Another one

Another strong gust of wind blew us away and I managed to change my direction mid-air, landing on my feet. To my left and my right, both women seem to be doing ok for themselves as well.

"Miss! Are you ok?" Aurora wrapped her and the boy in a bubble to protect them.

"Just call me Meraki, Aurora."

"But, that's really hard to do."

"If you don't start now, you never will."

"Bu-"

"Can we focus here?! That thing is coming!" Rose shouted, pointing to the centipede-like creature rushing at us.

"Damn is it ugly."

"Kefi."

"Look out!" Rose created a portal in front of me just as the creature was about to pounce on me. It fell from the sky a second later, smashing into an inky puddle once it reached the ground.

"Gross."

"Look, please pay attention. Creatures like this aren't easy to beat."

As if on cue, the ground rumbled again as the creature put itself back together again

"Aurora!" Rose shouted, running to the creature.

"Miss! Take Leo and go hide. We'll handle this."

I looked at Rose then at Aurora, who was pleading with her eyes. But I didn't feel like listening to her. I still am a little bitter of the fact that she still can't call me by my name even after I told her to do so.

"You know, my body feels stiff from sleeping so long. And you know what they say? Youngsters need exercise, right?" I said, giving my sweetest smile to Aurora.

"Miss?"

"Kefi."

"Roger. Don't take this personally, Meraki just has a very rotten personality."

And we were off.

"Wait!" Aurora called to me but I ignored it. To be honest, I don't only feel petty, I just wish to see what a battle looks like close up.

"So you're my back up?" Rose asked, jumping back when her attacks did nothing to the creature.

"Not really. I'm just here to observe. That woman will be here in a couple of seconds. Hold out until then, ok?" Kefi patted her shoulder and we ran past it, sitting on the branch of a tree to watch the action unfold.

"What the hell?!" Rose shouted, creating another portal in front of her as the creature shot one of its hands to her. Once the hand entered the portal, she closed it up, cutting it off the main body.

"What happened?" Aurora finally came with the boy no longer in her arms.

"I cut one of its arms but even that took a toll on my magic. Seems my Vial is depleting."

"Where's Miss?"

"In the trees there, watching. She said that she's only here to observe."

Aurora and I made eye-contact as she breathed a sigh of relief, "Good. That's good."

"Who is she anyway? You seem to cherish her a great deal."

"She's more significant than my existence," Aurora said, smiling.

"You've become so strange." Rose chucked.

"They know that we can hear them, right?" Kefi asked, pointing to the two worn-out women.

"I think their main concern should be more on the creature screaming in front of them."

"Oh, yeah. I was so focused on them, I forgot about that thing."

The creature really is a tough one to take down. Rose managed to cut off its arm but she is already gasping for breath, though the creature doesn't seem to be able to regrow its arm from all the screaming and the inky liquid coming out of the severed arm.

"Oh, grow up! You have twenty-nine left!" Kefi shouted, her tone held a mix of mockery and disappointment.

"You counted?"

"Of course. Why wouldn't I?"

"It's useless information at this point," I said, as the creature began attacking them again. Every move it made is heavy and forceful, shaking the ground and crushing the bodies under it.

"If you think that's useless information, why don't we go look for useful information?"

"What are you talking about?"

"The castle." Kefi pointed to it, "It came from there right? And that other woman says something about experiments. What do you think we can find there?"

"Experiments? Does she mean human, plants or animals?"

"We won't know unless we look. Come on, if we wait until this battle is finished, they will never tell us."

"Ok, ok. Let's go."

Taking one last look at them, we made our way to the castle, following a brick road to it. Parts of the stone wall were on the ground, covered in something brown. The smell from the brown thing feels so oddly familiar.

"That's blood," Kefi said, plainly.

"Blood?"

"Yeah, when blood dries it becomes a dark brown colour. Just like that one. If you can look around you, you can see that the path is stained with that same colour."

The brick path is grey but some parts of it are dark brown, I thought it was just because the path was old but seems like it's more than just that.

Not just the path or the rocks from the walls, but even the trees and, especially, the entranceway were covered in brown.

Kefi scoffed as we ran our hand across the stains on the entranceway. She chipped a dried stain off and smelled it, quickly turning to the direction of the creature with a smile on her face.

"Seems they are as crazy as I imagined."

"What are you talking about? What happened?"

"It's better to show you." Kefi placed my hand on my eyes as she did before and upon putting them down, I saw the threads again, a hundred times more colourful than the last time, if that was possible.

Except for this time, the treads came from the trees, the boulders, the path and from all around the withered forest and castle, even from the entranceway and the chip I held.

"So, what do you see?" She asked as I followed the direction they were going towards.

"No way."

Each person is assigned a colour, this colour connects parts of the person to themselves. So, seeing all these different colours, from every spot on the place and, perhaps further than that, connecting to the creature, it sends shivers down my spine just looking at it.

"What do you think happened?" I asked, never taking my eyes off the way the threads move with the creature, now a tangled mess.

"Experiments remember, Meraki? It does make sense, the blood of anyone contains tons of memories."

"Yeah. That's why heart transfusions usually lead to people having some kind of memory or familiar feeling to someone they haven't met before. But what about it?"

"When we were devouring all those people, they were nothing but empty bodies. They were human alright, but not ones that are alive. I didn't get a single flash of memory from the blood like I normally do. That's my way of showing respect to the people I consume so I felt it incredibly strange."

"They did feel very lifeless, now that you say that. Though I detected one core emotion from this place."

"You can do that?"

"I have a very strong understanding of emotions, though not on myself. I wonder why. Does it have something to do with my memories?"

"Let's wonder about those answers some other time. What emotion did you sense?"

"Fear. Pure, incomprehensible fear. I got chills just from looking at the bodies and the dried blood."

"What do you think they did?"

"I don't know, but whatever it is, it's really, really not good. Just what kind of experiments did they conduct for this much threads to come out of this castle?" I murmured, looking at the ominous building. A dark cloud surrounds it almost like a warning to other people.

"Sometimes, things like this make me wonder, what exactly defines a monster."

"What makes you think that?"

"Well, you see. When we tell people to define a monster, they instantly think of ghosts or ghouls, something like the creature back there. Or even something like me. But if you ask them why they think that's a monster they will just go, 'It looks like one.'

"Human experiments are the reason that creature came to be and that creature is considered a monster. So shouldn't the monster be the one that creates those abominations? Especially from unwilling test subjects, given the blood everywhere.

And … where a creature like that is, its creator mustn't be far off. But then, that's just a thought."

The ground shook again and I could hear Aurora's shouts and the creature's returning groans.

"Well, we'll never know unless we check it out. What do you think, Kefi?" I asked, turning to the thread-covered castle, I saw a faint silhouette on the window. It disappeared as quickly as it appeared.

A smile made its way to my face as soon as I noticed it. "Want to look for the real monster and give it the credit it's due?"

"I thought you would never ask."