Tick Tock Tick Tock
Arthur's smile as if he had just met an old friend without knowing never ceased for all of two full minutes Verity and Khoma stared at him. The clock continued to chime in the distance, barely reaching 12 gongs.
The rusted bell sounds as if it were just on the edge of breaking from its old age, the moss and rust barely audible, let alone visible. As dry as the town it resided in on Landfish Island, the small village by the name of Fishbone, a makeshift village built hardly a mile wide or across, had a population of hardly 1,000 people. The type of village where everyone knew everyone else by pure instinct. One look out from the tallest building, the belltower itself, could show anyone that Fishbone was built on the furthest cliffside of Landfish Island; multiple waterfalls surround the village as if it were built on a small pillar of stone. Turning the other direction would show a small town of small lights that cover the vast majority of the pillar, even with a small path to the waterfalls filled with stone walls that only lie beyond a small forest that spirals around the 'Eyes' of Landfish Island.
This forest is known only as "The Way of The Tongue", according to multiple adventurers who have made the trip back and forth for the sake of food. Some only venture out for the sake of self preservation, others for profit, but one legend holds true to most who venture in, hardly any come out without a piece of them being taken away.
"Are you… are you an Adventurer?" Khouma asked, finally releasing himself from Verity's leg. He slowly walks up to Arthur as the old man crouches down to meet the boy's eyes.
"Well, yes, but first and foremost, I'm a shopkeeper." He raises his left hand to his chest as if illustrating a point, as if an explanation seems bound to occur by anyone else's dispensation.
Verity raises her hand to the old geezer and begins floating away into the sky, both suns and all nearly three moons coming into her view. Her attempted goodbye is returned by Arthur as he continues to speak to Khouma. Khouma's eyes practically light up as his weak body jitters with a slight bit of excitement.
"Can…" He paused.
"Can you recite the Adventurer's Cree, please?" His head nearly comes close to bursting open as his excitement continues, his volume lowered to where only those in front of him could barely hear him.
Arthur smiles a little bit more and puts his hand on Khouma's shoulder. He nods and puts his wooden arm behind his back like a knight saluting his king and his living right arm on his heart curled up into a fist, his right leg on the ground as his left knee is raised. The Shopkeeper prays.
"We are Adventurers. The Treasured Age of Wondertale is an age of prosperity and discovery and we protect its name. We are masters of magic, weaponry, the environment, and we are those who never give up if it means to save all of Wondertale, discovered or otherwise. We are the ones who at the call of their guild, or at the call of adventure, take on gradually wild improbable quests that no citizen in their right mind would…."
"Hey wait a minute, that's not how the cree goes." Khouma says as he laughs slightly as his tone begins to cheer up a little bit. He stands up in front of Arthur and starts making a slow flurry of fake punches in the air. As he runs out of breath, he copies the exact pose Arthur made during his cree. He helps make some corrections to his posture before he begins to pray.
None of how Khouma said it could be heard by the ghost floating only above their heads.
As she inches closer and closer to leaving the two be, she looks down by her feet to see the two's smiles in a bit of laughter. Her hands touch her hips as she sighs in a sense of disappointment and boredom.
"Christ, let Oliver Twist find something else to do than cry, why don't ya? Ya let him cry into an old bastard adventurer's shirt and it's basically the start for some Greek myth and…"
As the two boys continue to laugh at the makeshift lesson on the basic cree of an adventurer, Verity's eyes open suddenly at a sort of realization, the kind that would make anyone's mouth hurt from the sheer shock, only she was dead so this hardly applies.
"WHERE'S MY LETTER OPENER?!"
Verity looks vigorously for the one treasure that stayed with her for as long as she has been dead. A sense of panic rushing through the vaguely corporal form of her undead self as she looks and looks throughout the small village, only for her to turn her head in a type of direction that would make no sense whatsoever to most, mainly to recognize a sort of crowd following the three to the front entrance to Fishbone. Arthur and Khoma could only turn their heads 5 seconds after Verity even noticed the mob.
The wooden grand doors to the front of the village are swung open with the force of an army of rams. The mob carries the seemingly unconscious body of the fake pastor whose name has still yet to be identified, only for his head to raise up only slightly with a strange, violet yet almost golden glow to them. As he fights to release himself from the crowd, a small bit of strange viscous gas-like energy begins to radiate from his body.
Arthur pushes Khouma behind him for protection as the pastor begins to march forward.
Khouma has lived in Fishbone most of his life, he has seen multiple horrors of the lack of leadership his village had, the kind where they decided to let one single figure control their actions. So why was it that looking at this fake pastor now, he didn't feel only anxiety, but true unfiltered fear?
The pastor continues to walk towards Arthur, his nearly shrunken eyes being set for combat, his fakened cloak being ripped to reveal a little bit of muscle, not muscle of a well defined builder but one who has only begun a routine.
"YOU!!" he screams, a letter opener caught in his robes not too long ago pointing at Khouma, his head almost drenching in sweat as his feet can barely move.
"YOU'RE THE DEVIL WHO COST ME ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING!! My name is now known to all. My Treasure Level now barely a fourth of a single star, after all that time planning, scheming, doing what was necessary to make it big. HOW AM I, BOGGY FORREST, TOO…"
"Oi, quit with the screaming already, it's getting old." Said a familiar voice behind the newly identified Boggy. The letter opener snatched from his hand as he attempted to point it at whoever was behind him, to no avail. His robes seemingly gone, revealing a small bit of hair on his chest, a pair of torn hunter's pants barely staying up by a belt.
"He's not the part that scared you shitless." The voice spoke again, Boggy looked around frantically until eventually, tapping his side was none other than Verity herself with a small, cocky grin on her face and a hand waving.
"Hello, remember me? Thing that scared you before?"
Boggy tries throwing a punch, his form sloppy but with a fist charged with the same energy he was radiating before. His fist surely came into contact with her face, but somehow as if her body had turned into a cloud of mist, his body simply passed straight through her. A byproduct of Verity's natural ability to kill any illusion one may have set in their head, or in this case, a hallucination made manifest that she placed in their head.
Boggy charges his fist once more with the same energy as before, his hands clenched as if his goal was to break one of his fingers against his palm.
Before he could rise up to even attempt fighting Verity off again, the ghostly girl is already down on his newly found level, her letter opener appearing sharper than any knife to the fake pastor as it's held straight up to his eye.
Sigh
"Sorry to scare y'all like that. You two can go ahead and talk about… whatever you're on about." Her letter opener turned knife still shines as Arthur and Khouma are only now in her line of view.
Khouma is barely visible as Arthur simply waves back and practically shouts as the boy has his ears barely covered.
"Oh, don't worry, I understand. I have a daughter myself at home. I was hoping to find her a small gift for her birthday and… wait, oh no, did I leave her fishing alone by mistake?"
The boy could barely let the old man lost in his own thoughts know what was flying towards him.
As Boggy attempts to sweep Verity's leg off of him, the most he could possibly achieve was to trip the ghost only by a small amount, as she levitated off the ground, literally catching herself from a fall.
Her face barely an iota of amusement as Boggy charges the same energy in his legs, rocketing forward to the boy and the old man, nearly reaching an equivalent to 45 miles per hour.
This was it.
This was the end of the young boy's life as the ghost could only float towards the imposter at half the speed in a slight annoyance.
Death by the hand of a mad man with a strange power he could barely comprehend was staring at him beyond the retinas, but rather directly into the cerebral cortex.
His hand could only let go of the old man's leg as he accepted the inevitable.
So why?
Why was the old man laughing? Laughing as if he was the host of the carnival of delights beyond the imagination. Laughing like a joke was told and he couldn't hold his laughter anymore. Laughing as if the stare of death both in front of 'him' and behind Boggy was little more than a competition.
Boggy attempts to try the same trick he tried with Verity, the energy in his fists growing in quantity. He reels it back and as he goes to punch the old man in his laughing facade, his head is only turned slightly to the side as a short stick is drawn from his coat.
Arthur, after performing a few flips in his fingers of the stick in his hand, points it at the fake pastor and casts a bullet-like structure of the same, strange energy.
Boggy, as he practically flies backwards from a simple attack, looks to the crowd who has done little more than standing around. One glare, and they all flee, knowing what sort of fate beholds them all.
This was not just an adventurer and some apparition of the undead they were staring at, these two warriors who both managed to land a blow on the want to be thief were something else entirely. What that something else was, nobody could put into words.
However, a warrior Khouma was not.
And Boggy, he was more aware of it than anyone in the small town he had visited.
Yet, before the idea of charging at the young man could even cross his mind, Arthur was already by his head.
Bwommm
Arthur, still laughing at everything around him, reaches out to his side and in almost an instant, pulls out a strangely shaped sword. A sword that was pitch black in nature, a sword that seemed to lack the basic grips of a traditional saber, yet the blade itself remains elongated, long as a katana and large as a broadsword. The grip he holds merely being wrapped in bandages.
Arthur slams the blunt of the sword into Boggy's arm, currently projecting the same energy as before, protecting his arm. It was almost as if the latter had only read the basics of this form of control from books, written by people who learn the basics of control from books.
"'TIS A FESTIVAL BOY, NOW ENJOY YOURSELF!! WITH ENTHUSIASM!!"
Khouma, in an attempt to walk away, stopped. He couldn't understand why, but his body refused to move.
It was as if his body were a second eye that could see a voodoo icon of his future self and was afraid of the consequences.
"BOY DO I GOTTA DRAG YOU AROUND EVERYWHERE?!"
Khouma almost lost his head, the speed of how quickly he turned his head.
Verity stands before him, Arthur fighting Boggy serving as a small excuse not to be involved, to have a small break from the annoyance, only to find another one almost shaking, almost behind the church.
"Ms. Verity, I…"
"Yeah yeah yeah, bruv, I know the story, "oh look at me, I wanna be an adventurer, I wanna see the world outside this worthless island but I'm too scared to fight for it." Just stop, alright? Let's skip all the reasons you can't be one and get to the point. Boy, it's one thing to have a dream. It's another to go after it. If you don't have the guts to go after it, you might as well be dead like me." she said, gazing into his eyes. An easily annoyed, yet almost sisterly tone can be seen in her eyes.
Verity has seen the destruction of dreams in her 300 years of living amongst the dead. She was determined not to let it happen to the undeserving, it was one of her more exciting days after all.
The boy, hearing what he believed was necessary, finally clenched both of his fists into his loose fitting pants save for a few suspenders. His fists being almost tight enough to rip them if he had the same type of energy Boggy and Arthur did.
It was then where the boy began to walk.
He walked away from Verity, slowly. The speed of his legs, although tightened with fear, began to move on their own, the speed of his steps gradually getting faster and faster until he eventually found himself running.
He wasn't just running into a fight he knew he couldn't win, but he was running into the start of a new life, one he could only regret if he never went after it.
He inhaled as such air as his lungs would allow, and he finally spoke.
"HEY PASTOR!!!"
Both he and Arthur looked directly to the boy, tears are currently in his eyes as his fist is raised to the sky. Every resident of Fishbone could hear his voice, all of them barely peaking out of their hiding places amongst the trees that surround the village as the boy could only scream as if he will let the entirety of its citizens hear his cry of freedom.
"YOU WERE WRONG!! MY NAME IS NOT 'BOY'!! I'M NOT AFRAID OF YOU A-ANYMORE!! A-AND…. I'M GOING TO BE AN ADVENTURER!! THE BEST NATION 9 HAS EVER SEEN, YOU'LL SEE!!!"
In the span of 0.52 seconds after his cry, Khouma's head became a completely blank slate. Nothing registered around him. No thoughts could be conveyed, no sounds could be heard, every sight became pure black.
Only one sound could be heard however after his concentration tried to come back. He turned his head behind him once more to see Verity laughing herself to a second death with a sense of genuine humor.
"You're bloody mad, boy."
"WELL SPOKEN!!" Arthur said, charging his foot and kicking Boggy to the side, his head finally hitting the side of the church and knocking through three layers of solid stone and concrete, knocking him unconscious.
Both Arthur and Verity walk up to Khouma. His eyes crying tears of joy like the waterfalls that surround the Eyes of Landfish Island. He lets out a small scream of victory.
This is where the young man's story begins.
With a crowd of civilians all running towards the three all screaming the same thing;
You… YOU'RE ALL MONSTERS!!!
UNNATURAL!!
GET AWAY FROM THE BOY!!
HE'S NOT FIT TO FEND FOR HIMSELF!!
At the very mention of the idea of screams, even if its the type of absolute anger, Verity's eyes all but flashed a spark of inspiration as she grabs the two boys by their collars and floats them away, up into the air.
Khouma's eyes instinctively close at the sensation of flying upwards where one slip of the fingers could mean his death. Yet, a voice began to speak in his head once more.
Boy, it's one thing to have a dream. It's another to go after it.
"She was right", he thought to himself, "This is the first part of my journey. Now's the time to fight through the fear and take hold of it all. Now OPEN, OPEN EYES!! OPEN AND WE CAN SEE IT ALL!!!"
He slowly forces his eyes awake to find Arthur somehow standing in front of him, crouching down and smiling while completely calm once more. His hand finds itself on Khouma's shoulder as he points to his side.
"Look to your left, if you will."
And so he did.
The sky finally became visible.
The clouds began to dance around him, all 9 layers forming into different shapes around his eyes. His jaw would have dropped to the ground if there was any underneath him.
His breath was taken as the two suns finally came into view, the sky and the clouds at the first sundown began dancing with lights as if angels from the heavens above were throwing down berries of explosive colored powders. Purple, chartreuse, marigold and skobeloff, all strange, yet all turning the sky into what he could only describe as a work of absolute art.
This is what he wanted to see. Before, he only knew a couple of stars in the night sky, but now he could finally see it all.
"Beautiful, ain't it?" asked the ghost, still pulling the boy by his collar as she floated midair, also wondering how the old man was seemingly walking on the air alongside them.
"Yes." Khouma said close to crying once more.
"This is the exact reason I wish to become an adventurer, and starting today, I'm going to be the best that's ever been in Nation 9."
"Yeah, that's good, bruv. But, uh, well, no offense, but you're sort of heavy and I can't hold you forever. Are you sure you're ready to start all of this?" Verity asks, pulling Khouma to look her in the face. Her face itself showed signs of suspicion.
Khouma looked at the sky and the town of Fishbone beneath him, finally realizing the size and scope of Landfish Island as a whole. He knew his next answer would determine the rest of his life, he knew he'd have to make a decision.
It took the young boy all of five seconds.
"Yes."
"Okay, sweet." She said with a small albeit supportive shrug.
Arthur walks up behind Khouma and pats him on the back.
A strange feeling passed through him at that exact moment, as if a sea of calmness finally overtook his mind. The old man speaks once more as he points to the ghost to let go on his cue. A signal seemed like a promise to catch him.
"Young Khouma, I will show you the way to my shop. I've left it by the mouth of Landfish Island. I hope you know how to swim."
Arthur puts Khouma onto his back as he smiles once more.
Verity tries to float away once more, only for Arthur to grab her by the arm, her intangibility bypassed as he's ready to release the magic keeping him afloat.
"Oh gods. So this man is a mage?"
"TALLY HO!!!!" Arthur screams as the magic he created on his feet is released as he jumps a bit, all but slowly plunging the three of them into the clear yet possibly beast-infested waters 1 km beneath them.
Screams were made, promises were set to be fulfilled, and dreams were set to begin as screams of horror turn into excitement.
SPLASH
And just like that, the three took the old man's lead and began to swim.