The Adventures of Mr. Dirge & Lady Freckles [ Part IX ]

The Search for Zus

Parts: [I] [II] [III] [IV] [V] [VI] [VII] [VIII] [IX] [X]

I had been walking for ten days. It seemed as though the path I was on was endless. But as Dafrod said, I needed to have faith. I reached the shore marked on the map given to me by Dafrod. Following the instructions, I continued walking along the shore.

To my left was an endless sea, green in color and almost still; barely any waves were forming. To my right, the jungle I had just walked out of. I looked ahead along the shore and saw a hill, and behind it another hill stood but a little bit higher. I looked at the map again, and realized that it highlighted a river between these two hills that I saw in the distance.

I got to where the river meets the sea. The river was called “Blood River”- or so it said on the map. When I saw it I understood why. It seemed that the water in that river was colored red. At the point where the river and the sea meet, the red water from the river and the green water from the sea mix together into a dark shade of brown.

I decided to rest there for a while under a tree. I sat down and pulled out the map to analyze it in more detail. It seemed that the path I should follow is along the river and into the valley. I put the map back in my pocket and decided to catch a nap. I was too tired to go on and –to be truthful — I wasn’t that motivated to go on anyway.

Suicidal thoughts crept into the cavities in my sanity. They lingered and twisted my mind into contemplating self-mutilation as some kind of compensation. The pain from her loss was beyond my understanding. The world is different from when I first met her. A lot has changed but nothing made sense. What is the point then?

My thoughts failed to overpower my tired mind, and I dosed off into a ten hour sleep. When I woke up I did not waste time. I got up fast and started walking again. It is like I was suddenly motivated again. Pushed to reach my destination, my feet started trekking the trail. I walked for hours, taking breaks every now and then. I was getting thirsty and I wasn’t sure I could drink that red water. Eventually thirst became intolerable, so I leaned in and tasted the river. It felt weird at first, but then I realized that it tasted exactly like water. As weird as that comparison could be; what does water taste like anyway. I got up from my knees, my thirst fully quenched, and continued along my way.

The trail started getting more and more narrow, as I got closer to the center of the valley. Eventually I was walking on the edge of the river. The trail disappeared into a cluster of rocks piled up against each other on the sides of the river. I had to climb up the side of one rock, and jump off the other. At some point, I had to jump across three big rocks from one side of the river to the other. The path only got harder and harder.

I reached a lake, formed by stones. The river transformed into a small waterfall and filled the lake, which in turn spilled another, smaller, waterfall back into the running river. After that lake, vegetation appeared again, and the valley lit up purple. The trees arched over the river, their shadows dancing on the surface of its running red water. I stood there admiring the strange beauty when suddenly, a huge spider jumped on my back. And by huge I mean almost half my height. It knocked me over and pinned me to the ground with its legs. “Who are you?” the gray spider spoke.

“My name is Dirge, I mean no harm. I am looking for the wizard Zus”. The spider backed off of me. I turned around and stood up. “I am Klaxx, the ninja spider. I am a friend of Zus” the spider said, “I will take you to him”. I followed Klaxx, through tunnels and across fields, until we reached a cave at the side of the mountain. “We must rest here for the night, this area is controlled by my clan” he said as he pointed with his two front legs to the other side of the valley “and that over there, is controlled by our rival clan”.

Klaxx told me that the wizard Zus resides in a log house in the center of the valley right between the two hills. He told me that Zus has been holding the line between the rival clans to avoid any fights. According to Klaxx, Zus seemed like a decent fellow.

We woke up the morning after. Klaxx left for a while after asking me to wait. He came back with weird looking fruits. Some looked like apples but were colored blue. Peaches that were colored green and bananas colored red. But they tasted better than the tastiest fruits I have ever eaten; juicy and full of sugar.

After breakfast, we started going downhill. Along the way, Klaxx started getting worried. I asked him what was wrong, he only replied saying “Just keep your weapons at hand, this might get dirty”. Not a second after he uttered those words, five spiders appeared from the tree tops, descending downwards right in front of us.

“Dirge, watch out” shouted Klaxx “they are from the rival clan”. To me, the spiders looked almost the same as Klaxx. The only exception is that they had brown skin while Klaxx had gray skin. I unsheathed my blade instantly and dashed against a tree to my left, slicing it at a low point. Before the spiders could even start moving, the huge tree I cut landed on them crushing them. But more spiders came and it was time I dusted off my powers. A swarm of monster ninja spiders was coming right at us.

Like I had done with those zombies, days ago; I stood in Nelumbo’s grace and focused on replicating my blade’s strikes. One, then another, two, three, five and eight slashes then I sheathed my sword and watched as Klaxx stood in awe of my ability. The spiders started falling to the sequence of my blade’s rising thirst. But the brown spiders were not done yet. Right before I could turn to Klaxx to tell him that we should be moving along, a giant brown spider came out of nowhere and stood facing us. I gulped at the monstrosity before me, I gulped out of excitement. I had missed fighting and all that pent up anger was leaving my body with every kill, making me feel better. The giant started running towards me but before I could unsheathe my blade, he shoved his left front leg — sharp metal rod-like leg — straight through my left shoulder. The pain was excruciating but I did not give it focus. Instead I continued unsheathing my sword as I fell backwards and whipped it in a spiral motion cutting off both his front legs. With his left leg still stuck in my shoulder, I got up and took a couple of steps back as the spider screeched in pain. But before the spider’s screeches echoed out, I pulled out the tip of his leg out of my shoulder and threw it like a spear straight into that spider’s skull. It started screeching louder and moving about irrationally before it dropped to the ground and died.

I had lost a lot of blood. My vision started getting fuzzy and my head started feeling heavy. The last thing I saw as I dropped to the ground was a man wearing a long gray cloak and a hoodie. He kneeled down next to me as I was passing out, and said “Finally we meet, Dirge”. Confusion took hold as my body gave up and I passed out.