"You told me to search Ichl's breeding ground for the mace. If I didn't find it, I should investigate who took it, and…"
"Enough!" The commander's voice cracked like thunder, the sound reverberating through the chamber and slicing through Renai's words.
"So, what did you find?"
Renai looked up at the wall of ghostly flames before him, his heart pounding in his chest, but he was met only with a deafening silence. He swallowed hard, the muscles in his throat constricting, and continued, his voice strained and barely audible,
"The mace is not with Auror, as you suspected, Commander. It's with the Convert."
The silence stretched, an agonizing vise tightening around Renai's throat, stealing the air from his lungs. Every second felt like an eternity, the weight of his failure pressing down on him with crushing force.
"I… I couldn't retrieve it."
"Renai!!!" The commander's roar was a physical blow, a wave of pure power that sent a jolt of fear coursing through Renai's body. He scrambled to his feet, his muscles screaming in protest, his heart hammering against his ribs like a frantic bird trapped in a cage. The chamber was vast, yet he suddenly felt claustrophobic, trapped in a cage of his own making, confined by his own incompetence. He had never seen the commander this angry, this close to losing control.
"Do you realize the danger you've put this realm in, by letting that weapon roam free?" The commander's voice was low and menacing, each word carefully chosen to inflict maximum damage.
"Now, you take whatever resources you require from the vault, and you never come back until you bring him back to me. Am I clear?"
Renai turned to leave, desperate to escape the oppressive atmosphere of the chamber, to put as much distance as possible between himself and the commander's wrath. He had been banished, sent on a seemingly impossible mission, and there was no reason to linger any longer. But just as he reached the edge of the hall, the commander's voice stopped him, freezing him in his tracks.
"Renai… Don't fail me again."
Renai nodded silently, unable to speak, and hurried from the chamber, his mind racing with the weight of the task ahead.
As he passed through the doorway, the frail old man touched his arm, his touch sending a strange, tingling sensation through Renai's body, returning him to a sense of normalcy.
"Remember, Renai, this realm might be evil, but it's our paradise." The words of the old man echoed, followed by an ear splitting cackle that made Renai wince.
Renai rolled his eyes, dismissing the old man's words as the ramblings of a senile fool. It was easy to forget that the old man was unhinged too.
This new mission would definitely be harder than the last.
The last time had been made easier because he had been able to trace Ichl's soul fragments left in the Convert's soul, providing a clear path to his quarry. But this time would be far more difficult since it was gone. With no trails.
It's definitely going to be a long..,long journey.
Renai closed his eyes and slouched, his muscles relaxing, drawing the anger around him to flow to all ends of his bodies, escaping his control and dissipating, the temperature around him dropped drastically.
He was fed up.
***
"Wake up, weakling!!"
A loud, grating voice shattered the silence.
Derek stirred, groaning softly. He turned over in his bed, pulling the covers over his head, wishing the voice would go away. It was yet another day, another day when one would have to wake up and live through another humdrum and pointless day. Going to school? Who even needed that?
Sometimes Derek just wanted to never wake up again, to escape the crushing weight of his own existence.
"Wake up!!" The voice declared again, more insistent this time.
Derek tried to ignore it, but the voice was persistent, intrusive, digging its way into his mind. He recognized the voice, it was masculine, grating and uncomfortably familiar.
"It's probably my dad," he mumbled to himself, trying to find some semblance of comfort in the familiarity of the sound.
But then, like a mirage shimmering in the heat, a vivid scene coalesced from the darkness of Derek's mind, a memory that was both familiar and disturbingly distorted.
He was sitting by the window inside a house he recognized and his father was outside, his face contorted in rage, hitting the glass with the full brunt of both fists, yelling for Derek to wake up. But his voice was muffled and distorted, as if it were passing through some invisible barrier, rendering the words unintelligible.
Derek stared on in utter confusion, his heart pounding in his chest. For one, he had never seen his father that agitated, that consumed by fury. What was worse, he wasn't even asleep.
"Dad… look, I'm awake already," Derek tried to say, but no sound came out of his mouth, instead, the sound of his younger brother crying suddenly came from his mouth. He jolted in fear.
At that moment, the scene of the accident that he had pushed to the back of his mind suddenly replayed again...and again
His father's fist had finally broken through the glass, shattering it into a thousand pieces. All these noises and horrifying scenes culminated into a cacophony of dreadful screams, Derek held his head and yelled awake.
He sat upright, his ragged breaths escaping his lungs in furious heaves.
Its just a nightmare," Derek tried to calm himself.
Then the grating voice spoke again, "Wake up!!!"
"Shut up, Quarren!!" Derek retorted, cursing the annoying mace.
"Ahh! It worked!" Quarren exclaimed happily, his voice filled with glee.
"What worked?" Derek inquired, trying to piece himself together.
"Everything! For Oblivion to take that memory as a real one, you must have such amazing imagination capabilities. I give you that.
"That memory generation thingy was something I came up with on the spot. It was just a hypothesis. But congratulations, you just made it a theory."
Quarren said, sounding a bit smug
"Also if i had been wrong, it wouldn't have taken your memories, no, no, no. It would have only broken your mind and killed you if you weren't a warrior with a vast repertoire it could take from in exchange for oblivion. Hehe."
Derek wanted nothing more than to smash the mace into dust. But, he knew Quarren too well. The mace could be incredibly annoying, even when it wasn't trying.
That smug bastard, Derek thought
He pushed himself to his feet and looked around.
A few scattered skeletons littered the landscape, but apart from that, it was just an endless savanna dotted with sparse grasses and shrubs. There were no ruins, no trees, no noteworthy landmarks, except for the rolling hills and mountains bordering the distant horizon. The landscape looked like a lazy artist had drafted the background and then forgotten to add the details.
"Where are we, and how did we get here?" Derek asked, his voice laced with wry amusement.
"You see, I once heard a rumor that the Forest of Oblivion was a prison."
Derek took on a more serious demeanor. "prison?
Well that is the last thing that I was hoping to hear"