TRACK 28

Talk to me as I am sleeping

Hold me while I'm dreaming

Honestly I could just breathe you in

Met you when my heart was bleeding

I'm constantly feeling

Drifting through an endless reverie

(Dark Beach- Pastel Ghost)

********

Naoya Sano's face peeked out from the empty space between the wall and the door of Hikari Akiyama's room on a late evening in Japan. He did, and he did it with the strangest expression she had ever seen on his face.

He just stood there and did not knock, did absolutely nothing but stare at her where he was for several moments, his dark eyes -no longer hidden by the colored lenses, which were resting on his forehead, where short dark strands of hair were in an absolute mess, like usual, perfectly comparable to a bird's Nest- gleamed.

And that expression of total attention -the nervous stalking type, Hikari couldn't help but think- lacking any kind of explanation... It wasn't the only disquieting quality about him.

As if that were not enough, his small, knotty hands were hanging on the door, not even trying to imitate Spider-Man himself or something like that. Half of his body seemed to be almost swaying, from there, though not in such a way as to loudly crash against the wooden floor surface.

Hikari, just from looking at him, already knew that there was going to be a massive, utterly chaotic, storm coming. A vengeful tempest of the rather explosive kind, perhaps. Maybe not dedicated to her specifically. But for other people? For sure.

"Get off the door and just tell me what you want," she asserted in a flat tone and with an arched eyebrow, peering back at him, one hand ticking against the computer's cursor while with her left leg, she pushed and pulled the chair next to her a bit repeatedly.

Naoya did exactly as he was instructed, even though while descending, reaching down, and touching the ground with his feet, well, he honestly seemed to be almost disappointed.

"Do you... uhm... Do you recall the favor I did to you, Hikari-chan?" he asked in a half-voice, a smile on his face. And he began to move through tiny little footsteps, as if afraid of making the floorboards creak, shoving one of his hands into his pocket, pulling out his cell phone.

Hikari merely nodded her head. Of course, she remembered, it was almost a stupid question to ask. It was genuinely hard for her to not remember.

Hikari's situation in October had been hard to forget. It had been when she had been selling pills to the Main Underground Gang, all to gain their trust -their patronage- and at the same time to scrape together a few yen. A mixture of the two things had allowed her to have eyes and ears everywhere in the city and to therefore keep on hiding, keep her freedom. But it had still brought her into trouble all the way, as the whole thing had ended in a downfall that was connected to what might have been called some sort of magical Yakuza.

But Naoya -who she had met only twice, and one of those had been a call for help- in his second shape, armed with a katana, numerous kunai, and his unleashed Magic, had kicked everyone's ass. A sight to watch, for someone like her who had been caught somewhere between the option of being beheaded and being pretty much kidnapped and tortured.

So, yes, she remembered very well, but whatever.

"Well," his voice was soft, extremely quiet, as if he still didn't want to be heard by anyone. As if even the faintest of noises could attract too much attention. "I would like for you to do one for me as well. A small one. Nothing to worry about."

Hikari, running her own hands over her temples and then moving several strands of hair from her face, let out a small, mumbled "Okay..." all while looking at him with an expression plastered across her entire face that incited him to quicken his pace, because he was seriously far too cautious. Far too slow.

"Alright, then..." Naoya leaned closer to her, his mobile phone in one hand, the other one tapping on the screen frantically. A moment of silence ensued. Then, "Could you hack this phone? Or intercept it? Or a combination of the two, perhaps?"

Hikari arched her eyebrow, mild shock painting itself on her face. "Why would you even need to...?"

"No questions, please." Naoya stopped smiling suddenly, appearing more than serious. "It's classified as Top Secret."

He sounded both tense and excited as hell.

"...Okay," she muttered a second time. "So, tracking down a phone number?"

"Yes. Or at least start with that. Could you? Possibly right now, if you don't have something more important to do?"

Hikari grabbed the cell phone without much thought, without blinking or giving him a vocal response.

The individual Naoya wanted her to intercept was a contact whom he had named Midnight Blue Hero -a bit cringe-worthy as a name. It screamed Power Rangers, but who was she to judge?- and that had a black cat as their profile picture.

Just looking at the picture made her instantly want to sneeze. Lame old-ass reaction to cat fur allergies. Luckily enough, she hated cats. And cats hated her back.

The chat the two had had was hidden. All of the messages they had exchanged had been deleted, but it was pretty clear that the texts were only a short range away from each other.

It was all very suspicious, but ... It was okay. It was a Top Secret mission of sorts. She didn't need the details. She didn't need them because she had no intention of getting into trouble a second time, unlike Naoya who seemed to do it almost for fun.

She started fiddling, first fighting with the mobile phone, then with her PC, poking around all over the place to pinpoint the precise location, fetching an already half-consumed cigarette and bringing it to her lips. She took little time in doing so, all things considered, mostly through a few nudges here and there.

When she concluded the process in the smallest of details, the detected destination left her somewhat perplexed. And as a result, the cigarette practically fell out of her mouth in surprise.

"It says that it is in a nonexistent location." She asserted with pure bewilderment.

"Yeah. That's it. That's the problem," quipped Naoya in a somewhat unnerved tone, getting up from the second chair in her room that he had ended up sitting on during Hikari's work. He had his head resting on his hands, and his elbows weighing down on the wood of the desk, before. Now they were just moving all over the place, almost jerking from one to the other. "During the call I tried to make, it was saying the same thing... This is why I would like you to hack him? I want to see if I can find some more explanations for that."

"Uh... All right..."

"But once hacked, don't read anything. Don't read messages, don't listen to audio... Just leave everything to me, pretty please."

"Yes, yes, I understand. You didn't need to tell me that, Naoya-san." She blurted out, sighing and slightly rolling her eyes before getting back to work.

Cracking the true internal protection of the phone took more than the few little nudges that she had used to get its -utterly nonsensical- location.

Even with literal hours, with sweat running down her spine, with Naoya intent on yawning every three by two, the defense of the unknown person's phone didn't drop. It even got her PC a damn, heavy virus. What.

She had to pause and take a bit of air because if she didn't, she would have ended up screaming curses. And throwing hands, too.

She restarted her work exactly after getting back in the room -a plate of dorayaki in one hand and a strawberry milkshake in the other- trying to work in a different way to get in the piece of the electronics system.

While she did, Naoya's eyes were on her constantly.

********

After wandering around the cave for who knows how long, following the sound of the running water, Nari and Blinky finally ended up in a part of the cave that was so big and cold that it froze the blood coursing through her veins, all the plants on her body retreating to hide among the leaves, closing off drastically. Yet everywhere around them there was not even a hint of ice.

The space they had found themselves in widened up all over and rose to such an extent that the ceiling seemed about six, seven meters away, even though all of it continued to be visibly curved down. It was interrupted by rocks, numerous stalactites, and crystals that protruded, but were still so far away as to be impossible to touch. Had they come loose, their fall would have been destructive, to say the least.

The ground beneath them was smooth and slippery in places, so much so that both of them had to take small steps to avoid falling as they walked forward. The effort became even more complex as they advanced, especially counting that although smooth -almost aesthetically perfect- the slope was such that, should one foot have slipped off, the fall would have continued for numerous meters with no way to halt it.

In the middle of the cave, they could see the river, which they saw horizontally. A rather long, almost endless-looking river flowed down from a wall -the one furthest to the left- and proceeded straight to the right in total darkness, where there appeared to be a gallery of some kind. It was much smaller than the one that they exited to get there.

And the river was the one with the bright pink color, just like all the little creatures -all identical to the first one they had seen- that went around it at a slow pace, which was an almost unnatural slowness. This was before they threw themselves into it -falling in, it seemed. As if they didn't have the strength to support gravity with just three legs. Or as if they did not want to support it- and to disappear from view.

Not even a hint of ears or tail peeked out of the liquid. Nari had looked for them as they moved ahead, expecting them to come ashore again or to catch a glimpse of them swimming, but she did to no avail. It was as if they had been swallowed completely by it.

"Miss Nari..." murmured Blinky, taking her attention away from the river. His voice was very low, so low that if they had not been so close at that moment, she probably would not have even heard him.

"Yes?" she asked in response, raising her head. A tone of voice similar to his was born from her. All of a few moments before she found herself staring at Blinkous Galadrigal with a hint of concern, an emotion that could only increase upon seeing the frown that was painted on the Troll's face.

"I think I see something," he said. He went to point to a seemingly vague spot in the darkness that was many, many meters away from them.

Nari tilted her head, giving it her full attention. She found herself squeezing her eyelids as hard as she could to focus properly, to even look for something, some shape in that obscuring darkness. But by standing still on the spot she could not get a single proper glimpse of anything.

She threw a single look in Blinky's direction -who had not shifted his eyes from what he was pointing at- then returned to look forward, walking several tentative, ever-so-small steps. Both because of the texture of the ground and to be sure not to get too close.

If there was something there, being too close to it would be more than dangerous. Especially if they were caught in it.

Following those small strides, she went back to squinting and observing, also feeling Blinkous flanking her in the process.

Peering into the darkness had not improved much, but it had enhanced enough for her to see a silhouette looming in all that stark pitch blackness.

It was quite large and appeared to be crouched over itself. The only reason it was visible was because of the pink river that was almost glowing in all that inky darkness... And the being was very close to it, especially its head.

In shape, its head was long, similar to that of a possum. But there were no eyes on it, not even in the direction of the mouth.

No, it had no eyes on its muzzle, which showed flashes of greenish fur. But peering closely, another couple of steps taken forward, he caught a glimpse of one, just a little further away from what looked like one of his front legs, where the ligament should have been. It was... pale purple. Perhaps.

Nari could not help but hold her breath, knowing perfectly well what creature that was. A feeling of mild terror enveloped her stomach and her blood froze in her veins even more than it had been before.

"Miss. Nari?"

"Do not breathe..." she said, immediately reaching out to grab one of Blinky's arms. The Troll seemed, just then, to better visualize the creature in turn. And realize what it was too, so much so that all his eyes went wide open.

"Great grumbling, gruesome..." he uttered in a low thread of voice. And he inhaled as much air as he could to hold it in as long as possible, just as Nari herself went back to it, trying to ignore the tension.

She was more than sure -they both were- that that was a Daolaogui. One of the most venomous creatures in the entire East, quite famous for it everywhere, but which technically should have been extinct -and thus making this one the last of its kind- in the middle of a dimension opened by the Core of a Phalaenopsis Aphrodite. It had been torn from its original land, from its home and times, by the Portal. All this when the flower had been Purified by Dalai.

And the purple eye, just like the green fur, said that it was a male -if it had been a female, the colors would have been reversed- so it was not only one of the most venomous creatures but the most poisonous ever. One spit, whether in the face or elsewhere, and they would have both died. Not even their bones would have been left in contact with such corrosion. And the rest of them would have been eaten, the creature tearing off chunks of flesh -and stone. It ate stone, too- with their sour tongues, almost made of sandpaper in the parts that weren't covered by acidic saliva... and by their very, very sharp teeth.

They couldn't run. Not with where they were. Not with the way the ground was. They could only avoid being noticed, which was quite tricky anyway. If not impossible, even, counting the capabilities of his senses.

And really... wasn't it already odd that he hadn't noticed them yet? That he had not moved at all from where they were, even when they had spoken to each other?

He was conscious but had shown no real signs of response, except to blink and to ... keep his long tongue dipped in the river. Lapping on it.

Nari frowned, taking a few more steps forward, trying to keep an eye on him, but at the same time not to be too close in her wary strides.

The violet eye even went to rest on her, but even staring at her, scrutinizing her, there was no... There was no lucidity in its eye. There was no liveliness. No glow.

It was a sombre, dull pale purple as if someone had sucked out all its vitality. It was quite disconcerting.

And while the Daolaogui could have been pinned down as a great danger that would have brought inconceivable pain and a slow and painful death, Nari, standing and seeing it in that state of apathy, of mental and emotional emptiness, pitied it greatly.

They moved away as quickly as they could, however, to avoid the case where it might have changed its opinion and that hunger could have been the first emotion for it to focus on. And the two of them... the first food available.

********

Jim was more than sure that, whether he was thirsty or not, and whether he was lonely or not, it was far too early to start experiencing hallucinations of any kind.

In the Darklands it had happened all too often, but he had spent much longer there before having imaginary sightings of people. It took quite a lot to see Claire and Toby, before hearing them chatting... sometimes questioning him things, sometimes berating him for choosing to go alone, for choosing to leave them behind. At times they even told him that they didn't care, that they were happier without him.

He had found himself staring at his mother. She had always been silent, always waiting for something he had never understood what it was, exactly. If it was for him to say or do something, it was never clear. She only seemed to look at him with something like judgment and pain jumping into her gaze.

He had found himself looking at Blinky, Aaarrrgh, and Vendel, all of whom kept asking him nonstop where he was and why he wasn't at the Trollmarket when they needed him to be there.

It happened often. Too often. To the point that to stay sane he had carried five pebbles in his pockets, all of different sizes. Little pebbles that he had tried to carve out at least a little to make them more distinguishable. He had drawn them on walls, too.

But here... It was too early to see things where there were not. People where there were not. It was far too early to be fooled so easily.

And even if he was hallucinating in such a way... He was not seeing anyone he knew.

As he kept marching along in the middle of nowhere, still seeing only soil, soil, and more soil, he occasionally did seem to catch a silhouette of a person whose face he could not see.

He stood beside or in front of him during his seemingly never-ending and extremely repetitive journey. He stood right there and just looked at him.

The first time he had seen him, he had been far away from Jim. He had tried to run towards him, hoping it was someone he knew, but once he had reached him, he had not been there anymore. He had felt quite foolish at that moment, to say the least, but he had passed over it rather quickly, merely shrugging his shoulders and pushing himself to move on as if nothing had happened. It had been a trick of the eyes, he had told himself.

The second time had been very similar to the first, but he had not run towards him. He had just walked very briskly, wanting to be sure that someone was there. And the silhouette had been steady, had increased its size, had been more visible in his advance, enough to revive in him the hope that it was a person. But about two meters away, it had vanished again like a cloud of smoke, leaving him staring at the horizon with a grimace etched on his face. And in that case pretending nothing had happened, putting it aside, had been much more complicated for him to do.

The third time he found him at his side. He had seen him out of the corner of his eye. And he turned around, but once again there was no one there.

The fourth time, he had always been at his side, but when he turned around one more time, he remained there. And so Jim found himself staring at a pale figure with no facial features, no eyes, nose, or mouth in it -but even without one, he had felt him staring at him everywhere- with messy, black, very long hair. For the rest of him, he had been surrounded by a thick dark cloak.

Jim had tried to speak to him, that time, but the figure had disappeared moments later, once again. And he cursed out loud.

It had happened four, or five more times, but once again with a bigger distance separating them. And at times the unknown entity's hair was tidier, pulled back. At times his cape was very, very ruined.

At times he even seemed to have a mouth, but his lips never opened. He did not speak, He remained silent, something calm, far too relaxed showing in his posture.

When he had had a mouth for the first time, Jim had seriously waited for him to answer his question, to tell him something. But yeah, nothing changed at all. Absolutely nothing happened.

He was there and then he was gone. A single blink was enough to remove his presence from the whole place, but not to remove the feeling of being stared at very closely. Of being able to feel unseen eyes following him through every smallest movement, every step he took. And so Jim had no idea whether he was hallucinating or not. He shouldn't have been, technically. Not with such a little time having passed.

'...That is if a short period of time has passed. A day or two at most?'

He had no clue. Not anymore. Hard to have one.

He knew that he had not stopped often, at least.

Maybe.

Sometimes he had even counted the number of seconds. But maybe he had miscounted them without realizing it.

He had slept only once, of that he was sure. And it had been an exhausting, uncomfortable slumber, no matter how tired he had been. And before he succumbed to sleep he remembered wondering things to himself, dwelling on whether perhaps he should change direction or not.

He remembered finding it a good idea, but at the same time fearing that he would undo all the path he had traveled on. He would leave just before reaching the right location. The place where he would see a river or someone, someone who would perhaps have water to drink, and food to eat -he had not found anything to hunt around there, nor any herbs that appeared slightly edible instead of a one-way ticket to the Underworld- and that would therefore remove the feeling of a dry throat and the grumbling that his stomach, which jumped in from time to time. And that had driven him to pursue the same path he had been walking on so far.

But as far as he was concerned, what about the rest of it? It seemed that it had even been weeks. And simultaneously only seconds. The same amount of time in the blink of an eye that allowed the silhouette to appear and disappear as it suited him.

At times he almost expected him to appear, though not in a positive way. When he disappeared and didn't appear for too long -a mental calculation of his own, then maybe there was less of a time gap than it appeared to him- he wondered if he was gone permanently... and part of him would welcome it very willingly -because maybe he wasn't going crazy, maybe he wasn't seeing things anymore if it was a vision of some sort- while on the other side... he was beginning to wonder if that something that was keeping an eye on him really existed, an uneasy feeling taking hold of his stomach just at the thought.

A ghost? Or else? Was it possible that it might be a magical creature that was having trouble appearing because in that place magic wasn't working properly?... Just thinking about it, it didn't seem like a bad hypothesis.

And then, again following that line of thinking, there was the question of whether it was a good creature or a bad one that he would have to deal with. The latter seemed a more plausible option than the former.

The blade of his -momentarily new, much less reassuring, much less familiar than the Daylight- sword was ready to be used against whatever strange thing it could be.

********

"It must have been very sad," Nari found herself saying in a whisper, bringing to mind the Daolaogui's figure, its awkward pose, and lost gaze. It had reappeared behind her eyelids whether she wanted it to or not.

The demi-goddess sensed Blinkous' eyes on her before she resumed speaking. "A creature born from the earth to predate reduced to a hollow soul shell."

"Even predatory creatures like that need a pack," Blinkous Galadrigal faintly remarked, returning to look ahead. "Loneliness and exile, no matter how much the environment is familiar with them, must have affected them severely."

Nari frowned but found herself barely nodding in agreement.

"Could I perhaps ask you if you had ever glimpsed a real specimen that closely, Miss. Nari?" asked Blinkous, his tone curious.

"Only once, in the core of a mountain," she asserted. "But I had no troubles with putting him to sleep, back in the day."

The Troll gave a slight shake of his head. Remained silent for a bit, then talked again. "...I listened to stories of Daolaoguis since I was the size of a pebble like this," he went to point to a small rock only a little away from his foot. The sight brought a small smile to Nari's face. "Adults used to enjoy frightening us with legends of the Cold Mountain Demons. Seeing one and surviving it was seen as legendary, an impossible ordeal..." he scratched his head. "Kind of like living in Paleolithic Australia, apparently," he paused once again. "I must say that we were rather blessed with luck in this case."

Nari nodded in agreement, again. He was more than right, yes, especially since Nari herself would not have been able to stop the creature as she had the first time, had it been entirely self-conscious and ready to strike.

But one of her hands still skimmed over her elbow in slight nervousness, whether she wanted to do so or not. She did it by mentally reviewing, once again, its eyes. Yes, she didn't need anything else than those single dead pale purple irises.

She did so by suddenly comparing them to the ones that had been Bellroc's before they had put a village on fire, the villagers screaming constantly about monsters, monsters, and monsters to the wind as they condemned other magical creatures to death -and they burned them at the stake or hunted them down. Ruined them just for the sake of it- that had barely received life from the Earth, from the Gods.

Bellroc's eyes had been almost apathetic at that point. Almost. But anger and hatred had filled them underneath.

Nari could not help but wonder if her own eyes would become like the Daolaogui once Bellroc and Skrael were officially gone. If they would be like that until she met their next reincarnation. A reincarnation that would lead them to choose other names, to no longer be what they had been, to no longer see the world in the same way. One that would lead them to no longer be them.

Just thinking about it made her feel a squeeze in the center of her chest.

She couldn't stop asking herself if eventually she would have cried. Or if her essence would have refused to since it was something natural. Natural and inevitable to the point that she would simply absorb the entire emotion. After all, what would change from not having a Family, when they were no longer a Family at all? They weren't the ones that she used to play with, the ones who reassured her when she needed it, the ones who gave affection without asking for anything.

She couldn't help but ask herself how she would react, really, but she didn't want to, so she focused on their surroundings. It was a small, helpful step forward that she forced herself to take.

So, her gaze fell on the gallery for the umpteenth time.

At that point, the road became very narrow and was almost entirely flooded by the river.

She and Blinkous were trying to avoid getting too close to it, especially since the ground around it seemed to be easy to break. It was like that to the point that occasionally rocks would fall into it, the sound of the impact echoing far and wide, even ringing in her ears. And so they remained close to the walls but continued to follow it carefully.

Nari focused on how the gallery itself seemed to open up into other small, subtle sections. Sections which in any case were much, much fewer than there had been previously, where they had appeared everywhere like mushrooms, even intertwining with each other, making that sort of underground labyrinth more difficult to navigate than it should have been.

But no, this part of the cave was pretty simple. And rather calm.

Some of these sections even seemed to have an almost immediate end, a single glance was enough to glimpse at it. And it always took a glance -or two at the most- to notice how, for the most part, the ones that were closed were all on one side, while the longer ones were on the opposite side. Across the river.

This view made the hope of getting out of there fiery, almost explosive. It was so intense that it instilled a hint of impatience in their journey. Again. But despite this feeling, they still took short periods of rest when they needed it. They kept doing it to make sure they maintained their strength, to not get out and feel like they were never going to move again.

"Do you miss those times, Mister Galadrigal?" She found herself asking -after a long period of silence- the words slipping from her lips almost too quickly, leaping over a small crack that traced the ground in front of them.

The Troll, for a moment, seemed almost surprised by the question.

"Sometimes yes," he admitted. "In some respects, everything seemed much simpler." His expression was slightly troubled before a half-smile broke through. "Little me would have never imagined becoming a Community Leader. And even now, even just the idea of it, it's like an odd-tasting sock, to be completely honest."

"What does an odd-tasting sock taste like?" Nari tilted her head, blinking a few times.

"Uh, well... How can I say it... Washed but with a tasty edge." He raised and waved his hands a little. "As if it had been used, but not quite. Or maybe as if a Human had started to wash it, but hadn't completely managed to clean it. So you're left with the savoriness, but it's not as good as you'd expect it to be from the smell. And it leaves a bad taste in your mouth."

Nari tilted her head even more, trying to take in fully the spoken words, dodging another crack in the ground, this time only by lengthening her stride.

"Huh..." she let out, almost gutturally. A single line that should have been followed by a sentence, but was instead frozen in place -and dramatically removed, making her forget it- suddenly, by an intense shaking of the ground.

Dust and rocks started falling from above, and the cracks in the ground could only get bigger, more of them adding themselves everywhere.

Panic struck them both and took their breath away, causing them to look swiftly at each other, before returning their eyes to the ground, following the gradual worsening of the situation without being able to say a word.

Everything went too quickly. The rifts, their anxiety, their need to survive...

They ran. They sprinted forward as quickly as they could, following the path and hoping harder and harder that the exit would show up for real. But the more they ran and the more the situation worsened, all the breaks on the ground became holes, some showing pitch-black darkness and a never ending fall.

To avoid falling into a hole that was forming right where they were, they ended up jumping into the river without even thinking twice, the liquid instantly welcoming them into a cold embrace. And overbearing pressure on both dragged them away.

But when it did, it was on the opposite side they wanted to get at, as the water was moving back inside instead of forward.

********

The sudden earthquake made Toby jump so high that he almost hurt himself during the movement. This before ending up paralyzed in place just as if he had been hit by an electric shock and clutching the bag as if that was a matter of life and death.

But the moment of fear disappeared rather quickly when he realized what was causing the trembling of the earth, the feeling being replaced by intense dismay: from the sky, in fact, right on the horizon where the lake was, some sort of large waterfall had formed. And it was emptying itself into it, causing first a sort of large tsunami and then thick white smoke.

The impact of the waterfall caused a deafening noise and the tsunami, each time it rose, fortunately, swarmed in various directions, one of which was the river that he had almost managed to reach -he was now almost truly alongside it; he'd probably get there in about ten minutes, at the pace he had been moving to- but it wasn't going to run over whatever was around it. It wasn't going to drown him, especially, still far away or not.

And he could do nothing but stand there, staring, his mouth wide open in shock and his eyes equally wide. He found himself looking at it until everything stopped, including the shaking of the ground.

Only the thick white smoke remained, which immediately began to advance, extremely fast, and cover every little centimeter of what was around it.

In just about three minutes, it had made it completely impossible for Toby to even see more than an inch from his nose. There was just so much white everywhere that he had no idea where to step.

The only positive thing was that the territory had not been irregular, as far as he remembered... By following a mental path, he would arrive at the river he had glimpsed, but he wasn't sure if being close to it was the best idea at that moment.

Maybe waiting for the fog to go away would have helped... or maybe something would have been hidden in all that fog. And not being able to see it well would have been a huge problem. A deadly one.

But so far, except for the giant red insects, he hadn't run into any danger... Luckily. So unless they emerged like this, due to the presence of thick fog, the chances were somewhat lower.

A bit. Not even that much. But a bit. Yep.

He still hated the fact that he was alone. Talking to himself to fill the silence, as if to give himself a schedule to follow -little but important invisible missions- continued to be the only way he could bear it, but it was losing part of its charm, often leaving him with a grimace printed on his entire expression, as he often was intent on sighing slightly.

Toby, very cautiously, sat down on the ground.

'What now?' He couldn't help but wonder, receiving no response, of course, other than a simple, slightly tense "Aaaand we wait," which he muttered under his breath.

He tried to strain his vision as much as possible -no matter how poor the results that the attempt was giving him, because, really, he couldn't see anything at all- to try to glimpse something in the fog, even the smallest thing. All with one hand returning to clutching the bag and the other touching the weapon that was hanging from his belt, still in its sheath.

'I miss my Warhammer too,' he found himself thinking, a pout forming on his face.

He wasn't used to the small thin sword he had right now with him. Four times out of five he would forget it was there, becoming surprised that it was. This was for a couple of moments of awkward silence, only to remember it later.

'Maybe I should give it a name,' he suddenly mused, 'Maybe it would help.'

Toby went to take the sword out of the sheath, placing it just above his legs. Then he looked at it carefully, studying it in every little detail.

It was very simple. Triangular pommel, gold grip but of a slightly faded golden -it was clearly ruined. With a little more care, perhaps it would have been as good as new. Maybe there was some way to get it to look better again?- and with a red band that was tied at the very end of the hilt with the seal of Camelot on it. Plus, the blade was a metallic gray and wasn't too long.

He stared at the weapon for several moments, even sticking out his tongue as he thought of a proper name.

It had to be something simple, but cool. A name that had the right sound.

'Warsword ?'

No. Nice, but no. It felt like a bad copy of the Warhammer name. It felt too much like a reminder. It wouldn't have helped distinguish it from the hammer, on the contrary. It would only make him miss it more.

'Lightblade? Fastblade? Swiftblade? Flash? Lightning? Quick Silver?'

Those weren't bad either, especially the third one, which sounded pretty intriguing, but Toby wasn't convinced.

'Camelot's sword?'

He regretted that name almost instantly. It sounded pretty bad and had nothing interesting about it. So, another no. The biggest no between all the choices he had thought about.

His eye fell again on the hilt, just like a moth attracted to a flame.

'Golden...' he bit his lower lip. 'Golden something? Golden Stinger? Goldenblade? Golden Reaper? Golden Tusk?'

No. They still weren't good. He felt like he was closer to a possible option, though.

'What do I need right now?' He asked himself, frowning a little and staring at the blade even more.

The realization hit fast as lightning. The final name attacked his mind in full force right there, right then. And both the satisfaction and the excitement rose instantly like a wave.

'Goldenmate.'

Toby smiled openly, finally convinced of his choice.