Flock

"I…was looking for a snake bite," Kiran shyly defended.

Noorh remained curiously staring at her. "So you tried to undress me?" he repeated.

"I wanted to help you!" Kiran shyly defended, her cheeks scarlet. "It was not out of any lustful desire for you or your body. And technically, you're not naked…yet…" she mumbled, looking away.

Noorh raised a brow at her, biting back a smirk. He understood what she meant but he enjoyed seeing her flustered. It was a pleasant stark contrast from her lifeless form not too long ago. "How are you?" he asked.

She stared confused at him. "Me?"

"You passed out," Noorh explained. More like died, really, but he couldn't bring himself to be blunt about it. Something inside him feared that telling her how her heart stopped beating could make her disappear from his lap.

Was she even aware that she was perched intimately on his lap?

"I did!" Kiran exclaimed, remembering what had happened. "I was so shocked at the snake that I gasped and this horrible stench just stuffed my nose and filled my mouth, and it stung like hell! It was terrible! And next thing I knew, everything was black. I thought I was dead but then I saw a white light and-"

"Oh and do me a favor," the voice said. "When you wake up, don't tell Noorh about me."

Kiran paused. She almost told Noorh about the voice - or the talking orb of light - from her dreams, even when it clearly told her not talk to him about it. She thankfully caught herself at the last minute.

Noorh raised a brow at her. "And..?"

Kiran shyly studied Noorh's curious expression. Then again, if the orb didn't want Noorh to know about its presence, then Noorh must know it personally. There must be a reason why he shouldn't know about how it suddenly made contact with Kiran. But what if the orb wasn't an ally of Noorh's? What if it was a villain pretending to be a harmless and helpful character in the complicated isekai plot that she mistakenly got entangled in?

"Um…Are you by chance acquaintances with a small white floating light orb?" Kiran finally asked, whispering to make sure that they weren't overheard by anyone. The villainous orb of light could be observing them from a far at that very moment after all. That was how fantasy villains knew how to trap heroes in TV shows and movies.

"A what..?" Noorh asked, puzzled. A floating light orb? People could be acquaintances with a floating light orb? Was she spouting something that only made sense in her world again?

"Never mind," Kiran said, shaking her head. Noorh must not have known about the orb. It could have been a figment of her dreaming mind, for all she knew. The poison must have made her conjure crazy phantasms while she was unconscious and delirious. "It's nothing."

Noorh scrunched his brows, frustrated that Kiran was keeping things from him again. Did she really not trust him? Well, he did kidnap her from her world. But for them to work together properly, they both have to trust each other in some way or form. He wouldn't be able to help her if she didn't ask for his help. Forcing her to share her mind might upset her further though, so he opted not to pry any further. "Are you sure you're alright?" he asked instead. "You're not in any pain?"

Kiran smiled at him. "No, I'm not," she answered. "I think I actually feel a bit more energized."

"And you can see me without your glasses," he prodded, remembering about how her spectacles plummeted to a winged serpent's nest earlier.

Kiran froze. "W-without my glasses?" she asked. Come to think of it, everything around her seemed a lot clearer than usual. She blinked and gingerly padded her face with her fingers, hoping to feel the plastic frame of her cheap glasses.

"It fell," Noorh explained as Kiran's eyes went wide with realization. "It's probably somewhere in the nests below us, that is…if it’s still in one piece."

Kiran gaped at Noorh. She really wasn't wearing any glasses! Usually, things around her would be slightly blurry without them, unless she leaned closer to look at them. But at that moment, she could clearly see Noorh's long lashes and captivating dark eyes. She quickly turned away to hide her flushed cheeks, and found herself staring down at the cliff behind her where her glasses supposedly fell.

Kiran froze as she saw the black nests and the hissing snake hatchlings furiously glaring back at her. The height looked more ominous than she imagined. It beckoned her to lean back and jump to her death, which filled her veins with a surge of panic. Kiran flailed her arms as she felt her balance tip over to the edge.

Noorh quickly grabbed her by the arms and pulled her against his chest in a thump.

Kiran trembled and gasped for breath in the crook of Noorh's exposed neck. Tears streamed down her cheeks as her heart pounded painfully in her chest.

"Hush," Noorh whispered, gently combing her messy brown hair with his long fingers. "It's okay. You're alright. You're safe."

"I…S-sorry," Kiran weakly mumbled as Noorh's other hand supported the hollow of her back. She squeezed her eyes shut and took several deep breaths to calm herself down. She slowly leaned away from Noorh to give him space, but he immediately pulled her back to his chest.

"Let's stay like this for a while," Noorh said, casting his sights on the cloudy horizon.

"Um...How are you?" Kiran asked, uncomfortable in the silence between them. She wasn't one to talk much usually, but she was sure the silence would expose the sound of her racing heartbeat. "You lost consciousness too. You were so pale and your pulse was faint. I thought I would lose you..."

Noorh blinked, faintly remembering the dream he had before he woke up. It was more like a memory, actually - one of the many dreadful scenes in his childhood that he never wanted to reminisce. Only the sight of the young man with midnight blue hair like him gave him comfort.

"Did you...have a dream where you were in a dark place too?" Kiran asked, glancing up at him.

"Yes," Noorh mumbled. It probably wasn't as dark as Kiran prattled on about, but it was definitely a dark place for him.

"And you saw a bright light too?" Kiran asked, suddenly excited at the thought that she shared a similar experience with Noorh.

Noorh glanced down at her, studying her bright doe eyes. "Just please…please stay with me…" he remembered her say in his dream. He wasn't sure why the words made his heart skip, probably because it was the first time someone asked him to stay with them? She probably only said them because he was her only chance at returning home to her own world. Regardless, her words were probably the reason why he chose the warmth that bloomed from his chest, over the young man's outstretched hand.

"Noorh?" Kiran asked, worried that her questions unearthed Noorh's unpleasant memories.

"We need to figure out a way to get past the nest before the hatchlings' parents return from their morning hunt," he said, looking away and changing the topic of the conversation.

Kiran resignedly leaned her forehead against the side of Noorh's neck, understanding his attempt at avoiding her question. "How did you get past them the first time?" she asked, determined to help him this time and not cause him any more inconveniences.

"I made sure the adult winged-serpents were away," Noorh recalled. "And the hatchlings were just eggs at the time. I thought things would be the same, especially since we got here sooner than I expected."

Things just weren't happening the way he thought it would from securing Alessa Dia to hiking down the pillar. It was as if all the odds had stacked themselves against him, after fortune granted him a relatively smooth journey to the teleportation altar and a successful performance of the ritual.

"But they've already hatched," Kiran muttered, reading what Noorh had in mind. "We can't just jump over them."

"No, not when they are all rabid and hungry from coming out of their egg shells," Noorh answered.

Unlike birds whose hatchlings were relatively full for up to 72 hours before they hatched, winged-serpent hatchlings were greedy giant critters with extremely potent digestive fluids that speed up their metabolism upon escaping their egg shells. It left them extremely hungry and eager to devour anything that could be more challenging to digest such as immense chunks of meat.

"The winged serpents fill their nests with carcass that they pick up from across the land to keep the hatchlings from escaping the nest out of starvation," Noorh continued. "Otherwise, the hatchlings would crawl out and fall to their death over the cliff in a desperate attempt to eat something."

Kiran winced, imagining how the winged serpents might have swooped down a stampeding group of deer and grabbed the most helpless one of them. Then again, she didn't really see anything that resembled deer in the nest. What she saw was...a human corpse. She had wondered if the human corpse that haunted her thoughts was someone like Noorh who failed to cross the nest. Based on his explanation, however, the poor stranger could have perished somewhere else. And instead of receiving a proper burial, his body was taken by the winged-serpents as food for their hatchlings.

Yes, that was a better explanation than being an adventurer like Noorh who perished from an unsuccessful attempt at crossing the winged-serpents' nests.

"The scent that the decomposition of the carcass emits in the nests mixes with the toxins of the black wood that the winged serpents use to build their nests," Noorh said, recalling his knowledge of the pillar guardians in the hope that it could unlock a solution to their problem. He glanced at his sides and stretched his free arm out to retrieve his cloak and scarf. "It creates a fatal miasma that keeps predators away from the hatchlings."

"They have predators?" Kiran curiously asked. Something as terrifying as giant winged serpents could be prey?! What kind of predator would snack on them? Could it be the giant serpent at the cave near the top of the mountain?

"They do," Noorh confirmed, smirking at Kiran's surprise. She would probably be even more surprised once she learned about the Lahnthean ecosystem. "The miasma will fade as the hatchlings consume the carcass, but the adult winged serpents will be back in the nest by the time it happens," he said, wrapping the cloak around him and Kiran to protect them both from the icy breeze blowing their way.

Kiran frowned as her eyes noticed something moving in the horizon. It seemed like a flock of birds soaring from a distance. The more she looked at it, the more it seemed to grow bigger. She caught five of them at first, then eight…twelve…too many for her to properly count from a distance, even as she squinted her eyes to see them better.

Then she realized that the flock was steadily flying toward their direction.

"Noorh," she anxiously called, grasping the his sleeve until her knuckles turned white.

Noorh looked curiously at her as he tried to fix the ends of his shirt and hide his exposed torso. "What is it?"

"The adult winged serpents," she began. "They don't happen to look like that flock of birds up ahead, do they?"

Noorh turned to look at the horizon and found the flock of birds that Kiran was talking about: a group of flying reptiles with black and deep red-feathered wings that were said to create winds strong enough to destroy an entire village.