There is a lot about me you don't know -Tales of Arcadia ENG

21- Eyes

TRACK 21

I can live another people's lives

I can't stop putting on other people's clothes

I love until I leave

I am a marathon runner

And my legs are sore

And I'm anxious to see

What I'm running for

(Marathon Runner - Yellow Ostrich)

********

Of all the things Douxie had expected -and there had been many- the sudden detachment of the lever in the control tower had not been thought about.

He had managed to fix it, but he had barely put a patch on the break. A patch that he had no idea how long it would last, mostly. And the panic that had arisen from seeing Sir. Galahad clutching the metal -almost waving the guiding instrument as if it were a bathtub- had even been doubled by seeing the Portal shrink and by hearing the Guardians' voices screaming from all sides and sensing Archibald's slight panic.

Perhaps luck, perhaps fate... or perhaps the fact that they had been close enough to their destination to allow that, however, they were able to reach the entry into the dimension.

They were sucked through the Portal in the blink of an eye. Something about the Castle of Camelot broke in the process. What, exactly, was not entirely clear. There was such chaos that it was impossible to tell.

Douxie could still hear his ears ringing as the Portal closed behind them. It seemed to him that he had a dozen insects circling around them, but he had no idea how to drive them away.

"Well, we did it!" was the Knight's cheerful and satisfied comment, although Douxie only half-heard it. What he felt at one hundred percent, however, was the slamming of his hand on his shoulder, as he had no time to escape it.

He tightened his lips in a grimace of pain, trying to turn it into a smile toward the man and failing miserably. He managed not to make a sound, however, a fact that in some ways made him feel proud of himself. Ten out of ten in the endurance competition.

"Yeah..." he found himself saying, taking a big deep breath. "We're here."

'Finally.'

He did not let himself waste too much time. He immediately moved from his position to one of the patrol paths, casting a glance at Archie to lead him to do the same -but on the second one- leading him to nod and take flight.

Douxie moved as much in a hurry as he could like that, barely paying attention to the dark gray sky, so dark that it even appeared black in places. The sound in his ears was seriously ever-present and annoying. It almost made him slip while walking several times, but it was totally pushed aside by his need to look for Master Merlin and Nari -who surely had to be on the ground, but not too far from the castle. Or... so he hoped.

Leaning against one of the battlements and clutching the cold stone with his fingers, his gaze started to wander right and left across the landscape.

The ground was not that far away -although probably, if he had tried to throw himself down from where he was, he would surely have broken something- and it was aesthetically very strange. At times snow-white. At times green. At times it seemed to be filled with large, ominous black holes and was crisscrossed by numerous rivers whose outlets were not visible from where he was.

These were not normal rivers, however. Or they didn't appear to be, counting that they were all of different colors: the one furthest to the left was golden yellow, the one immediately following was red, and then there was a green one. The middle one was a bright pink, then following it was a violet one, an orange one, and finally, the only one that seemed to be composed of water; a blue one.