A World Below Us (Ark Aberration/Final Fantasy 14)

The Start Of An Exploration

"Please let me come!" Alphinaud begged. "You know you can't. It's too risky with your wound." I stated. "It's almost completely healed!" He protested. "Exactly. You don't want to overdo it and reopen the gash now do you?" Alphinaud stayed silent. "That's what I thought. Come on, Papalymo." The bulbdog climbed onto my shoulder. I was trying to take Krile out for exploration, but before we got out the door, I heard mumbling behind me. I turned around. "What?" I asked. Alphinaud sighed, then spoke again, still in a quiet tone. "It's because you don't want me to come, isn't it? You don't want me here?" He said. My ears dropped at his expression. He looked so disappointed, like a child who'd been lied to about getting ice cream. "Nooo Alphi of course not." I said in a reassuring voice. I commanded Krile to sit and stay, then I rushed over to Alphinaud. "Of course I want you with me. You mean more to me than, well, anything." I said before I could stop myself. Alphinaud looked up. "I... what?" My heartbeat quickened as I started to make excuses. "Uh that's not what I meant, I just, um-" "I guess you're right." He cut in. "I'm... not in the best condition." He still sounded disappointed. "Listen, I'm just really worried about you. I just want to keep you safe. You can come if you really want-" "No you're right. How foolish of me to think that I can throw myself around when I haven't fully recovered." Guilt still washed over me, but I accepted his reasoning. Getting on Krile's saddle, I turned back on more time. Alphinaud gave me a tiny smile and a wave, and then I was off.
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"Well this certainly sucks." I told my dog-like friends as I looked over a cliff. The cliff wasn't that high up, and Krile could probably jump down without taking any fall damage. The only bad part was that a pack of ravagers and a few raptor stalked around down there, and I didn't want to take my chances with them. So we started to backtrack for the fifth time in an hour. "It's no use! We're never going to get anywhere with all these predators!" I huffed. Alphinaud would have known what to do. Papalymo yapped as Krile started to get jumpy. "Woah! What is it, girl?" I asked. The ravager let out a whine. "Show me! What is it?" She spun around and started to take us back to the cliff. "Krile? What are you doing?!" I screamed as she jumped over the side. I closed my eyes but did not feel a falling sensation. Instead I felt... walking? I opened my eyes to see Krile balancing perfectly on a thick vine. The vine stretched out like a bridge across the cliff. I looked up to see more vine bridges higher up, all leading to a normally unreachable part of land. "I didn't know you could do this!" I said to the ravager. She continued to stroll over to the other side of the cliff. Taking a closer look at the vines, I realized only a skilled ravager's claws could grip them and climb across. "Well I know how we're getting around!" I exclaimed as I patted Krile's side. She gave a happy snort, then jumped the remaining vine length and landed on the other side. "Woah! A far jumper too, I see? Man Alphinaud would have loved this..." I found myself missing him more than I should. "Actually, scratch that. He would probably hate almost dangling from a vine several feet in the air. Still, I wish he was here. Maybe I should have let him come after all..." Papalymo could probably sense my feeling of regret. He licked my cheek. "Heh. Thanks buddy." I said as I steered Krile toward the next vine.
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How is this possible?! Were there others here before us? I held yet another notebook in my hands. This was the third one I had found out here, and this one came straight from a collage student's backpack. "I don't understand. Does this mean that other people fell into this... this Aberration of a world? By the looks of it, no one survived." I sighed as I slipped the book back into the backpack. Worry gripped my heart. What if I didn't survive? What if Alphinaud doesn't survive? "I swear I'm going to have a heart attack before I turn twenty." I turned Krile around. "I need to get back to the base as soon as possible and tell Alphi about my discovery! He'll flip when he hears about it!" I tried to get Krile to move, but she wouldn't budge. "Uh, Krile? Back hom- I mean, back to the base?" She still wouldn't move. "What's wrong?" I looked around. There were no predators in sight. Then I realized. "Oh. You... you have no idea where we are, do you?" I asked. Krile sneezed. "Well. Um. That's not good. Because neither do I. Ugh! Alphinaud would have remembered the way! Now we're lost!" Krile's ears flattened and Papalymo whimpered. "Sorry guys. I didn't mean to yell. But how do you suppose we get home?"