Ancient Forces (2018 Reboot)

Chapter 33 - The Calling

The crowds of children swarmed and moved like a school of fish, all of them swaying in an orderly fashion to follow or evade the approaching trio. Aleah walked in between Zayne and Damien, both of whom waved and smiled to kids as they also waved and greeted them. Damien was more inviting than Zayne on this particular morning however. Zayne seemed rather, distant. It was obvious to everyone that something was putting him in a foul mood. They gave him their usual greetings, but evaded him after that. Aleah had especially noticed Zayne's bad mood. It was odd to see him like this, especially after he'd been so excited and joyful yesterday. Almost immediately Aleah came to the conclusion that something from the storage brawl was annoying him. There wasn't another explanation for his strange behaviour.

The trio reached their usual seating spot, which was being held by Aries and Austin. They were in a heated argument over a topic of great importance to them. Austin had thrown out about twenty characters for Aries to challenge, to which Aries thoroughly annihilated them. Aries' champion? Link. Austin's champions? Anyone he thought would be strong enough to fight Link in a nerdy battle of knowledge. So far Austin was losing drastically, and Aries hadn't even broken a sweat in the discussion. Zayne and Damien arrived, with Aleah shadowing the two from behind, and sat in their regular seats. Aries instantly switched topics from the Link death battles to Zayne and Damien.

"Dude you guys were awesome yesterday! Those villains were so stupid to think they could go out that early and not get a fight!" Aries exclaimed.

"Excuse me we were having a heated battle here!" Austin frustratedly cried out.

"Battle can wait. Acknowledgement for what happened yesterday can't. So what happened? Give us some juicy details!" Aries begged.

"Well I didn't get there until later, you'll need to ask him," Damien jabbed a thumb at Zayne, who was looking off in a different direction totally separated from the conversation.

"Zayne? Hey, Zayne? Are you alright bro?" Austin repeatedly asked.

Zayne seemed to snap from a daze and looked back over at the group, "What? Oh yeah, no yeah I'm fine. What were we talking about?"

"Yesterday?" Aries repeated.

"Oh. Um. Yeah, what about it?" Zayne was detached from everything so far.

"What happened yesterday? In the storage facility?" Austin repeated their earlier question.

"All you need to know is that we failed to capture them and they're still out there. I'm planning on spending a few hours to go hunting this morning and later this evening," Zayne explained quickly, then just as quickly returned to staring off into space.

Everyone gave each other odd glances, each of them sharing their equal concern for Zayne. Aleah was especially curious about the issue. She decided to ask him about it.

"Zayne?" Aleah asked.

Zayne perked up and returned his attention not to the group, but only on Aleah, "Yeah? What's up?"

"Is something wrong?" She questioned.

Zayne immediately went on the defensive, "No nothing's wrong, why? Does it look like something's wrong?"

"Yes," Austin replied.

Zayne quickly turned to Austin and gave him a good, long stare of disapproval, followed by a, "Nobody was talking to you."

"I'm just saying, you look really pissed about something."

"And I'm just saying that you weren't apart of this discussion, so shove off," Zayne growled in reply.