Oddly enough, it's not very hard to find someone you lost when they look different from everyone else. Go figure. So when I saw a small girl with long white hair, wings, and horns, I didn't have to worry about tapping her on the shoulder and being confronted by a stranger.
"Hey, why'd you walk off?" I asked Sophia.
She just looked at me funny, as though I had just asked the dumbest question in the world. In retrospect, it was pretty stupid to ask. Jackal would be proud. With a raised eyebrow, she pointed to the mural that she had been looking at. From what I could tell, it was just a giant explosion. Literally. Of the city that we were in. At least that's what it looked like. Granted... that... is an odd thought... to think that I was walking around in an explosion. "I don't get it," I said, raising the bar on stupid comments for the day. Soon I'd run out.
"Well, from what the priest told me, this has happened already to the city about twenty years ago."
"Wow, that's recent. They rebuilt FAST."
"We're not in that part of the city..." she said with a laugh.
"Of course not," I said joining in the laughter. "I was just kidding. So why are you looking at it?"
"It just seems like an odd mural, and out of place with the other murals."
'Artemis, find out what caused the explosion,' Judicis whispered into my thoughts. I could feel that he was both amused and embarrassed by my comments. It’s become normal for me to hear a voice in my head, and I suppose that’s what happens when you carry a sentient weapon for so long; that holds especially true when you develop some… indescribable link to your weapon that goes beyond anything I had ever even dreamed up or imagined. But yes, I could hear my bow’s thoughts, and could feel its feelings, whether it was in its offensive form or its current passive form: a white bracer upon my left wrist.
'Right,' I thought in reply. When I looked around, I noticed she was right. Everything surrounding us seemed to be related to ancient events - nothing as recent as this one. In fact, now that she had pointed it out, I could tell that the tiles that made up the mosaic murals were very fresh compared to the rest. "Hmm...do you know what caused the explosion?"
"Apparently, there was a civil war, and the Old Pretalia Castle was destroyed."
"But what caused the explosion?"
She shrugged at that. "They didn't tell me very much about what happened - like why it blew up. They just said it exploded."
"That seems ominous..." I mumbled.
"I'm just hoping it doesn't happen while we're around... I don't think I can live through that."
Part of me wanted to laugh. She seemed genuinely concerned by her inability to survive that size of an explosion. I thought about consoling her, telling her no one would likely survive, but I thought to let it go. Instead, I just put my hand on her shoulder. "It'll be okay."
"So why'd you come here? I mean... this place... not... here... here..."
"To this island?"
"Yes."
"Well, I pissed off a guy with a gun back in Radasanth. And I'm pretty sure he has some connection with the local militia. So even though I felt like I did the right thing, I also felt like I needed to leave and fast. Either that, or I might have ended up in jail or dead."
"Are you a criminal?"
"No, I just tried to be a good guy and help out in hunting down one of the main contributors to the Corone War. Problem was... the guy I chose to help was in it for personal reasons and was planning to hurt a woman who wasn't involved. So when I saved her, knocking him out in the process so that we could escape, I made an enemy in an emotional gunslinger. Needless to say, I was looking for a way out of Radasanth for a few days before this huge ship docked and I read a leaflet that said they were hiring mercenaries. Didn't need much more to get me onto to the ship, and so I applied. Didn't realize I'd be signing my death certificate at the same time as my employment slip."
She reached up and put her hand on my shoulder. "It'll be okay," she said with a grin.
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