"This is it?"
I asked as I glanced at the black and blue slime coated on the ground. Rial nodded, then began placing dried grass and firewood chips upon the foul muck. She struck at the flint and steel attempting to guide the sparks which flew out onto the flammable grass.

"So you're telling me a shadowbug, or whatever crawled out from the dark side di-"
Rial cut me off. She spoke back in a calm yet threatening manner.
"Enough about this, Mun. No more stalling. Tell me what happened."

After Rial's repeated tries with the flint, at last a spark jumped into the tinder setting ablaze a droplet of ember. Immediately she scrunched down and proceeded to blow oxygen into it.

The flames rose into an orange shimmer, engulfing the wood chips and grass. Eventually the fire burned its way down all the way to the slime. Pitch black smoke fumed out at the moment the slime made contact with the heat. Rial, who still laid low tending the flames, jerked up coughing as the smoke reached its way onto her face.

"By the light, that's repulsing!"

Rial fluttered her hands around in hopes of keeping the foul, shadowy silhouette far from her nose. When the flames seemed to have moderately wasted away the disgusting muck, Rial stomped on the fire to put it out. Shoveling away the ashes and ember with her foot revealed the ground to be free of any of the slime from earlier. Once she saw that the ground was now clean, she stepped back and turned toward me. Cocking her head ever so slightly to the left, she spoke.

"Well?"

Judgment time.

"Um, first of all, they did say they drank occasionally. But..."
"But what?"
Rial demanded.
I asked back as well.

"Well, where did you the idea that hearers can't  drink?"

"You know, from-"
Rial's face, previously showing confusion at my initial question, distorted with displeasure as if she were revisiting some past horrendous memories.
"From fifteen years ago. They told me hearers can't drink."

I said again, puzzled.
"People from the mirror said drinking has nothing to do with hearer work."
After a pause I continued.
"You know what, Rial? This seems like a good of a time as any to ask this question again. What happened back then? When we stayed at the Zenith, what happened?"

Memories during the time Rial and I stayed at... Lusk's mansion were blurry. Once I got older, though, I did have a better grasp on what Rial and, albeit another faint memory, Carn suffered through in the mansion. However, life back at the mansion became another subject I mustn't bring up to keep Rial from 'freaking out', along with the talk about the Zenith and hearers. Yet now, Rial was being active herself about shedding some light on the whole, somewhat past trauma with those topics.

Rial clenched down on her lips, lowered her head downwards then began walking away. She spoke with a resolute voice as she carefully took every step toward the darker side of the forest.

"Take a walk with me."

So I did. I stayed three steps behind Rial. Every step taken drenched the surroundings dimmer and dimmer in the darkness. Rial then opened her mouth again.

"I used to be so bothered by talking about these things, wasn't I? About hearers, the mirror, and the Zenith."

I kept my silence as she talked. She halted in place, then turned around to face me. The tree shadows laid over her body, covering her expressions in the tenebrous light.

"What do you think changed, Mun? Here you are, after taking a visit to the mirror. Here I am, ready to talk about what happened at the Zenith."

I thought about what she just said. Less than half-a-decade ago, these subjects would have been her dark place. The slightest mention of them was a trigger for violence, screaming, and anger. I spoke out an answer.

"Time. Time changed, Rial."

Rial smirked.

"Or maybe alcohol happened."

Silence filled the cold, forest air. Every inch of our surroundings seemed to be nothing but silence. We would breath in silence, and we would breath into silence. Rial decided to reignite the talk, burning away the bits of quiet.

"You first, Mun."

I contemplated on what to say, then figured to screw the plans and just to be as honest and objective as possible.

"You remember Pyio, right? The hearer lady back at the bar you talked about? What she said was about right. Hearers don't live like monks. They drink, indulge, and go about their lives like the rest of us. You had the wrong idea about them. That's the conclusion I have."

Rial stared into me for a while. Probably she herself was also mapping out what to say. Supposedly she came to the same idea as I did, seeing how she took a deep breath as if trying to shake away any unnecessary details.

"We left the mansion when those hearer guys came to take us to the Zenith, right? You remember how I said they told me I was a vessel. Anyways they made me go through what they called the 'numbing'. That's where I got these ideas about hearers, firsthand. They fed me these weird pills and the one thing they stressed so much was that I wasn't to drink or-"

Rial stopped mid-sentence, then abruptly turned her head to the left. She scanned around the forest, move her head side to side.

I asked what she was doing.

"What is it, Rial? Are you-"

Rial raised her palm signaling me to stay silent. She then waved her hand gesturing something along the lines of 'come here'. I treaded slowly and soundless toward her, noticing how nervous and on-edge Rial was acting. I whispered, now that we were about 3 inches apart from one another.

"What's this about?"
"Shhh! Listen! Do you hear that?"

Rial brought up her finger to my lips. Upon auditory concentration, small, faint rustling of the leaves came to my attention. Not in a continuous noise, but in bursts. Like footsteps.

"Is that... shadowbugs?"
Rial spoke in an almost silent manner.
"We're not deep enough in the forest to be seeing those."

The rustlings continued. The sound echoed all around, circling the perimeter. Rial pointed back toward the north, where our shed was at.

"Let's just slowly head back."

Rial furtively starting treading back, taking one careful step after another. I stayed a couple steps back, following her in the same sneaky way.

"Is that what you said you saw? That thing making the noise, the human-sized shadowbug?"

Rial murmured back.

"I don't know, just, let's get out of here."

A couple minutes pass walking, yet the rustling continue. Was it following us?

Then, the noise suddenly gets much more rapid, as if a wild animal was attempting to lounge at its prey. From the bushes leapt a shadowy creature, tackling me to the ground.

"Argh!"

I scream out in astonishment and fear. The being, just as Rial described it to be, resembled an amalgamation of shadowbugs with eyes, a mouth, and a face. It pushed down it's body against me. The dark, black tendrils from it's torso lashes down onto my neck. It's human equivalent of hands grasped my arms firmly, continuously trying to dig itself within my body. Was it trying to eat me?

"Mun!"

Rial screeched as she came rushing toward me. She threw herself forward with her arms out, in hopes of getting this monster off of me. Surprisingly, the creature is pushed away from my body with little resistance. The thing rolls away a couple meters, then having regained its posture shrieked in a high pitched tone. I myself also stumbled away from my original position, and scurried back up on my feet.

Rial and I stood head to head against this abomination, facing each other. The thing lowers its stance, as if preparing to charge at us once. Rial notices this, and screams out at the monstrosity.

"Back, beast!"

She takes in a deep breath, breathes out, then sings.

Alto de flames and the light
In grace of the one's might
Set fire to the dark
Amber, bark
Burn and cleanse
Boil the blood
Coat the mud
In soot mo then

Immediately the creature flinches, as sparks rise from the ground beneath.

Vu' uhn ze ta
Blun pin vhen
Ingra iigin vul

The body of the monster glows faintly white. The being lets out a shrieking howl as the tendrils surrounding its body stretches inwards. Suddenly, the arms of the beast vibrates.

A distinct, dreadful hum rings out from the creature's body. Rial's eyes widen as she stops her words and witnesses this situation. The creature was singing.

Inhumane sounds as they were, the monster expunged accurate melodies of the Song of Flames. I muttered out in disbelief.

"It... it's singing!"

The fiery embers on the creature's body and the ground quenched out, and now the ground beneath us began to show signs of bursting into flames.

"Rial! Sing! Sing!"

I shouted out in panic. Rial, hearing this, somewhat broke out of her dazed state and countered this creature's lyrics.

A symphony of words, both in the voice of a female and in the voice of a bloodcurdling hum, echoed amongst the forest.

The air all around heated up, as two distinct melodies clashed in an attempt to send the other wasting away into ashes.

Then suddenly, an enormous flame bellowed between the creature and Rial. I pulled down Rial and myself to the ground trying to avoid the encroaching heat. A giantic explosion of embers rushed over the forest.

After we scuffed out the little remains of sparks that had caught onto our clothes during the explosion and got back up on our feet to look around, the beast itself was no where to be found.

Rial and I, we just stood there. In the dim forest light, with half burnt and tattered clothes. In a strenuous endeavor to wrap our heads around what just had happened.

The same slime, the one we had charred away back at the brick hut, covered the dirt where the monster had been standing. Some droplets of it also soaked my clothes, presumably from when it had pinned me down to the ground.

Rial and I looked at each other, seeing how we were panting and trembling.

"Let's..., let's just go back home."

Rial suggested with an trembling tone.

I was too tired to reply, or to think of a better thing to do. I nodded.

And we dragged our exhausted and frightened footsteps back home, back to the brick shack.