I tucked my hands inside the pockets of my trousers, keeping my eyes on the people bustling around us. Beside me, Revery pursed her lips, clutching the straps of her satchel tighter. Right. Sometimes I forget there were people who didn't have an inventory like I did.
"Why did you pull me all the way out here?" Revery asked, looking back at the direction we took as we split off the main group. "I could have helped Heather pick out the right ingredients. I swear that woman had no sense of what's edible or not."
I continued walking until Revery had to double her speed to catch up to me. "We won't be long," I said. "I just...want to take you up on your offer."
Revery knitted her eyebrows. "Which is?"
"Ask for your help," I managed to cough out despite the growing tightness in my gut. The hours I spent last night mentally preparing myself to blurt out those exact words finally sank in on me with the strain on my shoulders doubling. "I admit I haven't been very good at that."
Recognition dawned on her face. Then, she smiled. "You don't need to be an expert to receive some," she said. "What can I help you with?"
I scratched the back of my neck even though there wasn't a single itch. Force of habit, I guess. "Do you happen to remember which stall Seline was attempting to buy that hairpin yesterday?"
"Huh? Oh, yesterday," she pushed past me and took the lead, stringing me along now. She pointed to the next alley. "I think it's there? It's hard to say. These street sellers don't have a permanent place, especially if they're travelers."
I blinked. "There are traveling merchants and non-traveling ones?"
Revery whirled to me like she couldn't believe she was having this conversation with a grown man, an adventurer, even more. "Well...yes," she tapped a finger against the side of her face. "The one Seline was consulting yesterday looked to be from the traveling kind. They had that look."
And then there's me who couldn't even remember what I had for lunch yesterday.
"Why are you looking for the hairpin anyway?" came Revery's question.
My head snapped up to find her back to me. She didn't see the heat painting my cheeks and the way I wiped my hands on my trousers to get rid of the excess sweat. "It's...um," I blew a breath and pushed my hair off my forehead, not that it did me any favors. "I just want to make it up to Seline but, for the life of me, don't know where to start."
I shrugged even though Revery was a few steps ahead, shouldering past the thickening crowd around us. "So I thought I'd start with the hairpin she's looking at," I said. "Might open up an avenue for a conversation."
Revery hummed. "I'm guessing this wasn't just about the fight yesterday."
Spot on. We're not exactly that subtle, weren't we? "Is it bad that there's so much history of mistakes between us that I don't even know how to go through them at all?" I asked. "It's just...so much more complicated. Now more than ever."
"Well...what are you apologizing for?" Revery said the moment we cleared the present bottleneck and stepped into a more spacious alley. This time, parked merchant carts peppered the sidewalks. Some cantered across the cobblestones, the horses drawing them neighing and swinging their heads as they passed us by.
I stuck a lip out. "A lot of things," I studied the buildings lining the alley. They're either taverns, residential houses, or inns passing travelers could rent for a night or two. "But mostly for ruining her life, as she keeps accusing me of."
Revery bobbed her head. "Why do you think you ruined her life?"
Memories of the past few years until the last night we spent together in the real world went back to me. From the hurts she carried because of me to the blatant upturning of everything she knew to be true, I was the one to blame for everything. "Let's just say I have been the source of most of her grief and there's nothing I can do to undo that," I said. "I still regret a lot of things back then. The best thing I can do now is to apologize and try to make it right, even if I have to atone for everything all my life."
"What about the happiest moments of her life?" Revery threw the question like it was a metal ball aimed at my gut. "If you claim to have been involved with her as deep as you both present to, you're responsible for some of those, correct? Are you going to apologize for that too?"
"No," the answer bled out of my lips as easily as water being spat. Mirani's words invaded my mind once again. Love deserves to be celebrated. Even if it didn't exist anymore. If it existed in the first place.
Revery stopped in front of a specific cart after studying the merchant seated inside the shade of his wares. "Then maybe you're seeing this in the wrong light," she said. "As much as you think you ruined her life, you made it better too. That's something we're prone to forgetting."
That's...
She picked up a golden hairpin with elaborate flowers stuck in it. Thin strips were carefully shaped and made to bleed into each other, making the flowers look like they're drawn and shaded using metal. Multicolored crystals hung from small metal chains, none larger than a fingernail. They clinked against each other and against the flowers as Revery whirled to hand it to me.
"You both made choices that led to this outcome," Revery said. "And none of you should be blamed for them."
Before I could say something, she turned to me with a gentle smile—something I couldn't reconcile with how scary she could be when she's engaged in battle. "You're a good person, Kora," she said. "I don't think you hurt her because you wanted to. But that doesn't change the fact that she's hurt."
"Right," I brandished the hairpin. "Hence, the apology."
I paid for the accessory and the merchant handed it back to me but in a velvety box this time. "Seline didn't deserve a lot of things and it seemed they're all I gave her," I said. "I just...wish I hadn't made those choices at all. I could have chosen differently. Wisely."
"Hey, you did what you could at that time," Revery said. "It's more than enough."
I could only nod. There's really no other way to go about it than what Revery was telling me. Yes, I hurt Hye-jin, way more than I wanted to, but that didn't erase the fact that most of the things I did leading up to our last night was for her and only her. There might have been lapses, but that's only because I had been human. And that's what got in between us. Just choices and human error.
It sucked—greatly—that the only things it left us were a sliver of good memories tainted by a lifetime of regrets.
But that's the truth to love, right? To open one's heart meant risking getting shards inside it. To love someone was to risk getting hurt. Over and over. Without any respite. All for the sake of tasting a little bit of heaven in this cruel world.
Revery forged ahead. I was about to follow when my periphery caught a group of townsfolk gearing towards the opposite direction. Their faces were grimmer than an average person and they walked with strange synchrony I haven't seen anywhere. I glanced at Revery to see if she's finding this weird as well, but the summoner continued walking.
Then, I noticed it. The multicolored bands on their arms, each one containing insignias I've seen elsewhere. The symbols. In my notebook. The one summoning all those nether beasts. I frowned. What were they doing around town, parading around like they're blatantly announcing their presence?
Still, this was the only time we're going to progress with this secret quest. And by the looks of it, the only time we'd be seeing actual people involved. I caught up to Revery and took a hold of her arm. "Go on ahead," I said, passing her the hairpin's box. "Make sure to give this to Seline, okay?"
The summoner's face crumpled in confusion. "Where are you going?"
I turned back to the group of strange townsfolk disappearing into an unremarkable alley. "Just around," I said. "There's an opportunity that won't pass us by the second time. I'll see you back at the inn."
Before she could say anything more, I went against the flow of traffic and dashed towards the alley I marked. I passed my hand in front of my face, summoning the map. This alley led to the forest surrounding Naskali. Why would those people go there? Perhaps to forage? They didn't look like hunters though.
The forest thickened around us. I darted behind trunks and bushes, squinting past the gaps in between to watch their movements like a predator. A small distance from the edge of town, nothing out of the ordinary happened. The townsfolk didn't communicate with each other, not even to give a companion a brief nod. All they did was march forward, their steps crunching against the grass and the forest floor in a series of monotonic thuds.
I've seen enough movies with scenes of brain-washed soldiers to attribute it to what I was seeing now. It's like they're not themselves.
Then, what seemed to be like an hour in, one of the townsfolk stopped in front of a random trunk and drew out a knife from his belt. My breath hitched but I pressed myself against the tree I hid behind, straining my ears and eyes. The man with the knife approached his target and began whittling at the sturdy trunk. What's he doing?
When he stepped back, an undeniable shape of another symbol was carved into the bark. I fumbled for my notebook, summoning it as subtly as I could from inventory. Just as I flipped to the page where the symbols were, a purple spark lit the air momentarily. My head snapped up just in time to see the man now had the same symbol etched on his forehead. Bits of electricity-like wisps flashed towards the newly-carved symbol as magic made the air thicker and warmer. With a series of silent hums and scratching sounds, the man's eyes closed and his body tumbled to the ground. He didn't move anymore.
My gut turned. Did he just...
Did he just die?
I cursed, taking out my makeshift pen and scribbling the symbol's form and where I found it. Wait a second. If this one's in Naskali, then...
My pen scritched against the parchment's fibers, forming lines that correspond to Solarlume's lay of land. Putting dots representing the places where I encountered the symbols on the grids, it couldn't have become clearer.
What I have now was an incomplete circle. Almost like a magic ring. They're casting some sort of spell. Better yet, they could be summoning something. Or someone. The question was—who? Maybe I'd ask Seline when I get back to the inn. She's the spiria. She knew more than me in this aspect of the realm. Plus, if I heard it correctly, she has the Book of Darkness in her possession. There might be something there too.
"Good job on getting here without getting caught," a new voice rang in the forest, startling me and making me almost drop my pen in the grass. Shit. Who was this newcomer?
I peeked in between the bushes and glimpsed a hooded man nudging the fallen townsfolk with the tip of his boot. The man clicked his tongue, seeing it as more of an inconvenience to be presented with a dead body. "This nutter can't last longer too? Where can I find competent ones these days?"
He turned to the gathered townsfolk around him, all motionless and with slack faces. "None of you will last either, if that's the case," he kicked the grass, uprooting some in the process. "Damn it. We don't have much time left. The Monarch must rise again before the Princess can fortify her fortress with that alliance, and these adventurers just won't leave this alone."
I knitted my eyebrows. Adventurers? Alliance? What was he talking about? Either way, a plot to start something on a territorial level was something Cavya should hear about. He might have a deeper knowledge about all of this. And we might need to capture whoever this hooded guy was.
I shifted in my crouched position. My foot hit a twig. It broke with a snap under weight. The sound echoed against the silence of the forest.
Shit.
"Who's there?" the hooded guy began looking around in panic. Then, he stopped as if he had already figured it out. "Oh, there you are."
He snapped his fingers. The next thing I knew was the feeling of a thousand arms grabbing me. Then, it was black.