Herin awoke to the sound of screaming.
It seemed to be everywhere and nowhere all at once, with his sleep-clogged ears, but then he saw Eon suddenly emerge from his tent covered in large gray insects.
"They're all over me!" He screamed. He was doing what seemed to be a crazy rain dance, hopping up and down one one foot while whacking and bashing the gray insects. Herin got up immediately and helped Eon with getting all of the bugs off. They looked like enormous Cambrian creatures: bony, hard and definetely out of date. They had large greyish-brown pincers and multiple mandibles that curved into a hook shape, topped off with a barb at each end. Herin did not have the energy to hit them off with a spell, so he just helped Eon whack them. Cobalt finally came out of his tent, wondering what all the commotion was about, and ran to help Eon.
Finally, when all the insects had been whacked, bashed, and smooshed, Herin asked: "What was that?"
"They were all over my tent! They were crawling up the walls, in my sleeping bag, everything." Eon was a bit shaken up after the grapple with the insects, and was breathing heavy and uncontrollably
"Stop it, Eon," Cobalt said, grabbing Eon and shaking him. "You keep breathing like that and you'll pass out. I don't want to carry a dead man with me to Horus. Let's go clean out your tent now that we got the ones that were on you. How bad could it be, really?"
They all stepped into the tent.
"Oh, yeah, a lot worse, apparrently." Cobalt was surprised to see dozens of footlong insects flooding every bit of the tent.
Herin started right away. He ran back to his tent and drank some coffee. Cobalt ran to his tent to get bug repellent. Eon ran to get a Band-Aid. Herin began rummaging wildly for coffee powder (It tasted nasty by itself, but it was a good kick-start for his powers).
He started off by chugging the coffee powder. He twisted his face to make it look as if he swallowed a scorpion. Oh, well, maybe it wasn't that bad. But he had some adrenaline in his veins and some caffeine in his mouth, so maybe that was enough to wake him up fully.
He decided to make a small curse, maybe a fun one to cheer him up. For some reason, the bugs didn't scare him... no, nothing scared him. He was the great Herin, the one who would get Eon's staff back and the one who would... honestly, he had no idea what they were going to do after then. Maybe they'd go and see the world. Maybe they'd explore the ocean...
Maybe they'd go home.
It seemed a bit impossible, but history continually played out for them in dreams and amnesia recovery and they began to miss friends a lot. He knew a kid named Hugo, who was his neighbor, and whenever he was bored, he would go on bike rides and walks with Hugo and they would go fishing or play basketball or whatever they could get their hands on. He found himself missing Hugo, but Eon reminded him of Hugo, so it wasn't all that bad.
He started the curse. This one had a comical tone to it.
Big bug, big bug,
You're sorta bugging me
A smell gonna make you leave,
Something stinky for me.
He found a can of bug spray in his hand, but it didn't have a logo on it or a price tag or anything like you would see in a store. It was a black can with BUG SPRAY printed in white on the side.
It would have to do.
"Herin!" Cobalt said, struggling holding off the bugs with his bug repellent. He had put it on a stick and was waving it ineffectively at the bugs."You done smokin' coffee yet? My stick doesn't work very well." He was sweating.
Herin sprayed a bit on one of the bugs, but before he sprayed the rest, he saw it squeal away into the forest followed by all of the others.
Eon stepped out of the tent awkwardly. He was covered in brown welts all over his body, looking like a clown. "T-they'll be back," he said, shivering in fear.
It made Herin laugh. He tried to hold it in, but he wasn't able to. Of all things he was expecting that night, one of which Horus, he could never have thought of getting attacked by bugs and making Eon look like a walking scarecrow. He heard Cobalt join in, a bit reluctant of hurting Eon's feelings, but then he remembered who he was. He joined him, laughing hysterically. Eon chuckled a bit, but said, "Easy for you guys to joke about. You weren't the ones getting bitten all over." But he laughed, too. It helped break the tension of the evening, after how horrified they were of Horus.
Cobalt stopped in mid-laugh. "The Infiniti Forge." He said suddenly, a look of newfound fear.
Eon stopped laughing. "Wait, what?" Herin didn't understand either; he finished a bit of his laugh to hear what Cobalt had to say.
"Horus has an ancient piece of equipent called the Infiniti Forge that lets him manipulate objects and enhance them with power. It is a dangerously addicting tool that can drive the owners power-crazy and can cause homocidal actions." He recited the words as if he was reading from a dictionary.
A familiar horror set in again. "Where'd you learn this, Cobalt? Only masters and apprentices of the forge are supposed to know that."
He could see Cobalt wanted to know who these people he was talking about where, but he had to finish the statement with a bit of swag. "Well, I guess I ruined your party. Let me guess: you're the forge master."
"No, but I was an apprentice. To Maggot." He nodded to Eon in specific, because Cobalt didn't know who his mentor was. He looked at Cobalt. "Now tell me: Where did you learn this?"
Cobalt shifted uncomfortably. "After I have a memory, I begin to learn more and more about the surroundings of the object. But now I see two places where Eon's staff is."
"The Infiniti Forge can do that," Herin added.
Eon joined in. "I can barely see the slight glare of the sun on the horizon. If we can leave earlier, we might have the edge on Horus and surprise him." It was obvious to Herin that Eon was eager to get his staff back. He was staring at Cobalt's walking stick he picked up on the journey.
"Horus won't be surprised," Herin heard Cobalt mutter under his breath.
Herin stood up. It felt good to stretch his legs. "Okay, then. Let's pack up the tents and get started. If we're able to get to Horus before noon, we should have plenty of energy and time to be able to overwhelm him. Hopefully - "
"Get down!" Cobalt yelled. Herin and Eon flattenned themselves to the ground just at Cobalt flung his walking stick into the bushes and made contact with something under the foliage.
Eon jumped to his feet. "What the hell was that, Cobalt? You could've knocked us out with that. You can't just..."
But Cobalt wasn't listening. He walked to the bushes and pulled a boy out, dressed in a tattered shirt and jeans with blond hair and no shoes. He was clearly bruised from where Cobalt had hit him on the head, and he was out cold. "I noticed him in the bushes when we were talking. I waited for a good time to hit him. I tried to keep eye conact off of him until he was out."
Eon and Herin didn't have anything to say. They just stared at the limp kid that Cobalt has holding.
"You're welcome," he said.
"Well, that's just great. Are we just gonna leave him here to freeze? What are we gonna do with him? At this rate, we'll be only able to get there by tomorrow morning. That gives way too much time to Horus to find out what the staff does. Shataar probably won't tell him anything, but I'm not sure about some of the others." Eon was a bit stressed, but Eon had his tantrums. It just took awhile for everything to calm down.
"And," Cobalt continued, "Horus had the Infiniti Forge. How does that lower our chances of success?"
"Shit," Herin muttered. He was about to ask about why Cobalt knew this, but he guessed that it would all become spilled.
He found Cobalt and Eon looking at him. He was about to say What? But then he remembered the kid sitting on the cold forest floor.
Herin thought for a minute, and another. Damn, it is hard to make close calls, being a leader. "Well, we'll just have to bring him with us until he wakes up."
A groan from Cobalt.
"What?" Herin said. "It may slow us down, but I won't be able to use any more curses, so I guess waiting isn't too bad. Is it, Cobalt?"
Herin gave Cobalt the Say-no-or-I'll-make-you-wish-you-did stare. Cobalt shrugged. "Whatever."
"Then it's decided. We'll go right now." Herin didn't wait for any objections. He grabbed the boy off the snow on the ground and hauled him off in the way that Horus was.
Cobalt grunted.