The door bell rang a couple of times, and while Maj was reminiscing about how his life used to be and daydreaming of what could have been an ideal life in his opinion, he scratched his ears wondering if he heard something, but went back to his daydreams when he thought he was just imagining it, until it became a constant sound that echoed around the place, which made him fall off of his chair by the window and run to the door.
When he opened the door, a face hidden behind a stack of documents was on the other side to meet him, and although he had opened the door at that point, the person holding the documents still kept his finger pressed on the doorbell, until Maj shouted "ENOUGH."
The person holding the documents was caught off guard and lifted his hand and dropped the documents both at the same time, revealing the face behind it, which was Anas.
He apologized and crouched down in a clumsy manner to grab the documents, then continued reading through them the moment he laid his eyes on them again. Maj went back inside at that point, and when he noticed that, he shouted from a distance while readjusting the chair, "Are you just going to stand there or get inside?" which managed to grab Anas attention finally.
"Ah! right, I just came to tell you that you can stop monitoring for now. I'll go patrolling around the edges of the third district in two hours. You can go to sleep in the meantime." Maj's eyes glowed in joy, as he was finally able to clock out early and might manage to sleep for maybe eight hours this night, which was a rare thing over the past few weeks, but a moment later he knotted his eyebrows and asked in a suspicious tone, expecting to hear the worst, "Is that all... ?"
Anas had zoned out for a moment there, as if he managed to keep eyes off of the documents but then failed to maintain his head clear off of it, and for a few seconds he stood in place without saying anything until he noticed the silence, "Oh... yeah, I might help out with other teams as well in the meantime around the second district."
A smile was drawn on Anas' face as he said that, which managed to unnerve Maj for some unknown reason. He sighed and frowned, then sat on his bed with a final question, "Is that really all...?"
Anas threw his head amongst the clouds and tried to remember if there was anything else, and as he was about to answer with "Yes" he finally remembered something, "Is it okay if I borrowed your old knife?" Maj died inside a bit, as he knew there was something else to be asked of him, "This again... why don't you just get one for yourself?" Anas became a little stiff after hearing that, as if he was simply expecting to get permission right away as always, "Ah haha, I'm short on money as of now, I managed to get a part-time job for daily needs, so I'm saving for it." Maj sighed helplessly, then opened a drawer next to his bed and grabbed the knife and threw it in his direction, "I only have one sheath you'll have to manage. This isn't charity, so make sure you bring it back this time. The key was already troublesome enough to replace." As Anas was trying to grab into it in the middle of the air, he accidentally cut his palm while catching it with his bare hand, but he didn't seem bothered by it to say the least. He threw a "Thank you" back in the air and ran for the stairs, just for Maj to shout back at him to close the door, but he was already gone by the time he thought of saying that.
While Anas was heading south through the first and towards the second district, he slowed down for a bit when he passed by an open bar and decided to go inside to get some food, and when a waiter grated him inside he asked for the usual, as he chose a table and sat down he took a look around to scan his surrounding and take a mental note of the number of people. Though there were merely seven people, the place seemed as lively as ever, possibly due to them being all drunk.
While his order was getting ready, he took out of his pocket a leathered black box and ran his fingers across it, then he opened it and pulled out a pair of glasses with clear frames that seemed to have gotten a bit yellowish over time. As he lifted them up and let them rest on the bridge of his nose, a waiter finally came back with his order, but Anas didn't seem notice him until he spoke up, "Oh my, they really suit you." Anas got a little flustered and took them off right away before he even got to see who it is that was talking, but as he turned his head to see, he squinted his eyes in the direction of the speaker as he recognized the waiter that is standing next to him, with his darker complexion and his long dark hair that is tied in braids and resting on his shoulders, and so, Anas jumped out of his chair at this realization, "John! I thought your shift was over already by now. Are you working overtime?" John firmly placed the plate on the table, as he avoided handing it over to Anas despite him extending his hands to receive it, "Well, Alina fell sick and has been bedridden for quite some time, so I'm here to fill up for her absence. It's a little late for you to be working now, too. And what's up with the glasses, trying a new look?"
Anas sat back down and shoved the piece of fresh bread into his mouth while a quick satistied smile was hinted at the corners of his mouth, then washed it down with a glass of water along with the smile quickly as he was listening to John, "I see, I'm sorry to hear that, let me know if I could help be of any help, but it seems we're both in the same boat, I mean, having to work late and all. I don't hate it. I can't complain. I recently got these glasses as a gift cause it's getting harder to read lately, as my vision seems to be getting interrupted with all these dots and shadows, but I didn't want to worry anyone about it, so this is a secret between us."
John knotted his eyebrows with a heavy expression across his face, and the warm smile he had a moment ago seemed to have gotten harder to keep up. As he lifted the plate that was holding a single piece of bread a minute before and the empty glass of water with him, he turned around without saying anything at first, but then hesitated for a moment and stopped in his tracks, "You need to get a real meal next time you come over, you can't run around with an empty stomach and pretend like what you're getting is enough, or else you might pass out in the middle of the street for hours before anyone could notice your absence. You know... the reason my sister fell sick in the first place was due to exhaustion, so I can't tolerate that behavior."
After hearing that, Anas seemed to have begun getting distracted and losing his focus for some reason. Reading through the documents again, he managed to follow with his right eye one word at a time before zoning out over and over.
Back on his track to get through the first district, he began thinking out loud, possibly to fill up the silence around him and the solitude created by the fog, "I was careless. I managed to hurt someone again. I hurt John out of all people. My actions are still clumsy and unfocused. I'm being a liability. Falling back on old habits. I need to be more careful. Fulfilling my role while paying back my debts. It is not a mundane task to go about it mindlessly and assume the best would happen."
At that moment, a flash of something in the shadows caught Anas' attention and made him stop, that's when it went over to his blind spot to the left and launched forward at full speed, while his reaction speed was a bit slow, he managed to dodge and wound it with a light cut after drawing his knife.
Amidst the fog, and after he crashed into a wall from the sheer momentum, he started salivating and drooling with intensity, while Anas took the time to readjusting and take in the figure that just attacked him, which he realized based on the description in ghe documents that he was one of the vulture bees, a cannibalistic group that feed both on seeds that are residing in normal people, and body parts of the children of the family tree that contain their power, causing most of the vulture bees' conscious to be ripped apart by the will of different desires mixed in together.
He thought of taking the initiative and probing for an opening or a hidden weakness, since the documents didn't specify any consistent method of neutralizing them, or even if they did, it would be a long shot for Anas to manage to recreate it with his current condition.
While Anas was trying to come up with a solid course of action, the vulture bee went on the move again, and before Anas could even realize it, he managed to get some saliva on his clothes which immediately made a hole through his jacket. As he got distracted by trying to take off the jacket so it wouldn't reach his skin, the vulture bee grabbed his head and drove it to a nearby wall. The sound of his skull being crushed started ringing in his ears, as it got mixed with his memory of Aurora's words, deep in his unconscious.
"Picture its scent, color, and sound. As you orient your mind towards it, try to follow its patterns and where they lead. Designate a single word to describe it, but keep it at the back of your head for long enough, as if you're occupied with something else. Don't allow your conscious to see it. Let the seed extend its roots to try and capture it, and as you feel the itch going number, place a mental block to stop the seed from fusing with it."
Spinning. The world twists into a spiral and reaches out for light from the above. Eyes that see everything and nothing at the same time. Tired skin falls out of its place into the ground. His body, eroding, rotting, melting, molding. Hello.
In a flash, Anas' eyes turned completely black, while something was running under his skin and reconstructing his skull, and extended further through his limbs and fingertips, creating a field of thorns made out of roots bundled up and twisted together, which dug into the ground then went up from below in an instant and pierced through the vulture bee's legs to stop him from evading, as the vulture bee was struggling and trying to melt the roots with his saliva, a knife was thrown between his eyes and finished him off.
Anas fell down on his back with a heavy feeling in his chest, while his breaths were rapidly shortening and jumping in front of one another, as he thought, with a weak smile on his face, "I'm still too slow on my feet. I can't afford to be too careful and mismanage my time in these situations. Thanks to this, I had to use my trump card. Man... I'm still not used to this. It feels like treating death too casually. Who knows how many more times I can get away with this. Maybe one day, I'll get both cornered and outnumbered and think, "Ah ha! here's something you could've never seen coming, you fools!" and just kill myself like an idiot, ha ha..." With some self-deprecating thoughts, Anas had managed to make himself laugh and forget for a brief moment the terrifying nature of his life right now.
It was unclear why did Aurora give him such instructions, besides the obvious fact that he could trick the seed into healing him, there wasn't an established logical reason as to why she would see that as a more suitable option than, say, to simply fuse with the seed and gain something consistent that he could get accustomed to in no time despite what kind of draw back it would pull on him, and yet, Anas chose to put his trust in Aurora's vision.