Black Oasis

Chapter 2 Pain

"Hey! Akuma!"

The girlish voice I knew all too well startled me as Annie called out, looking around while standing outside the guild hall. I glanced up at the glittering stars that filled the dark night sky that now cloaked the small village. As she approached from my right side, I turned to face her and said in an off putting demeaner "Well look who decided to show up, a half hour late."

Annie rolled her eyes, becoming aware to the disapproving note in my voice. She smiled and throw her black backpack around in front of her, she unzipped it and digging around for something.

"Hey, did you hear me?!" I barked out the question, my voice becoming slightly deeper as I grew more annoyed.

"Yea I heard you, I'm sorry I had to change out of my school uniform." She answered half-heartedly still searching through her backpack. I took notice at what she was wearing, a black drawstring sided tee dress accompanied by black leggings with fairly worn black tennis shoes. The clothes didn't match her bright personality. As I continued inspecting her outfit she looked up from her backpack and made a face. Her eyebrows were raised up, but she gave a small smile under my gaze "Whatcha looking at?" she asked cheerily.

"Oh, it's nothing, its nothing." I stammered as I broke my eyes off of her and onto the ground in front of me. Annie carefully observed my reaction to her question, she had twinkling look in her eye.

"Yea I'm sure it's nothing, but here this is for you." She pulled what looked to be a glass bottle about halfway filled with a viscous looking purple liquid. After analyzing the bottle and the liquid inside for a few seconds, I became aware of its magical aura.

"This can't be a healing potion, because those always have a reddish tint." I wondered to myself in a soft voice; my eyes still glued to the bottle Annie was holding. I shake it off remembering our mission. I pulled the job paper out from the inside of my coat and started going through it again. "It's a simple job hunting down some bandits. It's a silver ranked job, but as long as you stay by my side and listen to what I tell you we should be fine." I inform her, while handing her the job paper. "Sign here, this way we can both split the reward money evenly after the job is completed." I instruct her with a stern face, while handing her a quill tipped pen.

She snatched the job paper and the pen I was handing her, and whirled around plopping the paper on the wall of the guild building. She carelessly read over the words placing the point of the pen on the signature line and with the flick of her wrist signed her name gracefully. She twirled back around on the heel of her foot and handed the paper back to me with an excited grin on her face. "Here ya go." she exclaimed merrily.

I sighed while putting my gloved hand up to my forehead. "Did you even read it?"

"Of course, I did! Who do you take me for some kind of idiot?" She said in a way that lightly startled me. "Whatever, let's start moving I'd like to get this finished before sunrise." I sighed to her.

We began to take the western road leading out of the village and towards the forest in which the bandits hide. As we got towards the edge of town the once concrete road, we were walking down turned to rough dry gravel that kicked up dust behind us. The large coble stone and wood buildings from the town coming to an end as our feet impacted the gravel, nothing but farm land could be seen for a mile with the dark shadows of the trees in the forest at the very end. I glanced over at Annie walking besides me on the right, she looked up at me and gave a cute little smile.

"Sooo, I know you were curious about that potion I gave you; I'll tell you more about it if you tell me more about yourself." She offered giving the same girlish smile.

"My life isn't as interesting as you'd might think, I have nothing to talk about." I said, slightly annoyed by her offer. "I guess information about this potion would be helpful, seeing as I won't be able to use it unless I knew what it was for." I mutter to myself under my breathe with my hand rested on my smooth but rough feeling chin. I decided to give in to her request. "Fine, what do you want to know?" I asked forcefully, trying to speed the process along so I could get the information I needed.