"Are you sure about this, Heiya...?" Hrurim questions, my weapon resting uncomfortably in his hands. My eyes linger on him, and I offer him a simple, easy smile.
"It's fine, I have... I have Pops' weapon with me." I tell him, heading off before I can consider too much about what I said. Hrurim recognises that and raises a hand, parting ways with me by staying right where he is. No second looks go his way, and I keep walking, hopping a crop field's fence for the privacy of it.
Yet, within a step or two, I'm already still and not going anywhere. I shuffle the spike gun about, bringing it up before my eyes. My watering eyes. A sniffle fills out my nose, and I pull the empty gun close, hugging it tight as I look around.
The under-mountain world is bright and enjoyable, yet, I can't seem to feel the same way. I've tried taking it out on what I can, but it won't go away. I've tried to bottle it up, but I can't keep it contained. There's no way for me to escape or be free of it.
I just need to accept it...
"And I have plenty of time to get used to it." I let out, sighing what I can as my legs start to work again. Pops' spike gun shifts about in my grip, leaning heavily into one arm while the other brushes on some bushes. Some twigs and leaves break away, coming into my grip by accident and as I reach the end. It's by intent.
The crunchy ball of sticks and green falls apart as my fist unfurls. It covers the ground and I quickly leave it behind. If only there were other things I could leave behind so easily. While I don't want to ever forget Pops, I never want to leave him behind. To some extent, I want to leave behind all this pain and annoyance.
But that is how life is, really. I can't leave it behind. Without the bad, what I loved about my father would mean little. What I love about life as well would mean little. Yet, still... I would like the bad to be gone either way. Wise choice or not, I'm suck of it.
I'm sick of having to constantly relive that day, night, whenever it was. The details are slipping away, but the core moment remains. My fault. My fault. His death is...
My eyes close and I shade my head as I take a turn out of the farm and onto a broken fence. The road we came down comes into view, and I carry on my walk. Grass and dirt makes way for dirty brick and a nefariously controlling amount of it despite how little there is. The clearest path is always the paved one, and it takes away so much adventure.
Though, a lack of adventure is probably a good thing for me right now. It's adventure that ultimately leads to tragedy. At least simple, controllable lives are just that. Simple, controllable.
Not this, not a mess where a daughter is without anyone to call her family. I have no one. Momma and everyone else died decades ago. Now, Pops is with them, and not me. I'm selfish, inconceivably so. I want Pops to be with me in the here and now... Not elsewhere with them.
"I want to be here with Pops... Worrying about things with him. Seeing the world with him, like this underground resort... This wacky, strange, weird and uncanny resort... I could be doing it all with you Pops. Not just Hrurim and Nin. Some friend of yours and our biggest merchandise mistake..." I go, hissing at the end as I think on that strange detail.
Every time we've been with Nin, something bad happens. So much... Stuff, so much stuff happens when we're with him. I don't know why... I don't know why I focus on him like this. Nin is but one of many people we've been around, but one of many things I can connect dots around and to. Yet. Yet... I just can't stop.
He's in my thoughts here and there, just like Pops. Something inseparable and I can't quite figure it out. He made a promise, a promise when he didn't have to and a promise that doesn't mean much in my line of work and life. Yet again, he's there in my thoughts.
I am certain he will keep his promise and that it will work out. I... Trust? Him.
"Well, when he gets his magic, at least it will all be over quickly and like that." I go, clicking some of my fingers as I make my way to a random ledge in the countryside. My legs bring me as far as the dwarf-height hill, and I turn one way, then the other. All the way towards the one thing in the sky that can catch the eye. The Crack in the Sky as the people of this place call it.
Our tunnel is that, the so-called Crack in the Sky is just a broken wall, a tunnel.
"Mm, I wonder what... I wonder what I will do." I say, not minding my thoughts up until this point and just for an in-the-moment boredom. A shrug lifts my shoulders, and I hop down, walking along the root-erupting path as the forest envelops me more and more.
I mind the forest debris and climb when needed, carefully minding the canopy. For something that's so easy to see outside the woody confines, it's the opposite inside. What might feel like an extension of the Crack part of the title. It's not. Just more trees and their twigs and sticks.
A stump rather conveniently comes into view, and I head up the brief hill for it. My steps are limited, but the bark and bulbous growths certainly offer what they can. I shuffle about, finding my footing on the awkwardly dead tree. Flaking stump where the magic has fully receded into other parts of the tree remnant. Desperate measures for something that has no chance.
No chance...
"I have a chance." I shrug, unhelpfully thinking of Nin again as I pull Pops' spike gun out to look at it. My paws go across its worn surface, feeling out each scratch and dent and the barely formed lines of rust. My dominant thumb settles on the switch, and I flick it. The spike gun splits, the front half coming out and up.
Nothing, a honeycomb of nothing. Empty barrels, a filling frame with no spikes to insert. This weapon will never feel the heat it should again. I can improvise, I can get what I properly need to load this gun and it will never be right or feel the same. I don't know why.
"It's stupid, it's just a gun. Just a gun that I can load at any point and... I don't want to. I don't want to load it..." I let out, turning around and narrowing my eyes at the sounds of the woods. Something's off. I know this sound but I also know it should not be here.
I contradict my words, survival instinct taking over fully. I jam twigs down the barrels, the fine metallurgy handling the abnormal munition and breaking it into shape. The poorly shaped ones slip out as I lower the barrel, the rest stay. The certainty of being able to defend myself stays.
"N-Nin!?" I call out, not quite sure if I am somehow in the midsts of a practical joke. Yet, the more I hear the noise, the more it settles in. This isn't Nin. This isn't him. The Crack in the Sky, it's coming from there... Echoes. It's all echoes.
I look towards the way out of the forest and contradict myself again. Rather than heading for safety, obeying my survival instincts, I head to the noise. Pops' spike gun settles in my grip, his training propping up my actions and movements. I keep against the trees, peeking around them just a little more than I look around the open ground.
One set of bark is against me and then another, the signs of a camp breaking through it all. I keep where I am, minding the forest floor as I quickly take it all in. So many places where things can go wrong, where the aware can snap into greater awareness. Bad news for me, nothing but it.
My ears twitch, hearing out for the world I hate so much right now. Most of the noises are far away, the bugs aren't quite here yet. No... If the bugs are coming and the camp ahead is not busy with concern, ignorance or not... Then they're dead.
My nose twitches as a force of habit, no matter how thick the smell of foliage is. But, still, I know the smell of fresh blood regardless and there's something here. It's in the camp, specifically the camp. Something got in ahead of the bug hive proper. They smelled the weakness in the mountain in the same way we found it.
The earthquakes drove them out, that's the only explanation. Security on the outside, regardless of the mountain's reinforcement, is here purely for this. Bugs. Bugs... Bugs!
And they're in.
"Dammit." I snap quietly, knowing full well I'm a good distance away from anything. Bugs are stealthy when they have the earth covering them. They're not hidden in the open. They're too damn noisy. Even Nin with all his insecurities, can't stop the chitters. What kind of mess will one with no concept of it do!?
I take another peek around the tree and make my way down the safest path. Only the grass rustles, only the dust puffs. Nothing else, nothing more. My eyes narrow, and I can't really find much of anything out there.
My nose sniffles again and I double-check Pops' spike gun. His weapon is barely rusted. Enough to give it a musk, but nothing much at all. Something greater is giving the air its smell.
"Gods and goddesses above, Nin... Damn you." I remember quite clearly as something almost karmatic comes into play. The last time I had such an association with rust and a bug was on a mountain ledge. A day I almost lost Pops... Almost. My eyes narrow and my weapon grip tightens.
There's an earth shaman in the mountain. Why is there an earth shaman in the mountain...? No, wait, I know. Earthquakes, earthquakes drove the hive out.
Yet... That's an oddity in and of itself. The earth shamans never lead attacks. Though powerful, though witches and more. They never lead the attack, they build on the remains of what they order to be destroyed. They can fight, but they're hive-builders first and foremost.
Reputation and a name to go along with this particular earth shaman aside...
I need to run. I cannot fight this, even if I did have a properly loaded spike gun. An earth shaman is ahead of it. Even more so when one thinks about my past with this one. Wounded or not, it survived a bout with a gods and goddesses blessed Valkinvar! A bloody Valkinvar!
My back moves away from the tree and I step back, keeping my breath steady. I repeat the path I took, keeping it going and going all the way to the stump. Though it's bad to expose myself like this, I'm back on the high ground. The double-edged boon of more sight.
The Crack in the Sky seems so clear in the forest now, but so does something else. In the distant forest, rustling away, disturbing the peace. It leaps for something, and, although I see it so clearly. So far away. I jump and shake.
The critters it tried to hunt rush away, its orders keeping it from giving chase. However, it looks up and around, keeping to itself at the worst point possible. And, it spots me. I don't need a rifle scope to see why its form looks so weird now. It's facing me fully, eyes centred on me. Instincts flaring up.
"And I can't even blame myself for wanting to go for a walk..." I let out, knowing full well this is a danger I needed to have discovered while it's as small as possible. The osibindah roars, its shadow sprinting ahead of it.