-Break-
Φ"Cyrus, stop, he should be around here."
"Suzuka, I don't see anyone in the area."
"No, I can tell he is definitely here somewhere. Cyrus let out another scream."
Following my instructions, Cyrus lets out another large roar, which rips through my eardrums again. I need to focus; his thoughts should also be going wild right now.
What the hell is going on up there?
Up there? Is he below us? "Cyrus, I need you to dig down to the bottom."
Taking out his sword, Cyrus uses his legacy on it, then strikes the ground, cracking it open. He continues to drive straight through the ground until we completely break through.
Falling into an area below, I say, "Where the hell are we?"
I just heard something. Has someone found me?
Grabbing Cyrus's horns, I say, "Over there, full speed ahead."
Without waste Cyrus goes towards where I point him, using his sword, he breaks through wall after wall, taking the shortest possible path towards our target.
Eventually, after Cyrus breaks through enough walls, we come across a man in a black hood. "We have found you, Percy."
Turning around, Percy leaves the room as fast as he can.
Quickly following him, we come across a labyrinth. No such people should be on Skydust; those two must definitely be from Gevurah.
"Cyrus, we don't have time to lose heads that way, blow past every single obstacle."
"Right!" Cyrus says as he moves past all the ways in his way. When we see Percy again, he is climbing stairs, trying to leave the underground area. "Stop right there, you bastard!!"
Hearing me, Percy throws something in my direction, and as it comes at us, it looks like it is about to ignite. Before I can react, Cyrus uses his tail to grab me, and then I am thrown right at Percy as an explosion goes off behind me. "Cyrus no!!!"
Using my anger to gather myself, I tackle Percy outside. "No more running away, you bastard, you're coming with us."
Picking Percy up, I walk over to the exit I was thrown through. Casually walking out of the exi,t Cyrus says, "Did you ca-a-a-atch him?"
Seeing Cyrus, I kick him in the shin and say, "Don't scare me like that, I thought you blew up."
"So-o-o-orry, I knew it wouldn't kill me."
"Sorry isn't going to cut it, I almost had a heart attack," I say as I repeatedly kick Cyrus.
-Break-
Φ Where I come from it gets rather cold, and because of that, it is commonplace for families to hold each other tight during the night. So my oldest memory is the feeling of sleeping beside my mom and dad in our small house.
We were poor, so poor that we could only afford a single small scarf to cover us every night. Despite how sad such a view may look to people, it was one of the happiest times of my life.
I love that I could feel my parents' warmth so close, I loved that I could hear the heartbeats of my parents, and I even love how close our faces were mashed together under the scarf.
My parents were always one arm's reach away, and they used that fact to shower me with kisses and praise. Even though the nights were freezing cold, my body and soul were a blaze with happiness, and that was thanks to the scarf that bound us all together.
Even as I grew older, the warmth of the scarf never faded, but some things did. Day after day, when we all slept together, I could hear their heartbeats getting weaker and weaker each day. No matter how much the scarf kept me warm, it didn't mean my parents were the same.
I tried to find ways to help them get better, but no matter what I did, I couldn't improve our situation. In my country, warmth was for the rich or the immoral.
All I could do was sleep each night with my parents as their heartbeats slowly faded. Every night, I hated to go to sleep, and when I slept next to them, all I could feel was despair. The same scarf I loved so much just became a reminder of the inevitability of death. The scarf that joined us felt more like the grim reaper's ever-hanging scythe.
But it seems the scarf didn't feel like that to me.
"My lady, I am in love with you. Please marry me!!!"
"I think you got the wrong lady."
"No, I haven't, I saw you at the market wearing that same scarf. From the moment I laid eyes upon you, I just knew I had to have you as my wife, so please marry me!!!"
"Sorry, I have two people to take care of, and I can't just marry someone on the street whose name I don't even know."
"My name is Krik, Kritz. Let's get married."
"DON'T JUST IGNORE ME. I need you to leave me alone, money is time, so get out of the way."
A well-dressed man standing beside Krik says, "Hello, my name is Eliot."
I bow out of reflex to the presence of this man.
"I am sorry for my young master's brash approach, but I would have you know that master Krik is the owner of the Skydust shipment agency. To put it simply, my young master is a rather affluent merchant, so the young master has no financial issues. We can even reimburse you for your time."
"You see, I am rich, so marry me, please!!"
"Do you really want to be with a woman who would marry for money?"
Grabbing my hand, Krik says, "That matters not, I am sure that if you marry me one day, even if 50 years from now, I can get you to love me back, so please marry me!!"
Taken aback by his forward momentum, I start to blush. "Wait a minute, I need to ask you something."
"Go ahead, darling."
"Just to make this clear, if we get married, there is a 100 per cent chance that I will never love you, are you ok with that?"
"Of course, I am, I happen to be a man who can make even the hardest of rocks soft."
"I see you're an idiot. I will take you up on your offer, but to add one more clause, my parents, for the rest of the time they have left, will get to live with us."
Suddenly, tears pour down his face like a waterfall. Shocked, I say, "Why are you crying?"
"I knew your soul is as beautiful as you're face, you put family first even when offered a life of luxury, you truly have to be my wife," Krik says, jumping directly at me.
Holding him back with my arm, I say, "No touching."
"Then I will wait till we are married."
"You didn't understand, there will be no hanky panky at all, you got that?"
He falls down on the floor and says, "Really?"
"Oh, do you not want to marry me?"
"No, I understand, but in return, I will like to add a clause to this marriage. I must have a daily intake of 500 hugs!!"
"You get 5."
"That was my plan in the first place," Krik says giving me a hug.
Looking at his overly ecstatic face, giving me I hug, I feel happy. But then calm myself down when I notice his hand on my ass.
Using all the strength in my weak arms, I punch him straight up in the air.
"Elliot, I need you to catch me," Krik says as he falls towards him.
But Elliot uses the heel of his foot and crashes Kirk's head into the ground, "Young master, that was very boorish of you."
Krik shoots up from the ground straight away. His energy is so ridiculous, despite being injured, that I get shocked. "My darling fiancé, may I please get your name?"
"My name is Dush, Dush Zalik."
Getting on one knee, he says to me, "Dush Zali,k will you marry me?"
"Talk to me after the dowry is paid, let's go meet my parents."
Following me, he says, "Right."
Without hesitation, Krik went to my house and got my parents' permission with a giant showing of his affection, and the next thing I knew, we were all taken to his home country of Skydust, where he married me on arrival. And true to his promise, he let both my parents enjoy the last year of their lives to the fullest.
After both my parents passed, I felt lost; my only reason for living for years up to that point was to take care of them and now that had disappeared. But it seems my new husband couldn't stand by and let that happen, so every day without fail, he would come up to me and shower me with love.
And eventually, he asked me, "Would you like to go to school?"
"Are you trying to call me dumb?"
"I would sooner cut off my tongue than slander my darling in such a way. It is just that I heard you never got the chance to get educated."
"Well, what can you expect, you got to keep the peasants dumb to keep them in line, and in all honesty, it is not like I have much use for it any more, the only reason I would want that is to take care of my parents, but that isn't an issue anymore."
Getting up from his seat, Krik gets on his knee near mine and says, "I know you may not see the reason for it now, but I can guarantee that if you go through with this, it will without a doubt bring lots of light into your life."
Looking at his face a blush a bit blushes, he really does know how to look handsome from time to time. "Ok, I will give it a try."
"That's wonderful," Krik says, jumping at me and trying to give me a kiss.
"No kisses, don't get ahead of yourself."
The very next day, I started to learn all I could: Mathematics, languages, geography, history, and literature, and to my surprise, little by little, my mood increased.
But another thing that increased was my appreciation of Krik. Uneducated before, I wasn't able to grasp what he truly did around Skydust.
His family business owns the wonderbeast, Zterytavis, a giant four-winged bird, which is responsible for the shipment of all the goods of Skydust to their locations around the world. His family was the sole point of contact that Skydust had with the rest of the world.
And towards that end, he has countless jobs: making sure all the merchandise on Skydust is sold for the proper price, and to people who appreciate it, public relations nobles and merchants all around the world, and the import of goods and outside food supplies to Skydust.
It isn't an exaggeration to say he is the sole reason Skydust runs as smoothly as it does. He is loved by the people of his country; to them, he is one of a kind, and the more I saw this behaviour, the more I wanted to help such a man, the same man who chose to love and help me unconditionally.
"My darling Dush, I have heard you have been taking etiquette classes. Is everything ok, honey?" He says, jumping at me.
Stopping him with one hand, I say, "Control yourself! And just so you know, there is no issue."
"Then why are you going out of your way to go through such training?"
Smacking him on the head, I say, "Because obviously when I see my darling husband trying so hard, I decided that I need to do the same thing as well. Idiot."
Jumping at me again, he says, "I didn't know you cared."
"Get off of me, you monkey!!!"
That energetic fool's love really was relentless, and eventually, it got to me.
Holding my body underneath the sheets, Krik says to me, "Are you sure this is fine, Dush?"
"It will be as long as you stop crying."
"I just never thought this day would come."
"Well, it has, so stop wasting time and get on with it."
"Ok then, I love you, Dush," Krik says as he prepares to begin.
"Wait!" I scream.
"Ehh, did I make a mistake already?"
"No idiot, it is just that I wanted to tell you, I love you!"
Unable to hold himself back, he kisses me and begins.
For the first time since my parents died, I had truly felt the warmth I had lost, but all good things eventually vanish.