Heroes of Dreamland Rewritten, Book 2: Stars in Far Places

Chapter 12

Curador (Meta) | キュラドル (メタ)

The strange baby girl lunges at me, lips curled back over her fangs in a fierce snarl. I yelp and angle my sword so I toss her off without cutting her at all. She backflips from the momentum rather than falling backward, and lunges for me again.

Her eyes are still glowing fierce red. I can't tell if she's a Star Warrior, or a monster. The yellow guy's eyes aren't glowing as fiercely as hers anymore, but they're still glowing a bit too. He's still digging through the patient files, though he doesn't seem interested in reading them. I wonder what he's looking for so desperately.

I go to tell him to get out, only for the baby girl to get too close again. I shove her away again, but she gets close enough to grab hold of my non-sword glove with both paws. She yanks the glove off. I push her away, but she lunges at me again, knocking me over and pinning me to the ground. I hold her away from my face with a paw, while she snaps her fangs at my face, getting drool all over me like some sort of rabid wolf, trying to bite me for only-the-Star-Power-knows-what reason. "Get off, kid! I don't want to have to hurt someone as small as you!" She's tiny, so it's easy to throw her off of myself and stumble back to my feet. "What are you?"

She just giggles, obviously insane, and lunges for me again. She manages to grab my paw in both paws, and before I can yank away this time, she's stuffed it in her mouth, and bit down. Hard.

There's a sharp pain as her fangs go in, but as some sort of venom enters my bloodstream, I quickly feel myself slipping into a delirium not unlike the ones patients who are treated with laughing gas often experience. I chuckle a bit, and then laugh a bit harder as she glares at me with her glowing red eyes. They look so strange, not right at all.

Not right at all.

Despite the delirium and the fact that my vision is swimming, I realize that I have to get away from her. I yank my paw away, and kick her away from me. She screeches angrily, but seems entirely unhurt. My vision and mind clear almost instantly, surprisingly enough. It's as if her venom were a local anesthetic that only works as long as it's being directly injected. Also surprising is that when I look at my paw, the wound has already sealed, though the two pin-pricks are still there, clearly visible.

"A vampire?" I question, totally lost. "Those aren't real, though..."

She screeches again, and lunges for me once more. I hold my free paw behind my back so she can't get to it, and kick at her. "What the Shotzo are you? Why are you here? What is the yellow one looking for?"

The yellow one seems to be growing ever more frantic as he fails to find whatever it is he's looking for, but is mostly ignoring the two of us. I'm somewhat surprised no one's come to interfere, as much noise as the three of us are making. Maybe the yellow one put some sort of spell on the building to hide the noises; they both seem to be some sort of sorcerer or something.

And to think the day seemed so normal, before. I was doing my forced apprenticeship with Father, learning about how to store taken blood samples properly before they could be tested, scowling to myself every time he calls me 'Curador,' the earned name I was officially registered with as far as the government is concerned following my rescue of Forest two summers ago. He said Meta was a stupid name; that I wasn't allowed it. He went against tradition and changed it to Curador, Healer; a name, he said, that better fit my destiny. People questioned it at first, but there was nothing anyone could do since I'm a minor and he's my primary guardian (since Mother's a woman and they're married). Even she spoke against it at first, but he shouted her into submission like he always does. Nobody had any ability to stop him. So here I am, going by Curador, a name that is not my own, everywhere except at my real home out in the woods.