As Tyel lowered the zip, his expression slowly turned from a curious one to a horrified one. "What?" whispered he. As the zip began to slide down, he noticed something black that looked like hair.
"What's there, Tyel?" asked Liro as he noticed the look on Tyel's face. As he walked closer, he noticed that Tyel had taken some steps back.
"I…" Tyel, before speaking again, breathed heavily. "Listen," said Tyel. Liro positioned his ear near the zip and heard a small cry coming from the Seamstress.
"It's a girl's cry," pointed out Liro. "And it's of someone who's barely a child," said he. Tyel now took another step forward. "Let's save her. We can't leave a child here."
Liro nodded his head and watched Tyel lower the zip until they could see the face of the girl inside the Seamstress. She was crying and her whole skin was black, but not the same black that Zrelekai had; this one was rougher and had multiple wrinkles, as if she had aged countless years.
Her eyes were black and she had extremely long black hair, as if it had never been cut. But the thing that surprised the two humans the most was the fact that the girl was naked and her whole body was black. Unlike any other half-Krukin, half-human who always had some human skin, she didn't—she was totally black.
"Please go away…" said she as she turned her head while black tears flowed down from her eyes. As the girl turned, they noticed that she was completely missing an eye, but the tears were still coming down.
"No, we can't leave a child like you there," shouted Tyel as he pointed his hand towards her. The girl, who was extremely skinny, started to shout. "No, please!! Just go away!" shouted she, and right after yelling, she spat some black blood.
"Wait, Tyel…" Liro took a step forward as he looked directly into the eyes of the crying girl. "Why should we go away? Don't you want to be saved?" asked Liro with a calm voice.
"Sa… saved? By you? The ones who want to break and destroy my fun?" The girl started to cry harder while Liro and Tyel, after hearing that, exchanged a confused look.
"We—we don't want to ruin anything. We just want to save you," said Liro as he tried to put one of his hands on the girl's shoulder to calm her, but the girl pushed her body forward, getting extremely close to the huge black body just to dodge Liro's touch.
Liro, caught by surprise, stopped moving his hand and pulled it back. That's when Vane left Darian on the floor nearby Snowy and walked towards them.
"Are you really saying we're here to kill you? We just want to save you…" whispered Vane. The girl slowly turned her head back at the sight of Vane and she immediately started to cry more.
"Why are you saying this after you destroyed my plushies… they had done nothing wrong." The Seamstress remembered seeing Vane turning into different creatures and destroying her plushies in front of her.
Vane turned silent. "It was just because…" As he started to speak, he soon turned quiet again, as he didn't want to say something bad to a girl crying in front of him.
"It's just because you want to ruin my fun… it's your fault that I can't live peacefully and I'm always scared that someone might arrive and destroy my safe place…" The girl couldn't stop crying, and as she kept speaking, she felt her body in pain and she spat more blood.
"We want to ruin your fun? We're here to save you, what are you talking about?" asked Tyel as he kneeled down. The girl, still with tears in her eyes, tried to speak again.
"SA—SAVE ME? WHEN YOU'RE LITERALLY THE ONES WHO KILLED ALL MY FRIENDS?!!!" As she shouted, she spat some blood again, which landed directly on Tyel's Timehors costume.
But Tyel, like the others, didn't have time to react to the blood on his costume because he was extremely surprised by her words.
"It's your… your fault that I can't live a peaceful life anymore. I always need to pay attention to everything… I… I just… can't do it anymore…" As the girl arrived at the end of the sentence, her voice dropped and more tears began to flow from her eyes.
"Hey… I don't know what you've been through all these years." Vane suddenly began to speak with a calmer tone. Tyel, who had never heard Vane talking in that way, was surprised and took some steps back, leaving him space to speak with the Seamstress.
A big, warm smile appeared on Vane's face, and with a gentle hand, he positioned it on top of the head of the shaking girl. "We're not here to hurt you or anything… we weren't even sure that a girl like you was inside this costume… but as we saw you acting this way, we realized that we can't leave you here alone anymore…" Vane slowly glanced back past the Seamstress to look at the plushies attacking Orechin and Lily, and while he petted her head, he remembered what the small girl had said before.
"Do you enjoy your plushies more than anything in this world?" asked Vane. The girl, still shaking, nodded her head.
"Hey, I didn't know Vane was able to comfort people this well…" whispered Tyel as he remained surprised. Liro let out a soft laugh before speaking again.
"I know, it surprised me when I saw him doing that too…" answered Liro as he looked over at Vane proudly.
The girl, who had now calmed down a bit after looking at Vane's expression, nodded her head. "I used to play with my friends without any… anyone bothering me… why then did you have to…" The girl couldn't even finish speaking before Vane spoke with a reassuring tone.
"We're sorry," said he with a serious tone. The girl's tears stopped flowing from her eyes and she remained surprised by his words. "We knew it wasn't right to destroy your fun… but now we're here to bring you a new kind of fun… a new place to be happy and play with your friends, and what's more, without any problems," said Vane with a warm smile as he looked directly into the girl's eyes.
"Guys, be fast!! We can't hold them off anymore!!" shouted Lily, as the plushies were arriving and their numbers were increasing as time passed.
"So? Do you want to be in a safer place playing with your friends without any problems?"
The girl nodded her head. "Yes, please… I can't take it anymore…"
Vane nodded his head and carefully touched her skin. Has she ever eaten anything? I can literally feel her bones… thought he as he began to pull the girl away, when suddenly a small tick could be heard inside the Seamstress's body.
Everyone stopped for a second, as they were surprised by the sudden sound. Tyel was the one who reacted right after the small tick became louder.
"It's a bomb!" shouted he as he lunged over Vane and the girl to pull them away.
The small girl, scared, shouted and accidentally freed herself from Vane's hands. "No!" shouted Vane as he bumped against the wall. As he stretched his arm trying to grab hers, the bomb inside the costume exploded, completely shattering both the huge plushie and the small girl inside of it.
Nothing of the girl remained. Everything caught fire, and tons of blood hit all the walls around. After the girl exploded, the plushies stopped moving. "They can't move anymore… oh no!!" shouted Lily as the whole place began to shake, especially in the room where the Seamstress had just exploded.
"It's falling down!" shouted Tyel as he rushed towards Darian to grab him. Liro helped him by grabbing Snowy, and they both rushed away, but Vane remained still as he looked over the burning costume.
"No… it can't be…" whispered Vane as he stood frozen and tried to stretch his arm towards the fire.
"VANE, GET OUT OF THERE!" shouted Liro, but Vane didn't hear him. I saved her… I was about to take her away… Vane's eyes began to close as the fire grew stronger and spread through Lily's roots too.
"Vane, move!!" shouted Lily. A rock was about to hit Vane directly on his head, but some roots appeared under him and pulled him away, making him arrive near Liro and Tyel while a huge piece of debris fell right on top of the Seamstress.
"NO!!!" shouted Vane as more debris fell, completely destroying the room.
Zrelekai was currently looking at a small screen in his hands. While eating a slice of watermelon, he noticed that a small red marker had disappeared. As he took another bite, he nodded his head.
"They were actually able to convince her in the end…" Zrelekai left the screen on the desk in front of him and got up from his chair. He was currently inside a huge black room.
"Not our problem anymore… we've used Mary for as much as we could…" As he arrived in front of a window, there was a huge room before him in which multiple robots stood completely still.
"We didn't need her for our final plan…" As Zrelekai looked again at the countless robots, he took another bite of the watermelon.
Right after Karyuz had fallen to Ashikunz, exactly three hundred years ago, he was wandering around the ruins of the city. As he stepped on tons of lifeless bodies of the people he had just killed, the ones who were alive were pushed away.
'It's still hard to walk in the desert… I haven't gotten used to this yet,' whispered Ashikunz. As he kept walking, he heard a small moan.
"Don't worry… we will be out soon," said a voice coming from under some debris. As Ashikunz kicked it away with all his strength, a small girl with two plushies was revealed.
This girl, who had beautiful yellow hair and blue eyes and was only three years old, was looking at Ashikunz, terrified. Soon enough, she started to cry.
"Annoying," were the only words that came out of Ashikunz's mouth. Right before he was about to thrust his spear towards the girl, someone stopped him.
"Hey… you're Mary. I know you."
As the girl raised her head, she noticed someone she had heard about but never met directly. "Sir Zrelekai?" asked she. Zrelekai, while smirking, nodded his head.
"Don't kill her, Ashikunz… she's an Alterid, and she can be really useful for one of my ideas…" A weird smile appeared on Zrelekai's face, and the terrified girl began to shake.
Zrelekai knocked her unconscious with a small hit to her head, and the plushies nearby her stopped moving.
"We should use her to defend your empire." Some weeks had passed, and Zrelekai and Ashikunz were currently speaking in a huge black room, while not far from them, Mary was crying in another room, terrified.
"Mhm?" Ashikunz, surprised by what Zrelekai had just told him, got up from his throne. "I'm listening."
"Your blood has made my soul resistant… and I believe it can happen to her too," said Zrelekai.
"Should we make her a half-Krukin and half-human like you? But why?" asked Ashikunz, confused, as he couldn't follow Zrelekai's plan.
"Oh, but that's simple. When she was born, she was an extremely famous girl, especially because she was an Alterid and she could give life to her plushies…" As Zrelekai looked for a moment at the ceiling, he remembered when he used to walk in front of her house and always feel a great power in the air.
"Explain your plan, Zrelekai," ordered Ashikunz.
"We need someone to defend us in case someone from the outside attacks us, right?" asked Zrelekai. "We will simply use this girl as our weapon to defend and help us."
Hearing these words, Ashikunz's eyes lit up. "Let's see how this plan goes."
Zrelekai, smirking, brought Ashikunz into a room and showed him a costume. "I've thought that the girl should be inside this huge costume. Since she can touch a plushie and give life to it, she will be able to move it without any problem just by walking around, and we will enclose her inside of it." Ashikunz looked at the costume as Zrelekai spoke with a proud tone. "And because she will be a half-Krukin, we don't need to make her eat. I'll just create the plushies for her to use and she will attack the other people. Come, let's go convince her."
As they walked together, they finally arrived in front of the room where Mary was playing with some plushies. "Zrelekai!" said she happily, as this man had already created multiple plushies for her.
As she looked at Ashikunz, she hid behind Zrelekai's leg, as she felt awkward. "I told you, what is Ashikunz to us?" asked he. Mary, while looking down, answered.
"The emperor who saved us from the outsiders who were about to attack us…" Zrelekai, hearing these words, let out a strange smile until he whispered something into Ashikunz's ear.
"She has completely forgotten about the event when Karyuz fell… the trauma was too hard for her to handle, and I could easily play with her mind as much as I preferred," said Zrelekai with a really low voice.
Ashikunz kneeled down and looked directly into Mary's eyes. "You've got a really important role for our empire, Mary… you'll defend it from the outside so no one can come and ruin your fun."
"But will I be able to play with my plushies?" said she, wanting to cry, as she didn't want to lose her fun with her plushies.
"I'll create as many plushies as I can for you. You'll have infinite friends," said Zrelekai with a warm tone. Hearing that, her eyes filled with sparkles.
After some days, while Mary was sleeping, Zrelekai brought her to Ashikunz and left her on a bed with a small cut on her arm.
"We just need to insert your blood and she will soon turn into a half-Krukin like me." After Zrelekai had obtained Ashikunz's blood, he had started to change too, and after at least a month, a part of her skin turned black.
Ashikunz nodded his head and positioned himself between Mary and Zrelekai so that the scientist couldn't see what was happening.
"I've done it," said Ashikunz.
"Well, I wanted to see how you created the cut over your body to give her the blood… but oh well, what matters is that it has worked." With that, the girl was still half asleep and didn't notice anything.
"In the end, the fact that you stopped growing surprised me… but we've used you well." Zrelekai had just finished remembering the old times, and as he turned around, he walked away. "And soon… your sacrifice, not chosen by you, will help us." With that, he left the room with a huge smirk on his face.