"You have to follow me."
Killure didn't look the least bit pleased at having to get in the water, but Remi couldn't understand why. As she pulled back her hair, she couldn't wait to get out of the humid air and hot sun, and dip beneath the cool, refreshing waters. Surely he felt the same way.
Seeing that Killure wasn't about to move, she grabbed his clawed hand and gave it a yank. Of course, he didn't move.
"Please?" Remi asked quietly, widening her eyes and giving him the most innocent, doe-like look she could muster. It almost pained her to make that face, but when Killure averted his gaze and scowled as he slid off the rock into the waters with her, Remi was glad she'd done so.
He'd retracted his wings and tail, but he still looked every bit as dangerous and deadly as before. With his high cheekbones, bladed nose, sharp jaw, and large, muscular body that loomed over her, Remi couldn't help but feel slightly intimidated.
"See? It feels great," she muttered, pulling him deeper into the water.
"Perhaps to someone who is sweating."
"Shut up."
Remi kept walking towards the waterfall, eventually letting go of his hand when the waters became too deep and she had to swim the rest of the way.
As she neared the waterfall, water sprayed her face in a fan of mist, washing all the sweat from her face and dampening her hair. She grinned at the feeling—it was refreshing and incredible.
She glanced back to see Killure a few feet behind her, holding a vicious water snake by its neck, unfazed by the snapping jaw of the bloodthirsty creature. In one swift movement, he chucked the creature out of the water into the jungle.
Remi rolled her eyes at him. "They only bite if you provoke them by stepping on them or kicking them."
He arched a brow at her. "These snakes are known to rip apart little humans like you, and they're everywhere in this pond. You're not scared?"
She hated bugs, but snakes were a different story. Her cousin Soren was always obsessed with snakes when they were kids, and Remi supposed that was why she somewhat liked them now.
"I like snakes," Remi shrugged with a small grin, gliding in the water towards the waterfall. "Are you scared of them, Killure?"
His stare was blank. "Do I look scared?"
No, no he didn't. He looked far more deadly than the water snakes—not that she'd give him the satisfaction of saying that out loud.
"Come on," Remi laughed, diving straight into the waterfall. It pelted her hard with water, angry and unrelenting, but she didn't mind.
Remi emerged on the other side a few moments later, walking up out of the shallow pool of water that led to the cave floor.
She was never able to get used to this amazing sight.
Glowing, blue bats hung from the ceiling, the light coming from their little bodies so strong that they lit up the cave. Their light reflected brilliantly off the crystals covering the walls in irregular patterns, accentuating their unique colours.
The cave was beautiful.
Killure flitted through the waterfall. His clothes clung to his body, hugging every muscular ridge and dripping water down his strong, long legs. His hair had lost most of its curl and dropped water down his face, curling around his stormy eyes and pausing at his cheekbones before racing down.
Remi couldn't stop her mouth from watering at the sight of him. He truly was handsome, and other than all the light brown scars covering his body, he was flawless.
When she finally met his gaze, she could tell his eyes had darkened considerably to near onyx. "Like what you see?" he purred, amusement dancing in his eyes.
Remi turned her eyes to the crystals on the cave walls, hiding the unwelcome blush that spread across her cheeks. They provided a beautiful background for the stalagmites rising proudly from the floor, and the stalactites creeping down from the ceiling.
"I do; this cave is beautiful. It's why I brought you here." She was glad her words came out so steady, and that the slight flush on her cheeks was rendered invisible by the blue glow radiating throughout the cave.
He walked up behind her, staring over her shoulder as she traced some of the depictions carved onto the cave wall. Remi tried not to act nervous with his dripping body standing so close to her.
"They say that all the cities were once one big continent, and not the broken fragments we have today, clumped together, barely separated by thin tendrils of the sea," Remi said quietly, tracing the drawing of a continent with jagged lines drawn throughout, mimicking the shapes of the islands.
Killure looked on silently. Something must have caught his eye, because he soon walked over to a different part of the wall, his gaze intense.
Remi followed him and raised her eyebrows when she saw what he was looking at. The winged ones. Icix.
Their huge wings, thin tails, clawed hands, and sharp, protruding canines were scratched into the wall around what looked like mountains, or on the tops of clouds.
"There's not much in the history books about your kind—up until their demise, that is," Remi explained quietly, but the Icix didn't stir.
"We had cities in the sky, once," Killure murmured softly, his voice silky and smooth.
"What happened to them?"
"Who knows. All I've heard are rumours."
Remi nodded at that. She trailed her eyes across the cave wall in intense curiosity, flitting over the crowded drawings. There wasn't a single space that hadn't been drawn on, and many drawings chaotically overlapped others, making it hard to understand.
She came across a series of bold letters or symbols of some sort, scratched many times over. They were strange and odd, and she hadn't no idea what they meant. They weren't anything she was familiar with.
"Do you know what this says?" she asked Killure. He glided in inhumanly smooth movements over to her, bending down to get a look at the symbols.
He shook his head. "They look ancient."
"Don't they?" she agreed with wide eyes, peering at everything, unable to take enough in.
She wondered what it all meant.
A flash of blue near the floor caught Remi's eye. She bent down, wrinkling her nose at the damp, stale scent that greeted her.
As she traced the shocking depiction, Remi's finger became wet with condensation. She couldn't take her eyes off what she was seeing. It was clearly finger-painted onto the wall with some rich blue hue that had long since faded into the pale blue that was now before her eyes.
Two figures, much larger than the crowd of people and creatures drawn around them, stood facing each other with interlocked hands, fury on their faces. Their open mouths were frozen in a roar as they battled.
Giants?
Remi would have assumed so, had she not recognized the familiar blue and black, and the way they had been placed in the same depiction. The same blue that often trailed down her arms and hands in vein-like streams, glowing through her skin as she healed someone or something. The same black that showed through Blue and Bliss's skin as they destroyed something.
Were there Designers back in the ancient times?
And if so, why did they look like giants, hardly human? Or maybe they were drawn larger than the other depictions to show that they were important. It was impossible to tell.
Remi didn't understand. She stood back up and stretched her cramped legs before walking back to Killure. He was leaning his back against a wall, gazing up at the sleeping, blue bats and the light they emitted.
"Mesmerizing, isn't it?" Remi commented with a smile.
"How did you find this place?" His clawed hands were shoved into the pockets of his dripping pants.
"My older brother—Falkor—is somewhat of a maniac, and he really enjoyed scaring me when we were younger—all the damn time. One time he convinced me that there was a herd of monsters charging for us, and we took off running. Before I knew it, he was no where to be found, and I was lost. I wandered around until I stumbled across this place. After my father came and found me, I began coming here every few months whenever I had a day off."
Killure smiled tightly in response, before abruptly diving through the waterfall into the pool of water.
Remi winced. He was bound to hit a few dozen water snakes.