Welcome to Taranios! It’s Halloween!

Three days before Saya arrived in Taranios, Iwao was heading serenely toward the city. He was on the cart of the people he found. During the day and during the night, he didn’t once stop his camouflage. He didn’t want to redo the same mistakes he did before. It consumed a lot of energy and, to regain it, night after night, he devoured the nightmares of the passengers. Seeing their relaxed face as their nightmares disappeared made Iwao happy. While they slept, he also repelled the monsters that wandered in the surrounding area. It was his way of thanking them for the journey, even if they didn’t know he was here.

In the blink of an eye, the three days had passed and he arrived to Taranios during the end of the afternoon. He was at the main gate of the fortifications that surrounded the city.

“So, this is Taranios. It looks a lot like Paris in the 1800s. I remember seeing sketches and photos in my history books at school. It’s as if the baron Haussmann was reincarnated here to built a second version of Paris. It looks the same… except this.”

As he was walking towards the other side of the city, using his camouflage, he noticed a district covering about a third of the city that was not like the rest. It was like a slum, but with real houses. The streets were narrow and their pattern was like a maze.

“It seems to be a good zone to eat tonight. Poverty in all its beauty... the children's nightmares must be atrocious here. But it seems that they also celebrate Halloween here, so all the conditions are gathered.” Muttered Iwao with a sad tone in his voice.

He decided to come back later at night, when the children would be going to sleep. He then went in other parts of the city to explore and collect some information about the life here, the commerce or even how citizens use magic in their daily life. He thought that the life of citizens must have been different than the one of the people that traveled the roads constantly.

After a long walk, he arrived at what seemed to be the main avenue. He couldn’t resist the urge to whisper “Wow! Beautiful!”. The city was completely immersed in the Halloween atmosphere. Magic was everywhere. The street lamps used it to make light but there was something special. These lights also projected Halloween illuminations on the buildings. Pumpkins, skeletons, and other things related to this celebration were floating everywhere. The incredible thing was the disguises. Iwao didn’t recognize any character, but he could tell that people were disguised and took that seriously, not like on Earth where less people every year participated. He couldn’t talk much, or else he would have been spotted even with his camouflage on. So, he just devoured with his eyes what he saw.

By listening to some citizens, he learned that this Halloween consisted in a parade, a banquet on the streets and then fireworks. He was impatient, all of this reminded him of when he was a child. As this thought crossed his mind, he cried in silence while admiring the colorful city from a street on the side of the main avenue.

“I wonder what they thought of my death… From time to time, I miss them… Even if I was nothing but a good student or a good son instead of being me, I wasn’t really lonely, I was accepted and had someone to talk to… But now that I’m dead over there, I can’t really return, right…?”

The memories of when Iwao was still a child hurt him right in the chest. He didn’t say them goodbye. He didn’t have a way to return or even contact them. He thought that he preferred a world where he had value than here where he was nothing but a splinter on the feet of people.

He didn’t cried for long, as the parade began right in front of his eyes. People were disguised as monsters and others in fantastical armors or strange clothes. Behind them, there were chariots towed by what looked like ostriches, but much bigger and with four eyes, not much further differences than that with the ostriches on Earth. On the chariots were bands playing music and dancers casting spells that produced rays of light. The ambiance was marvelous and no one could take their eyes off this show. Ten minutes later, the parade was over in the main avenue and Iwao decided to rapidly finish his exploration.

He saw through the windows of some restaurants that they used some spells of fire to cook. In the streets, when a hat flew off a head in the air, magic was used to recover it. In shops, people made their wallet appear with magic, as if it was stocked in a different dimension. Iwao saw all sorts of uses of magic, some simple and some complex, like maintaining a fireball in a special place to heat apartments. Iwao knew how energy-consuming was the fireball spell, so it was incredible for him.

But Iwao came back to his senses and remembered what his mission for the night was. He was starting to get hungry, but he had to wait until the end of the banquet and the fireworks to eat. He returned to the slum to wait.

Few hours later, at midnight, the first kids were asleep. The Halloween atmosphere in the slum was not as captivating as in the main avenue, but it had its charm. Iwao searched for ropes that would hang outside the apartments and houses, as if they were waiting for him.

He found one, a big one. It meant that the nightmare was horrible, but could silence his hunger. With a spell, he verified that the rope belonged to a child. He touched the rope and entered in the nightmare.

Paris was in fire. The kid was crying in front of the bodies of what seemed to be his parents. Fireballs were everywhere in the sky, as if the ones that heated apartments escaped and where about to be launched on the city. Everyone in the nightmare was running and screaming, as they wanted to live. Debris were flying everywhere.

“Oh…! A really big nightmare, but not something insurmountable. In just two minutes it will be finished. After that, I will finally get some sleep, as it’s been three days since I last closed my eyes.”

Iwao opened his mouth and directed it to the sky. Depending on the size of the nightmare, he didn’t use the same skills. A little nightmare could be swallowed by plunging his mouth on the earth, but for the big ones, it was with the sky first. A whirlwind formed from his mouth and the nightmare began slowly to transform into energy. He was swallowing, but when it was time to swallow the fireballs, something was off. They burnt him, even though they were reduced to energy. But he didn’t care much, as the pain would disappear once outside the nightmare. At the end, he ate the rope and was outside the house of the kid. The memories of this kid and his nightmare reminded Iwao once again of his parents, but he did all he could not to cry.

As he was walking to go in a silent place where he could sleep and couldn’t be found, he heard a voice.

“So you finally finished. It was fast. I thought that I wouldn’t be here on time to see you and finally talk with you.” Said a feminine voice in a calm tone.

Iwao stopped suddenly. He turned in the direction of the young girl. She seemed to be twenty years old. Long blonde hair attached in a ponytail. She was quite tall and wore what seemed to be adventurer clothes. She had a bright smile on her face and a serious look that tried to see in the dark.

“Yes, it’s to you that I’m talking, Mister Invisible. It’s been quite some time since I started following you now. My name is Celi. Now that I told you my name, show yourself! If you’re concerned about what you look like, don’t worry, I’m not afraid and I don’t care at all. Since the first time I felt your presence and saw you, I knew something was off, you’re intriguing. I want to talk to you and maybe go on an adventure with you. I have a great feeling about that. I will listen attentively to your worries if you have any. Have faith in me!” She said in a playful voice.

Iwao was shocked. She could see him. She was not afraid of him. She wanted to talk. All this new things in this world at once made him hesitate. But Celi didn’t seem to be lying and so he removed his camouflage.

“Where do you want to go to talk? I can’t stay here, or we will have problems due to what I look like.” Whispered Iwao to not be heard by anyone else than Celi.

“But someone’s already watching us, you know?”

“Yes, but I don’t care about her. She won’t do anything except following us and trying to hear what we will be discussing. I know her intentions really well.”

“So then, want to include her in the conversation?”

“No, I’m alright. One person at the time.”

A young woman, in her twenties too, was hidden behind a house. With her strange outfit, she did not go unnoticed. She wore a white suit that highlighted her blue eyes and her short brown hair. She was listening and looking at the two of them as they were discussing.

“Do you know her?” Asked Celi to Iwao.

“Not quite that. I only know just a few things about her. Her name’s Saya Benegram, princess of the Polmo kingdom. I know what she looks like. That’s quite all I know.” Uttered Iwao without thinking he could be heard by Saya.

Saya was shocked. Her eyes were lost and she couldn't barely think of anything as all her thoughts were flowing so fast in her head.

“It… knows me…?”