a/n:
I made an actual cover now instead of just searching fantasy tree on google and pasting the third image i found onto wattpad :D
"Not your girlfriend, huh?" Casey was standing over me, grinning.
I'd awoken to an aching back from sleeping upright and a sleeping Mumei leaning on me, my arms around her and of course, the three kids standing over us. They for some reason felt the need to rain down petals on us from the flower basket that was supposed to be for Mumei's hair.
"She isn't." I scowled at him, careful not to move and wake Mumei.
Asher snickered. "You should have seen the both of you while you were still asleep."
"What about it?" I demanded from them. It was apparently too much for Joey's eleven-year-old brain to handle, because she had to giggle for a minute before answering;
"Arms around each other, Mumei's head on your shoulder and your head on hers." Joey started giggling uncontrollably again.
My face felt hot, which it's been doing a lot these past few days. Why?!
From somewhere below me, Mumei yawned softly and started to shift her position.
Joey immediately knelt down beside her. "Good morning!"
"Hi." She whispered.
"We can fix your hair now!"
Mumei smiled at her sleepily. "Yay."
She shot me a look that clearly said 'help'
I grinned at her dryly. "Welcome to my world."
As the kids settled down next to Mumei, their flowers ready, I remembered that I had some errands to run. Namely, returning the Baryonyx saddle and getting a Spinosaurus saddle, grabbing scrap metal for Bennett's leg, and asking about basilisks.
I got up and picked up the Baryonyx saddle from within the Pod and shouldered it. "You guys have fun, I'm heading into the village."
First stop, the taming stall.
The woman who manned the station seemed to recognize me, because she waved at me when she saw me arriving. I waved back and placed the saddle onto the counter.
She furrowed her brows at the saddle. "Why're you returning it?"
"Baryonyx died, got a Spinosaurus instead."
"That's delightful!" Her expression lightened, then her eyes widened. "Not the Baryonyx dying, of course! The Spinosaurus was what I meant."
I chuckled a little. "Speaking of the Spino, do you make saddles for those?"
She nodded. "Free of charge, courtesy of Taming Support, unless of course you'd like to modify it."
"Nah, just the saddle, please."
"Okay, it'll take two days at most."
"No problem."
"Give me a sec, I'll go inform the leatherworkers." She exited through a door in the back.
About five minutes passed before she came back.
"They're working on it now." She confirmed.
"Thanks... sorry, what's your name?"
She looked pleasantly surprised, as if most of the conversations she's had with clients were focused on taming and supplies only, strictly no small talk, and I was the first one that even bothered to learn her name in a while. "I'm Lynette, nice to meet you!"
"I'm Leo, and ditto."
"Ditto?"
"Sorry, it means 'same'"
You are not from the same time period as these people, dude I reminded myself.
"Oh, is that a different language?"
I shrugged. "So to speak, but anyway, I have a hard question for you."
"Throw it my way." She brushed her black hair behind her ear.
"Know anything about basilisks?"
She suddenly looked alarmed. "You're not looking to tame them, are you? Cause the last guy that tried, well..."
"No, I need the venom for Emily's healing salve."
"That's really not any less dangerous."
I pushed further. "Tell me what you know about them, or at least where to find them."
She sighed. "Don't tell me I didn't warn you."
Lynette told me everything she knew;
Basilisks were ten feet long and looked like ordinary snakes, with the exception of frills around their head. They had needle-sharp teeth and venom that could corrode skin, which they could spit far and fast. They live deep underground in nests of three to four.
"Please be careful." She pleaded.
"Don't worry, I'm not eager to turn into a puddle." I reassured her.
Waving goodbye to Lynette, I headed to the smithies after asking a few passersby for directions. There were a few guys and a few girls hammering away at the anvils. There were a bunch of tables with tools, pieces of metal, screws, and a bunch of other bits and pieces. Blades were put in buckets filled with water to cool. In the corner, there was a bin full of broken, corrugated, and twisted bits of metal next to a coal bin.
One guy seemed to notice me as I approached. "What'cha need?"
"I need scrap metal." I gestured at the rejects bin.
"Why?"
"A project small enough to not need a big sheet of iron."
He didn't look convinced. "That garbage gonna break on you in no time."
"If it does, then I'll only have my workmanship to blame." I shrugged.
He opened his mouth to say something but shook his head. "Whatever. Knock yourself out."
As the dude headed back to his anvil, I checked out the stuff in the bin;
A whole bunch of metal showing varying signs of damage, dented, twisted, half-melted from heating accidents, you name it. Leather straps that were starting to become stiff and cracked. A random fork, three out of four tines missing. A whole bunch of needles, nails, screws, and nuts.
I picked out random pieces of metal and bent and smacked them on the side of the bin to test their integrity. In the end, there were only two that were fit for use, but I decided it'll be enough. A few similar tests for leather straps later, and I had my materials. I also snatched up a pair of heat-damaged tongs from the bin for easier handling. Holding them in my arms, I stood up and headed back to the Pod when suddenly;
"IT'S ALL THEIR FAULT!" A dry voice yelled from behind me. I wheeled around and saw a small old lady pointing a gnarled finger at me, a silver ring with a symbol on it, a family crest maybe?
"What?" I readjusted the pile of scrap in my arms.
"IT'S YOUR FAULT THAT MY BOY IS D-" Her voice caught on the last word, and I had a feeling it ended with the letters E, A, and D.
"Lady, I've never killed anyone?"
"He never returned from his scouting mission the day after you and that girl came here to eat!" She wasn't screaming anymore but her voice wasn't any less accusing.
"And how is that our fault?" Of course, it was inevitable. I was bound to get accused of being a bad omen sooner or later. What did I expect?
The old lady opened and closed her mouth repeatedly like a goldfish, looking for something to yell back at me that wasn't "BAD OMEN!" when a teen came and shot me a look before dragging his grandma away, the weird symbol ring visible on his hand when he put his arm around her.
"Huh." Lugging my stuff, I went back on my way. The whole experience didn't bother me all too much, but my mind drifted instead to how Mumei coped with this almost every day, with her reclusive nature and all."
"Hi." Mumei greeted me once I arrived back at the meadow. Her hair had been done up in the flowery braid again and despite her protests earlier, she looked happy as she fiddled with the knots. I set my stuff down next to her then went to collect my plasma glove from the Pod.
"Some old lady called me a bad omen." I told her as I rummaged around.
"Short, wears an ugly yellow dress, and has a ring?" She asked.
"Yeah, do you know her?" I went back out, the glove now on my hand.
"Miranda Jenkins, she always lets me hear it when she sees me nowadays."
A smile tugged on the corner of my mouth. "So you could call her husband 'Old Man Jenkins?"
Mumei hit my shoulder playfully. "This is serious! She's really mean."
"And what the hell is up with Miranda? Basic ass old person name." I continued.
"You're impossible." She hit me again.
Laughing, I got to work.
I turned on my plasma blade and cut the metal plates into six strips. Then I heated them with my plasma and bent them all into a U shape using the tongs. After that, I cut holes into the ends of the U shapes and threaded the leather straps into them, so the shape was like a letter U with a line at the top, so it wasn't just open into space. After that, I used my last leather strap to bind all the bands together, so it looked like a ribcage.
I gathered the metal bands and headed over to Bennett.
"These'll help you walk, don't mind them." I reassured him as I strapped them onto his bad leg, careful not to hit his wound. He sniffed them dubiously for a moment, then took a few tentative steps forward. I was delighted to realize his limp was gone. He seemed to realize that too, cause he started to run towards the kids.
Satisfied, I sat with Mumei.
"Hey." I poked her arm.
"Yeah?"
"Before you settled near here, you were a wanderer right?"
She nodded.
"Have you ever come across basilisks?"
"Basilisks?"
"Y'know, big snakes. Frills around their head like a dilo?"
"Oh, those." Her tone suddenly shifted, becoming guarded as if she was skirting around a topic.
I raised my eyebrows. "So you do know?"
"Yes, but I don't want to go there." She said quickly.
"And why is that?"
Mumei put on her hood, something I came to recognize as her agitation sign. "I don't want to talk about it."
"Then just tell me where, and only I'll go." I offered.
She suddenly looked at me, her eyes wide and her expression torn from under her hood.
"No!" Mumei yelled.
"Then where is it?" I asked again.
Mumei shook her head. "Promise me you'll never go there."
"Fine." I conceded. Arguing would just end up in Mumei being under the hood for the rest of the day.
But why's she so reluctant not to go? If she was just scared of the snakes she could've just told me the location and sent me off by myself. No, this was something more. I wonder if I could request an audience with the Council to ask about it.
What the heck, I'll try it. I entered the Pod and reclined on the chair and closed my eyes, trying to force myself into sleep while thinking Council repeatedly.
For a few moments, I was just sitting there feeling stupid, then when I was about to open my eyes and quit, an unnatural sleepiness fell upon me and I drifted off.
"What do you mean you like soggy cereal?!" A familiar Australian voice was saying.
I was in some kind of time-transcending rat's nest. Among the mess of clothes, magazines, toilet paper and food, there were pieces of medieval knight armor, the hat a bishop wears, a sandstone tablet with Egyptian symbols, scrolls with what looked like Ancient Greek writing, a Roman pilum, a random moldy loaf of bread and a bunch more junk. Sitting in the middle of the mess was Bae, curled up in a pile of blankets, phone pressed to her ear and a female voice ringing out from the speakers.
She listened for a second before talking again. "But if cereal should be soggy, then why do they sell it crunchy?!"
The other voice started to speak, but Bae cut her off. "Irys, ew! If you keep this up I'm breaking up with you."
At that moment I decided to clear my throat, causing Bae to jump out of her skin.
"Who? What? Where?" She looked frantically around, then saw me.
"Hi."
She sighed in relief then put the phone back to her ear. "I'll call you back. See you."
Then she turned to me. "How much did you hear? And more importantly, why are you here?"
I smiled dryly. "The Spirit of Chaos and the Spirit of Hope together?"
Bae turned as red as her hair. "Shut up."
Under different circumstances, I would've teased her more. Now, however, I needed to ask her something.
"A while ago, I asked Mumei where basilisks lived and she refused, and I don't think this is a simple case of being scared of dangerous animals." I sat down next to her blanket bundle.
"And your intuition is correct." She put herself into a cross-legged sitting position. "You cannot go there alone, you need Mumei if you wish to survive."
"Why is that? Mumei kept telling me that too."
Bae looked like she was about to say something, but then her form started to flicker, looking kinda like a ruler when you draw it back and then suddenly let it go so it starts to vibrate back and forth really quick like Mumei did back then. She refocused, massaging her temples and gritting her teeth like she had a migraine.
"Sorry Leo, you'll have to figure that out by yourself. I think Mumei told you a bit about how touchy us Immortals are about our affairs. We can't help you find the cave or save you when things get hairy down there.
I sighed. "Oh."
"But I can show you what happened that made Mumei so reluctant to come back." Out of the mess, she pulled out a thin stone tablet that was inscribed with the same symbols as the Council table. She waved a hand over it and a hologram appeared.
It was Mumei standing in some kind of cavern, purple tendrils snaking up the walls and across the floor. She was holding a fifteen-inch blade that was dripping with blood and had the same inscriptions and design as her dagger. Her hood was up, blood-spattered cloak billowing around her. Basilisks were rearing their heads at her, and snake corpses littered the floor and at the borders of the image, there were blurry humanoid features, pink-purple lines snaking across their outstretched arms. That wasn't even the most disturbing part of the image. Mumei's face under the hood was completely obscured by darkness except for two glowing pinpricks of red light where her eyes would be and jagged white triangles that looked like teeth.
I blinked a few times at the image. "Is that really Mumei?"
"Afraid so." Bae said grimly. "One of the reasons she tries to stay isolated from others is because she's scared of her own power."
"Scared of her own power?" I was still struggling to associate the girl in the image with the Mumei that I had my arm around just a few hours before.
"I could give you an entire history lesson, but I'll keep it short. So basically Time, Nature, Chaos, and Space were created by the Gods, so we're familiar with each other's powers. Civilization, however, was not. Mumei simply popped into existence a few thousand years after us, with the creation of the first human city."
I nodded to show that I was listening and she continued.
"Mumei's powers were and still are mostly unknown to us. They're as unpredictable as human civilization, what she manifested from. Most of the time, she was peaceful and reclusive like now. Mumei was uncomfortable even with Council for most of her life, only talking to us when absolutely necessary."
"Then one day, Fauna was angered with a city and activated a volcano near it, burying that city and all of its inhabitants in ash."
"Pompeii?" I interrupted her.
"Yes, exactly." Bae nodded. "After that, Mumei just suddenly appeared at the Council table, eyes red, teeth sharp and sword out, then lunged at Fauna screaming; 'Why did you do that?' It took all of us to restrain her and Fauna had had to rest for a few decades before being fit for Council duties again. Once we calmed her down, she swore to herself that she'd try her hardest never to use that power again, then left. These days, she works with us more, but I think she's still ashamed of Fauna."
"So, something in the caves forced her to use the power she swore never to use?"
She nodded darkly. "Something was powerful enough to force her into it."
For a second my vision swam.
"You're waking up." Bae informed me. "One more thing, though."
"Yeah?" My voice sounded like it was going through a phone with bad reception.
"Make a compass with the Element block you have, it'll resonate with the basilisk's home."
With that, she placed her hand on my forehead and I was back at the Pod.