Special Chapter VIII - Anger (part 2)

I did my best...

I beat them down as quickly as I could.

I chased after them as fast as the horse could.

Then…

How am I... so late…?

By the time we caught up, there was fire everywhere. At the sides, it looked like a battle had happened here since there were plenty of holes on the ground. The whole carriage that was supposed to bring Lyona and Eva back to the kingdom was burned to the ground, not a single living soul can be seen.

Instead, a few charred corpses on the carriage were sighted.

I counted only two.

And one of them only had one arm.

"We are too late…"

The captain mumbled as he watched the fire burning. His eyes landed on the two corpses on the ground, not too far from the burning carriage. 

He took a glance at a glimmering item on the corpses. It was pendants, belonging to both of his underlings.

Including Eva.

The captain held while closing his eyes, as tears fell down from his eyes. Then, he stored the pendants away in his pocket, where the other pendants that belonged to his other underlings are located.

The captain pondered about it for a while, and he slowly turned around.

"From the looks of it… It doesn't look like they killed Lyona. We need to-"

The captain's words were cut off. He wasn't paying attention to the air until just now. He was so busy mourning for his lost comrade, that he didn't even notice how thin the air had become.

Until now.

The captain fell to the ground, gasping for air. Even the flames on the carriage started to dissipate.

I took the first step.

And another.

Every single step I made, the air went thinner, and the flames went smaller. Until I'm only an inch away from the corpse, that seemed to belong to Eva.

I recalled all the memories I had about her. How she was very cold to me in the beginning, then her cute face when she fell asleep at the farmer's cart.

How she cried when she tasted the barbeque.

She was a true knight.

I lowered my body, and placed my hand on her shoulder.

That's when I realized something was off.

My hand was lifted from the shoulder, and I placed it back on the shoulder again to double check. Once confirmed, I feel like something bright has come upon my heart.

Thank god…

The air around starting to turn normal. Though the fire was already put out, it's quite dark now. I conjured a flame from my hand and created multiple floating fireballs to lit the place up.

"This is not her."

I pointed at the burned corpse of a supposedly one-armed Eva, which apparently isn't.

"How did you know?"

The captain asked while I continued to study the burning corpse. I lifted the corpse up. And the part that wasn't held fell down, like a burned grass.

Because it was in fact a type of grass.

"Oh. Newly burned corpses don't do that."

"Exactly. Which gets us to another question. Where are they?"

CLAP!!

CLAPP!!!

A clap can be heard from far away. Twenty meters from here looks like a dense forest. And the clap is coming all the way from the forest. And slowly, the person who was clapping came out of the shadow.

It's… a dwarf?

The dwarf walked closer to us, until he was only five meters away.

"Well, well, well. You are both zcary and zmart!"

The dwarf complimented me… weirdly.

Come to think of it, the kingdom of dwarves is nearby, isn't it? Then this guy must be…

"You are from the dwarven kingdom, Bale… something?"

I asked the dwarf, who seemed to be mad because I forgot the name of his kingdom.

"You are zharp indeed! But you are dumb for not knowing ze name of my kingdom."

I did hear that dwarves are impolite, but only now that I know how much. Both me and the captain stared at him for a long time until he finally realized how rude he was.

"Ah, right! Where are my mannerz."

That's right. Where are they?

He bowed down with his right hand on his chest and his left hand on his back. A noble's bow. After that, he lifted his body again and stared at us.

"My name, iz Ezerio. I am ze reprezentative of ze dwarven kingdom. And I azzume you must be… Rize and Captain captain?"

Both me and the captain turned at each other awkwardly.

"Your name is Rice?"

"Rize… Your name is Captain?"

"No, that's definitely a mistake."

I shook my head and turned back to the dwarf.

"So…? Where are they?"

"Okay, no need to rush ze things. Come, now. They are very eager to zee you two."

The dwarf was about to turn around, and he almost forgot the small detail.

"Oh right, can you put those shiny things back and put the corpse back to where it is?"

"Huh? Why?"

"It will make zenze after I explain it. For now, make it look like how it waz before, all burned down."

Me and the captain looked at each other in confusion, but we could only follow along. I placed the fake corpse back and the captain threw the emblems back there.

"Okay, great. Now, follow me."

The dwarf walked back to the forest. Me and the captain turned to each other and decided to follow him.

We entered the forest and walked for around fifteen minutes until we arrived at a certain spot.

It looked like a simple tree at the side of a cliff. But behind the tree is a bush, thick enough to hide the existence of a cave just behind it. The cave is big enough for two people to enter at the same time.

The dwarf, Ezerio, opened the bush and headed inside the cave first. Followed by me and the captain.

"Cloze ze door."

Ezerio said while he took out a crystal from his pocket. Seeing that it's a flashlight crystal, I was quite confused as to why it's not bright.

"Door?"

"He meant the bush."

The captain was quite confused about what the dwarf meant by door. I closed the bush, just like how it was before and turned back forward.

"To think that an entrance to a cave existed here, of all places."

I said as we strolled down the cave. The dwarf was still busy trying to get his flashlight crystal to work and go brighter, so I conjured multiple fireballs. He was quite jumped and pissed.

"Well, it iz quite random, izn't it?"

"It is."

The captain was more restless than me. We have been walking for almost half an hour now.

"Okay. Where are they?"

"Be patzient! We are cloze!"

The dwarf snapped with a high tone, and the captain got taken aback. Dwarves always had a short temper.

The captain walked closer to me and whispered in my ears.

"Do all dwarves can't pronounce s?"

"I think it's just him being weird."

"I. Can. Hear. You."

Ah right. This is a cave. The voice echoed. Whoopsie, totally accidental.

We finally arrived at the exit, a giant room where there's a gigantic tree in the middle. The tree goes all the way up into the hole on the surface, so that we can barely see the leaves from down here.

And if my geographic knowledge isn't wrong, we are exactly at the bottom of a mountain. Which means this cave goes all the way up until the surface of the mountain.

A waterfall can be seen falling from that opening of the surface at the ceiling. The water fell to a pond, not too far from our location. The pond connects all the way to the small rivers that stretch all around the cave. And at the end of the bridge that connects above the river, are the two people I'm glad are alive.

Lyona and Eva, along with the other knight, are standing at the other side of the bridge waving their hands at us.