บท 239: Chapter 231: A Broken Song Can Yet Be Sung
Quetz frowned.
Ever since coming back, Drake had ignored her. He had kept her at a distance while helping the other humans and doggies. And Quetz didn't like that.
She didn't like that one bit.
During their short journey from the gate, to the house, and now to the stupid boring center. All he did was ignore her and talk to the others.
Why wouldn't he pat her like he usually did?
He asked her to take a quest from the stupid center and she did as he asked. She wanted to be a good girl after all. And good girls did as they were told.
[Quetzel Mano]
[Race: Sun Conure]
[Base Class: Ranger] Level 1
[Vitality] 10
[Strength] 10
[Dexterity] 25
[Intelligence] 10
[Wisdom] 10]
[Endurance] 20
[Free Points] 0
[Skills] Basic Power Shot [Level N/A]
[Titles]
N/A
Once she accepted the quest, Drake handed out presents. But Quetz didn't like what she got. The bow felt unwieldy in her hands. The grip uncomfortable for some reason.
The knife was unassuming in her hand but the moment she saw it, flashes of horrifying memories flooded her mind.
Quetz tried her best not to show it on her face but her feathers couldn't hide her emotions as they changed to pale and muted colors.
Before being saved she had been captured by humans.
Waking up in a place she didn't recognise with no one from her flock anywhere to be found, she had grown anxious. Only a few hours later being found by men who used nets to bring her down and keep her from flying.
Quetz hated the nets. They restricted her and the thought of them brought shivers of fear down her spine.
She had stowed the knife quickly in the new inventory that Drake had mentioned, unable to bear seeing it for long.
After the center, they met up again with the big green lady who always clung to Drake. Quetz didn't like her at first but she had slipped Quetz food and gave her head pats, so she didn't dislike her now. Except when she took Drake's attention from her.
Drake brought them onto something he called a bus and they were carried by sparkling shining rock things that looked like people.
Quetz sat as close as she could to Drake on the bus and as far away from the others.
She didn't like being touched. The men that had caught her beat and hurt her. Plucking out her colorful feathers on her arms and legs, making sure she couldn't fly away.
Her hands moved unconsciously to the locations on her body, the pain still fresh in her mind despite the wounds healing again thanks to Drake and the tasty vials of red liquid he gave her.
Quetz's feathers grew rapidly back even if she didn't want them to. So the men continued to torture her despite her pleading for them to stop and begging that she wouldn't run away.
She hated remembering the days when she wasn't with Drake. The days when she had no one, stuck in a cycle of pain and numbing loneliness.
During those days she replayed the song of her flock in her head, humming the tune to herself when no one was around. But the song was broken, just like her will to keep going after the seemingly endless days of torture. Her heart was wounded. She simply didn't want to keep going.
She couldn't see her family, her flock. Destined to never sing again, only to be tormented by these horrible people as they dragged her around.
Then one day, after days of hazy walking, following the people and other captives, clarity came to her.
She remembered it as the happiest memory she could recall in the recent fleeting days.
Drake, the man who looked like the same people who had captured her but still punished those same people without remorse.
He had killed the people who had captured her, freeing the prisoners from the days of being used, beaten, and strewn about like objects waiting to be sold or worse.
"Are you ok?"
That was all he asked when she met him. Handing her a red vial. But that small gesture had brought life back into her.
Someone.
Someone had finally been kind.
The memory warmed her. And she flashed back to the present inside the bus.
Drake stopped the bus, instructing everyone out of it.
The group filed out of the bus following him and the big green woman.
She tried to pay attention to Drake, but she had a bad feeling about the area. Unable to focus.
"... Now get to it, you have five days to reach level 10, and the clock starts now," Drake said, bringing Quetz's attention back to him.
W-what…? She thought unsure of what was going on. H-he's leaving? Is he leaving me? No! Not like everyone else!
Quetz's feathers paled, anxiety boiling up in her stomach instantly as she heard Drake's words. And it only cemented further when the sound of something creeping out from behind a tree filled her ears.
She looked away only for a second to see the monster, then snapped back to where Drake was. Or where he was supposed to be but he was gone.
The monster shrieked and Quetz looked back, the monster writhing in pain, an ax now embedded into its side.
The orc boy had run forward beginning to fight the monster.
Quetz's body shook. The crushing fear of being left alone again crippling any notion of helping even after the human girl screamed something and then rushed forward.
She looked over watching as the girl charged forward to help the orc boy, the human boy frozen in place like her.
Quetz's teeth chattered as she struggled to even grip her bow. And before she knew it, the fight was over the human girl bleeding, the orc boy in just as bad condition.
Both Quetz and the human boy ran over, her anxiety temporarily washed away and replaced by regret as she tried to help in some way. She tried to do something, anything to get her hands moving to help the human girl up but failed each time as they recoiled just before they stretched out to touch her.
Quetz struggled against her ingrained trauma and wanting to help, Drake's voice echoing in her mind to help them.
She wanted to help, she wanted to reach out but the chains of the pain from before made her stomach turn every time she saw other humans. The same people who tormented her.
The human girl got up after getting help from the human boy, the orc boy shouting something.
A moment later the human girl motioned in funny ways to Quetz but she didn't understand what she wanted. Quetz eventually just nodded, pretending to agree to whatever the girl said.
She followed behind the group battling with her own inner thoughts as she looked at the back of the other three.
Quetz put on the happy smiling face she knew Drake wanted to see. She hated seeing him frown in concern for her. She only wanted to see him give the same smile he gave her when she was saved.
But here in this wilderness away from him. It was crumbling. All of her anxiety, fear, and concerns rose to the surface away from the only member of her flock. The comforting song in her head became dower. Warped to something unrecognizable and for all her worth, Quetz couldn't figure out why.
Was she sad she was away from Drake? Did it hurt her to be alone again?
Or maybe.
Did it pain her to sit there and do nothing as the members of Drake's flock, the chicks he cared for so dotingly like he had for her, be injured while she froze in fear?
This wasn't the same as the time when she lost her previous flock. That had happened in the blink of an eye and with no ability to do anything, as the Great and Mighty Bird took them away to who knows where, leaving her alone and without family.
She was here, she was present, and she could do something.
Quetz bit at her bottom lip in frustration, her brows furrowed as angry tears began to form at the edges of her vision.
I want to be there for Drake's flock… I don't like being alone… My heart can't take it anymore.
From the corner of her eye, she saw one of the group veer off to the side. It was the human boy. For some reason, he had turned taking a different direction than the others, his head cemented to look at the ground.
Quetz raised a hand to call out to him, but her voice was caught in her throat. She knew they wouldn't understand her, but maybe just the noise would get his attention.
Her head swiveled to look back at the other two, slowly walking forward in a different direction than the human boy as she panicked in her indecision.
And before she knew it, the boy and the other two were gone, out of sight, only their footprints in the snow remaining.
Quetz couldn't let the human boy go alone, she knew that much. He was just as scared as she was when they met the first monster and she still remembered how he saved her after she was so startled in the town that she tumbled from the sky.
She wanted to at least repay him, despite him being human.
Making her decision, Quetz ran after the boy. A few minutes of following the snow-laid footfalls she heard a ruckus that put a fearful knot in her stomach.
Quetz quickly flew upwards trying to get a better vantage from above. And she quickly found the source of the noise.
The human boy was surrounded by four white-haired pigs.
She needed to do something.
"Should Quetz go get the others…?" she said hesitantly, her face paling as she watched the boy struggle, "N-no! There i-isn't time for Quetz to go get them, she has to help! Drake would want Quetz to help!"
She dove down, despite the mounting anxiety in her chest, pushing the fear and trauma that wade against the wall she had erected in her mind against it.
Quetz needed to forget about those fears for now. She needed to repay the kindness shown to her, she needed to truly become part of Drake's budding flock.
By the time she flew down the unwieldy bow in her hand, the human boy was already pinned to a tree, bleeding.
The wall she had put up suddenly cracked at the sight of the poor boy's condition.
Had she been too late? Was he already gone? Did another person leave her, this time before she could repay him?
Suddenly the boy screamed, roaring to life as he began to fight frantically once more. Slamming his mace into the boar next to him and then stood against the final two.
I have to help, no more figuring it out! She screamed in her head, her hand quivering as she fumbled to grab an arrow from her quiver.
She scrambled to amateurly knock her arrow to her bow her eyes darting between the last remaining boar that charged at the human boy and the string on her bow.
Quetz pulled back on the string with all her strength, as she began descending from the sky, unable to keep her altitude while her hands were occupied.
"Please let Quetz's arrow fly true!!" she croaked, chanting her ranger skill, "Steady Aim, stout heart. Power Shot!" as she let loose the arrow bathed in green light.
Her body impacted with the ground, a puff of snow plumming upwards.
Quetz's body shuddered from the collision and her vision swam as she searched the area for the boar, her hand trying to scramble for another arrow.
But she had found it. Right in front of her, dead as dead could be.
She looked to the side, the human boy unconscious but breathing, a small red blanket of snow covering him, the boar slumped against the ground just inches from his feet an arrow lodged right in its eye socket.
Quetz gave a playful chip, a note she hadn't heard herself make since before the bad men took her before her head suddenly felt clouded and light at the same time. Her vision darkened and she lurched forward onto the human boy.
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