“I think we lost them,” Nivia said as she glanced behind her shoulder. She saw nothing but endless rows of trees and patches of grass and leaves scattered all over the ground. She pulled on the reins and brought the Kiral to a stop.
“That’s good…” Lilian muttered weakly while she was breathing raggedly. Despite having used four Mana cells to recompense the tremendous Mana expenditure of Flora Eruption, she still left herself in a fatigued state as a result of Mana deficiency. She had even passed out for nearly half an hour but the heavy shaking from the ride eventually woke her up.
“Can you walk?”
Lilian smiled feebly. “I will manage.”
“I seem to have missed a lot of events,” said Aera who had been awake shortly after Lilian had passed out. She was also woken up by the intense shaking. “I never got to ask, how long was I out?”
“Two hours or so,” Nivia answered. Though she was sure they were no longer followed, she still scoured the area with her watchful gaze just to be sure.
“Why was I even asleep?”
“You don’t remember?”
Aera shook her head.
“Well, you can ask Aedan when he comes back,” Nivia said. “If he’s coming back at all.”
“Speaking of him,” Aera looked around, “where is he?”
“Not here,” she answered sparsely.
“Will he be back?”
“I wouldn’t know,” she muttered cynically.
Once Nivia was sure they were absolutely safe, not just from their pursuers but also the wild creatures, she hopped off the Kiral with a faint groan. The ride had been too harsh for her fettle. She helped Lillian off the Kiral after she loosened her joints and muscles from the harsh ride. Leading the Dryad by hand, she guided Lilian to a shady spot under a large tree.
Aera helped herself off without any need for assistance. She showed no sign of being severely troubled by the awful experience. Though she was asleep, she was still on the Kiral but she didn’t feel sore on any parts of her body. There was even a single small bruise on her feeble-looking body.
Not long after Aera got off the Kiral, it neighed like a horse and disappeared into glitters of cyan lights.
“I have truly reached my limits…” Lilian said.
“How long of a rest do you need?” Nivia asked as she gently laid Lilian sitting under the tree.
“An hour will be enough,” she gave a plain response. “You should get some rest too, Nivia. You have also worked hard.”
“Not as hard as you have, Lilian. I’ll be fine. Just rest, I’ll keep watch.”
“If you insist, Niva… then I’ll be resting my eyes for an hour,” Lilian and she fell asleep the moment she shut her eyes.
“What should I do in the meantime?” Aera asked, walking towards them with awkward steps.
“Just don’t get into any trouble,” Nivia offered a vague answer without offering her a glance. She woefully ignored Aera and climbed onto a large boulder nearby, sitting atop to get a good sense of their surroundings.
“I’ll do my best,” Aera replied with a wry smile and walked to a shade under a tree just across from Lilian. She tidied her rustled hair. She patted the dust off her robes and straightened them. She sat down on her knees with her hands on her lap on top of one another before closing her eyes.
Nivia couldn’t help but stare at Aera’s overly refined conduct. She had been acquainted with a few human nobles before and none of them was as delicate as Aera. Especially in their current circumstances, etiquette simply felt redundant to be practised.
“Were you highborn?” Nivia asked.
“Huh?” Aera opened her eyes. “Did you ask me something, milady?”
“I said, were you highborn?” she repeated with a tinge of annoyance.
“Umm… no. I am not.”
“Then who taught you all of those etiquettes? They are human court etiquettes, practised by nobles. You seem to know and conduct them better than the nobles I have met.”
“I learned it from a travelling priestess that was on her pilgrimage. She knew a lot of things and I was excited to learn from her. She even offered to teach me how to fight but I rejected her. Maybe I shouldn’t have.”
“A priestess who knows how to fight?” Nivia frowned in dubiety. “What kind of priestess was she?”
“An odd one, definitely. She kept her prayers and faith to herself. She didn’t push it onto others like most other clergies I met.”
“That sure sounds odd,” Nivia muttered in agreement. “Did she say which Divine she prays to?”
“She didn’t.” Aera shook her head. “She said nothing about her god. I have only heard her pray but she didn't tell anyone about why she prays or who she’s praying to.”
“No one in the village was curious enough to ask?”
“People were definitely curious but we didn’t want to risk spurring her into tedious preaching. We decided to just leave her be.”
Nivia chuckled dryly. “That I can empathize with.”
“And for a woman of the cloth, she was very… unfettered with her tongue. She was loose with profanities and fancy words. She even taught me a lot of words that no common folk would ever use and words that a lady should not be using.”
Nivia furrowed her brows. “What did your mother have to say about the priestess?”
“I was told to stay away from her lest we get roped into whatever problem she had brought along with her. We gave the priestess the usual greetings a paranoid and unwelcoming village would give to strangers.”
“Paranoid? I guess the priestess taught you that word?”
“She did, among other words.”
“I would love to meet this priestess. She sounds interesting.”
“She’s journeying east. She told me that before she left the village.”
“Why east?”
Aera shrugged. “She didn’t say but I think she expects me to go find her if I have the chance.”
“Perhaps after my business is done with the Covenant, I’ll embark on a journey to find this priestess.”
“W-why?”
“Maybe I can get Erin to come along. It would be a fun adventure, won’t you agree?”
“I-I wouldn’t know… I have never been anywhere far from the village. This is actually the furthest I have been away from the village…”
Nivia shot her a curious glance. “I don’t mean to pry but… what do you intend to do after you have completed your vengeance?”
“I don’t know… I don’t even believe I’ll be able to see it through until the end.”
Nivia frowned. “You think you’re going to die?”
“No… I want to die.”
Nivia fell silent at Aera’s response.
“I think,” she added. “My whole life has been destroyed. I would like to believe I’m merely on borrowed time from my Divine Guardian. It’s only a matter of time before she comes claiming my due.”
Nivia didn’t know what to say. She had never once participated in such a conversation in her relatively long years of life. Back in her home forest, she left all these kinds of talks to her elders. Once she left home, she had never used any of her sympathies in the truest sense. None of the people she met deserved any sympathy for the false pretences they were constantly putting up. She was sick and tired of those performances. Still, she was beginning to realize how awful of a person she was, to not know any appropriate thing to say to an acquaintance who was feeling more than just down.
“She won’t take your life if that's what you're worried about,” a familiar voice came from their flanks.
Nivia immediately stood up with swords drawn but her face and shoulders slackened upon realizing who it was. A man with short and dark red hair emerged from the trees as if he had merely stumbled upon them in his walk.
“Aedan,” Aera beamed. “You came back.”
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“You didn’t think I was going to?”
“T-that’s not what I-I meant!” she stammered. “I was just— saying…” she trailed off.
Aedan simpered. “I know and I wasn’t directing that inquiry at you.” He turned to Nivia. “I was asking you, Nivia. Only you would have that kind of notion.”
“You’re not wrong,” Nivia admitted blatantly. She could feel her face grimacing on its own but she forced it to remain slackened. “But am I wrong to assume that? We’re just a liability. You have no reason to come back.”
“But I do have a reason.”
“And what would the reason be?” Nivia challenged. “Please don’t say ‘Erin’. You don’t get to use her as the reason for your whims.”
“She is the reason,” Aedan answered. “But not the sole reason.”
“Humour me, then. What other excuses will you be throwing?”
“Sentiment.”
Nivia snorted with a chuckle. “You? Sentiment?”
“Although I don’t find your character pleasant…,” Aedan sighed, “I do enjoy your company.”
Nivia frowned in confusion and she unconsciously took a step back.
“Despite being a fleeting moment, I was brought back to my adventurous days with my parties. By the stars… those were the days… We enjoyed adventuring with one another but we also fought a lot. We bickered at every opportunity. We tailored insults specifically for each other. We’re not perfect… but we grew together and became better together, through thick and thin, as the saying goes.”
“You… you jest…,” Nivia murmured in response, casting her gaze away from him. “Like I’ll believe that…”
Aedan grinned faintly. “I’m sorry for everything I have said. I was… bitter and tired.”
“What changed your heart?” Aera asked.
Aedan made his way to Aera and sat down beside her with his legs crossed. He shrugged at her question. “Fear, I suppose.”
“Fear?” Nivia uttered. “What do you have to fear?”
“Losing the three of you,” Aedan admitted, gazing at his feet. “I thought the three of you didn’t matter. I thought I was just concerned with losing the trust of a friend but… I considered the three of you friends too. Maybe I'm just going senile after reliving a brief moment of the past.”
Nivia felt her brows twitching but she didn’t know for what reason they twitched.
“I have lost a lot of friends, family, loved ones… To time, enemies, some untimely events… It’s all fucking bollocks… Point is, I have lost a lot of people that I cared about. When I thought I would lose the three of you too… I was afraid. I didn’t think of Erin’s face then… I thought of our brief time together. And I know there's a part of me that don’t want this to end.”
“I also enjoyed the time we spent together,” Aera said. “All of us.”
“Unbelievable,” Nivia scoffed. “Do you expect us to overlook every fight and squabble we had?”
“No,” Aedan said. “Those are just part of the journey. It would make everything pointless otherwise.”
Nivia groaned in chagrin and turned her back to Aedan with her arm crossed around her bosom. “Think what you will,” she huffed. “I still find you vexatious.”
Aedan smiled warmly. “I suppose amends aren’t meant to be easy. At least, we aren’t fighting over a woman. Are we?”
“Just give her some time,” Aera said, resting her hand on his lap. “She’ll see reason. In the meantime, why don’t you get some rest? You must be tired.”
“I can’t rest yet, not while there’s an immense battle happening just miles away from where we are.”
“Another battle?” Nivia responded as she sprang to her feet. “Where?”
“East of here and slightly to the south.”
“Are we safe here?”
“If they keep it to the east, we will be but… we’re heading east and I doubt that a battle of such scale would stay in one place. It will definitely be erratic.”
“So we will eventually and inevitably plunge ourselves into the battle?”
“We could hide and wait until the battle is over.”
“And how long would that be?”
“I don’t know. I just know it’s immense. Even my skin is crawling from just sensing it.”
“Could it be the Covenant?” Aera asked.
“As I have said, I don’t know but given that we were chased by a whole battalion of the Covenant’s lackeys, I say that’s very likely.”
“I sense a ‘but’ following,” Nivia mused. “There is one, isn’t there?”
“But… I also sense traces of divinity from the battle and the Covenant dabbles in the arts pertaining to the Demons. Divine Apostles fighting the Covenant or simply Apostles fighting Apostles. Whichever it is, it’s dangerous for all of us.”
“You too?”
“Never underestimate divinity, even if it’s a small amount. The miracles it can be done with it are unfathomable.”
“No…” Aera muttered suddenly and stood to her feet just as abruptly. “It’s her…”
“Who?” Nivia questioned.
“My fellow Apostle… I sense her presence from over there.”
“An Apostle of the same Divine Guardian as yours…” Aedan mulled. “The Apostle of Lust, is it?”
“Wait,” Nivia halted the exchange. “Who are you talking about?”
“Yes,” Aera answered, disregarding Nivia’s inquiry. Her shoulders were shivering with an unknown emotion brimming. “I must go there. She needs me… I must help.”
“You can’t go there,” Aedan said. “You will be—”
All of a sudden, a loud roar erupted from the east. A small wave of force swept past them as if an explosion had just occurred. Aera recoiled and stiffened in response. Nivia almost fell off the boulder. Lilian was jolted awake, squealing, from her slumber.
“You gotta be joking…” Aedan gasped.
“What was that?!” Lilian asked with a horrified expression. “That felt extremely oppressing. It kinda felt like…” she looked at Aedan.
“Yes, it’s a Dragon.”
“So that was a Dragon…” Aera muttered in a hollow voice as she hugged her shoulders.
“Why is a Dragon here in this region?”
Aedan sighed. “That’s what I wish to know too. Looks like our break has been cut short.”
“We’re going there!?” Nivia blurted out.
“Erin could be there.”
The glint in Nivia’s eyes took a sharp shift. “Oh… then we should head over there fast.”
Aedan rolled his eyes. “I’ll go on ahead,” he said and took off into a sprint.
“Wait!” Nivia shouted but Aedan had already left. “For the love of the Spirits… I swear—!”
“Looks like it’s up to me again,” Lilian muttered exasperatedly as she began her chant to summon the Kiral.