Shave Your Neckbeard, Blackbeard (01)

Alban's eyes shot open, his gaze that was previously leveled at a red sky now aimed at a red sky specked with dots of white. The white spots fell down onto his face, melting and leaving a thin watery residue. His body automatically heated up as the flames responded to his subconscious desire to be warmer. What fell upon his face was snow.

He laid against the cold ground that cradled up to his mostly bare skin, unmoving. He was waiting for his vitality to get to work, healing itself back to it's prime condition. He felt reasonably comfortable, his head lying on his long hair that splayed out beneath him. His hair now extended past his shoulders, the color a rich dark chocolate. His gorgeous face bore no expression, his passionate emotions from his triumph thoroughly cooled off by now. His stunning body that appeared heavenly without compare was still, the only movements being the wounds that were quickly closing up along his battered body.

"Why're we here now...?"

"Does anyone remember that bright light? I thought I went blind for a second..."

"Blind? Bloody hell mate, I thought I died!"

"We might as well have. It's so cold here..." The gheckla conversed amongst themselves, each sharing their thoughts on their current situation. And what a situation it was. They didn't even have the the time to wipe away their tears before they found themselves in an entirely different climate. Most of them had frozen water droplets that stuck to their face like glue.

"Ah, we've all survived worse. Quit complaining and survey the area." Amidst the chatter, Lat's voice was carried to each and every gheckla. The crowd's murmurs had subsided a bit at his comment, plenty of the gheckla already scanning their area for anything that could warm their bones. All except a female gheckla that stood by Lat's side.

She was a very charming woman, her countenance mature yet still as lively as her youth would suggest. She looked a lot like Lat, in fact, she was nearly identical to the young man. The main difference was that her hair was much longer, her golden blond hair nestled against her collarbones.

"Since when have you been the boss, Lat?" Her elocutions were easy on the ear to all who had the fortune of listening to them, though it intensified the guilt that Lat had forgotten. His cheery expression froze, much like the tears that were affixed to his face. Yet the tears melted at that moment, the action caused by the fresh hot tears that streamed down his visage.

"Krista...I'm sor-" He couldn't even get the words out of his mouth before Krista interrupted him. Although her mint eyes were stern, her lips were perked up into a warm and beckoning smile. The expression her face portrayed was the joy of seeing your family once again, a feeling usually that accompanied a long wait. Krista quickly hugged Lat before pulling away, before speaking up again.

"There's no need to explain anything to me. Well, maybe one thing. Who's that boy that saved us and is now lying on the ground?"

"Uh..." Lat didn't really know where to start. It would be a rather long story that wouldn't be very productive given their current circumstance. Before he could think of a way to evade the question, Alban's deep and mellow articulations had saved him the effort.

"Miss Krista, is it? I hope you know that I can very much hear you, and that you can ask me if you really want to know."

"Nah. You're scary. Who just lies there with their body half beaten to death while talking all polite and what not. You still have a LOT of blood all over you, too."

Silence. Alban pondered her on her asseverations, finding them kind of justified? Honestly, it puzzled him a bit why he felt literally nothing about almost dying and was a lot more hungry than anything. He decided not to question it though. Wouldn't do much anyways, and he wasn't really all that bothered by how he was right now. If anything it was an improvement over the easily afraid person he used to be. He really only had one question...

"Is that supposed to be bad? The last part, I mean."

"YES. YES IT IS. Brother, where'd ya find such a weirdo...?" Krista was feeling a bit concerned at her brother's choice in company. She was grateful that Alban had saved her people, of course, but uh...did he have to look so elated while he did it? She had definitely seen the unmistakeable grin that he wore while fighting the huge gecko.

"Come off it, he's fine when ya get to know him. And it's not like we can do much else right now..." The climate was pretty low in visibility, as the cold winds that were full of snowflakes buffeted the area around them. The only way the ghecklas and the savage who got ported with them would move would probably involve Alban and fire. Lots of fire.

Sighing at the amount of work his people still had cut out for them, Lat massaged his glabella. It seemed the cycle of work never truly ended, free or not.

—-

At a manageable distance away from Alban and the gheckla's current position, there laid a town cozily nestled between two blankets of snow. The town was large in both area and scale, the houses easily making the average two story building look like a child's play set.

The monsters that inhabited the giant town were quite similar in size, differing by only a small amount. The only monsters that could live in the town were the only tall monsters in the continent, the cyclopses. Their blue tinted skin and dark hair colors stood out in the endless white that surrounded their town, yet the cyclopses stood hale and hearty.

"Bah. Hettur has really gone to the birds lately."

"Ja, I agree. How come the chief has been held up in his home for days?"

"You haven't heard? Our "brave and fearless" leader came back running like a chicken. Some man he turned out to be, talking about all this "We tall people shall rule, we are the only ones fit to take control of this continent!"

"Puhahaha! Big words and yet a tiny man. He is no better than a forefathers, the chiefs that came before him."

"No, that Blackbeard is much worse. The second his old man croaked he started spouting out the most ridiculous things to anyone that would listen. And now what is he doing? Hiding in his room like a child."

"The boy is an unwise chief, I wonder why no one started an uprising. There's a reason the cyclopses haven't invaded the other tribes in all of our history, after all."

"None of those upstarts want to take on the role, that's why. Most of them are scared hairless, holing up and protecting that mockery of a chief. Peh."

The two cyclopses shared all of their opinions on Blackbeard with another, now free from the overbearing fledgling chief. They would probably be free to say whatever they wanted for a long time, as Blackbeard and the cyclopses that went with him were so traumatized that they didn't even dare to enter the plaza. In a tribe like the cyclops where strength ruled all, that didn't bode well for them. Many of the cyclopses that refused to go were becoming increasingly insubordinate by the day.

Of course, that didn't mean much to Blackbeard. The cyclops that was tall even for his kind was currently hunched in the corner of a dark room, biting on his fingernails.