บท 16: The Ridge Keeps Expanding
3rd POV:
As the sun rose the next day, the two brothers began their search for Ash. But try as they might, Ash was nowhere to be found.
Even with the two of them, they couldn't seem to find Ash, but they knew he was in the city. They could still recognize his mana signature even if he was suppressing it.
As such, the first day passed with them making no progress on finding Ash, even though they scoured most of Xyrus city.
"What's it with us and missing teammates?" Fayden complained while walking down the streets of Xyrus.
"Considering the fact that he is looking for Vonde, it isn't unusual for us to be unable to find him so soon." Jaron answered, walking beside him.
Fayden sighed, "I suppose he should have at least sensed us by now, so what's stopping him from coming to us?"
"He might have a lead on Vonde." Jaron pointed out.
"Ah well," Fayden straightened his back, "we'll find him sooner or later anyway. So where to now, chief?"
"The Helstea Manor." Jaron replied simply, not planning on elaborating further.
"The… Helstea Manor?" Fayden raised an eyebrow, "Why there?"
"Arthur and his family are staying there."
Fayden screeched to a halt, memories of the night he broke the news to Alice, coming back to him. "C-Can't we just go to some inn?" he asked weakly.
"No." Jaron replied, grabbing onto his shoulder to keep him from escaping.
"Aw come on!" His protests were in vain and Jaron would have none of it, as he dragged the person he considered his brother towards the manor.
_______________________
Well, this is awkward, Fayden thought as he stood in front of a certain auburn-haired woman. They were standing on the porch of the house, with Jaron standing a few feet behind Fayden.
"Um, hello. I don't know if you remem-" He was unable to finish his sentence when said woman pulled him in her embrace.
"Uh? Mrs. Leywin?" he asked, confused at her sudden action.
"You poor, poor child. It must have been hard for you." she muttered, referencing to the last time she saw him.
Fayden realizing this eased into the hug. A motherly embrace after all this time felt… nice.
"And call me Alice." she said sternly after releasing him from her embrace.
"You sure?" Fayden asked with uncertainty as it would be rude to call someone older than yourself by their name. Reincarnations don't count.
"Yes, or you can call me mom." she chirped in reply, smiling widely.
"I'll take the former, thank you very much." he deadpanned at her, calling her 'mom' would be plain weird.
"It's nice that you guys gathered here, but I might have quite the bad news." A new voice rang out, catching their attention.
Looking back they could see Ash standing in the doorway, holding his hand up and displaying the hole in his palm, almost as if someone stabbed a knife right through it. Using his water-magic Ash did slow down his blood flow, but small drops of the blood were still falling onto the floor.
"Vonde is absolutely determined to inflict fatal wounds on the three of us. I barely caught this knife." Ash brandished a jet-black knife, which was now covered in blood, his blood.
Alice stood frozen in her spot, her eyes wide open, reflecting the horror she was currently going through. The two others were still calm, they had gone through worse wounds during their career as adventurers.
"Here inspect it yourself and help me with this." Ash tossed the sharp object towards Jaron, while Fayden just snapped his fingers and greenish-black flames ignited on Ash's hand, alerting Alice as she screamed out.
"What are you doing?!"
"Jeez, relax. Have a little faith in me will ya?" Fayden refrained from rolling his eyes, deciding to slump down dramatically, "No one trusts me these days."
"Oh no! I did not mean it like that!" Alice began panicking, noticing Faydens downtrodden expression.
"If you are done with your theatrics, may we head inside?" Jaron cast a displeased look at him.
Fayden placed an arm over his chest in mock pain, "You wound me with your cruel words dear brother."
Jaron stared at him, a neutral expression on his face.
"You're no fun." Fayden pouted at him, dropping his act.
"That was all an act?" Alice asked, a dangerous edge to her voice.
Fayden gulped, why are women always the scariest ones.
_________________________
After a stern scolding from Alice, the former adventurers entered the house.
Once inside, they notice Arthur waiting for them. The awkward staring contest continued before Jaron broke the silence.
"Arthur, I see you are getting better. Do you have any mental strains?" he questioned.
"No, I'm alright. What about you guys?" Arthur shook his head and asked, glancing at Fayden.
"Pretty much alright, only a few issues. We'll have a little briefing, so you might as well join in." waved Ash, motioning Arthur to follow them.
"What's this about?" Alice suddenly asked, causing them to flinch in surprise.
"It's nothing Mrs. Ley-Alice, just something Arthur wanted to talk to us about." Fayden tried to salvage the situation, faltering when Alice glared at him for trying to call her 'Mrs. Leywin'.
Alice stared at them skeptically, but in the end, relented. "Fine, but don't be too late. Dinner's in an hour."
With that, they entered one of the many rooms in the mansion, Jaron soundproofing the room with his use of deviant magic.
"Let's get star-" Fayden had the breath knocked out of him when Ash punched him on his chest with an ice-covered fist.
"What was that for?" Fayden complained after regaining his breath.
"You know exactly what that was for." Ash spat out, glowering at his old teammate.
Grumbling something under his breath Fayden continued, "So where was I before I was so rudely interrupted? Ah yes, let's get started."
"What were you doing in the Beast Glades for the last twelve years?" Ash asked, astonished at the sheer amount of time he spent in the wild.
Fayden shrugged, "I wanted to isolate myself from the outside world and vent a bit. Turns out killing mana beasts really helps in relieving stress. Oh, and did I mention about not being conscious for more than half of that time?"
"..."
No one uttered a single word, they were too surprised to do so. Staying unconscious for over six years was unheard of unless the said person was in a coma.
I think we broke them. Fayden thought, snickering quietly to himself.
[You did unload a lot of information on them.]
"Wait, so you were asleep for over six years?!" Arthur broke the silence, finding the need to get the question out.
Fayden nodded, a bit too cheerfully for the others, "Yeah, I had something I needed time to adjust to, similar to how beast tamers assimilate."
"You were assimilating for half a decade? Unconscious at that?" Jaron asked, showing an awful lot of emotion.
Fayden shrugged in reply, "Yeah, apparently I was in this sphere of mana during the process. After awakening, I barely had any control over my new… abilities. And they were hard to control. I had to spend a lot of time just mastering them so that I didn't accidentally kill a few dozen people every time I sneezed. And I did enter towns every once in a while for supplies."
"Well, that was a mouthful. What about you two? What have you been up to?"
The other two white core mages took a few seconds to digest that before eventually answering.
"Ash stayed in an ice castle he made, and I began forming a new government in a safe location." Jaron answered simply, regaining his demeanor.
Fayden raised an eyebrow, "So Ash pulled an Elsa?"
"He also mentioned creating an entire new nation, but you focus on that? Why am I not surprised?" Ash tried in vain to divert Fayden's attention.
"Oh, no I'll not 'let it go.'" Fayden snickered at Ash's expression, one full of dread. He was going to tease him so much about this.
"Can we get back on topic?" Jaron deadpanned at the two.
"Yeah, please." Ash replied almost instantly, feeling relieved for the change of topic.
"No. I wanna tease him more." Fayden stubbornly refused.
Jaron deadpanned at him, and a gust of wind made Fayden lose his footing as he began falling to the ground.
He disappeared from their vision in a flash of black, appearing behind Jaron, "Rude."
Jaron opened his mouth to retort but stopped as Arthur's chuckles filled his ears.
"You guys are a lot more childish than I expected."
"Don't lump me in with those immature idiots." Jaron grumbled, huffing in annoyance.
"Anyway, back to the topic," Ash began, a serious expression taking hold on his face, "Jaron, where's The Sanctuary currently?"
"Last time I saw it, it was near the coast of Darv." Jaron answered.
"Wait, what do you mean by last time? Does the nation move or something?" Arthur interrupted.
"You could say that." Ash replied vaguely.
"So that's the weird island I've been seeing for the past few years." Fayden muttered to himself, realizing what the island truly was.
"How many people are on the island currently?" Fayden asked, intrigued.
Jaron shrugged, "Around a thousand."
"A thousand? How has nobody noticed yet?" Fayden exclaimed, that was a pretty big number.
"We usually take in orphans and slaves. The more… advanced people of the society were taken in small numbers."
"...You sound like a kidnapper." Fayden deadpanned, Arthur nodding in agreement.
Jaron stared at Fayden, "Are you done?"
"No." Fayden smirked, suppressing chuckles.
"Alright, let's not turn the Helstea Mansion to rubble." Arthur butted in, raising both arms placatingly.
Fayden sighed, relenting, "Yeah, moving on. What are our plans now?"
"Finding Vonde and reforming the party." Ash replied.
"Great, fixing the clusterfuck of a mess is the first on the list." Fayden muttered, but it did not go unheard by the others in the room.
"You can stay if you want to." Ash began slowly, noticing Fayden's confused expression, "He hates you more than us combined, I'm sure he would attack you first instead of any other."
Fayden's expression hardened, not something you see very often, "Then he'd better hope I don't get my hands on him. I won't just stand back, just because he is your brother."
At this Ash grew a glare, "I'm not going to stand still either. You goddamn better than anyone know that I'm ready to go against the world if it means to protect my family."
Fayden leaned forward, resting his arms on the table as he smirked evilly, "I'd like to see you try, popsicle."
"Yeah, we'll see, furry."
"Says the guy humping mountain trolls for the last decade," Fayden's smirk deepened, "What, got tired of the ice fleshlights?"
Arthur glanced between the two white core mages, the walls of the room groaning under their pressure.
Suddenly a soothing presence invaded the room, making Arthur sigh in relief.
"Stop it. What would Eleanor think if she saw you now?" Jaron commanded, embers licking his coat.
"Tch." Fayden clicked his tongue, turning away, "She wouldn't be thinking anything, she's dead, remember?"
Now that struck a blow, Ash scowled, on the verge of lashing out, even Jaron glared at the canine man as he melted into his own shadow.
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