198Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnyN3Eu2ZsW
Vine wraps around Isaac’s waist together with the bunny--Mira who is still chittering and chapping at the children below. An average Hemrean child would not dare to climb a tower, nor would they have the nerving fingers to latch on paper thin sized edges and actually move up. Isaac heaves with rough breaths. His eyes set on the only window of the tower while hearing the growling and roaring echoing louder around them. Whatever it is, Mira expresses the same concern.
“Mira is not gonna fight whatever is angry at Mira. It sounds big.”
“They call it the lochness here.”
“L-Lochness!? Mira heard of it before.”
“It is a beast”
“Then” she gasps in surprise, muttering “Mira has found it.”
“You said something?”
“N-no, Mira is fine~ that is all”
Five minutes later and he is now halfway up the tower. ‘Why’ Isaac thinks, ‘Why does it seem like it’s growing longer.’ Ten minutes pass and the tower window does not seem to close in. The ground below has vanished and the winds feel like they are trying to pull him down. Mira tells him to stay calm but his fingers are bloody erupting every time he stops for a second. “Mira, stop moving around.” Grunting and heaving for the next crack after another. Even a rat climbs better than him. Then suddenly another rat comes, but jumping out of the window. It drops, splattering straight on Isaac’s face. “Gaagh!” His fingers slip and he falls—screaming.
Zephyr hears him from the bushes and bends her hand, stiffening the vine that is wrapped around his waist, and stopping the boy from falling. Although, it is tightening down on him. Isaac moans and yells to let go and Zephyr softens the vine. “Help!” He calls, “Cannot you just make me a ladder.”
…And Zephyr looks at her siblings as if there is anyone else Isaac is talking about. “Who? Me?”
“WHO ELSE!?”
There is Ipos who can probably raise the ground or sink the tower but that will disturb the marsh…and so Zephyr, being unnecessarily hesitant, elongates the bushes her and her siblings are hiding to create a leafy ladder.
Isaac manages to climb once more but his fingers want to break themselves off from this grueling labor. He has never been carrying or climbing or anything because he always sits on the carriage rider seat. Not to mention how extremely difficult it is for his fingernails on these line thin edges, at least with this ladder, he smoothly scales the tower.
“Gods, how I wish I could draw him climbing,” Real says in a daze, “Ah…right,”
“What is it?” Haures asks, hands in his pockets,
Patting herself, even around her hair and genitalia, “I forgot to bring my journal…”
Zephyr gasps, inhaling the shock, “Mine if not all of us! How forgetful you are Ipos!”
“H-huh? W-h-y ar-e y-y-ou bl-ami-ng m-e? I al-so for-g-ot m-mm-ine…”
“Ugh, if you had just made guidelines and notes in this little side trip of yours then sis could be drawing right now. We don’t even know if it is morning or night already. If it is past midnight,” She clutches her head, “Oh no, oh no, we’d be deader than the wraiths that always eat my water lilies! There’s nothing to cook here too! Ahhh I fear that I might go cannibal…”
“I will go back and get them” Real proposes and the rest seems to agree, with Haures joining her. “Are you trying to be helpful?”
Haures did not hesitate to say no. And the two follow back the sticks in the mud. The dark entities in the water—wraiths, don’t even dare to do anything when they see their poolmates get hexed into a fly or riddled to ashes.
“Quite baffling how we forgot our Journals, like how? Real asked in bewilderment, skipping on top of the murky pools with her magic.
“Obsessing with that Isaac” Haures says, using his unique talent of light footsteps and being able to hop across pools by using the floating bodies.
“He has his own story to live, plus it is interesting how the old man stuck with him.”
Which reminds Haures of what Real saw in Isaac and he asks about it,
“Perplexing” Real responds, “His own mind is clouded with that old man’s magic and he does not look like he suspects it, or trying to clear it out.”
“Duhh, He is helping us because he wants out and go back being a lapdog.”
“Hmm…” Real ponders as they near the hut,
“What is it?” Haures asked,
“Why have not we decided to go out of the marsh?”
Which Haures reply, “Don’t even go there”
“We can go and try.”
“Better if we stay together in the hut”
“No, come on Haures, you’ve always been wanting to not do anything. Let’s try going out. We helped one once. But not with ourselves”
“And what if you cannot come back?”
“I will bring my journal with me”
Haurus looks away, “You do you” walking past her
Real sighs and enters their stone hut to look for her journal but it is not on the table where they had placed it. “Haures, did you take the journals?”
“Not on the table?” Haures enters after finishing his trickling business,
“They are not here…”
“Then where, Zephyr and Ipos don’t have them---Ughhh” Haures groans for a second same with Real. And both knew that it is already past midnight and their journals are still nowhere to be found. “Three hours…”
“We only have three hours, where the hell did, we place them?” Real runs out of the hut, paranoia in her eyes and steps as she runs into the mist, yelling that she is looking for the journal on the cabinets but she is madly running and disappearing.
“Real! Damnit” Haures curses before hearing a voice saying to pulverize the hut. He knows that these voices only come out if they don’t read their diaries and he cannot resist them. Pulling out one of his burnt black hands from his pockets to touch the floor. “Ipos won’t mind…” Muttering before the entire foundation and walls of the stone hut collapse into dust. Anything that sticks out are all garbage, except for a skull that connects to a skeleton then to a book and bracelet. The book I tightly held and he ends up breaking off its entire arm. He opens its pages and find familiar words and handwriting. “This is…Ipos’s entry.” Further into the pages and the handwriting changed to Zephyr’s then his and then Real’s.
Meanwhile back at the tower, Zephyr and Ipos both wonder what is taking Real and Haures long after they got the same past midnight headache. It is unlike them for all four to forget their journals and Zephyr wants to go back to the hut and check but Ipos begs for her not to leave him behind. And the older sighs, tending to the younger as they both look up and hope that Isaac and Mira have reached the window.
Thanks to the leafy ladder, Isaac manages to climb higher than before. Eventually he manages to grab hold of the window and Mira--who managed to break free from being a belt bunny, was on it first. A chilling pressure like she never had felt before stiffens her in fear.
Whatever is behind her, she dares not look back nor tell him to continue. She tells him to stop and go back, no, jump back quickly. Then Mira’s all fur stand on edge as she feels it coming for her nape, gnarly grumbling and croaking. Mira jumps and Isaac sees two bloody hands with black veins that reach out for Mira. Is it a monster or a human? Isaac cannot see clearly but he too decides to let go and fall.
Zephyr once again stiffens the loose vine around Isaac’s waist and quickly managed to catch Mira as well. She asks what they found in the tower and Mira is about to tell her the truth when Isaac lies that they only found a rat nest. “For real” he says, “There is nothing there other than a pile of rats.
“Ah shucks, what a bummer…”
“What happened to Ipos?” Isaac asks, watching Ipos clutching his own head and muttering at himself.
“He is starting to hear voices. He—” Zephyr hesitates whether to tell them or not but she decides not to. “Let us head back to the hut, quickly.”
And so, the group hike their way back to the hut following the line of sticks. Mira and Isaac still thinking about what they saw which Isaac asked to Mira if she knows but Mira shakes her head. Only saying, “Better keep away from it for now. Mira did not like what it was nor is Mira curious about it. But Mira, once Mira is back to being Mira. Mira wants it.”
They walk, and suddenly notice that some of the poles are missing. Ipos’s groaning getting louder before Zephyr shuts him up with a mouthful of leaves. Playfully teasing the youngest about holding it in. But then they arrive at the ashy remnants of their stonehut. Everything is gone not even the cauldron. Haures’s ash devoured everything. Zephyr and Ipos look around in shock and horror, wondering if there is anything they can salvage but none.
“What happened here…” Isaac asks before Zephyr hurriedly rush back to him and ask if he knows where Real and Haures would have gone, or this is not the place where they had their stone hut. But Isaac points at murlock carcass by a murky pull, saying that it should be the place. “Tell us what happened…”
“We have to find them,” breath shaky and eyes wandering wild, “We have to find Haures and Real and our journals before the worse pass!
“O-okay…do you know where?”
Zephyr catches her own breath by the throat, grabbing both of Isaac’s hands “Please, if ever we forget. Remind us who we are in the basic sense possible…Ipos is the carpenter, I am the florist, Haures is the general, and Real…Real is the strategist, I believe.”
“Tell us why first Zephyr, calm down”
“There is not time for calm, boy! We have to find the journals and get Haures and Real back together. And remember that if we start forgetting who we are. Simply tell what I said, our names, and who we are to you. Don’t even think about saying that we are enemies because who knows what will happen to you—”
“You said that you will help me get out of the marsh.” saying as if he does not care about them, but Isaac does not understand.
And Zephyr tries her best to calm herself and Ipos who has dug himself in a hole. “We will, we will. But please, help me and my siblings first. We’ve been like this once and Real was the only one to stop us from rampaging throughout the entire marsh. So, I tell you again…ugh, my head hurts…If you wish to get out of here safely and not going back in circles, then help us. Children of the Marsh. I’m sure you know what we are…” She hisses, her head twitching, “…servant”
And Mira once again finds another striking revelation. She has heard about the children of the marshes before and to think that they would live in the same place as the lochness. Her cute tail wags but her eyes hungers for blood.
ns 15.158.61.54da2
