Waking up Kyle found himself in a somewhat old and worn house.
He was laying in the ground with a makeshift bed made out of large and soft leaves, probably those of the leaves from the white star tree.
However Kyle, lacking this knowledge grew interested in this leaf as he had never seen these types of leaf in his life.
He then looked at the pillow he was laying on which was handmade making it feel less comfortable but it was better than anything he had slept on except for the bed that his leader had given him.
Kyle then observed his body being wrapped in a leaf. These leaves often mimicked those of a banana leaf.
This leaf was something that Kyle had recognised, he would often see some families using this as a substitute for normal bandages during the Great War and the pre-crisis that lead to the war.
The leaf came from a slightly poisonous large plant and the leaves had to be carefully processed.
'I think the name of the plant was Noxtorn. I don't know the method of processing since no one taught me but I remember it being very popular among most of the poor people and soldiers' Kyle thought seeing the bandages around his body.
As he was observing his body. The door opened as a person wearing a classic knight armour with the addition of a black robe walked in and upon seeing that Kyle had woken up, he walked up slowly and spoke,
"Please lay down, you need rest." He said, his voice quieter than a normal person.
Kyle, hearing the words from the knight, still held up some guard, even injured, still not sure to trust him or now because while someone had treated him out of goodwill, it didn't mean that the person who treated him and the knight was the same person.
'For all I know, this knight could have killed my supposed saviour'
While Kyle would love to trust the person in front of him and lay down, he didn't because he had to be cautious, at least for now.
"No need to put your guard up, I'm just here to help you out." The knight said trying to calm Kyle down
But while this situation and the situation he had faced when he met Sky was similar, there was a difference.
For one, he knew that even if he refused Sky's help and attacked him, it would be difficult to deal with him since he knew all the techniques to knock me unconscious making me able to activate my ability to fight him at my best and there was the factor that Sky was the only one in the cave with him and Kyle had known that Sky was the one who fought and treated him and his claims of not wanting to fight and him not killing him made him trust Sky enough to let him to join his side.
But this situation contained none of those factors.
"Relax, you're Sisu aren't you?" The knight said not to approach Kyle further to not prompt him to attack.
Hearing this, Kyle was shocked at someone knowing his real name and the doubts and reasons he made were forgotten in that instance.
Even in his own kingdom, only 3 people knew his real name, it was a name that he hadn't heard someone call him that for 9 months,
"How do you know my name?" He said, his voice being more aggressive.
"I was originally from your side of the street before the pre-crisis, although I did leave the kingdom near the middle of the pre-crisis." The knight responded, still keeping his distance. "I had known your father before he…you know, uh…how do I say this."
"Killed himself" Kyle responded finishing the word the knight was hesitant to say.
"On your 14th birthday I had saved and given you some food, don't you remember?" The knight spoke, trying to remind Kyle.
"Then answer this, what was the food I had received that day."
"Mushroom soup, I had given you mushroom soup since I thought you would share it with your sick older brother."
"What were the exact words that the gifter had said to me?"
"I had said, 'Learn to be comfortable alone, learn to be comfortable in silence and only then will you learn truly how to survive as a weakling and only after you have survived as a weakling, can you learn to be stronger.'" The knight spoke, his voice turning soft, "I had spoken those words as you were about to join the gathers to earn some food while you were still struggling, So I said those words hoping you could be an independent kid, who would grow from his weakness."
Hearing these words made Kyle feel something, something he had felt occasionally, a feeling that made him trust the person.
"Are you Draelith?" Kyle asked curiously.
"Yeah I am but it feels weird when someone calls me that name for some reason, So I prefer you refer to me as Tervain."
"Well then I personally prefer you call me Veyrith since that's the name everyone calls back at the kingdom, but as I'm travelling with a not fully trustworthy person I would like to be more consistent in my deception, so call me Kyle."
"Not so trustworthy… yeah, I won't dive into that complex relationship for now so let's talk about something else for a change." The knight spoke, slowly approaching Kyle, "Well let's talk about the kingdom, how is it holding up after all the… 'crisis' that it went through."
"Well, not good, in fact it literally got destroyed and caused the death of over 80% of the population." Kyle said with a bit of a sarcastic tone which quickly faded away, "We were just roaming around until our leader showed up and united the remaining people and with the help of the white stone we found, we managed to create a kingdom, though it was a small one with only an estimated population of 2,000 people."
Tervain hearing new terms such as 'white stone' and the sudden news of his kingdom falling and the rise of a new smaller kingdom made him understand that this was a very and I mean very simplified version of what had happened during the years he had left. This also made him realise that Kyle may not be the best person to summarise this information.
"Could you explain everything from the beginning in detail, slowly?" Tervain asked politely.
"Sure, I'll explain everything I can in detail and also how I met this person who calls himself Sky."
"Yeah, that's better for me." Tervain said, grabbing a small wooden stump which he used as a chair and sat somewhat close to Kyle to listen to his story, "But before that, Sisu- no, Kyle could you instead tell me about a few other things?"
"Yeah, go ahead but I might not answer your questions" Kyle said as he laid on the bed with both his hands behind his head.
"How did the kingdom get destroyed exactly?"Tervain asked, very curious and worried about this matter.
"I don't know the exact details but it had something to do with the internal conflict weakening the kingdom's defense and the invasion of a group of fiends"
"Could you elaborate on the cause of the internal conflict or the final moments of the internal conflict and the crucial moments that happened changing the war?"
"I can't," Kyle replied instantly and went silent for a few seconds making the conversion awkward, before he spoke again, "I don't know about that at all so I literally can't tell you even if I wanted to."
"I see, you're a bit unreliable in this department like always aren't you?"
"Is that an insult"
"It is if you take offence." Tervain replied, smiling inwardly, "You've really grown haven't you?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, normally you would just stay silent and not make any remark unless you have to or if someone asks you a question but even then you stay quiet most of the time." Tervain said moving his hand to express his thoughts, "Now you're still awkward in social situations but at least now you don't stay quiet at every single situation making you look like a mute Kid"
"I see…" Kyle replied realising his actual self-development after Tervain pointed it out.
This made Kyle feel weird, the feeling was small, fragile but resilient as if it was feeling that Kyle had forgotten but this feeling soon faded and only felt like a small drop of water into a river.
'Odd…' Kyle thought as he failed to recognise his own feelings or rather lacked the knowledge to classify and explain it.
"Trust be told I never expected the pre-crisis to turn into a full war or crisis just like the old hags that predicted this. I guess I should have guessed the crisis part since the struggle we were facing was literally called pre-crisis."Tervain said, pulling Kyle out of his thoughts.
"Well I ask some questions later, you can go ahead and explain everything you said you would." Tervain continued, a bit of sorrow filling his heart at the news of his kingdom falling.
"Sure, I'll first explain the white stone" Kyle said, clearing his throat before continuing again.
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
The pursuer held his throat as he gasped the air falling on the ground.
His neck had blackish and reddish marks as a result of the mark left by strangulation and his teeth were chipped as he struggled to cut the strings with his teeth and any other sharp blades he had in his pockets, which turned out to be just a very small metal file whose edge had been a bit sharpened.
The fight he had taken had caused many injuries to occur on his body.
His nose was broken and was bloody. He had droopy eye lids and one of his eyes was blood shot red. His body was bloody injured and there was a ringing sound that he could hear.
He had trouble breathing and when he did take a breath of fresh air, his chest was in pain and despite this, the pursuer looked at the cliff where Sky and Kyle had jumped off with the white stone.
He stared at the cliff with blood shot eyes and resentment.
He slowly stood up and walked like a drunk man, struggling to even stand and despite his resentment turned around and tried to go to the base with hurry as if he didn't reach the base before the night of the ravishing moon ended and the sun rose and fell, he would surely get eaten by the monsters that will come out on that night.
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
"So let me get this straight, the reason why I found the guy named Sky with a part of his skin skinned off was due to this plan he made to steal this white stone." Tervain asked, trying to confirm what he had understood.
"Yep," Kyle replied, confirming his beliefs.
"Why couldn't you just use a cloth to wrap it and throw it." Tervain asked looking for an answer instead of a reply from Kyle saying that he doesn't know.
"Well I had to first hide and move from the shadows for quite a distance, like around eight hundre- no around a kilometer to remove any chance of me revealing my presence, and the total mass of 2 salt rabbits is quite large even if you don't consider the weight factor, it's a handful to carry even when you carry it on your back and moving through the shadows is like swimming and I can't surface in the air at all until I reached near their walls and I had to quickly throw the thing and could only take half a breath to move through the shadows and in that situation, Sky said, we needed to limit the risk as much as possible."
"So that's what led to a part of his abdomen being skinned." Tervain spoke, his understanding growing, "but why did he go through that much effort? I mean he didn't know you much and you even tried to kill him, heck he probably doesn't even know that Kyle is a fake name you use."
"No I do and I did." A sudden voice came and both of them turned towards the source of the voice, there they saw sky who was still struggling to sit up and not lay down.
"No need to force yourself." Tervain said, trying to make sure Sky didn't open up any of his wounds.
"You said you knew that my name was fake from the beginning, but how?" Kyle asked, confusion filling a small part of his mind.
"That's easy, from the beginning I realised a key fact about the behaviour of yours, your finger twitched whenever you lied." Sky replied, laying down as his body fatigue made him unable to stand.
"Ah, That explains it" Kyle replied back staying calm realising his own mistake. "But do I actually do that when I lie?"
"Definetly." Sky responded with absolute confidence, "I have been forced to constantly observe things out of the ordinary to survive and your twitching of your fingers was not really that difficult of a thing to observe."
"Well can you tell my habit when I lie?" Tervain asked with a bit of enthusiasm.
"Maybe, but I couldn't really observe you in your conversion, in fact this is one of the few times I saw you talk with me. I could probably see through your lies by reading your micro expressions but I can't really do that since you are covering up your face." Sky replied with a somewhat bored expression. "I could probably find your habit after a while of conversing but could we move on from this topic?'
"Sure, but what do you even wanna discuss about?" Tervain asked
"I would first like to know if you have a soul interpretation or not and if you do, I would like you to tell us what it is." Sky said, hoping that Tervain would answer his question.
"This may sound dumb but what exactly is a soul interpretation?" Tervain asked, his hand subconsciously moving behind his neck.