"You finally up phsyco?" Kala said looking down at her.
"I'm not a psychopath! I was just a little desperate in the moment..." She exclaimed as she slowly got up.
When she got up, she saw a raggedy old looking worn down dock that had multiple flights of stairs going up the middle mountain, all the way up. She looked at the others, "So how tall do you guys think this peak is?"
"I don't know. Probably at least 50," Tundra said, monotone as always.
"50 what?"
"50 anything."
"It's actually roughly 150 feet/45.72 meters," Ellen said matter-of-factly, tilting her head slightly while shrugging.
"That's too large to walk up all of those stairs is there another way?" Hirune and Tundra said, the pain from having to walk up all of those stairs preemptively filling their voices.
"Yeah, that's pretty average," Kala said. They all turned their heads towards her, "Excuse us?"
After quite a bit of arguing about how large the peaks are, they took 8 hours to get up the stairs. Hirune literally dying on the floor when she finally reached the top, Tundra trying to act as if he's fine yet he's very obviously panting. Ellen is mostly fine, just mildly deep breaths while she tries to keep her hair out of her face from all of the wind blowing into them. As for Kala, she's just frolicking around as if it was a light walk. They all stared at her, "Dang sharky, what are you made out of?"
"Wouldn't you like to know you phsyco?" She answered with a cheeky smirk.
Then there was a loud shriek that sounded like a combination of a cockatoo and a jaguar, the sound also being distorted with the hard wind flowing past their ears. "Why can we never catch a break?" She said as she stood up and dusted her knees off.
The grass around the area was almost as orange and red as the sea way far down below them, there was also a small little shack around the middle of the middle mountain, 2 bridges connecting to the other two peaks. There were also a lot of stones and pillars with scriptures all over them. Then there was another screech, and another. There were multiple of those things around them.
Ellen walked over to the shack and peeked inside, then signaled for the others to follow her in after clearing the area. After they went in, the shack was actually pretty cozy, a fireplace in the middle, some firewood, a couple of couches and blankets. Yet most of all, bookshelves filled to the brink with books. A name flashed across Hirune's mind, and she unconsciously said it out loud, "The Library of Alexandria." They all looked at her, confused, yet they all nodded as if agreeing on the name.
Ellen then felt a sudden sharp pain in her head, as if she'd just badly cut her hands with a knife but in her head. She dropped to the ground in pain, "Good name, but please never say it again! I beg of you." They all stared at her, concerned, yet any time someone said anything that sounded remotely familiar to another name of a historical place she freaked out. The Library of Alexandria sounding similar to a library that used to belong to Namulenza called The Sanctum of Airdnaxela.
Hirune stared at her for a moment, her hands slightly in front of her, about to reach out to Ellen to ask if she's okay. Then as she's about tap her on the shoulder, Ellen waves her hand at her, and she gets thrown into one of the sofas. Ellen quickly turned her head to Hirune as she was now on the sofa to the left and stared at her like a frightened puppy, her hands cupped near her face. She didn't mean to do that, she doesn't even know why she's freaking out so much. "Hirune are you-"
"I'm fine. Sea water on my hand is much. much worst." She responded before Ellen could finish as she slowly stood up to avoid the blood rushing to her head. She was trying to sound and look kind, but there was an obvious scowl on her face. What could've caused such a large reaction? It was just a name, not just that but she only wanted to make sure Ellen was okay. "A better question is if you're okay. Seriously, I said that name and you started freaking out. That's not normal."
Ellen stared at her, she was right. She looked at Kala and Tundra, they both seemed concerned but stayed out of it. "You're right, I'm sorry. I don't know why I freaked out." They all started to walk around the shack, making sure that nothing could get in, but that they could get out; But Hirune was doing her own thing, she was walking around aimlessly reading the spine of the books all over the shack. Trying to find something, anything that might be important to what she currently wants to learn about.
She didn't find anything about Namulenza or Demonia, but she still found something useful. A small little pamphlet that had info on the 8 routes that someone could take. She quickly put it in her hoodie pocket and kept on looking around, doing a double take on all of the books. She'd never really enjoyed reading that much, but trying to learn about Namulenza and her alleged sister changed that. But yet again, she didn't find anything that could withhold anything that has to do with her current interest, just a bunch of random historical texts that didn't matter to her.
She then rested her left hand on a random book; she took a look at it and saw that it was wildly differently colored from the books around it. Not just that but it wasn't even about the same topic as the other ones. She looked around and saw another book just like that, so she swapped them out for each other. Then one of the bookshelves started to slide open backwards. She looked left and right; how did she keep on finding these secret doors when she was all alone? She looked into the corridor and grimaced, a shiver running down her spine; it was all gloomy, and damp with a red mist in it that matched some of the red stains on the walls. She closed the book shelve up again. If she was going to go in there, she needed to get someone else to go in with her.
She walked back to the sofas, and she saw Kala and Tundra there, Tundra reading a book and Kala was... She stared at Kala for a moment; she was tied to a sofa while a bunny somehow got in and was hoping around the room, Kala was staring at the bunny, her pupils slit and shark tail slamming into the sofa as she tried to get out of her restraints.
"Sooo, what did I just walk in on?" Hirune said, a slight frown on her face, eyes furrowed, the left side of her lips raised, squinting a little trying to figure out what the context of Kala being tied up could possibly be. She then picked up the bunny.
"Hiru! Quick unt-" Kala was quickly cut off by Tundra freezing her mouth shut. "Don't listen to her. She wants to eat the bunny, and before you ask how the bunny got in, I peeked outside the door to see if I could get a glimpse of whatever we heard. Then the bunny got in, and Kala nearly ate it before I closed the door and pulled her away from it."
She stared at them for a moment, mouth now agape, but the rest of her expression being pretty much the same, "And why did she try to eat this cute, little, adorable thing?" Her face softened as she held the bunny in front of her face, a mild smile forming on her face as she tried to hold it in.
"Well, she's a shark girl, and she was raised in the ocean by sharks. Sure, she seems calm, cool, collected and concise but somewhere in there she has an animalistic nature from how she grew up." Tundra said shutting his book and sighing. Kala was pretty calm now, her tail hunched over the sofa softly, a mild pink blush on her face.
Hirune laughed, but not a bad laugh, a soft laugh. "You know, I thought you were weird because of the whole trying to eat a bunny thing. But now that I know why it actually seems pretty normal," She paused for a second, "But seriously we still have to work on that we can't be having you trying to eat random animals in public."
"Since when are you responsible?" Tundra asked, an eyebrow raised.
"I don't know. Just slight worry that someone else might think she's weird. I mean, not everyone is going to be as open to her reasoning as us." She responded, a solemn expression on her face, feeling as if she can relate to her in some sort of way. She sat down next to him, letting go of the bunny on the floor. It was quiet with the exception of the shrieking outside, and a little of Ellen singing as she kept on looking around, but it was nice.
Then suddenly the bunny stopped moving in front of Kala. Kala stared at it intently, the ice on her mouth slowly breaking. "Shouldn't we li-" Hirune got cut off by the bunny suddenly blowing up from the inside out. All of them froze, even Kala who was close to eating it froze. Why did the bunny blow up all of the sudden.
Hirune was the quickest to recover, she wasn't sure if it was because she'd done something similar back in Medio or something else, but she quickly looked around to make sure it wasn't something that was outside or something that somehow got in. After making sure it was that she filled up a bucket with water and grabbed a mop, then started cleaning up fast. She honestly didn't care about the mess, but she didn't want Ellen to freak out about it and ask, or for Kala to stare at it any longer. Tundra stood up and started helping, recovering almost as fast as Hirune, but he kept an eye on Kala to make sure she was okay while Hirune was getting the bucket.
As soon as they finished rapidly cleaning and scrubbing off all of the blood, they both collapsed on the same couch,
"Would you mind moving a bit?" Tundra asked Hirune as she was panting with her head on his chest, kind of slouching on him and the couch.
"No, let me catch my breath. Also, this is comfy." She responded while heaving.
Ellen then walked into the living room to see a tied-up Kala, and an exhausted Hirune and Tundra on the same couch, "What did I miss?"
All three of them responded, "Nothing important." Then the door got knocked down; A figure that had a discombobulated skull and lanky arms with froglike legs bursting in. It's body wriggling as if it had thousands of worms inside of it, lacking eyes, yet making up for it by having a tongue that was clearly meant for echolocation.
"Can we ever catch a break?" Hirune asked, annoyance on her face as both she and Tundra got up. "Get used to it," Kala said as Hirune used a claw to cut the ropes off of her, allowing her to get up and stretch. "Either way, this place would crumble on us if I did anything. So, it's up to you three." Ellen said as she turned one of the sofas around to face the creature and then sat down comfortably on it.
Another one walked in behind the original one. "Lovely, there's two." Hirune said as they all got ready to fight whatever these things were.