Alasla: The New Age

Chapter Twenty-Three - Betrayal

Ralph's eyes snapped open after Layat's closed forever. He sat breathless for a long moment. The weight and pressure of centuries of truth compressing into his brain.

Then when he finally realizes to take a breath, the frosty air rushing into his lungs woke him up from the trance. Looking around, he sees Cecilia looking at him with glimmers of interest.

"So?" She asks. "Did you find what you're looking for?"

Ralph blinked. "We... Are the descendants of the Five Families Layat mentioned," he says, slowly wording out his thought. "I'm Ling. You're Queen. Eve's Alameke. Kanitha's Harusin. And Chenire... The descendant of Chenire is dead, though."

"Correct. Seems like you know them all too," Cecilia confirms. "Perhaps there's another, then? But Layat's prophecy won't be wrong. Paulie had been searching and looking for the five descendants for a long time. He swore to help Layat make the prophecy come true."

She pauses.

"Paulie didn't take his Stone in his own will," she whispers. "It was forced into him by Clipper, also known as Lucy. He wanted the Scars overthrown more than anyone else. I was imprisoned in the Garavian dungeons as the Target, he freed me after discovering me. I had been working with him ever since."

So that was why he is so passionate about training me, Ralph thinks. And... What Kanitha meant when she say that she's no human is probably what the past just showed him. She was born from the sea and she was used as a tool by her tribe- The Gods. The man he killed, Whales, was probably one of the rare love given to Kanitha. But he killed him.

"This mine... Mine 6 is the same cave where Layat lead the Gods to before they left, isn't it?" He demanded.

"Yes," Cecilia nodded. "If you walk down to the end of that pathway, you will find the wall carved with names." She points at a dark, wheezy corner of the mine, which Ralph has no intentions of walking into.

Despite the fact that the Gods were laughing about how vain he is, one question is beginning to pop up in his head. A question that he never really cared about before.

"Cecilia, do you know who am I?" He questioned. "Who is the Lings?"

"You really are thick, aren't you?" Cecilia laughs. "You are seriously trusting someone you just knew for one month to answer that question rather than yourself?"

"Yes," Ralph insists. "I am. I know nothing about myself except that I am a murderer trying to fix his past."

Cecilia gazed at him for two seconds, then got up and walked away.

"I do have something for you. But I'm not the right one to say it. The Ling family is one of the largest and most twisted ones out of all five. That answer you have to search for yourself."

Saying, she disappeared in a shadowy flash. Seconds later, the door was opened by her from the outside.

"As for now, we have two more months of training to go through."

*

His body aches from the training frequently. Especially recently, with just one month left before the hunt of Shelly the Dragon begins, even Paulie had decided to join the team of beating him up - Well, training him a couple of times.

Tonight he collapses onto the carpet of his room after the day of training. He is now capable of the constant maintenance of his plague flame without getting tiring for a fairly long time; he could even set it ablaze upon targets out of sight. So overall, he thinks he had improved quite a lot.

Just as his eyelids slowly closes, a sharp, unusual pain shot through his body. He was unprepared, and couldn't stop himself from emitting the blood-curling scream.