Heather's Adventures: The Search for Maxamus

Chapter 36. Max

"What?" Heather asked, repelled by her sister's words. She was shocked beyond belief.

"That's right. You're dead to me!" She cackled, as spikes of earth appeared everywhere.

Dawnlight, who was a the weapons pile quickly picked up the first thing in front of her, a frying pan, and swatted a spike out of the way from hitting Rheannah. "Huh, I think I actually like this thing." She took her knife from the pile before she started to combat the spikes that appeared and vanished at random places for random increments of time. This was perhaps the most bizarre thing I've seen yet.

The Weird-o woke up the other two, who acted just the same way to us.

"They're possessed." The Weird-o remarked, "Possessed by darkness we need to get out of here to someplace safe. Quickly now, they'll follow us out of here and then they'll leave Issola alone because they have one sole mission: they want Heather dead for who knows what reason.

"Max! Catch!" Rheannah threw my sword at me. It was rotating through the air coming right at me. I was able to catch it by the hilt however, change it to its watch form, and throw it on my wrist.

"Nice catch." Heather stated as she clutched onto her own bow, "Now can we get outta here? There is now way we're going to win this fight."

I picked her up while I watched Rheannah fight the girl I presumed to be Zena. Rheannah was getting low on space so she took a vial of pure moonlight spring water out and splashed it in Zena's face. It stunned her, "we move now! Go go go!" Rheannah insisted as we ran out. I was still carrying Heather. Running with her on my back was difficult, especially since her bow kept hitting the side of my face, however there was no way I was going to get caught falling behind. Sheria was running beside me with her rod in her hand. She was using it to grow a cornfield behind us to slow down our three pursuers. I only hoped it would work. I didn't know if it would.

"Quick! Back to the portals! We can go anywhere from there and it'll mess those three up." The Weird-o commanded.

"Where are we going?" Rheannah asked as she was using wind to create a clear path ahead of us so we wouldn't step on shattered glass.

"Liandria. It's a small village we'll be fine once we're there." He responded quickly.

"Not if you don't get there first." Heather's sister Jen came out from the ground and appeared in front of us. We all stopped in our tracks.

Sheria growled like a dog, "I curse you to become a bird for life!" Sheria threw the curse off her rod; however, it missed Jen and bounced off walls as we engaged in a fight, dodging the curse and the earth spikes that were coming up from the ground.

"Protect Heather we've got the fight handled," Dawnlight shouted as Rheannah launched herself at Jen. Jen blocked Rheannah with a wall of dirt that shot out of the ground and threw her into a wall.

"This is crazy, Jen was never this powerful before." Heather told me as her eyes were following the curse as if it were a fly arrow, "Max duck!" She pushed me down onto the ground as she jumped off my back. I was thrown violently into the ground. I rolled over to look at Heather, but only a few white and brown feathers fell to the ground. They looked like the feathers of an eagle.

A violent scream was heard. It was Sheria. The curse hit Heather.

"No no no no no! Undo the curse, just undo the curse!" Sheria screamed as she launched another earth power that actually hit Heather. We didn't see anything but yellowish white light for quite some time. When it finally cleared, Jen was gone and Heather was laying on the ground with a large pair of bird wings as if they were from an eagle. Dark luscious brown with white as snow tips. Feathers fell down onto the ground, joining the shattered glass, dirt, and leaves. The place was a mess.

But most importantly, Heather saved me, again. This time from a curse.

"Heather...are you alright?" I asked as she started to move and sit up.

"No, my head aches, what happened? Where did Jen go?" She glanced around before noticing her new wings, "oh no no no get them off me get them off me!" She freaked out. This was a first. She was always so calm and collected. But to see her freak out like this? This was new.

"We can't...it was a curse..." Sheria cried, "I'd need more power I don't have I'm so sorry Heather!" Sheria was bawling as she ran to Dawnlight to cry on.

The Weird-o had a solution to offer however, "Just bind your curse to your amulet. They'll be gone. But you better learn how to use them otherwise you'll be stuck when you really need to get out of something one day."

Heather nodded, "alright." She sounded quite incompetent for the first time that I noticed. She wasn't in control. She couldn't do anything. That's why she didn't know what to do. She was used to being able to do something, now she couldn't do anything at all.

She was able to quickly bind the curse to her amulet and seal the curse away, "can we go now?"

I nodded, "yeah,"

"You were supposed to protect her." Dawnlight told me.

"I shoved him out of the way. It's my fault if I didn't he'd be cursed." Heather responded for my defense. She saved my life and took a curse for me. This girl was seriously playing with her life. She was reckless, daring, and really didn't know what she was doing most of the time. Spontaneous.

But I kinda liked that.

"Can we go now?" Heather asked again as I helped her up.

"Sorry," I apologized to her as I tried to flood my eyes full of even more empathy.

She just shook her head, "don't apologize to me, I just saved your life. Apologizing to someone when you did nothing wrong at all is admitting your weak and claiming it as your fault when in reality, it's not your fault. Don't take the liabilities of someone else. You don't need that burden to carry around."

But you're carrying the worst burden now. You're carrying a curse that was supposed to hit me that you don't deserve. You didn't do anything to deserve it. You didn't do anything wrong. My inner monologue of thoughts persisted. Why did this crazy chick stand up and protect me this much? What were her motives? She definitely could not be just doing this out of 'the kindness of her heart' because as far as I was concerned, she had no kindness in that heart of hers. Just dead burning passions. It was obvious by the way she glared at the Weird-o and didn't exactly keep the best positive outlook on things.

Plus she was trained to fight and battle. She was trained to be a human living breathing war machine. Who would create such a beast? Why do we need such a beast?

Heather started to walk out cold. She didn't have words. Did she hate me? I couldn't understand her. She was more complicated than I originally thought. Her actions were influenced through her impulsive randomization of her ideas. Only she knew what she was going to do, and even that was very spontaneous. She didn't even know what she was going to do until she was doing it. That became pretty clear when she was trying to fling herself off of me to avoid the curse. Now if she was trying to avoid the curse herself or save me was another story. I couldn't even answer that.

She was so mysterious. It intrigued me.

The rest of us put away our swords and other weapons and began to walk out as well. The immediate threat was gone but it was obvious we couldn't stay here. The place was in ruins and we didn't know if Heather's siblings and friend gone mad were still there. And if they weren't there we didn't want them to come back here. They'd definitely destroy the city even more than it was already destroyed. They seemed pretty enraged at the sight of Heather. I'm not exactly sure what she did but something was on her mind. She knew something. What exactly did she know, I couldn't tell you. I only knew that she knew of something she wasn't going to tell the rest of us. That's why she was so cold.

She was colder than ice. Mysterious, colder than ice, yet she made me question my life now.

Was she just saving me to make me feel bad now?

Irritating. She was irritating.

Yet for some reason I still liked her.