Chapter 10: The Return of the Bounty Hunters

Rey, like someone saying good morning to someone who had slept a pleasant night, said:

"Oh, you're awake at last."

Taking a breath, he looked around as if enjoying the scenery, to add.

"I have kept my promise. If you use your power, you can break through this stop and get to where you wish....".

Edith was being held by a single hand, her feet dangled in the air and she felt the strong, firm embrace of someone smaller than her. Lifting her gaze, she also noticed Rey's transformed hand wedged within the solidity of the platform. She also saw the wings still burning like glowing coal embers and the pale face of White, who, despite having his mouth open and tongue out, was even breathing.

"Are you out of your mind!!! What if this isn't the Tartarus?" he asked tearfully.

"No, oh, oh oh oh... Don't play with me Edith." The grip on the ceiling loosened a little. "It's not like I'm staying long. This is the only chance I can give you as a friend. Face your problems and take responsibility for the consequences, it's the only way. It's better than wandering around lost. Looking into your eyes, I reflect back at you. You made me realize that the only way out is to go through the situation I was trying to escape" The grip loosened a little.

Edith, with tears in her eyes and denying:

"I don't want a friend..." She paused and hid her gaze. "To fulfill my purpose and hold me accountable afterwards, I need us to be something more....."

Rey, almost unsurprised, said:

"Umm, that is something I may take into consideration in the future. But for now, this must be goodbye between the two of us." Edith asked worriedly:

"With those wings, will you be able to survive the fall?"

"Will I be able to survive the fall?"

He flashed a haughty, wide, confident smile of someone even more arrogant.

"Are not our strings intertwined? Is not your name Edith Laquesis? Have more faith in yourself and don't make me laugh anymore. Our life has many more options than those shown to us by simple strings; we need to see them and have the power to take them...."

"But, but..."

"Edith, I wish you well..." interrupted Rey.

The sound of the grabbing and the crumbling of the stones in the area he used to hold on took place. The three little ones fell into the void; however, using his hands, Rey threw the Parcae's body as hard as he could, forcing him to make himself non-tangible, if she didn't want to crash into the stones.

Edith, with her saddened eyes, stopped seeing the little one without a surname and the whole red environment. Crossing the earth, all was darkness. She could remain intangible and fall back down, but she would waste the precious opportunity someone had given her through her sacrifice.

"No," she answered.

Emerging above the surface of the Tartarus, she wiped her blurry eyes to make out more than a dozen figures wearing long black robes with silver buttons and gold ropes. Tall and imposing, endowed with slight curves that only the female body had, with black hands, they covered their faces with hoods. They, who could be perfectly distinguished by their dead eyes, said the following words:

"Oh, little one. We have been waiting for your arrival. Come on, you're late for your ancient language class" as if nothing had happened.

Edith stopped floating, fell to the ground and, with her eyes twisted and her fists clenched, followed the guides with the airs of rigorous instructors, with whom she was well acquainted. The Parcae knew they were strict because, no matter how much she learned or how much she demonstrated her talents, none of them ever gave her a smile or a nod of approval. But something struck her as odd, for every time she made a mistake, she received a stern reprimand. More than a hundred times she had had to go to sleep after a good thrashing. "Won't I be punished even though I escaped?" she wondered. "Why were they waiting for me in this exact place? Was this among their plans?", questions that neither came out through her lips, for, if they had, perhaps they would interpret it as wanting to receive punishment.

...

On the other hand, Rey, hugging White against his chest and shrinking into a ball, descended as far as he had climbed until with his barrier he impacted against the almost solid surface of a drying lake. The violent impact caused the sphere to crack on all sides and partly deformed its original structure. On the other hand, the ground, overflowing with bodies in pain, boiled blood, filthy mud and sullen sludge, almost exploded into a thousand pieces as if it had been a bomb. Heart-rending screams, cries, grief and anger were heard all over the place.

Both White and the little boy survived because the defensive barrier had withstood the blow, but that did not mean that the creator had remained unharmed. The barrier had cracked just as an egg did when it fell to the ground and fortunately did not split in two. As his core was related to the heart chakra and all the others, Rey felt the external damage right inside him and vomited blood. As if an organ had been damaged, Rey clenched his jaw with the intention of enduring the almost most unbearable pain he had felt so far. "No, I may lose consciousness..." he mumbled to himself. Fighting against the intense dizziness and the fading lights, he willed the barrier to shrink and return inside him as a core of energy.

Struggling to stay lucid, Rey was losing track of what he was doing, where he was, sense of direction and thoughts. Had it not been for constantly reminding himself to protect his furry friend, he would have opened his hands.

Dead and unwilling entities rearranged themselves in the hole created by the little one in his fall. Unable to use the barrier to protect himself and rendered helpless, Rey was devoured by a thousand dead hands pulling him to the bottom of the mud. Without ceasing to protect White with his own body, he received as many blows, scratches, bites and screams as those dead wraiths who hated and detested life could give him. Once human, they were now drowning in rage and hatred, and though they had no eyes in their sockets and no flesh on their bones, they did avail themselves of two black lungs inflated by mud and muck. The two sacks hanging from the chest cavity had the sole purpose of inflating to scream, and though not many had tongues, the few that did insult the gods, insulted Leonel.

Returning to the present, Rey began to struggle as much as he could, but in the face of his inability to create favorable results he said to himself, "It is impossible to reach the surface." Scratches, blows, bites and kicks from those dead stopped hurting him as they had before. "Hmm! My body doesn't feel hurt anymore... Since I can't go up, it's better if I keep going down," he said to himself before letting himself sink. Which was not very difficult, since he weighed more than the dead there.

Even if he opened his eyes, Rey was unable to see. All around him everyone wanted to climb into the lake of shifting mud, apparently to cry out their sorrows so that they would be heard. On the other hand, the deeper he went, the calmer it became. So much so that it got to the point where there was no more slapping, scratching and biting, only kicking. "This mud feels more liquid, but I don't think I can see," thought the little guy who, after patting twice, appeased the squirming that his furry companion was giving as he became short of breath."

White had been out of breath for a long time. He struggled against his urge to want to inhale from the liquid around him, but still the struggle was becoming ineffective against his instinctive desires to want to expand his lungs. As soon as he felt Rey's pats on his back, he decided to exhale all the air he had inside him a little at a time, to at least do something and buy time. Still without opening his eyes, Rey propelled himself down with his feet and kept swimming until the mud ceased to be and felt more like water.

Pushed away from all the movement and anger that hurt him, the little guy with no last name decided to once again put to use the barrier he could create with his core and push the water away from the spot. Once he was able to rest on the bottom of the narrow, still cracked sphere, he called out a full blast of wind, which came with oxygen and the gases needed to breathe. The wind further inflated the size of the sphere, which allowed itself to be enlarged by the will of the user.

White inhaled through his mouth, then expelled the water that had remained in his nostrils, and thus took as deep a breath as he swore he had ever taken in his life. Lacking strength, after taking a few steps, he shook out his coats and lay down on the floor which was circular in shape and made him slip to the center no matter how far he moved away.

Rey opened his eyes and, although he could see in the dark as if it were daytime, he could not see out of the barrier. His body was battered. He only had to reach out his hand to feel the cracks in the enlarged core. As a sorcerer, he knew what he had to do. Sit down and meditate. And so he did to reach out to recover the physical wounds and replenish the structure of his barrier. The energy of all his vortexes was flowing correctly and, with it, he gradually mended the cracks of the core that protected him, as well as healed the wounds of his skin and replenished the plumage of his wings. Once White had recovered from his near-death experience, Rey opened his eyes and stroked his head.

"Thank you for trusting me so much," he said and White purred in response. "Well, it's time to find our way out, I think we've hit rock bottom. Whether it's good or bad, who knows?"

The little white-eyed one stood up and, after extending his hand, once again cried out a gust of wind to re-enlarge the size of his now repaired core. Rey made the large black book with red letters float in the air to search through its many pages. At the conclusion of his search, he was able to summon a sphere of light out of the barrier. Putting in far more energy than it needed, the sphere became capable of illuminating a considerable amount of space at the bottom of the lake.

From within the darkness, the light caused a huge, wide-eyed face to appear with a whole expression ablaze with withering hatred, with eyebrows and eyes raised as if someone was pulling at her hair and a mouth open as if she were screaming at the top of her lungs. It was a female face whose body was of unknown size, for how big could someone whose pupil was twice the size of the sphere protecting Rey be? So large and terrifying was the image that White raised a paw, covered her resigned little eyes, lay down on the ground and pretended to be dead.