Dipping his bone dagger into the flesh of the dead terrabeast, the wanderer looks at it thoroughly. At first glance he had made some assumptions, however when giving the dead patch of sky another look he found irregularities.
"That's-That's odd." His right hand scratching his right sideburn. "The beast is not disformed. It is…It is half formed or was becoming formless." He probed with his dagger at the place he thought there was supposed to be another part of the terrabeast.
And he was right. His dagger did slip in, but not as fast as it did in the air. "Hmm, there definitely is something here that I can't see….What about touching it?" He extended his left hand to touch the place with his fingers.
The deformed beast's supposed cavity in front of one of its appendages shimmered slightly when the boy's hand touched it. He did not feel much difference other than a heaviness bonded to the space surrounding his fingers in the cavity.
He brought his hand back out.
It came out slowly.
"Huh," he glanced once more at the being waiting at the gate of the castle.
Rather than standing up, he sat down comfortably on the leveled sand. Grabbing with his right hand at one of the appendages of the terrabeast, he began chopping it.
"UGHH!" the boy pushed hard against the hide of the terrabeast. "Damn it! It is just as hard as understanding what this actually looks like!" He glanced around thinking if there is another he could attempt cutting.
Spotting a few of the dead beasts some steps away, he thought he could change his target. However, a deep urge came from within him. One that spoke to him. One simple word.
'Willfall.'
Shiver ran across his skin in a wave.
Right then, in his peripheral he saw. The being at the gate waved again.
Instinct within him spoke to freeze, and another rose to run. Run in any direction that called to him.
He followed none. He just breathed in, breathed out. And again did the same.
Lowering his head back to focus on the beast in front, he made himself forget that a word rose within him. One he felt everyday.
Holding on his bone dagger with both hands, he gripped it tightly and pushed it into another appendage of the beast. One he thought was the beast's leg. The dagger plunged in deep.
With one hand placed on the semi-transformed hide, he began cutting it in a repetitive pull and push action.
He said, "One. Two. Three." And counted on and on.
Finally at the number four hundred forty six did he stop severing the appendage, the appendage had broken off completely in a clean fashion.
Pushing it to one side, he attempted to sever another. But the dagger broke in the middle of the process.
Sighing, the boy looked at the supposed leg he had severed off out of the few legs and arms this beast had. "May be I should try this on others as well?" He considered it, yet he remembered the second wave the being at the gate made.
A random thought entered again his mind, 'Is that being wearing a shroud or something?' Choosing not to glance at it, he kept his focus on the severed appendage.
But his mind kept drifting to the inside of the castle, what it may hold. What is it a promise of. He had so many delusions.
Shaking his head, "I had just destroyed one castle this week. Nope, should wait to get into another."
His words fell on his own ears. His mind wanted to go to the castle, and now so did his heart. It had come out of its hiding place after the scare of being crushed in an instant without ever having a chance to escape.
He used the sand and drew grooves in them. Deep ones. And then drew the action of earth in each separate groove.
His makeshift fire ring was ready. He dug out the sand inside with his broken bone dagger. Its blade now half in its size. "Still usable," he told himself.
After a while he had made and roasted the meat of the beast, he took out a bottle of deep red liquid. Pouring it on top of the roasted meat of the deceased terrabeast, he also took another dagger out from his brown overcoat.
Using it he cut the roasted meat in pieces well enough for him to eat. Dropping one into his mouth, he chewed on it. His expression changed from disgust to hard to swallow and so many more but he never spit it out. He just swallowed it whole.
"Ugh, that desert monger's blood is not the right sauce to eat with this patch of sky terrabeast's meat. Yuck!"
Eating some more through sheer will power he wolfed down the roasted meat he had made while the rest he had cut went into one of his brown overcoat's inner pockets.
The boy felt yet again mesmerized by his overcoat's ability. For that was something he only learned of after receiving and using the overcoat in Beret.
After having delayed his only option for so many minutes, the wanderer finally stood up.
"It is time I faced the castle." He turned to it. "Come on, let's go."
He voiced it out only to make himself feel he was being heard. By someone, anyone. And he was the only one in a land filled with corpses, the one who could listen.
He walked and dusted himself off at the same time. Glancing time to time at different corpses and stopping at some to look at the distinction each made in his mind.
"None are quite different. Was this kind of like a large pack or group of terrabeasts?" His words questioned the very thing that came to his mind.
"Are they like a communal beast that hunts together and lives together?" Shrugging his questions off, the boy kept walking.
Now, he knew how far the castle had landed. It wasn't very far, yet far enough that it could be counted in leagues. 'Maybe like closer to a leti-league.' He was close to the gate of the castle and on the edges of the shade he saw the daylight shimmer as blue as ever.
The being however began stepping back as the boy reached close. That's when the boy in the brown overcoat noticed, the being did indeed seem like to be covered by a shroud.
A shroud of purity and mesmerizing nature, one that only invited him in into the castle. He did not know when had he crossed the steps and stepped into the corridor across the gate.
Only when the gates of the castle closed, did the boy awaken from his stupefied self. He turned around to see the gates closing.
The light in front of him shimmered brighter as the gate closed.