King's Final Decision

"You mean... he's deciding if I get to return home?" I whispered back.

"Yeah, so please don't speak. It would probably lessen your chances of going back."

A long pause fell between everyone. Sweat now joined my blood as it slowly trickled off of my body. My eyes kept glancing over to the unconscious Jarun, checking to make sure they didn't at least kill him.

After what seemed like an eternity, the silence was broken. The king had made his decision.

"Andrew... you may return home tomorrow morning. On a few conditions, of course..."

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"What!"

Jarun was pacing around his room. It was small, with brown clay walls. There was no bed, but instead a mattress-looking thing was in the center of the room on the wooden floor. The place was kind of empty if ya ask me.

"I'm sorry dude, but Burcham said you had to."

"Bullshit bro! What am I even gonna do? I haven't even left the village, let alone the fucking planet!"

While Jarun was unconscious, Brucham announced that both Ziya and Jarun would be coming back to earth with me. I tried to argue against his word, but the king had spoken. The conversation between Burcham and I was still stuck in my head:

"Listen to me Andrew: I believe that Jarun can help you in case one of you are injured. He has a lot of talent Andrew, but you have to believe in him."

"I know he has a lot of talent dammit! I don't want that to go to waste though if he dies!"

"I understand that young sir. But with both yours and Ziya's powers, you'll be fine."

"You aren't listening, are you? I never wanted Ziya and Jarun to come home with me in the first place! Besides, how am I going to hide Jarun's face?"

Burcham let out a deep sigh, as if he were tired of arguing in general.

"Andrew, have you not already figured out that we are powerful? We know how to turn ourselves human."

"But, you and Ziya and Thomas are already human."

"Andrew, Bruce must've already taught you how we became what we are, correct?"

I paused, thinking back to how it happened before nodding. The story was that thousands of years ago, a group humans were somehow transported onto this planet. They had no clue how they had got there. The foreign land unknown to them, they were nearly killed from beasts. That is, until a child among them had mutated into a mix of both human and beast. The child had animal-like features and traits, but it walked and talked like a human. Soon enough, more and more began to mutate into these "Beast people" until eventually, only a small percent were still human. This small percent of humans was labeled as the royals, therefore they would rule the land.

Currently, only about 100 humans out of the millions of organisms on Jaguer ( Y-ae-gur) existed. Three of them were Burcham, Ziya, and Thomas. Thomas was part of the royals, but his family was ruling somewhere else while he was sent to this city. There were many villages on the planet, and one king can't rule them all, so the bloodline was divided into leading different villages around the world. However, this is only what Bruce had taught me, so the story could be much larger than what I knew.

"Since we started mutating, we also learnt how to turn back."

At that moment, whispers suddenly went through the crowd. I thought we were quiet enough for no one to hear, yet someone could obviously hear what we were saying.

A man stood up in the crowd. He had the face of rat, literally. He had a furry black head that resembled a rat's and black eyes that glinted in the sun. He wore a fancy suit that was shiny like a beetle's shell, probably made with a rare material.

He yelled angrily. "You mean we could've been human and you kept that a secret from everyone!?!"

Burcham flicked his head towards the man, and he dropped to the ground. Suddenly, thousands of people fell over, as if passing out.

"I didn't want to wipe their memories, but this must be a secret. We must discuss this later."

Everyone started to get up slowly, like they were waking up from a long sleep. No one spoke a word, not even the man who was just yelling.

Burcham's attitude had changed like a lightswitch. His tone was now light-hearted as he spoke loudly to the crowd. "Congratulations, my good sir! You managed to beat my daughter in this battle! As a reward, my daughter will accompany you and Jarun back to earth. A woman's scream was heard in the crowd. My eyes went over to find a boar woman running through the crowd.

"No! You can't do tha—"

The king's eyes flicked over to her, and she quit talking. A look of sorrow and understanding filled her gaze. In that moment, I realized that it was Jarun's mother. Could the king have... telepathically told her something? She turned and started walking slowly back, disappearing from sight.

I turned my attention to Burcham. Just what ability did he have?

Grief filled my heart as I watched her walk away. I was just as worried about Jarun coming. What I was worried was that Jarun would get killed if he came with me back home. Sure, it wasn't dangerous, but if he was caught inside my dorm room, then he was sure to be arrested and executed.

"Hey!"

Jarun was waving in front of my face. I guess I must've blanked out again.

"Oh, yeah. Sorry bro."

He looked down. "D-did he say that I could at least say goodbye to my family?"

His voice started to crack halfway through the sentence. I realized he was about to start crying. A bag laid on the mattress, half-way filled with clothes and other items.

"I'll take care of your stuff for you. Go say goodbye to your family."

He quickly walked out of the room. I didn't want to make him sad, but Burcham left no choice with the news he gave.

Once I had packed everything I saw in his room, I told Jarun we had to leave after dinner. There was a "ceremony" that we both had to attend to. He nodded, gave his family a group hug in silence, then he grabbed his coat and shoes and walked out the door without another word. I thought about the family I had. I shivered as a chill ran down my spine.

I grabbed his bag for him and left the house. I didn't want to make them feel even worse than they probably were. 'Dammit,' I thought. I started walking faster. 'Fuck their love for each other.'

Tears began filling my eyes. The truth was, I never really grew up close to someone enough to call them my family. That was, until I was forced to level up here.

Before we knew it, Jarun and I were in front of the castle. Bruce led us inside, where we were greeted by Ziya and Burcham sitting in a room where a stone altar stood in the middle of the room, surrounded by 9 floating balls of purple fire. Ziya was wearing the same clothes from earlier, except they were cleansed of the blood on them. Her cuts and bruises were also gone. It wasn't shocking, so I just set down Jarun's bag and we both walked over.

"Good. Jarun is here," Burcham said.

"Yeah. Can you turn him human?"

"That is why he is here. Now that you both are here, we will start the ritual with my daughter first."

Wait a second. A ritual?