After being lost in thought, Nightingale finally spoke up again. "The boy's words can be trusted. I personally took him out of that place and the scene I stumbled upon completely validates his words. I am truly stumped about this man Parro's ability. I cannot think of a single god that would bestow such a man a blessing. Sure there are gods whose intentions lead to many wrongdoings, that has always been the case. However, I cannot believe there is a god that allows their own representative to kill children shamelessly. I will certainly need to confer with my siblings to further investigate this. Though from what I have been able to assess with the information given, this man Parro seemed to have set up certain conditions in order to fully utilize his blessing. He created an environment that was meant to completely break down the minds of those he kidnapped. He made the children kill each other instead of doing it himself, which further contributed to the mental decline of those who were deemed strong among the pack. It is an utterly despicable manipulation, and yet my belief is that it was this environment in which he created that allowed him to utilize his ability whenever he wanted. I think that because you were so mentally strong Ivan, that he was not able to control you." Nightingale said with a nod. All of his points made perfect sense. But something still didn't sit right with me. I think that we were missing something when it came to his ability. Smiles then said something that ultimately sent us on our way. "I do have one more thing for you Warlock, although I think you would have ended up going there anyway. I can't speak for the Absent Eye, but I can say with certainty that the organizations called the Red order and the Masked Syndicate will be making an appearance at the upcoming event at the Grande Colluseum. Especially considering the leader of the Red order runs the place heh heh. I'm sure you'll find something of use there. That's all I have for you. The Gone water will be given to you when you leave. Next time don't bring that brat, or I may just eat him." He said with a piercing gaze and a wicked smile. Screw this guy. I hate this crocodilian man. The next time I see him, I will for sure kick his teeth in. "Alright then, we'll be on our way." Nightingale finished speaking, but that wasn't enough for me. Before we left I looked that stupid reptile in the face and I said, "Smiles, if we meet again, I will return that strike you made on me one hundred fold." I said with absolute certainty. Smiles simply scoffed and bared his rows of gnarly teeth. He acted completely uninterested, so I made a gesture at him that completely changed his demeanor. It was a gesture called "biting the devil's horns." In Bane, this hand gesture was forbidden, as it meant something along the lines of, "Even if you were the devil, I could bite your horns." For further clarification, it basically meant that no matter how strong you think you are, I can get to you. It was an incredibly disrespectful gesture, and I thought it was quite fitting for this bastard. The gesture is made by putting out your thumb, index finger, and pinky on your hand while keeping your two center fingers tucked in. You put your hand out like this, and then bend your arm inwards towards your mouth. That's when you bite down on your own index finger. And there you have it, you've bitten the devil's horns. However, when I made this gesture I did something a little extra. I let out the energy of my blessing and formed the same purple skull with horns above my head just like I did when I first learned my God's name. This clearly made Smiles mind start racing, as his eyes widened in both anger and confusion. But before he could say anything else, I waltzed out the door and told Nightingale to come on. I felt pretty cool after that, and also thought Osseous would be happy with my actions as well.
And that was it. Smiles did not follow after us or anything like that. I'm sure I gave him a lot to think about. We took that information and the gone water with us and left. I hoped that I would never come back to this god forsaken city. I don't care how cool the giant cavern was or about all the people with crazy beast-like features… The memories I will have of this place will always fill me with rage. Nightingale led us down a few pathways and then we came to a very long and winding staircase. We climbed that staircase for what seemed like hours until we reached another tunnel on the side of the Cavern City's walls. We took that tunnel for quite a while. It was pretty dark except for the random glowing stones all over the ceiling and walls. Nightingale explained that they were called luminouscrystals, and they were a naturally occurring mineral in the caverns of Gamula. I ended up breaking off a couple small pieces and storing them in my pocket for safe keeping. Nightingale caught me and said I shouldn't do that because they are considered the only natural light source in these cave tunnels, but I just shrugged and said finders keepers. My own actions reminded me of Sid… I missed him, he was a greedy bastard but he was the only best friend I ever had. Eventually we made it to the end of the long tunnel, and came upon an opening to the outside of the cavern. What was waiting for us was beyond anything I could have ever imagined.
I knew that Nightingale had mentioned something about terrible weather above the cavernous City, and that's why it was underground to begin with. But what I saw when we exited the tunnel was absolute mayhem. There was such powerful wind I couldn't even see two steps in front of me. I think there was rain too but I couldn't even tell over the roar of the wind. I began to take a step outside and immediately felt my body lift up off the ground and get pulled forward. "OH SH*T!!" I yelled as I was being pulled into the torrent of winds. Luckily, before I was swept away Nightingale had grabbed hold of the back of my shirt and pulled me back in. "YOU IDIOT! Don't even do that again. Follow BEHIND ME. I told you before already how horrendous the weather is in this area. They call this the Howling Derecho Canyon. You can't tell from where we are due to the wind, but this whole area is made up of intersecting canyons. However, long ago this used to be a massive mountain range. After the winds had become much more powerful, they quite literally cut through the mountain range and created these canyons. Now, because of all of the powerful winds blasting through the different paths of the canyons, they form this maelstrom of violent twisters and derechos all combining and clashing with each other. If you get caught out in this, you'd be blasted into pieces from the power of these winds. Please do me a favor and stay AWAY from the entrance, okay!?" Nightingale said with irritation. He was right, I really should have stayed away from the entrance. I have never encountered winds like that before. The world sure is big. "But Sir Nightingale, why did we climb all the way up here if we can't even go outside? And what was the point of getting that weird water stuff from Smiles anyways?" I asked. "We needed to be at a higher elevation to use this Gone water. If we were below ground there is a greater chance that we could end up in the ground itself or somewhere worse. It's best to eliminate any chances of failure before utilizing it. This Gone water is a very special creation of my brother, Fable. As I've told you he is an incredible enchanter and has invented all kinds of useful objects in the world. This Gone water is one of them. It will allow us to travel a far distance with ease, however there are still some drawbacks we have to take into account. The farther we are hoping to travel, the less accuracy we will be able to maintain while using it. Right now we are going to use it to travel to an area outside of the Grande Colluseum. If we used it to go directly there we may encounter some issues with the local law that I would really rather avoid. However, the area we are heading to is dangerous. So prepare yourself for when we arrive." Nightingale said as he pulled out a small vial of an aqua blue substance. I was bewildered by how this small vial of liquid was going to help us travel so far, but I couldn't rule anything out based on all the weird artifacts I had seen recently.