The Island With No Parallel

Legacies

As soon as they were outside, he straightened his back, the glaze in his eyes leaving immediately. "Is what Kokl says true? Are you three the Chosen?"

His sudden change in demeanor startled all of them. "Kokl?" Kailu asked.

"The monkey. You see him, don't you? He lead you to me."

"Y-yes," Yunara answered. "We came here looking for you."

"It's about time! Do you have any idea how long I've been coming to this bar every day, pretending to like the people there and acting drunk just to stay hidden?"

Kailu's mouth fell open. "That was all an act?"

"Of course it was! I couldn't very well hide under my actual name or residence, could I?"

"What happened that made you have to hide like this?" Manuel asked.

"The Aracs somehow discovered who I was and came after me relentlessly." He looked around, as if there were someone watching them now. "Even now, I question the safety of talking out here in the open. Come. We will talk in the house that I am renting out at the moment. It's not far from here."

Shi'ran took them to a small building that was hardly anything to speak of, much less call it a home. It was a narrow stone house with small windows, and was one of many on the block. He took them up the stairs that lead to his front door, taking out a key and opening it to let them inside.

"It's been so long since we've been able to talk, hasn't it, friend?"

"Yes, much too long, Kokl. Thank you for watching my home for so long." He took a brush from a drawer and started brushing his wild hair into a neat style. "As a scholar, I've always made it my business to study new things. I've explored places all over the world in search of wisdom. In my research, I found ancient tomes on creatures that the mortal eyes was incapable of seeing without help. Soon, I discovered more and more history regarding the Unseeables, and was amazed by what I found.

"Around that time, there was a group of people forming in Ecencia that were learning about the same thing. To further my knowledge on the subject, I went there. That was when I learned of a woman named Aznia who was leading more and more people to do the same."

Manuel's eyes went wide. "My mother."

"Is she? I've heard she was a very remarkable woman. By the time I was joining the movement she started, she was already dead. But the impact she made was enough to keep it going. The people she was connected to asked me to continue my research on their behalf so they could learn more about what our society used to be like when we still communed with the Unseeables.

"Then recently, I was approached by the Ancient Ones themselves, and they told me that I had been Chosen. I'll never forget the experience. 'You have been chosen, but you are given the option to choose,' they'd said. I chose to help them, and everything went downhill from there. It wasn't long after that that I was attacked on a constant basis by Dark Ones, mostly at night when I was home alone." He shook his head. "I've read fantasy books on fighting monsters, but I never thought I'd actually have to do it! Anyway, I started hiding out here to finally lose my pursuers. I learned that most everyone I was in contact with was a member of the Aracs and wanted me dead."

Kailu crossed her arms. "So now that we're all together, what do we do now?"

Shi'ran frowned. "What do you mean? There are only four of us here."

"The last member is injured," Manuel answered. "He's waiting for us at an inn a good hour away from here, resting."

He frowned even deeper. "So you found me last? Oh, wonderful. No hurry to find me or anything," he said as he fumbled around in a drawer in the corner of the room looking for something. "I've only been hiding from the Aracs on a near constant basis on my own all this time is all." He finally pulled out a pair of glasses, fogging them up with his breath and cleaning them with a small cloth before pushing them up on his face, completing his transformation from a dead beat drunkard to a nervous bookworm in mere minutes. If nothing else, he was a good actor.