The Rising of The Masked Hero

09. JOURNEY

He could only watched as his home empire engulfed in flames, with tears ran on his face.

Out of the ground, several wooden crosses emerged from with burned rotting corpses nailed on each and every one of them. The dead stared at Marius with their rotted eyes in despair.

"Why won't you save us!"

"You were suppose to protect us all!"

"You promised!"

"You were our protectors! Why did you let us DIE!"

The corpses screamed at Marius with words, reminding him of his failures. Marius fell on his knees and covered his ears to blocked the horrifying voices.

Then, a figure appeared in front of him. Marius looked up and saw a centurion with black armor and a terrifying steel mask.

Fear soon gripped Marius as he could not do anything but stared at the angry centurion holding a bloodied gladius.

The figure then grabbed Marius by his hair and pressed the tip of the blade on Marius's throat, "You... Did... This..." said the blacked armored centurion with a demonic voice as he ran his blade throught Marius's neck.

Marius woke up from his hellish nightmare, covered in cold sweat. He looked around and saw a tent with Raphtalia and Filo sleeping underneath it. And not far from the tent was the wagon with Naofumi sleeping inside.

Letting out a heavy sigh he went back to sleep, hoping the nightmares won't return.

Raphtalia knew Marius was having a nightmare after her sentitive ears heard his fainted cries. She looked at Marius who' sleeping on his bed roll away from her sleeping spot. The demi-human couldn't helped but felt bad for Marius. Having a terrible nightmare but no one around to comforted him.

But, does he need comfort? She remembered how he nearly killed her if it weren't for Filo saving her. And why master Naofumi still kept him around baffled her. Even with the slave crest on him she still afraid what he might do when the time comes to remove the slave crest.

"But I am Naofumi's sword..." she thought,
"I will not let anything happened to him. And if you want to harm my master, I will not go easy on you like last time." she cluthed her sword beside her before going back to sleep.

There was only silence during their journey. Naofumi and Raphtalia were seating next to each other at the driver's seat while Filo pulled the wagon to their destination.

And every five minutes or so, Raphtalia would turned around and glanced at Marius incase he's up to something while behind their backs.
Marius sat at the very back, watching the view of the forest. He has his masked on and one thing Raphtalia noticed was that the eyes of the mask were alway pitch black. As if Marius's eyes would disappeared everytime he wore his helmet with the mask on.

Soon, they reached a small village. The wagon stopped and Marius could hear Naofumi talking to what sounded like an elderly man. He then saw the elderly man running down to the village clinic after saying something about a Heavenly Fowl, but Marius paid no mind to it.

While Naofumi and Raphtalia helped around the village clinic, Marius was tasked to guard the wagon alongside Filo. As each minutes passed he grew bored.

"Who's going to rob this wagon in a middle of a ghost town?" Marius thought.

A loud thumping noises got closed to Marius and something pecked on the topside of his helmet. He slowly turned his head and saw Filo, in her filolial form, looking at him with serious look.

"What?" said Marius, completely annoyed.

"I'm keeping my eyes on you. Just making sure you're not trying to escape." said Filo.