CHAPTER 47: IOLL (1)

"You found an Angas pool and survive after going inside it?!!!"

When I tell Excafol and Selene what happened to me inside the forest, Excafol jumps at me and grips my shoulders with both hands.

"Brat, it is not good to lie! Better tell us the truth before I smack it out of your sorry ass!" Now, it's Selene who is threatening me behind Excafol.

"I am telling you the truth, I swear!" Excafol brings his face so close to mine our noses are almost touching. And behind him, Selene starts shouting.

"So, you are saying you touched an Angas pool, you even fell inside. And not only did you survive but you even draw power from it, some world's roar or something. That what you want us to believe?"

"I-I-I didn't know it was an Angas pool. And I was chased by-"

"Shut the fuck up kid! you are talking shit!!!" Selene is even angrier now. And Excafol won't let go of me. He is looking right into my eyes, and in his, I can see something like a fire burning.

***

After three minutes, Excafol finally releases me and sits back down, Selene is still standing up, with her arms crossed. Excafol sighs and then looks at the ceiling.

"So it was not impossible after all. Jeanne, you were right in the end." At those words, Selene's face becomes red with anger.

"What the fuck are you saying?!! Do you how many people died on us that day!! And who the fuck is Jeanne?!!"

Selene's hair are standing like the fur of an enraged cat. She looks crazy right now. Her eyes are about to pop out of their sockets. Excafol is still looking at the ceiling and suddenly, he starts crying. Huge drops of tears fall from his face. His cheeks become red. Seeing that, Selene calms down like she was actually never angry before. She simply sits down near him. We watch him cry for like five minutes. Unable to say anything in this awkward situation. Then finally, tired of waiting, Selene breaks the silence.

"Will you tell us already?! Stop whining like the kid! Or I will end up smacking you both on the head!" Wait, she was really going to smack me?

Excafol wipes his face and takes a deep breath. Then another one, and another one. When we thought he would start talking, he just looks at the ceiling again. Selene looks at him and then sits comfortably now.

"I am an iollian."

He starts speaking. And with a weird confession at that. Although not so weird since he said Ioll had disappeared from the map.

"My family had been chased out of Ioll a long time ago because one of my ancestors was not able to use more than three elemental attributes of Angas. So, he came to Titanium and settled. Fifty years ago, I encountered a woman. She was an iollian just like me. But beautiful, oh my sweet sweet Jeanne. Her hair, silky smooth, caressing you like a warm and gentle breeze, her face, an angel upon us, shining like gold, her hands, her body, she was perfect. A woman that can appear only once in a thousand years. No, maybe in ten thousand years."

Excafol face's become weird, happiness starts flowing in every corner of his body it seems.

"You would think somebody like that can marry whoever; that the nobody I was could never even talk to her. But, what would you know about life? She was a hardcore researcher, interested only in science. A pureblood iollian so to speak. At the time, I just obtained my license to enroll in the eternal academy but she didn't, even though her family was richer. Because some noble had put pressure so that she would have to meet him. But, instead, she decided to continue studying on her own. Seeing that, I couldn't accept it. So I took a decision that changed my life."

Excafol stops for a moment. What he did must have impacted his whole life.

"...I gave her my license. When I did. She looked happy, puzzled, and confused. Then she said it couldn't help her since the family name at least needed to be the same. And like an idiot, I said 'Then you just need to marry me.' And she did. She accepted with a big and beautiful smile I had never seen before."

"This is too long." Selene butts in Excafol romantic story, his face was the very definition of happiness with a smile so big it could have torn off his face. This woman is not considerate at all.

"Right, you are right. Long story short. She discovered at the academy that Angas pool was one of the worst things iollians had ever experienced on. Angas pools are a mix of every element present on Shcamerin. Due to unknown reasons, they gather up and condense so much that they become liquids and blend together."

So that why that pool was changing colors like that? It was made of a lot of elemental Angas. though I haven't been able to use them yet.

"No one is able to explain why. Not even my ancestors could. But they tried to see if it was possible to use them. But, even just gathering the liquid of an Angas pool proved to be difficult. Every container used just turned into their original form. Glass reverted to sand, iron to rocks, and so on."

He grabs a glass while saying so and looks at it for a moment.

"So they did what should never be done. They used people. Thousands and thousands of slaves bought here in Titanium. They died by the hundreds every day. Forced to drink the liquid to see if it would stay in the body and revert it back. But they were simply dying. Of more than 500 thousand slaves, no one survived that experiment. So it was declared a total failure and Angas pools were simply described as the liquid of sure death."

"See what I told you, fucking kid!"

"But Jeanne was not one to simply accept things the way they are established. She always needed proofs, facts, and examples. She even asks me for an example of my love for her. I was completely lost that day and I just kiss her like it would be the last time. She was so red, so cu-"

"Hey."