Lucidity

Chapter Five: The Tower

By the eve before the deadline Mentirix had named, four of the chosen ones were already in Belmoth; Oburon and Anwyn already at the tower, Yaz and Hjalmar staying the night in the village. One, however, had still not departed on her journey.

Caitlyn Sequor was locked in a hospital room, no way of escaping. At least, not with the options available to her at the moment. But there was a way out, she just needed a little help from a friend.

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The sun rose and reflected unpleasantly on the tower's metallic surface. Anwyn stared up at the tower and immediately averted her gaze, regretting not having considered the fact that reflective surfaces and burning rocks in the sky never made for a good combination.

"You know, I think a chosen one shouldn't be so lazy," teased Kosa, "I've been up for way longer. Oburon too. You should be more like him."

Yesterday evening they'd shared the last of their food with Oburon and had ended up talking. Well, mainly Kosa and Anwyn had talked and Oburon had possibly listened. It was hard to tell with him. Either way, it had come out that the two of them had dreamt the same thing and the two girls were kind of spooked by it.

"Do we even know if I'm really the chosen one anymore?", murmured Anwyn, tucking her chin between her legs. Kosa shoved her, making her hit the dusty ground. "Yes. You're my friend and you're the chosen one. Now, let's get something in that chosen belly. We're going to town to buy new supplies."

What they didn't know was that there were two more chosen ones in town, namely Hjalmar Solberg and Yazmin Ahmed. The two of them, Junior and Hazhil had spent the night in an extremely rundown inn. Dinner had been... Interesting. They'd been served a sort of soup stew mixture with a floating eye in it.

"Eat up, chums," the barman had said, though they hadn't been able to understand the foreign words. To them he had sounded like he had been about to throw up while he had slid their portions across the table, which upon having caught sight of the dish, one could have easily mistaken as a perfectly natural response.

Junior had been the first to commence with eating their dinner, whereas Hazhil had stood up to say she was going to go and look for vegetation - after they'd paid for her meal, which Hjalmar hadn't appreciated - and both Hjalmar and Yaz had been rather hesitant.

"I'm not eating that," Yaz had stated.

"Sure, but you'd better pay me back and let me eat your portion," Junior had demanded with his signature smirk. Yaz had pushed a few coins across the table, then had stood up. As she had began to turn away, Junior had called after her, "Wait! I wasn't thinking in money."

"I know. You're not capable of thought so I did the thinking for you. Now I'm going to get my room key," Yaz had retorted. With those cruel but fairly justified words, she'd left.

"Women," was the last word to have been spoken at the table.

The next morning Yaz headed down to breakfast with Hazhil who had been reminded that vegetation wasn't easy to find in a desert that previous night. To Yaz's disappointment, Hjalmar and Junior were already sat opposite each other. Naturally, Junior called out, "Hey, Headscarf, I saved you a space next to me."

Before Yaz could claim the seat next to Hjalmar, Hazhil had sat down there. Still not giving up, she put on a sugary voice and said, "Hey, Hazhil, you get on with Junior, don't you? Why don't you sit next to him?"