Triumphant Walk Outta Town

The three of us walked out of the building, grins plastered over our faces. As soon as the doors opened, and we exited into the outside, everyone was staring at us in disbelief. In fact, there was a crowd of what I could only assume was most the town, and all of them couldn't believe we were coming out alone. So much so that they were completely silent.

Xeta walked to us immediately, also surprised that we were perfectly fine.

"Yo-you guys are okay?"

"Yep!"

"What did you...."

"What?"

"... What did you talk about?"

"We talked about a lot. I would explain it to you, but Senco wanted to talk to you. It didn't really sound like he was in a hurry to talk though."

All the people outside were surprised and one blurted out "Nothing happened to him?"

'Well, not yet. I still wanna learn the secrets of the most important, evil looking guy here.'

Not answering the person who asked out of the blue, I ignored it.

"Sensen wants to.. see me?"

"Yep. It seemed important, but I couldn't tell you what he wanted to talk about. Now, go, just in case he wants to talk a lot. We have work to do."

Quite concerned, Xetalona stared at the three of us before deciding to walk towards the doors. Once in front of them, she looked back with some concern showing before entering the building and disappearing from view.

After she was gone, questions started to ring out from everywhere around us.

"Did they.. not get any judgement from Senco?"

"Sencotorume.. are they not heretics?"

"Nothing happened to Senco, right?"

I decided to just ignore these questions and waited for Xetalona.

For a minute, it was boring, since I didn't have anything really to do or think about. That was, until it got so boring that I decided to walk over to the well.

There were people in the way of the path to the well, but they dispersed when I looked them directly in the eyes. When I did make eye contact, the people would look away in what I felt was fear. And so, a path to the well was made with no trouble.

Getting to it, I sat on the edge, and decided to look at how far down it went. That was a mistake, because I gripped the stone I was sitting on and nearly cracked it. What I saw was a perfectly large hole that would have been fine as a well if it went down enough. The issue being, it wasn't just that. While looking down the maw of this 20 foot radius well, it was fine for at least a hundred feet down. Still a giant hole, but not the worst part.

Looking down this hole, farther than the well walls, was a massive cavern, I couldn't tell how big it was, but I could tell it was several hundred feet farther down than the bottom of the well walls. Only at the bottom could you see the water.

I stared down for a while, looking at the water down below. I was frozen in place while not even having my eyes twitch. And when I finally noticed something shimmer in the water, I felt a hand on my shoulder, which caused me to jump.

When I turned, Rem had touched my shoulder, and I put a hand to my chest before rubbing my eyes with one hand.

"Geez Rem. That freaking scared me half to death! Was there something you wanted?"

"... You were staring down the well for a couple minutes, and both Taki and I wanted to know what was going on."

I sighed out of relief that something major wasn't happening, and then spoke "Ah, just that. I thought something was happening."

I turned to them, and let go of the stone I was on, standing up before continuing.

"Well.. I think you know, you saw me do it before."

"You mean, your fear?"

I shook before replying. "Yes. As for something else, I think I saw something other than water down there."

They both became more interested than before.

"We should check it out when we have time. That might be a while, but we should check it out."

I then noticed, using observation, that Xetalona was coming back. I smiled.

"We are gonna take a while before that."

I watched the doors, causing everyone to look, especially the crowd, who were confused what I was doing.

Then, when the doors opened, Xetalona exited, walking towards the three of us, but before she got to us, the crowd surrounded her, some looking inside the building to check on Senco.

The ones surrounding Xetalona asked some questions like:

"What happened in there?"

"Is Sencotorume still alive?"

"Did anything happen to you?"

"Are you okay?"

Alongside other questions, those were the main points: asking if she was okay, if Senco was okay, and what happened.

The people who looked into the building yelled "Senco's good!", or something to that effect.

Bombarded with questions, Xetalona pushed the people away, finally getting to us, and saying "That... that was weird. Let's get going..."

And walked away.

The people around us started to spread out, all watching the four of us, and we walked through the town.

'What could've gone down in that time I was too busy being frozen from fear?'

"So, Lona, what did he ask?"

Xetalona shook a little, and hesitated for a minute and answered ".. He found out I took you guys to my workshop.."

"Okay..."

"... I told him that you wanted to redesign the ship, and he got mad that it wouldn't be done for a while, a couple of months at least..."

"Whatcha mean?"

She questioningly looked at me.

"Hmm?"

"What do you mean, a couple months?"

She looked at me like I was crazy. "It's going to take a few months with the people who normally help me...."

"... That's IF we use them. I wanna tell you something."

We continued walking down the same path we entered the town using.

"I built my ship from pieces of other ships, all mixed together. It took me less than a month to basically build a ship from scratch. All by myself. So, either they're incompetent, or just unable to do work quickly."

Xetalona furled her eyebrows.

"What do you mean, incompetent? They're the best carpenters on the island!"

"And I said that I could fix a ship from being in half to fully functional in less than a month by myself. And I have zero experience with it!"

I looked at Xetalona and I noticed that she flinched when I looked at her.

"What?"

"U-, yu-, your eyes..."

I groaned before I turned to the left for a second, away from Xetalona.

'Okay, what is your deal?'

'Who're you talking to?'

'Myself. Hopefully the one who keeps showing up in front of Lona.'

'Ah. You'll have to talk to Lucifer. Have fun trying to talk to him.'

'You aren't any help right now.'

'Nope.'

'...'

'Weren't you talking to someone?'

'Oh, right!'

"Sorry 'bout that. Apparently I have like.. zero control of things when I should have way more, like.. waaaaay more. Anyways. There is the fact that your helpers might be the best, they may also need to build things from scratch, especially NEW things."

".. And so, with that answer, I was right."

She smugly grinned a little, already partially over my red eyes at that moment.

"Well, seems like you can get past some things pretty quick."

".. Is that.. is that good?"

She tilted her head cutely.

"Yep. That is pretty good. Otherwise, how else would we be able to start on going through some of my odd knowledge?"

I turned to grin at her, and then found Taki and Rem looking at me.

Taki was the one to speak "You can remember that, but not that you wanted Rem's help later?"

"... This is exactly why I need other people with better memory than me, otherwise I would have forgotten that."

"And you remember wanting to teach odd stuff to Xeta, still?"

"Yep."

"You... You are crazy."

"Not THAT crazy. I could be waaaaay worse than some who are actually crazy."

"Whaaaaaaa...."

"Nothing, nevermind. Now, we should get back to your workshop, Lona, otherwise it may take too long to get to working."

And with that, we left the town, and headed towards the workshop.

•

In the clouds, a figure was sitting on a throne made up of other clouds.

"I'm sorry, my child, but it seems as though there will be more than what I have done for you to deal with. I hope it doesn't affect you too much."

With those words, the figure grimaced before looking around, away from their project.

"I did think that I was able to keep everything out, but it seems as though some things have been able to slip through. I do hope nothing was tampered with, this place was supposed to be from the One, but I can only think he did this on purpose. And now, I have to deal with this. I have a lot of work to do."

The figure stood up, and walked into the throne, disappearing.