The Shadow of Eudaimonia

Chapter 15: A Deal

Vide arrived shortly with clothes and food as if she went grocery shopping. Her pale white face had turned red and sweaty now from all the things she had gathered from different places using her Obelisk. The thing is, she could only translocate things that were just a few meters away and also the amount of energy needed is proportional to the mass of the object she's translocating.

"Here you go." Vide dumped the clothes she stole, including two new crutches, in front of Calvin.

"How are you feeling?" she asked Lazzi.

"My stomach still hurts but I think I can stand now."

"What are these?" Calvin asked while examining the clothes Ophelia had brought. His eyebrows crunched. It was a blue and green striped button shirt, probably oversized, and a black chino shorts paired with worn-out sandals. "Am I going to some beach party?"

Ophelia stared intently at Veross, as if she was going to say something but she just sighed and averted her gaze back at Lazzi.

"I've brought some pain reliever for you Shijian. The medicine here is so primitive. They don't even have fibroplax."

"We don't have fibroplax in our planet either." Lazzi said sternly. Vide's eyes visibly widened and her face turned red.

"What's fibroplax?" Calvin asked, genuinely confused.

"You wouldn't get it." Ophelia replied.

"It's a high-end drug that lets you heal your injuries quickly. But only the rich can have those." Lazzi retorted. "But in Gaia, since they're more advanced, they take it like candies."

"I-um...I never thought it was a high-end drug."

"It's okay. I understand. It's difficult to imagine the things we take for granted to be something that others can't even have. Privilege does that."

Calvin looked at the both of them. He could feel some sort of tension between the two. Calvin cleared his throat and continued to dress himself.

"So what's our plan Veross?" Vide asked. She sat in front of the two boys and tore open a bag of burger and started gnawing on it.

Lazzi patted Calvin's shoulder who was busily trying to put on shorts on his limp legs. Lazzi grinned. He found Calvin's innocence amusing.

"What? Oh yeah, I'm Veross. But please call me Calvin. Veross is such a weird name."

Vide sighed. "Alright Calvin, what's our plan?" she asked again.

"Why ask me? I shouldn't even be here."

Vide winced visibly. "Why ask you? My stars!" She looked at Lazzi as if asking for an explanation. "We're gonna die, aren't we?"

Calvin tilted his head. "What? What did I say?"

"Ophelia, he's still new to this." Lazzi defended.

"New or not, this is not what I was expecting from our new Veross. Just look at him, he couldn't even put on his shorts by himself. How are we going to defeat Ortus? How are we going to get home?"

"Hey! Watch it Ophie!" Calvin bellowed.

Ophelia's mouth went agape. "Ophie? How dare—Ophie, really? Might I inform you that Ophelia is an old respected name of the royal family. And here you are sullying it with—"

"What? Ophie is a cool name."

"You two shut it!" shouted Lazzi. He sighed and tried to control his temper. "We're not kids here, alright. Now Vide, you must understand that Calvin here is not from our time. He doesn't know everything yet but he will."