That night the nightmare returned. What was different in the nightmare from that day wasn't just Helio and Cass going with me and Stella to the beach, but Heo was also there. I had my now short cut hair, she had her long hair that looked like Stella's.
I awoke from the dream still next to Stella. My whole body was sweating and shaking. My hands felt tied tight and the circulation cut off. I shook, it was earlier than normal, around five am. I stumbled out of Stella's room. I scribbled a note and left towards the guild.
I came in and took the Marine quest. I walked it up to the counter and had it stamped. I walked faster. Racing the sun down to the bottom level of the city before the sun came over the horizon. I sat down in a car and had it take me to Marine.
This stupid dream.
…
It was around thirty minutes to the forest the town was in. The dense forest had dark red trees. These were actually monsters that act like parasites to plants. They're harmless. We drove past them. Their tall bodies fighting each other for the sunlight.
"Marine hopefully don't have terrorists like Spirit did." I sighed.
The roads up here in this mountainous region of Mila were scattered with pot holes. So many, the driver begged me not to force him to drive further into town.
Black leaves occasionally fell in the summer wind. The dense forest looked more like walls as the monster trees fought each other for sunlight. The farther away from the town the less dense the trees were, as they dance on containment.
The run down town sign hanging up in front of me read 'Welcome To Marine'. There was a small pond under the word Marine and red trees painted on around the sign. Of course the sign itself was made out of the dark wood of the forest.
A fog fell around the entrance to the dark forest town. It was framed like a graveyard or a boss door depending on how you looked at it. Fog was a staple of Noxstave culture hinting that the majority of the population were actually immigrants from there.
I walked along the crumbling concrete into a town full of potholes. The sign to the town was held up by a run down ticket booth looking place.
It was made of the monster wood around us, a common material used in Milian buildings. The wood was actually heavily used in church designs giving the similar color scheme of the black hole gods.
I walked up and tilted my head into the small window.
"Hello?"
It was dark, the fog seeped inside the room giving it a haunting look. The light at the top of the room flashed like lighting, revealing a middle aged woman leaning over.
"Oh, crap… Are you alright?" I experimentally knocked on the window.
Her body stumbled awake. Her four eyes fell like anvils every time they raised. She wore a white sundress. Strange when it was so cold under the leaves. A similar white sunhat laid on a rack on the door to the small room. Lastly, she had small dark blue smooth horns coming from her head.
"Oh…" Her face smiled lazily like a stereotypical Milian that people would talk about. "Hi, welcome to our cozy town. What brings you here?"
"I got a quest to clean up some marífts."
Her eyes opened a bit wider. "Oh, sweet. I think I remember someone talking about placing a quest up online for it. I guess Spirit's guild is the one who posted it?"
"Yeah? Are they that troubling?"
"Yeah. No one comes here and no adventurer lives here, so they're population is thriving just eating tree bark. Some trees have fallen over and a few people have been trampled by them."
"Are there really no adventurers here?"
"Not one, let alone a guild."
The woman leaned back in her chair and the light flashed again. The light illuminated her and I couldn't help but look at the shape of her chest and waist and how it oddly sat under the sundress.
"You alright?"
"Yeah sorry." I rubbed my forehead "Depending on how big of a crowd there is I might need to stay here, any good places?"
"Not really, but all the way down the road at the five way, turn left and left again there will be somewhere to stay."
"Thank you."
"You're welcome."
The light flashed again, I hit my head on the wood pulling back. The street stretched into a forest before curving. On the left side as I walked were buildings, yet no lights were on for the entire street. Less homes and more shops looking, all abandoned as I walked.
The road in the city was as bad as it was outside. There were more potholes and missing concrete than room to drive. Pieces of the road shifted when I stepped on it. The forest smelled like dust in an old person's home. The forest had way less room inside than it looked. The trees keeping everyone here caged in.
Where were the people here really? I didn't see people walking or in homes or even any sounds really? It was seven but still, the forest sounded like a confined room.
A light shuffling I heard a few feet ahead of me. Marífts looked strong at first. Shadowy black sheep with four horns and four ears you couldn't tell the difference between the shade. Four glowing white eyes. The same black wool fell down their backs and into a tail at the end. They looked like a black hole priest with their wool looking like a blanket drooped over them. A human-like neck fell into monstrous chest muscles, three times the amount of a human's into thick tricep muscles and thick knees. With the muscles in between thinning out more into short round hooves. The strange chest muscles were mimicked along their abdomen and crawled behind their wool tail. Their back legs were similar to the front two, just thicker and more bent, allowing the taller front legs to raise their chest and heads high.
"Wow, that was quick." I whispered.
The dirt around it made a crushing sound as it slowly walked over to another tree and took a bite out of it. I created a small discus of fire and threw it at the creature. Universal Destruction boosted the strength of the spell as it cut the creature's fall to the ground.
Surprising me, thousands of four eyed beasts turned and stared at me. They blended into the dark forest. I hadn't even seen the horde there. Thousands of flashes erupted. The marífts all started to teleport away, some of them didn't.
Like I said, marífts are mostly dumb. One charged me blindly. I spawned Paukena's sword and quickly placed it between the eyes. Flicking the blade out I chased the remaining marífts.
They could all teleport but some were just running. I wrapped fire around my sword, more so I tried but it took too long and I was already on a maríft. I flicked the blade backwards and cut at the neck. The blade finally burst into flames as I hit it.
Goblin-slinging myself I danced between the remaining marífts. They had quite frail bones. Smashing them into the ground with gravity was very effective against most.
I tried to chuck the fire at the last one I could find. The fire decided not to move as if it could decide. The last one had jumped behind a large tree far ahead of me and I lost sight of it.
"Damn!" I looked at my fire slowly going out as I fed it less magic.
I can't understand why my magic wouldn't respond to me. I could easily coil water magic around the sword but for some reason my fire magic I hadn't been able to use well.
…
I continued on what was left of the road. The five way stop the woman talked about was simply undrivable.
The road to the right went up the hill and behind the buildings behind me on the right. Then the road next to it went far surrounded by only trees before slowly turning till I couldn't tell if there was an exit that way. The road in front of me similarly curved but in a much quicker and more abrupt end, like they gave up on building it. The last road to my left had buildings on the left side and stretched like the road on my right.
I went left, one building sat on a corner of the road that went into the creek area. Two other buildings sat on that road, and three more home-looking buildings sat at the end of the road on the creek.
I went into the first building advertising itself as an inn. An old man laid sleepy on the counter as I walked in. He had on a black suit and a black hat over his eyes.
"Hello?" his face rose, four eyes looking at me.
"Oh hi. Welcome in." He laughed tiredly. "In my inn." He laughed tiredly, almost falling asleep.
His hat he pushed up revealing goat-like horns carving behind his ears and to his face, similar to Baydí's and Primé's.
"Hi, I'll be spending a couple days here for a quest put up for the town."
"Oh, I heard about that. The news made its way in my inn." he laughed tiredly again.
"Yeah. My name is Heo Estellé. You'll be seeing me a bunch."
"You can stay here for free, since you're helping us. I wouldn't want to burden you."
"Are you sure? This town doesn't seem to get enough visitors to just be skipping on some money?"
"It's fine. I'm getting up there in years being one-hundred and ten. I don't need any more money, just some good zs." He laughed again.
"Well, thank you."
He showed me to a room and handed me a key. I took some clothes out of my blood stained backpack. Laying them terribly on my desk, I left my temporary home.
The forest made getting around the town like a maze. It was worse in the thick of the trees rather than the residential area. I had to really just look around till I could find some marífts. I had started exploring the entrance to the city because it was a little less maze-like.
The next couple of hours I would find small hordes of them and only take out a few. I had been getting faster so I could catch these guys if they didn't teleport. The rest of the night I spent piling up the marífts a bit outside the forest so I could burn them.
I found a small convenience store near the inn. The shelves were barely stocked but there was still a woman sleeping at the front. I woke her up quietly and paid for the food. She wore the same clothes as the woman at the front.
Every few people I'd see in this town all wore the same either white dress or black suit. It was a Noxstavian cultural thing. I couldn't really say I've ever met a Noxstavian till today, but all of them were kind to me.
I had to ask people in some really runned down looking buildings where they'd seen any marífts. All of them gave me a look before telling me. The town was small enough that everyone knew about the quest. Surprisingly, no one had seen any in the left side of the town where most people lived.
It got late and, instead of working through the night like I did —and being calamid— I went to bed early that night.