DRIFA

  I tried to get rid of the snow in the area, I wasn’t sure if Abs noticed or not but he wasn’t able to make another snowball. Even with that, he seemed pretty happy about the snow just sitting on Ismund’s face for a few moments before he reached up and wiped it off.

  While Abs was making fun of Ismund, or at least it looked like it, I pulled on the edges of my sleeves, my stomach was full of butterflies, and it seemed like my lungs wanted to breathe in tandem with the furious flaps of their wings. I looked around us and jumped at so much as a little crack of sap in the weak fire.

  We were going to the boss soon.

  Am I ready? Could we wait longer? That would let Ismund heal more… that sounds like the smarter, safer, option. But, with Abs trying to hurry out the door, I’m not sure how long this’ll be able to last, we’ve probably waited a whole day or more longer than he wanted to wait.

  I sighed.

  I don’t know…

  When I looked back up at the situation in front of me again Ismund was holding a snowball and Abs was standing in front of the fire, he was a black outline there.

  Ismund had grabbed the snow that hit his face, spat on the snowball a few times and rubbed it into the snowball to make it coated in ice.

  Ew.

  Absinth obviously found the situation entertaining, at least for a few more seconds. After that, not so much.

  Ismund winded up his arm, twisted his shoulder to the side, and flung the snowball full throttle at the big man, right in the neck.

  I wasn’t sure how he’d hit Abs, but he obviously seemed quite happy with himself and made a distorted grin with the bandages distorting his face again.

  Abs stood still, he was processing. It had less to do with what had happened and more what he was going to do. Based off of his fists clenching and unclenching fists it wouldn’t be positive, nor neutral.

  The timing for this wasn’t great for my plan.

  “Abs!” I yelled out before he could do anything.

  I held up my writing rock and tapped on it.

  Abs looked back and forth between it and Ismund a few times before giving him an ‘I’m watching you’ gesture and heading towards me.

  He sat down and looked at me with an ‘explain’ look. So I did.

  “We want to get to the boss soon, right?” I said.

  He nodded.

  “I think it would be harder to fight the boss if, lets say… Ismund’s drunk? Do you think that maybe you could,” I cleared my throat, “Remove the effect you have him under?”

  Absinth snatched the charcoal from beside him and quickly wrote “No.” before standing up to walk away.

  “Wait! Please—”

  Abs gave me a look out of the corner of his eyes, I imagined he wasn’t smiling, I could tell since the bottom of his mask was removed.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  Sitting down, he started writing, writing quickly too. Even so, He was only done a few minutes later, it was all written in point form with the Title “The will of post-burned Pork-Chop in her new life.”

  There was a long list, but the most notable thing was specifically ‘she’ supposedly needed revenge to be acted on Ismund and why. There were many, many options for revenge it seemed. The most concerning thing was that Abs, we all know it’s Abs here, wanted to use the contract he imposed on Ismund as a sort of way to make him act as his slave.

  I had kind of hoped that maybe Abs would annul the contract from disliking Ismund so much… but I guess I was wrong. Maybe if they’re friends? If he starts to genuinely like the guy he probably wouldn’t want him under that contract anymore, unless he has a twisted view of friendship and control,

  Abs was Staring me right in the eyes at the moment while whispering to Pork Chop rapidly.

  which could be quite possible.

  His other list on the reasons for why he wanted revenge were simple enough, but they didn’t seem like much in comparison to what he wanted to do to Ismund.

  The reasons were: Ismund being rude and boring, just overall unpleasant, that he didn’t seem to like anybody, not even his backpack(one of the sadder things according to him was that the it wasn’t named), other miscellaneous things about his personality, and most of all, crispy Pork-Chop. He had tolerated Ismund until then.

  We can still fix this. Not through the way Abs want’s to do this, but it can be done.

  I glanced over at Ismund.

  It’ll just be a matter of him complying.

  I looked back at Absinth.

  “What if it’s only before fights so he can be sober during them without hangover.”

  Ismund walked over, intending to sit down, but Abs roughly shoved him away, towards the fire, and gave him a rude gesture.

  He did mention that in the list of thing’s he wanted to do, except Ismund didn’t land in the fire.

  Abs wrote on the stone again, it reflected his actions. It only took a moment.

  “Why would I? I wouldn’t be gaining anything only helping Ismund. You read what I said earlier right?”

  Once I was done reading Abs smacked his lips together a few times and closed Pork-Chops lid.

  “But, it will help, we’ll have another person who can fight in battle.”

  I glanced at Ismund, strangely enough, he didn’t seem to agree. His face was pulled into a grimace with his shoulders hunched in and was purposefully looking away from me. I was confused.

  I wasn’t able to say anything else, not really anyway. Absinth had said something to Ismund while mock-imitating him in, I’m guessing, his most recent fight against Pineapple.

  I wanted to say something but I just knew that it’d be out of sync with whatever Abs had said. I was also completely at Abs’ mercy and I had seen how it’d gone with Ismund.

  Ismund slunk away from the firelight.

  Absinth turned back towards me with an twinkle in his eye waiting for what I was going to say next.

  “Well…” I shoved my hand through my hair and gripped my head, released it and looked up, “what if I always give you one more sausage than Ismund?”

  Abs thought for a moment then shook his head head decisively.

  He brought up a hand with four fingers raised then gestured for them to be large.

  I’m not sure if we can actually afford that with how much meat we have left.

  I tilted my head.

  Well, like, we have plenty left but that doesn’t mean that it’ll last forever and I’d rather not let our resources run short.

  Thing is, it doesn’t matter if we’re in a bad spot where Ismund is practically rendered useless.

  “Three.” I said.

  Abs brought up his second hand so he could have seven digits raised.

  How would he even eat all of that.

  “Okay, four.”

  He seemed happy with the deal.

  I’m glad he is, but I don’t quite get why he is. They’re not that good, just not bad.

  Both satisfied, I headed over to find Ismund, wherever he was.

  After searching for a little bit I found him where he had been last time, well, a little further migrated towards the stands.

  “Did you hear—” I started before I was cut off by his nodding.

  I took a quick peak at his status, the de-buff hadn’t been lifted.

  “Abs!” I shouted.

  I didn’t hear anything back, but Ismund’s status changed.

  “Can I work on your eyes a bit more? Maybe they’ll get a bit better before the boss fight and it won’t make you, “I waved at him as a whole, not that he could see it, “drunk.” Ismund hesitated for a second before nodding, I could hardly see it, but that was all I needed.

  After while of giving his eyes energy to heal I stopped. I didn’t want to run out of energy before the fight, even if it was easier to get it now.

  * * *

  After what I thought was several hours, it was hard to tell without any natural light, we were ready to head out for the boss and Ismund had recovered from his hangover. We were ready to go.