They traveled to the north west as they went deeper into the forest. Their thought process was that north west of where they found the two groups was away from the direction that the river was heading while still being roughly the right direction they wanted to go. This process was backed up by the location that was shown on the map, the location that Vincent indicated that the village would be.
Finally after an hour of trekking they finally stopped to assess the situation. “What happened? And why are you significantly more ugly than you were literally an hour ago.” Adriana finally asked.
“Do you want the long or the short of it?”
“The short for now I guess.”
“Sonia was a celestial being, essence drain makes celestial beings age instead of sapping their life. She had a long life ahead of her and as such we gained a lot of xp. As to your second question, it also had to do with Sonia. I figured out something that I shouldn’t have and the Eld punished me for it.”
Adriana looked at Bjorn obviously waiting for him to elaborate. “And?”
“And that is the short of it for now. I still have a few notifications that I have to go through first before I can give you a comprehensive long of it.”
Adriana glared at Bjorn. “Alright, did you at least find out where the village was?”
“Most likely.”
“Most likely? We didn’t do all of this for a most likely. I want certainty.”
“Even though Vinny answered my question about the location under duress, I am willing to believe the information he gave me was true. But for the time being it doesn’t overly matter, not until I have the full picture on the long of it. However, rest assured that I am confident that the location of the village isn’t too far away from here. If I was a gambling man I would say we are within a day or two travel from the edge of the village.”
Adriana was silent for a long while, long enough to make Bjorn look up from his feet that he was staring at. “Alright, get to work then, I want a more complete answer.”
Bjorn nodded and got back to work.
Your bloodroot spriggan has increased in level. Again and again. It is now level 26. It has +26 natural armor and increased regeneration. Your health regeneration has decreased by 26%
Your bloodroot spriggan has once again increased in the stages of its development. It advances from a bloodroot spriggan sprout to a bloodroot spriggan seedling.
Due to the name of this particular kind of spriggan it is obvious that they would have ties to blood. Spriggans are inherently magical creatures and as such the strongest magic it can wield is blood magic.
You have aided the bloodroot spriggan in its continued development and growth, as such it has decided to forgive you for your channeling of fire magic through it. Due to how much you have aided its growth it has gained the ability to wield blood magic. It has decided to share this power with you.
Congratulations you have unlocked a new combination magic, a magic that is oftentimes viewed as evil and destructive. But as all things in the Eld everything can be used for good or for evil. Blood magic isn’t inherently evil, but it does have a corrupting touch on its magic user. Do not stray too far off the path or your mind will be consumed by the corrupting power of Blood magic.
You have advanced your skill level in the Skill: Blood magic. You are now level 5. You have unlocked new spells.
Know this! Your connection with your bloodroot spriggan has deepened and it has given you access to one of its inherent spells.
You have learned the spell: Blood consumption.
Due to this spell and its related magical school being given to you by your bloodroot spriggan any blood magic spell you cast will have its power increased by 50% as long as the spell is channeled through the spriggan.
Continue to foster your bond with the bloodroot spriggan to increase the spells that the spriggan choses to share with you.
A feeling of ominous dread consumed his mind as he registered what the notification said. He wasn’t sure where the dread came from but he had a feeling that it had to come from the spriggan. Bjorn looked over at the arm and got a surprise. Before this fight the spriggan was about halfway up his right arm, just under where his sleeve sat. Now however the spriggan was up his sleeve. Lifting the sleeve it was now up his arm and had consumed his shoulder. Tendrils of the bloodroot spriggan were spreading out into his neck and into his chest.
He needed to find out how to slow down this spriggan, if he was a gambling man we would be willing to bet that the spriggan wouldn’t take kindly to the herbicide that Skarit created. He seemed to have a taciturn relationship with the plant, best not to aggravate something that honestly had a mind of its own.
“Peeeeaace.” A single thought entered his head. He couldn’t explain it but he was pretty sure the thought had come from the spriggan. It was strangely unsettling knowing that he had a living and now thinking entity attached to his arm.
He left the single word hanging between the two of them and moved on with his day. He went to the Stellar dust. An unique level item had to be powerful. Hell the one time Meira drank a legendary level potion she gained an insane permanent attribute boost as well as it helped heal her mind.
He used W.A.I.L.A. on the vial once again.
It had been several hours since he had collected the dust and it already had lost a point of durability. Honestly kind of worrying but there was nothing to do about it. A notification appeared in his vision, one that he apparently ignored last time when he collected the dust.
This Stellar dust can be consumed but it is a terrible idea to ingest the dust. Would you like to consume this dust? Yes/No?
Know this. Something within yourself is rejecting this Stellar dust. If you do consume it you will not create a stellar seed like anyone else who consumes this dust. Instead it will create a corrupted stellar seed, turning you into something that is anathema to the Eld. If you would like to avoid this outcome you should locate and remove this hurdle.
Well as much as he would like to consume this dust right now and get another powerup that seemed like a terrible idea. He had no idea what an Anathema to the Eld meant, but he didn’t like the sound of it. So for the time being he decided to put the dust into his bag of holding. If worse came to worse he could give the dust to Adriana and let her create a stellar seed within herself.
“Hey Adriana, what do you know about the unique rarity?”
“Huh?” she hadn’t been paying attention to Bjorn, for the last little while he had been sitting there by himself not talking just staring off into space. He had to repeat himself.
“Not much. At least as far as I know. I know for a fact that the different rarities go, basic, common, uncommon, rare, epic, legendary. Stories often refer to there being higher rarities, the only ones I've heard of in stories are unique and artifact. Each and every time that a unique item or artifact is mentioned in a story they almost always lead to world changing events. Why do you ask?”
“Well according to my ability this item.” Bjorn pulled out the Stellar dust. “Has a unique level of rarity.”
“What? Can I see it?” The excitement was obvious in her eyes.
“Sure, why not. Just be careful not to drop it, it is considerably heavier than it looks.” He held it out almost nonchalantly with one arm.
Adriana moved to take it but Bjorn didn’t let go. Not until she placed both hands around Bjorn’s hand. He gently placed the vial into her palms. He could see her visibly struggle when he let go of it and she had the full weight of the vial. She brought the vial close and looked into it. The jet black dust that was contained within the vial had small motes of what looked like stars that winked in and out of existence. It was mesmerizing to look at. The dust within looked to have a level of depth that would be impossible for the vial to actually contain.
He had no idea how long the pair of them stood there looking at the vial in her hands. It had a way of drawing them into it. All he knew was when his mind resurfaced from wherever it went he checked the clock and it was near to nightfall. Based on roughly the time they got to this area several hours and up to 8 hours must have passed.
“So what do you think about it?” Bjorn asked.
His words must have broken her out of whatever trance she had been under as he saw her almost cloudy eyes clear. “Take it.” She almost commanded. When he took the vial from her he could see visible relief flood her body.
“How long was I holding that? My arms are killing me.” She emphasised her point by shaking out her hands. “This is amazing. I have never seen anything so beautiful in my entire life. Can I have it?”
Bjorn let out a small chuckle. “To use and not to stare at correct?”
“Huh? I don’t even know what it does, all that I know is that some part of me is begging me to own, consume, possess whatever it is. What is it called?”
“Stellar dust.”
“Stellar dust.” She said with wonder in her voice. She sounded like a kid talking about Santa Claus. “What does it do?”
“Well from the best I can understand is that it will create a celestial seed within you. I don’t know what that is, or what it does, what it means. But if I was to venture a guess, whatever it is would be a great boon for anyone who creates one. It sounds like a celestial seed is something that will change you on a fundamental level and will make you a better person. A super soldier serum if you will.”
Adriana licked her lips. A look of avarice on her face. She must have realized how creepy she was acting because she almost immediately stopped what she was doing. Her face fell and she slapped herself on her cheeks. “You should put that away before I jump you. I almost just attacked you to take the vial from you.”
Bjorn quickly complied. As soon as the vial went back into the bag of holding it was as if the spell that had fallen over Adriana snapped and she relaxed. A small shudder ran through her body.
“As much as every fiber of my being is screaming at me to use the Stellar dust, I don’t think I should. If just being in the presence of the dust was enough to elicit this kind of reaction from me, I don’t want to consider what it will do to me. I don’t want to consider what kind of effect it will have on my mind. I know not 2 minutes ago I told you that I want it. I can promise you now that I do not want that dust. Please promise me that you will not give me the dust under any circumstances."
Her complete one eighty took Bjorn by surprise. This reaction she was having was similar to when she met Luna. When Luna had almost broken Adriana’s mind to her will, to get her to do whatever Luna wanted her to do. A small part of Adriana’s personality finally clicked. For her her mind is the only place that has always been hers, nothing or no one would be able to violate it, at least in her world view. The thought to her of something invading her mind, or affecting her mind, was something that went against her world view. It was something that could break her.
“Yeah I promise. I will not give you the Stellar dust. But the fact remains we need to find out what to do with it. It will last roughly a month before it completely degrades, and as the notification said nothing can stop this process, not even the time stopping effects of my bag of holding. So our options currently are to use the dust or to let it degrade into nothing.”
“Thats simple. You take it, you use the dust. I can imagine that a celestial seed would have to be a boon for you.”
“Eh, there is a slight problem with that line of thinking.”
“What?”
“Well you see, I already tried to use the stellar dust. Some part of myself would corrupt the celestial seed as it grew within me. I think it would corrupt me in turn, and no matter what I try to do, no matter what I try to do for good would actually lead to evil. I don’t know how that would manifest but I can say with certainty that it would end with more damage done to the Eld than help.”
“Hmmm. Well then, I guess that only leaves us with two choices. Either we find someone we trust to use a unique level item on which will likely turn them into a celestial creature. Or we let it waste away, and instead of changing the power going out of control we just let it disappear.”
“Those were my thoughts exactly. To me that isn’t much of a choice. If it comes down to giving someone we don’t trust a power that we don’t understand or letting it go to waste. I would rather let it go to waste.”
Adriana got up and paced back and forth. Her hand on her chin as if she was trying to stroke a beard. “But is that the moral good? You said so yourself, that celestial beings are creatures of good. Is it right to let an unquestionable good leave this world just because we don’t trust whoever could use it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have an answer, or a good answer. What I think we should do now however is set it aside and worry about the present. Our goal still hasn’t changed, we still need to hunt down the rest of Kairon’s crew. So to that end we should sort through the various gear that we collected from the battle we crashed.”
“Agreed.”
Bjorn began pulling item after item out of his bag of holding. They were indiscriminate with how they looted the battlefield. It didn’t matter whose corpse the items came off of, they took everything. Leaving behind mostly naked if not completely naked people. After their looking spree Bjorn learned something he wished he had never learned. Goblins both male and female were just as much if not more ugly when naked than they were when clothed.
Most of the gear that they collected off of the goblins were either too small, rusted to the point where it was almost useless, or damaged so badly that it was actually completely useless. However there were a few things that they managed to collect off of the dead goblins that could be of use.
They decided to split the rings. Adriana got the two health rings as she had lower health than Bjorn and she didn’t have any rings to boost her stats. Bjorn got the stamina ring due to him being their front liner, and as it turned out melee fighting was considerably more taxing than attacking from a range.
As for the bow they stored it for the time being. Its shorter size made it harder to draw. Adriana was almost able to draw the bow but it was just slightly too heavy for her. As for Bjorn it was too short for him to use. Besides on top of that it had the same damage range as Bjorn’s drow bow he got all those years ago, but the trade off was that it had significantly less range than Bjorn’s bow. This new bow made Bjorn realize that it was about time for him to get a new one.
The amulet was actually kind of a heated topic. Bjorn wanted Adriana to have the amulet because she would probably get the most use out of it, and the one who needed the damage increased the most. Adriana didn’t want to get the amulet because it just felt wrong for her to wear something that made it easier for her to kill her own kind. It just felt wrong on a fundamental level. So they compromised and Adriana kept a hold of it, she would only wear it if she needed its help when they confronted Kairon.
Although the staff was cool and would be powerful it was actually kind of useless in their group. Neither one of them had access to air magic. On top of that the mana cost was almost prohibitive. Bjorn had better uses of the mana so it wouldn’t be great for him. It was too big and bulky for Adriana to carry on herself, without some sort of dimensional folding bag it would just be clunky for her to use it. So for the time being it went into Bjorn’s bag of holding.
Adriana decided to keep the highsteel scimitar. It was the weapon that she took from the goblin that almost choked her to death. Even though she was fully healed her leg occasionally twinged with phantom pain from where she got stabbed. She decided to keep it for two reasons, the first being that she didn’t have any good medium ranged weapons, she had her bow and several knives in case someone got too close for her bow. On top of that it just felt right to keep the sword that injured her in the fight.
That was it for the useful goblin gear. There was still the usefulish gear that they got from the bandit party.
That was the extent of the noteworthy items that they found on the bandit’s bodies. However they did find several damaged bits of leather armor with a small amount of metal armor. All of that was basically worthless to them so it stayed in the bag of holding for the time being. They weren’t overly well protected, it spoke volumes to how much Kairon really cared about his troops. He saw small villages with better protected militia than these bandits.
The only other noteworthy things that they managed to get from the battle was money. For the most part the bandits that weren’t Sonia and Vincent only had a few coppers on them for their coin. Vincent and Sonia were outliers, between the two of them they got 92 gold, 140 silvers, and 35 coppers. On top of that they also got two other gemstones. One was an opal the size of Bjorn’s thumbnail, the last one was a sapphire. Based on W.A.I.L.A. The sapphire was 2.5 carats large. Whatever that really meant.
As for how the gear was divided up. Bjorn took two of the health rings and the ring of flowing thoughts. This brought him up to a total of 8 rings that he wore. The mana storing wasn’t amazing but it was like having half of a mana potion on hand as instant mana, where mana potions still took time to restore the mana. Adriana got the last health ring. This round of looting brought her total increased health up by 29 points. Almost 15% of her total maximum health.
The small hand crossbow was useless to both of them as their bows were significantly better so it and the bolts went into his bag of holding. It was starting to get seriously heavy. The same went with the steel breastplate. The lucky charm was useless so they just dropped that on the ground.
The glass hand and a half sword was better than what Bjorn was using, which was a high steel longsword. Its total damage was significantly higher than the high steel, the metal was tougher so it would last longer, and it actually weighed the same. The only real downside was that the blade was almost a foot longer than what he was used to. It was enough of a problem that he would have to practice for a bit to get the hang of it, but in the end the extra reach should be useful in a fight. It did come with the added bonus that he could wield the sword either one handed or two handed. Giving him the flexibility of swinging harder or leaving a hand free for spellcasting. All in all a nice upgrade.
As for the dagger of burning that went to Adriana. If Bjorn got to the point where he needed to use a dagger he always had Tayla’s dagger. It was more than enough for what Bjorn needed, and on top of that it held sentimental value to him, he wouldn’t give that up. On top of that he already got one nice upgrade with his sword, it would be better for Adriana to have an upgrade as well, something to give her that extra bit of help for her to survive.
All in all the gains that they got from the last battle were astronomical. Bjorn gaining 9 levels from Sonia, the bloodroot spriggan also gaining levels, making it harder to damage. It was now like he had a shield permanently attached to his right arm, one that was versatile enough that he could still cast spells. On top of that now gaining access to blood magic. Thanks to her parasitic partner ability she was now level 19. They were slowly becoming a force to be reckoned with. The only downside was that Adriana was still vastly lacking on the experience in true life or death situations. Until this point Bjorn had been taking the brunt of all danger whenever they got into a fight.
The only question that remained was would it be enough? Only time would tell. Bjorn feared that it wouldn’t be.
The only last thing that Bjorn needed to do was allocate the 45 attribute points that he got from the 9 levels. This one wasn’t as clear cut of an answer as it once was. The main problem was this reduced charisma. The problem with that was now he was almost too ugly. He stood out in a crowd. With a charisma score of 10 being average for a human without enhancements he was so ugly that it would be impossible for him to blend in. On top of that the charisma went even deeper than just his looks. It permeated his entire being, even if he was covered or under a disguise his low charisma will make other people instinctively look at him.
With a current charisma attribute of 5.4 which was rounded down to 5 he needed to fix that. The next problem was for each 10 points he sunk into the attribute he effectively only gained 9 points, so he would need a total of 12 attribute points invested into charisma for him to get back to the 16 he had in it previously. It sucked to put the points into a soft attribute such as charisma but it had to happen. He was fairly certain that they would have to infiltrate this town and he couldn’t have his low charisma affecting their next step.
So with a sigh he put 10 attribute points into charisma bringing him to a 14.4 for his score which still rounded down to 14. When he added the next two points it brought him to 16.2 which again rounded down to 16. The 10% reduction was going to kill him. If he was to go back and to the day over again he wouldn’t have tried to capture Sonia’s soul in a soul stone. Honestly with the information he had he probably would have still done it 10 times out of 10. But for the first time since he started his quest for vengeance he regretted a decision he made.
With his 33 remaining attribute points he had to do something to help balance out his build. In what felt like the hundredth time he put 6 points into both dexterity and agility. This brought each of them to 35. Leaving him with 21 points. Honestly most of his attributes were respectable. However one that he knew he would need in the coming days was constitution. So he dumped 10 attributes into it. This brought him to 40 con and gave him a respectable health pool of 442 including his health increasing rings.
The next attribute that he felt was lagging behind was endurance. During the last fight it wasn’t a problem as it was a shorter fight. But still during the fight he had burned through roughly half his stamina. If they got into a prolonged fight, or if he actually used some of his stamina consuming perks he could easily burn through all of his stamina. So to rectify that he put 6 of his attribute points into endurance bringing it up to 30, and his total stamina pool up to 318.
This left him with a choice. His only attribute under 30 was wisdom. But it wasn’t as important of an attribute currently for him. An extra 50% mana per day would give him an extra 167 mana per day to play with. However for the most part each of his fights would happen at once and the rest of the day nothing would happen. The extra mana would be a waste. However, that could change in the near future. So it would be a gamble. However in the same vein having a larger mana pool would be nice. Having an extra 50 mana would make it so that he would have just that extra amount to use each day. Besides most of the time his mana went to waste as he was sitting at max mana. And increasing his total mana would further increase how much more mana he regenerated per day. Ultimately he decided to dump the last 5 points into intelligence. This rounded him out to 385 total mana in his mana pool.
With that taken care of they decided to start heading towards the location indicated on the map by Vincent. Based on how far away the spot was from their current location it would take them a day or maybe a day and a half to get to the village. It finally felt good to have a direction to channel their hate and drive towards.
As they traveled the pit of Bjorn’s stomach began to drop. Not anything fast, not anything drastic at first, but slowly it got worse and worse. At first he didn’t even notice and this feeling just continued to grow, it happened so gradually that he didn’t ever notice it happened. Just slowly a sense of trepidation grew.
The landscape that they were traveling through was much the same that they have traveled through for the last month, small pits or long scars on the landscape. Small hills that would give small vantages but not enough to see over the towering trees. Luscious meadows or patches of bare ground with nothing to really indicate why it was bare soil.
Adriana didn’t seem to have the same feeling or be affected as Bjorn was. It wasn’t until that night that Bjorn finally recognized the feeling of trepidation that had slowly crept into his body over night. When they stopped for the evening Bjorn was fidgety, impatient, and paranoid. Every little sound set him off, put him on edge. The rustling of leaves and he would snap his head in that direction tensing up his body. A small breeze would blow through and Bjorn would put his hand into his bag of holding ready to react to an enemy.
Adriana noticed his behavior and it also put her on edge. “What is the matter? You have been acting oddly all night.”
“Huh?” He hadn’t been expecting a question, even as his mind processed the words that Adriana said the rest of his mind was constantly exploring the surroundings looking for any perceived threat that wasn’t really there. “What do you mean?”
“You have been jumping and tensing up at every little normal noise of the forest. Why is that? You aren’t normally like this, normally you are calm and collected. What is going on?”
His mind understood what she was saying but he was so thick with paranoia that it didn’t have an effect on his mental state. “I don’t know, I just have this bad feeling, like we are being watched. Or we are walking into a trap. Or maybe that we are going to get caught and all of this would be for nothing.”
During their travels together Adriana had learned to trust Bjorn’s instincts, or at the very least his gut feelings. They were usually right and saved their asses on more than one occasion. “Do you think that is actually possible? Do you think that there is a chance that we will fail?”
“There was always a chance, a great chance. But that chance is as low as it has ever been. I don’t like this, I am going to make sure that no one is around us.” With that Bjorn got up from their small space in the forest and he walked into the forest.
He spent the next several hours slowly patrolling the land around their camping spot for the night. He started close and slowly made his way outwards exploring every bit of the forest. He didn’t find anything. He had searched the forest as thoroughly as he possibly could and still there was no sign of life other than the small normal creatures of the forest. Nothing that would cause his feeling of trepidation.
Finally he went back to the camp that he and Adriana had for the night. She was sitting there alert with her bow on her lap. “You should try and get some sleep, I know I won’t be able to, not yet. I am too wired. I will wake you up when I am too tired to keep watch safely.”
Her head snapped to him because he had broken stealth behind her. When she saw and heard Bjorn her body relaxed. It took her a moment for her to fully relax enough to where she could breathe normally again. “I’ll do what I can. But I doubt I will sleep well tonight, you have me on edge.”
“Yeah. I don’t think either of us is going to sleep well tonight. Still do what you can.” With that he didn’t even wait to see Adriana’s reaction before he got up and went back to slowly patrolling the forest around them. Nothing happened or he didn’t see anything during the night that would even be close to considered a threat.
It was about an hour before dawn when Bjorn had to finally admit that his body was tired enough that he needed to sleep. Every fiber of his being was screaming at him to not give the post over to Adriana. That if he did something would go wrong, someone would stumble upon them, someone would catch Adriana off guard and all of this time and effort would go to waste, that Meira and Alaric would never be avenged. But the survival instincts that had been beaten into his brain over the years in the Eld won over.
He finally woke Adriana up and had her take over his watch. Before he tried to lay down to sleep he cast one of his new spells on her. It was dark vision. The abyssal mana coated his hands as he cast the spell. It coated his hands like a pair of gloves. When he touched Adriana a small amount of the abyssal mana stayed on her skin. It slowly seeped into her body. After a few seconds the mana was completely absorbed and her eyes changed color from a brown color to the same green as abyssal mana. Her eyes didn’t glow or anything like normally happened with other magics. The irises of her eyes just turned the pale green color of abyssal mana.
With that done Bjorn lay down to try and get some sleep. He doubted that he would get any. He was wrong, not even a minute after he lay down his mind slipped into unconsciousness.
He awoke with a painful pressure in the middle of his back. Before he even opened his eyes he automatically tried to fight back against the pressure. But something was wrong, he not only felt weak but something was stopping him from moving, from fighting back. He was paralyzed.
He opened his eyes and he saw a familiar scene. It was one that plagued both his waking mind and sleeping mind for the last year. Luna’s face was front and center in the middle of his vision. She was bent down mocking him for his cries of pain. Just past her face he could see Meira on the ground getting violated by Jarred, Ramsey was just starting to pull out his knife so he could sever the muscles keeping her mouth shut.
For the millionth time since this traumatic event happened he wished he could do something. That he could have fought back. He now had more power, how was he not able to fight back? How was everything that he had accumulated over the last year not enough.
The injustice of the world and his mind didn’t care however. He was forced to watch Jarred fuck his wife and watch as Ramsey slowly sawed through the muscles that were used to close her mouth. This always happened whenever his mind decided it was time to relive this event. It was always a question of how long he had to live through the event again before his mind pulled itself away from the dream.
Only somehow this time it felt more real than it did before. In previous times where he experienced it sometimes the sounds, the sight, the feelings, or his emotions were muted. Sometimes it was multiple, sometimes just one, but it was always one of those senses that was muted. This gave the dream an almost unreal feeling, like it didn’t happen and instead his mind was playing a trick on him.
This was the first time that he had this dream that he felt everything, saw everything, heard everything. The first time since he lived the experience the first time. Only this time he could hear things that he didn’t hear before. It was almost like his enhanced senses were brought into the dream with him. Making so that he noticed and heard things that he didn’t when he lived the experience.
He could hear Meira’s throat try to make sounds, trying to cry out to Bjorn, asking him for help. He could hear the pat as Jarred thrust himself into Meira’s womanhood. He could hear the stiffening of Killion’s pants as he grew engorged by the sight before him. The entire reignited that same feeling of helplessness and his body once again entered the same fight or flight state it had been in.
Just when Ramsey was about to re-enter Meira’s mouth the world jolted around him.
Bjorn sat up, his heart racing and his body covered in a thin layer of sweat. He had reached down to his belt and pulled Tayla’s dagger from behind his back and held it out in front of him ready to defend against whatever happened around him. His breath was racing and shallow.
He looked around himself and saw nothing, nothing that was a threat. Nothing that was the cause of this experience, nothing that warranted this level of readiness. He slowly began to relax as he took a few deep breaths to calm himself.
It was early morning with a thin red yellow color in the sky. It had only been a few hours, if that, that he was asleep. While he was calming himself and his nerves he took stock of the surrounding forest. It was still, quiet, as if it didn’t want to risk Bjorn’s ire. Normally this early in the morning birds could be heard chirping overhead, small creatures would be moving through the underbrush of the forest, rooting around in the dirt trying to find some sort of morsel. Not this morning.
After what felt like an eternity to Bjorn but was probably less than 15 or 30 seconds Adriana made her way into the small nook between two trees that they had used for their camp that day. When she entered the nook she took stock of Bjorn. Even though he was starting to uncoil he still looked like a spring ready to jump any which direction.
“Bad dream?”
Bjorn just nodded.
“The same one?”
He nodded again.
“I am sorry you have to keep living this over and over again. Are you sure there is nothing I can do to help you? There isn’t anything I can do to help lessen the impact of the dream? I am willing to do anything.”
In that moment Bjorn believed those last words. They were the same words she has spoken to him time and time again over the time they have traveled together but this was the first time be believed them.
“I appreciate it but I don’t think there is anything other than time and revenge that can help me.”
He wasn’t looking but if he had been he would have seen Adriana’s face fall. It was only a moment, there was pain plastered on her face, then it was gone. Schooled away so that Bjorn wouldn’t see how his state hurt her. He didn’t need it, he didn’t need to see how his words and actions hurt those who cared for him the most. She just wished that he would confide in her, that he would open up to her. He carried the world and no one was there to help him. No one was there to help him carry the burden.
“Well seeing how you won’t be getting any more sleep today. Shall we go see what we are dealing with?”
