Race Against the ”Ram”

“What is it, Agon? Are you sick? Are you wounded?!?” The questions rapidly fired from Dinorah’s lips. A familiar wave of anxiety washed over him as he contemplated the situation.

“Twelve minutes…he’s really going to kill me…No! No…I refuse to let him have this…I don’t want to feel that pain again, especially not by Olagna; I CAN'T let that happen…!”

Agon’s eyebrows twitched as an idea came to his mind. He rose to his feet while using Dinorah’s arm for leverage.

“Dinorah…can you please take me to Ruchs? I’m…very hungry…” Her concern was slightly eased upon hearing that, but she was still on high alert.

“Is that all? You certainly had me worried! I thought you were having a heart attack or something!” Agon feels a shiver down his spine at those words. If they didn’t hurry, she would be absolutely right. Agon quickly changed the subject.

“So…how far away…?”

“Just a couple of minutes-”

“A NUMBER.” Agon snapped. He gasped at his own voice and watched Dinorah’s eyes widen in shock. An unignorable sense of urgency coursed through him. He quickly tried to atone for his display.

“I-I’m sorry, I-”

“Aha! You must be STARVING!” Dinorah smiled. She appeared to take his words as a simple indication of being hangry. “Not to worry, Agon. It should take us no more than five minutes to get back to Ruchs!”

“I need more time…That extension from Olagna gave me a little more wiggle room, but it won’t last long.”

Agon cleared his mind and opened the void. He searched for any missions to accept, but found none.

“Ugh, where are the missions?!? Stupid ram horns…he’s toying with me…! Wait…what if…” Agon suddenly recalled a brief memory. A child was lying in a bed with a game controller in his hands. They were trying to play an RPG on a small TV. It was a young Agon. By his side, sitting on the edge of his bed, was his mother. She was a lovely sight. Beautiful bronze skin, violet eyes, and a full head of luscious curly black hair that gracefully fell to her back, decorating it like a rosebush found in the night. She smiled warmly as her son moved the character that was on screen into a small town, walking up to a message board, and accepting a quest.

“You wanna do a quest? You know, Agon…you tend to be quite…jumpy with a lot of things. When I bought this game, I figured it would be a nice distraction for you, but I also worried that the monsters would be a bit too scary. But here you are, playing it with no problem! I thought by now, you would’ve wanted me to return this game-”

She interrupted herself to see her son’s shoulders hunched to his ears and his body shaking. She quietly sighed and rubbed his back in a soft circular motion.

“I’m proud of you for wanting to be strong, Agon. But if the monsters are still too scary, I'll fight them for you, sweetheart. Sound good?” his mother reassured.

“O-okay…thanks, mom,” he replied. The memory ended, and Agon hatched a theory.

"That’s right…in the game, the hero finds quests on a message board in the first town, and from what Dinorah told me about Ruchs, it’s home to a lot of warriors. So that means Olagna must’ve put my quests there…!"

Agon’s face dropped for a moment. Seeing his mother, completely unscathed, was a bittersweet vision. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever see her again like that, or at all, for that matter. He quickly shook his head and tried to shift his focus back to present matters.

"He really wants me to play hero, huh…? It’s a big reach, but I can’t think of anything else…! Five minutes to travel…I’ll have seven left by the time we get there…I should’ve known he would lock the missions like that; it would be too easy if I had them now. But I won’t let him win this. I’ll just get to Ruchs and accept the first quest I can, the quickest and easiest one. I’ll buy as much time as I need to make it before the sun sets!!!”

“HUP!” Dinorah grunted.

Agon squawked as he felt Dinorah hoist him up from the ground and pack him on her shoulder like a bag of rice. It was clear that she had some form of great physical prowess since Agon recalled seeing her leap from underwater, waving a giant, albeit poorly crafted blade, but what was the extent of her strength? What is the measure of power in a world as vague as this?

“I’ll take you to one of the greatest eateries in all of Ruchs! Hang in there, Agon!” With a swift bend of her knees, Dinorah’s grip on Agon’s waist tightened. As he gulped silently, Dinorah's eyes flickered with adrenaline, and she bolted through the forest.

“HAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!” She roared.

Agon’s eyes watered uncontrollably as the wind slapped his face, eyelids forced shut from the intense speed of Dinorah’s charge. The trees whistled by his ears with shrill notes; he clasped his palms to his eardrums as tightly as he could, but the vibrations of Dinorah’s feet pounding against the earth with each step sent a shockwave through his entire being. Everything around him was ramped up to eleven, all because of this one girl.

“She’s gonna kill me before Olagna does!!!!”

As Dinorah carried Agon through the forest, he felt a strike to his center; a burning sensation blazing through his chest. Another minute had passed. He stifled a grunt.

“Are you alright, Agon?!?” Dinorah yelled above the fervent sounds of Mother Nature whipping past.

“I-I’m fine!” He spoke through clenched teeth.”

“I can’t let her find out about this…But…it hurts…!” Olagna’s searing brand of spite spread throughout his chest like a wildfire, then slowly went out. With each passing minute, the heat returned, reigniting his soul; the magnitude increasing as his clock stepped closer and closer to zero. Agon began breathing heavily, his sweat seeping into his ragged clothes while he tried to muffle his cries of pain. His senses dulled; four minutes had passed. Eight minutes left until he died again.

“Hold on, Agon…! We’re almost ther-AGH!” Dinorah cut herself off. An ear-splitting wail was heard throughout the woods. Agon and Dinorah held their hands to their ears. In an instant, all of Dinorah’s loud and boisterous antics were put to shame by this sharp, mysterious cry.

“What is that?!? Every bone in my body is vibrating!” He questioned frantically.

“That’s…One of the greatest battle cries I’ve ever heard…! Certainly no human. What creature is capable of such a squall?” Dinorah furrowed her brows and held onto Agon with all her might, digging her feet into the trampled soil. Just as she questioned the forest for an answer to who made the cry, a glass sphere shot out from the corner of the grove, floating several feet before Dinorah and Agon. She gasped.

“What is it, Dinorah?!?”

“It…It can’t be…”

The sphere let out a faint white glow. From it, a light mist poured out that slowly grew in size. The mysterious clouds each morphed into one half of a quadruped. The entity grew a small head, and from its skull sprouted two antlers that wrapped around each other until they formed a knot. Dinorah softened her grasp on Agon; he rolled off her shoulder and fell to the ground on his side, grunting loudly.

“Why’d you drop…me…?” As he turned around, he saw a peculiar being. A deer, or at the very least what Agon could easily recognize as a deer. It stood before him, split in half with a white and green splotched fur pattern decorating its body.

“There’s no way…that thing…it’s actually…”

“I can’t believe it…I was right…!” She cheered.

It was the Elbrus, in all its rumored glory. Dinorah’s face lit up brighter than the early morning sun.

“Dinorah? I know you’re happy to see that this thing is real, but I need you to-”

Agon’s words failed to reach Dinorah as she changed her stance to something more “warrior-like”. She puffed out her chest and pointed dramatically at the creature.

“Ahem…ELBRUS! I’m here to aid you! Tell me what troubles weigh on your divine heart; and I, Dinorah Kuria, will CUT them to pieces with my righteous…”

She looked to her side and saw nothing but Agon, who looked back at her with exasperation. It seemed that she forgot that her “righteous blade" was still stabbed underwater in the pond, and was also still missing its hilt. “Ah. Yes...” she croaked.

The Elbrus cried once again, sending a shockwave right through Dinorah and Agon. She braced for the impact, holding her arms up in a blocking position, trying to deflect some of the blast, while Agon was knocked all the way over on the ground. Just as his head hit the soil, he felt a tingle within his mind. A small prompt box appeared in front of him like before. His eyes widened as he read the bold text.

NEW MISSION: ELIMINATE THE ELBRUS. REWARD: 15:00 BT.