Wandering Souls

Qassot barely had time to react and pull all her swords back before the figure closed the distance and swung at her. Seven shimmering silver blades folded inwards like a closing flower and rushed to defend her neck in preparation for the strike.

The blow never came.

The figure changed directions abruptly, legs kicking up sand in a screen of dust as he darted around Qassot and behind her, giving her a playful tap on the snout with the hilt of his dagger as he passed, before sweeping around to sit down abruptly behind Aavern, who still hadn't realized the figure had started moving.

The entire exchange took less than half a second.

"Look out!" Aavern yelled.

Qassot sighed and the seven floating swords cocooning her neck shimmered out of existence.

"Your reaction time sucks," she muttered.

The figure chuckled and sheathed his daggers with a flourish and a grin at Qassot.

"You're quick. I like that. The name's Kyle. Nice to meet you."

"Uh," Qassot hesitated, "I'm Qassot?"

"Who's the fuzzball?" Kyle asked.

"I'm Aavern," Aavern said.

"Aa-what?"

"Aavern."

The figure cracked a teasing smile. "That's too long. I'm calling you fuzzface."

"WHA-"

"What? Would you rather I call you nugget?"

"NO-"

"Fuzzface it is, then. So whatcha doing in this dreary place?" Kyle asked, interrupting Aavern's protests. "Travelers?"

Qassot shook her head, deciding it was better to not question Kyle. She had her fair share of dealings with Cyil, so she knew how to respond to such an unpredictable situation. "Aavern forgot to replace the light orb, so the Dimensional Link collapsed while we were in it and we got thrown here somehow."

Kyle laughed. "Well if you don't want to tell me, you don't have to."

"I'm not lying," Qassot said.

"Yeah, she's not," Aavern added.

"Sure, sure," Kyle chuckled. "By the way, what are you two? I haven't seen either of your kind here at all. There's just Argeanians like me, a buncha random creature folks, and the Dark Lords."

Kyle leaned in and lowered his voice as if telling a secret. "Don't call them that, though. They hate it."

Qassot was having a hard time keeping up with Kyle's rambling, lighthearted attitude, which did not fit this dreary place in the slightest.

"Uh," Qassot said hesitantly. "I'm a dragon and he's a… I don't actually know. What do you call yourselves?"

"Oacinhragn."

Kyle made a gagging noise in his throat. "Too long. I'll call you a fuzzball. Fuzzface the fuzzball. Rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?"

"WHA-"

"Calm yourself, fuzzface. I ain't gonna be able to pronounce whatever that is even if I tried. A dragon, though, that's cool."

Kyle squinted at Qassot. "Smaller than I imagined, though."

"I'm still young," Qassot grumbled. This was the first time anyone had called her small, and for some reason she was feeling offended.

"The other Argeanians always talked about dragons being these superpowered massive winged lizards. Guess they're wrong. You look kinda cute."

"I- what- huh?" Qassot recoiled in bewilderment.

Kyle laughed again. "Don't worry, I'm not into you like that."

Qassot looked blankly at Kyle.

"I am so confused," Aavern muttered.

Qassot shook her head in an attempt to free herself from Kyle's control over the conversation and changed the subject forcefully.

"Have you seen our companions?"

"Whoa! There's more of you? Cool! Where?"

"We got split up in the Dimensional Link, so I don't know. I'm guessing at least a few of them ended up here as well."

"Again with that ridiculous backstory. Whatever. What do they look like?"

Qassot gritted her teeth and tried not to growl in anger. Kyle's carefree, teasing tone was starting to get on her nerves.

"One's like me," Aavern said. "His name's Cyil.

"Fuzzface two, then."

"NO!"

"Any others?"

"There's a black wyvern and a land guardian too," Qassot said.

"Haven't heard of those."

Qassot blinked. "Uh…"

"A wyvern's that dragon thing with only two legs, right?"

"No," Aavern said. "It's a dragon with no legs."

"How do they get around?" Kyle asked with an innocently confused look on his face.

"They slither," Aavern said. "Duh."

"Interesting," Kyle mumbled. "Basically a snake with wings."

"What's a snake?"

"Hm?"

"A snake."

Kyle paused for a moment. "How do I explain this?"

Kyle seemed lost in thought for a moment before jumping up to his feet. "Well, whatever. Doesn't matter. So, what's this land guardian you speak of?"

Qassot struggled to describe what a land guardian was.

Kyle blinked. "So… a panther with a turtle shell?"

"A what with a what?"

Kyle smacked his forehead with his palm. "Whatever, carry on."

"Okay?" Aavern said. "There was one more. A wizard."

Kyle let out a low whistle. "A wizard you say? Those Dark Lord fellows like to call themselves wizards. What does he look like?"

"They do?" Aavern asked.

"Well," Qassot interrupted. "They walk on two legs kind of like yourself…"

"I know what a wizard looks like, silly. They're pretty much just Argeanians in terms of appearance."

"Argeanians?"

"Like me," Kyle said, gesturing to himself. "Them Dark Lord fellas also call us humans. They say it's what the Earth people call themselves. I'm a human too, but for all rights and reasons I'm an Argeanian right now."

"You're not making any sort of sense," Aavern said, shaking his head in confusion.

"Anyways, what does that wizard dude look like? I'm talking hair color, eye color, skin color, build, whether they're good looking like me, all that good stuff."

Qassot paused and thought back to what Axel looked like. "He has brown hair, brown eyes, and lightish skin? He's a bit shorter than you, and he's also a bit thinner."

"He?"

"I can tell the difference between a male wizard and a female wizard, thank you very much."

Kyle looked disappointed somehow, but his cheery face suddenly took on a serious expression.

"His name wouldn't happen to be Axel, would it?"

"Yeah, that's it, why?"

Kyle's eyes widened. "He's alive?"

"He- what?"

Kyle ran his hand through his hair furiously and started pacing. "I thought for sure he was a goner. How did he even get out of that void thing?"

"Were you two friends?" Aavern asked.

Kyle stopped fidgeting and sighed. "We were. We both served under King Creon as soldiers. At least, we did."

"So Axel wasn't a wizard?" Qassot asked.

"No. He's a human just like me."

Aavern wanted to smack himself. "So that means we've been following the wrong lead this whole time. What a waste of time."

"Cheer up, fuzzface," Kyle said. "No use crying over spilled milk."

"What?"

"Actually," Qassot interjected. "If he has some sort of connection to those Dark Lord people, this wasn't a waste at all."

"What's milk?" Aavern asked.

"Kyle said that the Dark Lords call themselves wizards, right?" Qassot continued.

"Hey Kyle, what's milk?" Aavern asked, blinking in confusion. "Wait, what? He did?"

"You weren't paying attention, were you?" Kyle asked.

"They could be from the same group of wizards from the Call of the Beyond. They might know something about getting to the Beyond," Qassot finished.

"You're right!" Aavern said, then turned to Kyle. "Take us to those Dark Lord people!"

"Sheesh, would it kill you to say please?" Kyle grumbled, but then brightened up. "Eh, why not? I was gonna take you guys there anyways and get Ido to send out his armies and look for your friends. Let's go, fuzzface!"

Kyle began to cheerfully walk down the shoreline with an exaggerated gait.

"I don't like him very much," Aavern grumbled.

"You're just mad because you don't like your nickname," Qassot snickered.

-

Axel dragged himself ashore in a shivering heap, cursing his lazy refusal to drag one of the shattered doors out of the castle and down the mountainslope to the shore to use as a raft. He shivered violently as he struggled to train his mind on lighting a fire in his palm to dry his wet, clinging clothes. He had found nothing else of note in the strangely structured castle and went back to the shoreline. Once there, he seemed to recall there being a castle on the mainland, and, feeling some sort of attachment to that castle, had started swimming.

Axel warmed himself up enough to snap up and take a look at his surroundings. He had landed not far from where he had fled from the onslaught of black creatures a while back, and could even see the mishmash of footprints left behind by the army as they failed to follow him into the water. When he was satisfied that he could see no sign of the creatures anymore, he finished warming himself up and struggled to peel his clothes off and dust off the copious amounts of sand that had adhered to them when he had practically rolled onshore.

After an agonizing period of time trying and failing to rid his outfit of sand, Axel put his grainy clothes back on and began to walk towards where he remembered there being a mountain range. When he had recalled a castle on the mainland, he had also recalled it being sandwiched between a mountain range and a vast field of grass and farmland. Axel began to walk across the foggy desert in the deep dark of the night towards the mountains he had climbed down earlier.

What am I even doing?

Axel sighed to himself as he continued trying to make his way towards the castle on the mainland.

I really should go find the Gem Keepers, but here I am, chasing after a memory that I'm not even sure is real or not.

Axel chuckled at himself as he continued walking.

Oh well, they can wait. Maybe I'll unlock another memory at that castle.

For some reason, that thought filled Axel with a distinct excitement, a gentle pounding of the heart which he had not felt ever before.

Recovering my memories, is it? Why does that idea make me so happy?

Axel shook the feeling out of his head and continued moving.

By the time Axel had attempted to climb up the mountain, failed, tried again, failed again, and finally decided to follow the shoreline around the mountain to the massive estuary on the other side, the eerily dark fog had begun to gain a dark gray tinge, signaling the rising of the obscured sun.

"I need to think through what I'm doing more," Axel grumbled as he rested on the banks of the half-kilometer-wide expanse fed by a river which split the entire island in half. 

Axel could barely see three meters across the estuary due to the fog, but his sporadically returning memory kept him informed. A little ways upstream, the estuary narrowed down into a wide river shouldered by massive mountains that ran all the way to the other side of the island, formed from the almost constant snowfall shrouding the peaks of the mountain range.

Axel stopped himself from jumping into the water and swimming across, deciding instead to move upstream to where the body of water narrowed.

"Look at me," Axel mumbled as he picked his way across the tumbling rocks at the foot of the mountains, "already thinking things through. Good for me."

The fog had brightened to a somewhat visible level when he reached the point where the river narrowed suddenly and he could barely make out the steep opposite bank a few dozen meters away.

"That's not that narrow," he grumbled, forcing himself to jump back into the freezing water and swim across to the other side.

After another period of drying his clothes and warming himself back up, Axel picked his way downstream back to the estuary, aiming for the wide plains and farmland where a castle existed in his memory. The mist had turned a light gray and seemed to be thinning by this time, and Axel noticed a gentle breeze start to pull the clinging tendrils of fog inland, away from its hold on the shore.

By the time Axel clambered over the last rock and crossed from the sandy shoreline to a gentle, flat plain, the midday sun had broken through the cloud cover and was now beaming down on Axel's battered frame. While Axel's fatigue disappeared every time he held the hilt of his sword, the pain from his wounds did not, forcing him to stop and bask in the warm golden light while his throbbing body's protests gradually fell silent.

"Well, that was a pain," Axel mumbled. "Should've just swum across to save time."

Axel groaned as he got to his feet. While the pain had receded, it was still present, and would certainly flare up again if Axel got into another fight. The image of the black creatures who attacked him appeared in Axel's mind as he cursed under his breath. The idea of avoiding a fight with them angered him for some reason.

Why does this thing hurt so much all of a sudden?

The growth on his side seemed to be spreading, digging into Axel's skin and innards in the same throbbing motion, sending shocks of uncomfortable nausea racing up and down his body.

Axel trudged inland with a slight limp, keeping one hand on his sword hilt as he walked across the slightly sloped plain, skirting the foot of the mountains as he went. The throbbing in his side worsened as he moved, evolving to a constant aching pain that made his head spin and made him want to throw up. His labored footfall as he walked across the grass sent shocks of pain running up his stressed bones, which throbbed down to their very core. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth against the pain. The fog returned in Axel's mind, pulling what thin threads of focus remained apart. 

Axel's eyes flashed open, revealing that he had wandered across the plains while keeping the mountains on his right, and was now approaching a forest. Axel's mind didn't have enough coherence to wonder how he got there.

Another flash of vision. The forest had gotten closer. Axel began to feel cold, and shivered as a strangely uncomfortable buzz ran down his back.

"How odd. The forecast said it would be hot today." Axel was so detached from reality that he could barely hear his own voice speaking.

Another flash of vision. Axel was now among the trees, stumbling through brush. The rustling of branches and the snapping of twigs barely registered in his mind.

Another flash of vision. Axel was now lying on the ground, shivering as the sunlight filtered through the canopy and gently illuminated his face.

"This isn't…" he mumbled, "…the castle."

As his eyes closed, he could see a small scaly head pop out of the bushes nearby and cock its head.

Strangely enough, he couldn't see its face. It was just a blank gray surface.