Fall of Dragonesia

Chapter 24

"You are such a crybaby. Who hates water anyway?"

"That's just an excuse to hide his phobia. He is such a weak soul."

"My Goodness, why are you trembling with tears in your eyes? A real man never sheds tears."

Lucian and Lena were not always thieves. Before the age of nine, and before the two had met one another, Lucian used to attend school with kids of his age. At least his abusive aunt and uncle had allowed him to attend school. That saved him back then from getting beaten up or going through opprobrious slurs when he was at his institution. But that did not help at all. Lucian was thinner and smaller than he should have been as per his age. Hence, there were times when his body could not keep up with several outdoor activities or during the times when he tried to join his classmates for games. He was known as the weak boy who was a good for nothing.

For some reason, Lucian despised water, or any water-body to be specific. When kids his age were learning how to swim in lakes, he was standing at a corner and shivering with the thought of going into the freezing cold water.

Drowning. That was his fear. What if he drowned while trying to swim? That became another excuse for others to pick on him for being 'feeble'.

And right now, he was drowning. He was drowning deep into the great chasm of water. The light of the above surface went far, far away from his reach.

Lucian like others, had found himself in one of those white houses. He had nowhere to go. He was just standing there and inspecting the interiors when the unprecedented splash of water had touched his feet. When he had glanced down, the water level was already up to his knee. Staggering, Lucian had tried to walk through the rapidly filling water and towards the door but in vain. He could no more find any door and rather himself in the middle of a four walled room. He did not know where the water was coming from, but it was arriving, anyway.

And before he knew, the water had swallowed Lucian completely, while the boy felt himself drowning deep. The water filled up his lungs just how it swelled the small one-room house till its brim.

This was it. He was going to die then.

Lucian's eyes grew heavy, and slowly his eyelids began to close. The bright light was clasping into a tiny beam, however, Lucian saw a hand. Before he could fully give in to his unconscious self and accept his unpredictable fate, a strong force pulled him above the surface of water, resulted due to the pull of a bloody hand.

Lucian coughed out water as he sat up straight. He held onto his chest as he opened his closed eyes. And he found himself somewhere he never expected himself to be. Lucian was sitting in just a small puddle and in front of him, with bated breath was crouching down a bloody Cynthia.

Her hair was dishevelled and there were blood stains everywhere on her attire. Not to mention, blood was yet dripping down from her arms, even though there was no sign of any wound. It also seemed that she had wiped off her face which had been previously covered with blood, not long ago.

"Why in the world were you choking yourself?" Cynthia yelled at the face of Lucian as she held tightly onto his shoulders, "I tried so hard to wake you up."

"W-What do you mean?" with confusion, Lucian, who was trembling and struggling to form words, asked the girl, "I thought I was drowning."

"Of course you thought," Cynthia disclosed, "Because drowning is your fear, I am assuming."

"I know it is, but how were you able to bring me here?"

Cynthia chuckled without any emotion to pour fuel upon Lucian's confusion more, "You were never in a large water-body or drowning. It was all that thing's tricks. You were simply lying unconscious in a small puddle of water which that thing-"

"The Driren," Lucian informed, as he had been well aware who that particular creature was, since the time he had captured Cynthia back in the forest.

"Yeah the Driren," Cynthia continued, "I figured out that he shows our worst fears to make us kill our own selves or bring us to our most fragile condition so that it becomes easier for him to feed on us. Remember that weird riddle?"

"Wait, hold up," Lucian made Cynthia halt her statement when he realized something, "How do you know about the riddle, or are even present in front of me? Were you not unconscious?"

Cynthia shook her head, "When I woke up," a gulp went down her throat when she reminisced the brutal murder of Cora, "I witnessed my worst fear, in the most gruesome and cruellest way possible."

"And that was?"

"The death of Cora."

"Oh," Lucian nodded understandably, "That must have been traumatizing."

"It was," Cynthia bobbed her head up and down in affirmation, "It was more than traumatizing. I could not do anything. It all felt so real. I thought it was all real until, out of nowhere, I woke up, again. And this time for real. It was uncomfortable enough already that my shirt was attached to my wet body like a leech and when I glanced down at my attire, I was completely and wholly drenched in blood. Fresh blood. I went out of the house I was in and came across this maze full of white houses."

"Did you find me from inside one of those houses?" Lucian asked, as entering each and every house till she found Lucian would have been close to impossible, given the number of toppled houses.

Cynthia shook her head, "You were lying here, on this red road, in between these rows of clamped white houses."

The two did not speak for a while as they took in their surroundings. To say that they were dizzy would be an understatement. They were both deeply exhausted with the hellish illusions they had gone through, and these white houses were not helping either.

"We need to keep moving," Cynthia stood up, stretching out her hand to help Lucian stand up, "We need to find the others, as soon as possible."

"How do you think that would be possible without us two not being separated?"

"We need to overcome fear," Cynthia said, looking straight into Lucian's deep ocean blue eyes, "Alana once told me that 'Not fearing is the solution to every possible threat'. And as for staying together, hold my hand."

Cynthia intertwined her fingers with Lucian's and spoke to him, "Whatever happens, we would not let go of our hands. Better together, right?"

"Right."

And that day, for some unknown reason, eighteen-year-old Lucian's heart skipped a beat for the sixteen-year-old girl and her bravery.

The emotions were foreign. Almost too foreign to decipher.