Pain of Death

Chapter Two

“Pride cometh before the fall.”

-Proverbs

The sunlight almost stung her eyes as she opened them, seeing the last embers of a dying fire dozing in the fire pit she had helped dig the night before. It wasn’t often she had to do so much work, and it, combined with all the fresh air of the unchanging country side, had worn her out, and she had fallen into a dreamless sleep. It took her a moment to remember where she was, that she was stranded in Sylvarant, and that her companion was the rather stalwart Kratos Aurion, who sat nearby, his stoic eyes concentrated on her form.

“I see you’re finally awake,” his deep voice, so very different from how it had been portrayed in the games, startled her into reality, and any hope she’d had that this was all some dream was dashed against the rocks.

“I see you’re awake already,” she snapped, her back stiff from her long hours on the cold, hard ground, pieces of dead grass stuck in her tangled hair and clinging to her clothing, damp with dew.

“Yes. I’ve been awake since early this morning. Do you care for some granola? It’s all I have on hand, at the moment,” he seemed unfazed by her brevity and harsh tone, his own tone as casual as if he’d known her for years upon years.

Rubbing sleep from her still tired eyes, she outstretched her arms and was given a container of granola. She suddenly longed for the convenience of plastic bags and not the unsanitary means in which he stored his food, but accepted the food anyway. She was really in no position to complain.

An unwelcome silence fell over the small camp as she ate, only the scrapping of the granola against the sides of the container as she pulled it to her mouth, and the vague whistling of the wind through the grasses of the plain dared to permeate that silence. She took the time to really examine her surroundings, an azure expanse expanded as far as she could see, and the green of the grass was uninterrupted in nearly every direction except south, where a ridge of grey rock hung against the horizon. She guessed, from her knowledge of the maps of Sylvarant, that there was a desert far to the north, and that that ridge was where they were headed, for The Village of Oracles was the only hamlet of safety for miles; except, she supposed, the home of Dirk and Lloyd. She realized in shock that she had no idea how long it had been since Anna’s death, so there was no way to gauge Lloyd’s age, nor the ages of his friends, but she was too afraid to breach the subject, and decided to control her curiosity. She would discover the answer when they got there.

She turned her face to Kratos, who she discovered was staring intently at her, though she hadn’t noticed. She returned his gaze, though she was sure her eyes could not possibly share that same intensity. She was truly shocked to see that he was every bit as handsome as Kosuke Fujishima had likely intended him to be, and wondered vaguely if he and the others involved in the project had some strange channel into this world. He had very broad shoulders, clothed in a tight purple fabric that clung to his form, his neck was also thick, and the skin that stretched so smoothly over his form was powder pale, or as pale as the moon. He had a broad jaw, a long face, and high cheek bones. His eyes were not deep set, but they were tired, as if he had not slept in entirely too long, and were sharper than his features. His auburn bangs swept into his right eye, partially obscuring it, though she could see that they were ruby even from the distance which separated them, a distance of about 30 feet. The color of those eyes was disconcerting to her, if only because no such eyes really existed where she came from, and that was only one of many fantasies that she held.

“Do you like what you see?” he joked, his baritone yanking her back into the present, and she realized she’d been ogling.

She turned a shade of red she hadn’t been since she was in High School, and turned her face away. “I’m sorry.”

He tilted his head to one side, a funny gesture that reminded her of a puppy who strived to understand his master’s request but was failing miserably, and one that didn’t suit him. “Why are you apologizing again? Is this some habit of yours?” he sighed heavily, standing and beginning to pack up the equipment he had strewn around camp “, you don’t have to worry, I’ve often had women tell me I’m attractive. I take no offense.”

“Aren’t you confident in yourself?” she asked aridly, and he snorted.

“It’s better than having no confidence in myself at all,” he retorted, motioning to her frumpy sweater and torn up blue jeans.

She looked down at herself and realized, with a pang of sadness, that she had really let herself go since the accident. She barely ate, and so she’d lost weight, but not in a good way. Now all her clothing was two or three sizes two large for her and dwarfed her petite frame. Her hair was lackluster, at best, and her skin was oily, and she’d be willing to guess that even her eyes had a dead, glossy look. This is what Dani had been dealing with, and she suddenly felt guilty.

“You’re right,” she muttered dejectedly, looking at her hands and feeling overwhelmed; yet she couldn’t even cry because all her tears had dried up.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, suddenly coming to kneel beside her.

“Why do you even care?” she snapped at him, turning her face away from him “, I’m no one to you, remember?”

How had he even mistaken her for Anna in the first place?

There was another silence, except this one was thoughtful. She felt a hand fall on her head in a reassuring way, and she looked up to see Kratos, his eyes concentrated on her form.

“You do not, perhaps, realize that I can tell, just by looking at you, that you are suffering from a weight far greater than you can carry. If there is anyone in this world, or any other, who can understand a great burden it is me,” he trailed off, sorrow flashing through his eyes once again. “Normally, I would not be willing to lend you my ear, but… There is something about you that is reassuring to me.”

She stared at him in dumbfounded shock, her mouth hanging open. She wanted to ask if it was because he saw a part of Anna in her, no matter how minuscule that part may be, that he was willing to listen to her story; but she thought better of it, remembering what he had told her the night before. Instead she closed her mouth and nodded her head mutely, averting her eyes from his constant gaze.

“There was an accident,” she told him “, and some people that I loved more than my own life were lost to me…they were like my family. It was my fault that they died.”

He must have realized that she didn’t want to tell him anymore, for he nodded curtly and ruffled her hair in a companionable, if somewhat awkward, way “, I will not tell you what to do, but I do think that you need to find comfort in the people that you still have around you.”

She thought of her brother, still alive, and her parents, waiting for her to call when she never would again. All her friends, still alive, who had grown up with her, knew her all through High School… What had she done to them? Still, it was too late, she could never go back.

“I can’t. You won’t take me home.”

“Then make a new home here,” he stated simply.

She sat and stared at the horizon, wondering if it was really that simple, until Kratos pulled her up off the ground, informing her “, we can make it to your new home by nightfall if we hurry.”

In a daze, she stood and followed him back onto the dirt road that she was sure lead to Iselia.

………………

Zachary walked into the New York apartment, staring at the tile floor, which was stained with dried blood, though certainly not enough to bleed someone out. His partner stood next to him, her black hair drawn into a tight pony tail at the nape of her neck.

“Is this the place, Zach?” she asked him, staring at the blood in mild disgust.

“The place of the Dimensional Disturbance?” he responded, in turn, with another question. “Yeah, it is.”

“According to this, both of the tenants have gone missing. Eyewitnesses stated that they saw one of the girls running through the streets and heard gun shots a few minutes later. No one saw her pursuer, though,” the woman informed him, walking up to the counter and running her hand along it. “From the looks of it, this place has been vacant for awhile.”

“Yeah, one week,” was his response as he kneeled by the blood, staring at it curiously. “And no one else would have seen him. It takes someone with a particularly big imagination to see an Extra Dimensional Inhabitant.”

“Someone like you and me?” his partner asked, going through one of the drawers in a nearby cabinet.

“Yeah,” Zach moved on, noticing a piece of purple cloth stuck in the molding along the wall. “Maggie, hand me the forceps, will you?”

He took a plastic bag from the inside of his jean jacket, kneeling by the wall, and opening the bag in a very distracted fashion, staring intently at the cloth. Maggie handed him the forceps, which she taken form the black brief case that she’d left by the front door when they’d entered. Zach carefully pried it from the wall and placed it in the bag “; this cloth is from the EDI.”

“How can you be sure?” Maggie asked him, shaking the cloth up in down in the bag after he handed it to her. “Looks normal enough to me…”

“Look more closely.” Zach pointed at the cloth, and Maggie focused her attention on it. “Does it look like any cloth from this world?”

“You’re right.”

Zach smiled, looking at the refrigerator, which had a note pinned to it.

Dani,

I’m going shopping today, I’ll be gone when you wake up to go to work, so don’t worry too much about me, okay? I’ll see you when you get home.

Jesse