. He looked at the diamond in his hand and his eyes swelled with tears...
He didn't understand why he was here... but his heart knew something.
Sherah had chosen him... and his heart now was captured by her...
Viva's half becoming smaller and smaller.
But he would do anything to save his family and loved ones.
Anything.