Hermes | Book 1

: 18 :

The darkness and light speak volumes; I thought
you should know
Maybe then you won't feel as lonely
anymore.

Chapter 18

ASTA DIDN'T  give him much time to think about what she said; she didn't even spare him a moment for confusion.

Faster than his mind pieced together information, her fingers wrapped tightly around his wrist and dragged him along with her to the sickening drop.

Hermes hardly felt his shoes scrape pathetically at the loose mud and stone in a subconscious attempt to save himself.

And that moment when his stomach lurched and the biting cold wind stung his eyes like a hundred consecutively thrown knives, Hermes felt mild disappointment that after all his boasting of being a God, he did what any mere human would do: scream.

His normally deep voice rose up a few octaves and made him sound ridiculous enough to make him blush thinking about it later.

The air around him was thick, cold and foggy. It was thick enough to suffocate him and burn his nose and throat.

But as quickly as they fell to their deaths, they stopped.

Simply suspended in air, the two of them took a moment to grasp their surroundings.

"Come," Asta's voice echoes around him loudly and he felt her tugging him. Shock still buzzing through his body and feeling greatly nauseated and lightheaded, Hermes put his trust in Asta once and for all.

He didn't know for sure, but Asta had been trying to get him to trust her for a sometime now. She had got what she wanted; Hermes had a feeling that the red head always did.

The feeling of weightlessness gradually receded and helped by Asta's incessant tugging on his throbbing wrist (her nails were razor sharp), he floated slowly downward.

"What is this?" Hermes asked looking in awe at the fog that blanketed him so thoroughly that he could only see flashed of Asta's grey eyes and bright blood coloured hair.

"Gravity." She sounded light and casual but her grip remained vice like. "The power exerted by gravity here is lesser than normal, but I should warn you, when we get a little lower, we will fall."

"When is tha- AAAAAAAH!" Hermes's voice rose higher and higher as his stomach hurled up to his throat when the ground sped towards them at a blindingly fast pace. Somewhere between the terrible harmony of the loud whistle of the wind and his broken screaming, Hermes noticed Asta moving closer to him.

If they were really falling as quickly as they were, what he had experienced had happened in a matter of a few seconds. But the seconds felt like minutes and when he thought about it later, the minutes felt like hours and it seemed that the whole world was holding its breath before just for Hermes to realise what was happening around him.

Asta's other hand which wasn't holding onto his wrist grasped his biceps and soon (too soon) her back was pressed against his chest, her bouncy hair tickling his chin, the scent of some sort of washing powder and mud overpowering his nostrils and red curls haphazardly flying and obstructing what was left of his vision.

Her name was but a soft whisper when it exited his lips, but it shoved through the thunderous music of winds and vibrated through his very skull.

And just as he saw green and black and brown rush to meet him, Hermes heard his name plainly and clearly in his ears, uttered with a sort of emotion he had never heard or felt or encountered.

Asta's voice bloomed slowly and gracefully through the din, like an angel in an abode of devils. She had uttered his name only once, but Hermes knew right at that fraction of a fraction of a millisecond that even though he was the God of thieves, Asta- Human, an Eta, mannerless and imperfect- managed to steal something that was more valuable than a thousand casket of jewels from right under his very nose.

And when, instead of plain green and brown, Hermes Novum saw a rainbow and the merciless roaring of the wind was truly and finally heard as symphony that roared along with his heart, he knew that he didn't want the stolen item to be returned, didn't want any of his stolen items to be returned if Asta was the thief.