Carmine (Completed)

Chapter 62

The flames of the campfire simmered and crackled against the silent night. We made it through the forest, and found the man Valor feared.

Dagon, the name that introduced this tall gray haired muscular man to us with his hair ending between his shoulders, and eyes changing colors like San Rosa. Janilla called it The Eyes of Dalia. It gave them the ability to see the unseen, or put simply, to visualize objects in different variations of sight, whether darkness, heat, ultrasound, amongst other ways.

The many scars on his face and arms indicated his past life ripened with many escapades I feared getting involved in.

Dagon sat on a round brittle log with worms swirling out of the dry earth it rested on. "Yes, come drink, eat, be merry."

Valor sat on a whitish gray rock neighboring the tall dark brown tree I leaned my head on. Sandream and Five sat on the ground with ants prowling the earth for scraps of the cooked meat they ate, while Janilla wrapped in a tight wool blanket sat on a high mountain of clothing, reading her book to my absent ears.

My arms relaxed and my eyes twitched open as the fatigue suffocated me. The moonless night annoyed me with it's beckoning dark claws from the trees hiding their assassinating tendencies.

We arrived a short time ago. Tiredness swept through us and consumed our limbs to the awaiting slumber.

I had not eaten much, and it was for the best. My stomach could not handle this life anymore.

Janilla put me to sleep with her renditions of strange beasts with wings for arms and bodies that molted into acid that consumed anything. Obsolete shells such as the Gamma Base T-two and the Exga seventy eight, so much knowledge existed in this world, yet there came so little comfort from it.

I blinked.

It was morning. When had I fallen asleep?

Two long thick creamy whitish sheets covered me in the same spot next to the tree.

A dull pain ran through the moving of my arms as if chained to the earth. Exodine saved my life from pain, but only in short bursts.

I stood up and blinked trying to organize my thoughts. Stretching was also in order, because this back pain nagged me. It took me several seconds before I walked around some trees towards the center building.

"Had a good nap?" Valor asked.

"No." I sighed, and turned to the deepening frown on his face. The trees around us stood at a good distance, leaving a bed of dying leaves and narrow branches.

"What's wrong?"

My eyes rolled before a smirk twitched out of my despondent appearance. "Nothing."

He approached, the closeness of his face, the sweet aroma of earth tickled my nose, offsetting the overarching power of his height. "You said no, that's not, nothing."

My eyes flicked up thereby hitting the bottom of his stubble-lined chin. I crossed my arms, clutching the shoulders from the cold morning chill, yet in his aura, warmth raised within my heart, but never exited. "You cannot do anything to ease my pain."

"Try me." Valor shifted on his feet, protruding his discontent through the deep ridges of his clenched jaw when he bent before me.

Air exhaled through my nose as I averted my eyes. "You ever feel like you don't want to exist?"

His head tilted to the side. "Carmine, don't think like that."

My shoulders shuddered in annoyance, and my eyes sliced through his facade. "Kind of too late for that don't you think?" I turned away from him, but my shoulder got gripped, seizing me to the spot.