He finally learns why they say it's blind. It'll take failing more than once for Jungkook, Joon, and friends to see the importance of love, friendship and sacrifice--and to defeat Death before it defeats them.
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All-BTS Fantasy AU
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Sequel to Take...
The forest was full of chatter, birds and beasts stalking through the undergrowth or swooping through the thick treetops. If it had been evening time, it would have cast the noise in an eerie hue--but the sun was bright on the other side of the shadowy treetops and the air hot above the moist canopy.
But in the undergrowth thick with green and moisture, cast in shade, the thick air was cool like a perfect pool on a summer's day. And Shae, Ava, Jungkook and Taehyung were swimming in it.
The four sleuthing humans suited up like warriors were focused and quiet, only the sounds of their bodies in motion, breathing quickly, interrupting the jungle chorus. A branch gently swept aside in a WOOSH. A snap of twigs underfoot. The scuffing of a boot against a fallen log. And the labored breaths.
They were far higher in altitude now than they had been back at camp. The jungle elevation rose and rose on a slow incline, a whole horizon rising away from the camp with no clear mountain peak that they could point to from back down in camp.
Then something shifted in the sounds and the sensations surrounding them.
Like a premonition, Jeon Jungkook felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle just as he led the way around a spiny pink fern, and into a small perfectly circular clearing. Bright sunlight burst down hot and humid over him, in that space without canopy cover. His eyes scanned the ground where no trees or shrubs grew. The earth in this circular clearing was sandy and dry, not lush and overflowing like the soil outside of it.
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Then Taehyung stepped out, and he let out an audible gasp.
Ava and Shae followed. Ava reacted on instinct, pulling her longsword from the hilt on her hip and bracing it carefully in two hands. Shae, instead, squatted closer to the ground and reached down to scoop up some of that hot sand in her hands. It burned against her skin, but not too much to be unbearable, and she let it spread and scatter past the gaps in her fingers back down next to her feet.
Jungkook spun around in a careful circle, taking in that perfectly circular treeline around them. "This place..."
Taehyung's electric blue eyes stared into a singular spot on the uniform sandy earth of that perfectly symetrical clearning floor. "...is where the voices came from."
Ava choked. "Say what now what now?"
Shae scooped up more sand in her hand again. This time, as it spread between her fingers and fell back into the earth beneath her, the gravely shhhh noise of it raining down seemed to mingle in brief moments to her ears with the sound of human whispers for silence.
Shae stood up again and pulled the single shortsword out that was strapped to her back. It felt awkward in her hand, but it also felt like the right thing to do. She noticed that Tae, too, had unsheathed his Genji longsword and he had begun stalking along the perimeter of the sandy, circular space.
