Arkenstone_3

Unfortunately, David and Gael had not fared better, in a way.

Gael's constant rants had lost them the element of surprise or stealth in any capacity, and so now they were surrounded by many bows and magical arrows of golden light aimed at them. All of them were held by shadowy figures clad in black and golden hanging from the thick branches of the forest and the bushes below.

"Where is Diego when you need him?" Gael complained.

"Shut up," David ordered, "Let me do the talking."

David returned his blades to his back and raised his hands, "Heya, we do not wish to fight!"

An arrow fell right in front of him.

"Do not come any closer or the next shot will be aimed at your head."

"Hmph, as if you could pull that off," Gael grunted.

"Shh," David silenced his friend, "All right, will one of you come out and talk? We only wish to have safe passage towards the Annals HQ."

Those last words lowered a lot of arrows, but whispering and confusion filled the shadowy ambushers.

Finally, one of the figures emerged from one of the trees. David and Gael were stunned to see a girl with dark skin and golden hair, with her yellow eyes and feline face glaring menacingly at them, holding her sword close. The arrows went back to pointing at them.

"Greetings," David said, "And you are?"

"Aradan," she said.

"Aradan...?"

"Aradan of Starbright."

"They are the Golden Elves mentioned in Cesar's report," Gael commented.

"Greetings Aradan..."

"State your names and business in Annals HQ," she commanded.

"This is Maveric 4, I am Maverick 5, we are from the private company Maverick, We are on a mission to recover something."

"Something?"

"Something of value for our client."

Aradan grimaced at David as she took a quick look at the two mercenary boys, "You're Pathfinders..."

"Enchanté," Gael said, "Now could we please get moving? Those arrows look tense enough."

"Not so fast, trigger boy," Aradan said, eyeing Gael's hand on the grenade launcher's trigger, "the Annals HQ has been off-limits for days, the Hex Authority forced all personnel to evacuate before occupying it, and then something worse happened..."

"Still, we're tasked with retrieving something of value left in the HQ," David remarked.

"Why should we let more humans pour into this sacred land?" Aradan asked, the Hex Authority has hunted down Golden Elves and other magical beings in the area because we like coming here for our rituals, using its divine waters as a rite of passage. It is something sacred to us, this land."

"We are only passing by, we will retrieve this artifact and then be on our merry way. We do not wish to stay in the GP any longer than it is required."

"Maverick 1... those arrows are starting to tremble at the strings, I'm getting nervous."

"Shh..."

"Don't 'shh' me, man!"

"What is this 'something' you're looking for?" Aradan inquired, intrigued.

"It's classified information," David said, firmly.

"Well, unless you cooperate, we're not letting you go."

"Ninja! Please let's just—"

An arrow pierced Gael's head from end to end, his eyes widened, and letting a small gasp, he fell to the ground, uttering a few last words as his eyes then closed: "FUUUuuuuck—meeeee"

David closed his eyes, as the sweat on his ninja mask became visible again.

Aradan looked in the general direction of the arrows, the ranger responsible for such a thing was as surprised as her, with his eyes filled with terror.

"I'm sorry, High Ranger, but that guy was getting nervous, I think I saw him reaching for that big gun of his."

"Forget about it," Aradan said, closing her eyes in visible exhaustion, "listen... Maverick 1, was it? I'm very sorry that..."

Her words were cut off as she saw David neither mourning nor panicking just his eyes closed. His calm demeanor gave her a sense of a nameless danger, as if they had just unleashed something horrible, her elven senses felt it. 

"This is not good," David finally said.

Aradan and the other Golden Elves's senses went crazy, like a constant deafening ring in their ears, making them feel dizzy.

"What's this?" Aradan asked, losing her footing.

"You see, Maverick 3 has a very explosive personality, he complains a lot, especially about me, but we in the team know that he is the chillest man on the whole Moros."

As David said that, Gael seemingly lost control of his impulses, and steam started to come out of his mouth and joints, increasing in size as he did.

"Chillest...?" Aradan echoed, trembling, "that boy is losing it right there!"

"He wears a gauge in his right hand, a watch, you know..."

"Not true, there is no watch there!" said one of the Golden Elf rangers.

"If that watch's gauge reaches its maximum output, he just... explodes."

"Explodes?"

A mighty roar followed Aradan's words, Gael had transformed into a monstrous version of himself. His head bore a skull mask, and his spiky hair now was an abundant mane, his arms had transformed into bony large limbs that were held together by some invisible force.

"You see, my friend here, he's an avatar of Moros."

Aradan shuddered as Gael leaped from his place, causing a shockwave that made Aradan and the golden elves on the ground fall.

"What? An avatar of Moros?!" Aradan repeated.

"An embodiment of the world we live in," David explained, whereas Gael dispatched another group of panicking elves, "The very manifestation of chaos, Gael's power is triggered when there is a huge amount of coincidental events that create threatening situations toward him."

"Coincidental... threatening..." Aradan's mind spiraled out of control as she witnessed another batch of her fellow rangers being pelted by the monster's arms detaching and plunging themselves at their general location. 

"Your loose arrow happened to be the breaking point," David said.

"Wha—"

Gael fired a deadly green ray from his eyes, burning the foliage where other rangers stood.

"There certainly are a lot of you, Aradan," David remarked, "I hoped for this to be over soon."

The massacre made the golden elf sick, making her throw up on the ground.

"I completely understand, I don't like this part of him myself, that's why I told you to let us go... although now that I think about it, there was no way for you to know."

Aradan looked up again, clearing her mouth, and her eyes widened in terror as the great humanoid monster now glared at her with its glowing eyes beneath the mask. She closed her own in wait for a final blow. How would it come? A smash? Would her body be ripped apart? Maybe she would be pulverized by that beam. A million ways to die came to her mind as flashes of her perennial life surfaced. Tears were about to overflow her eyes when...

"Maan, I hate it when this happens..."

Aradan opened her eyes and noticed the pair of humans had left. They were now behind her, walking in the general direction of the Annals HQ. She turned and saw that Gael, the monster that had made a bloodbath of that green and lush forest now measured about his original size and was putting up his clothes and gear. 

"I hate it too," said a calm David.

"We could've avoided that whole slaughter if you just had opened fire from the beginning," Gael complained.

"They would've just sent more of them after us, we don't want two armies after us after we retrieve the Arkenstone."

The last word echoed in Aradan's mind, her eyes widened even more and her pupils shrank. She knew that name all too well. In her frail mental state, she began connecting the dots, although nobody checked her if she had done it right. As blood dripped and fire blazed around her, rain began to pour down in the forest.

Aradan's vision began to blur, as she saw the two Pathfinders taking out ponchos and wearing them. She did not realize she had been panting the whole time, losing her breath at the anxiety of everything that had transpired. 

Humans... Huu... huuumans...!

Her body arched upwards, contorting her body as she looked at the cloudy sky now unleashing its full load of rain.

"REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" 

Back with the two Mavericks, David heard the shriek from behind but paid it no more importance.

"Why did you let her live, Gael?" he asked.

"It would've been overkill..."

David took a final glance at the scene they left behind and saw the bodies either scorched or gutted, and a now soulless, and voiceless, but living Golden Elf losing her shit as she screamed her heart out to the gray heavens.

"You're messed up," David said.

"You could've stopped me, you know? You didn't, now shut up, and let's gap the distance with the HQ, this pay better be worth the effort."

There was a time when the five Mavericks had first awoken in that classroom about a year ago when David was indeed bothered by the cruel environment that unfolded before the group of friends as they explored it. However, Moros' nature was as subtle to man as it was alien, all it took was a year to feel vaccinated from the myriad tragedies that happen daily in this godforsaken world.

"Right, let's get on with it," said David resolutely. 

One more shriek from Aradan caught his attention, making him turn again. Things like this were commonplace in Moros, but this last glance gave David an encoded insight—a gut feeling that somehow they had unleashed something upon the world. He prayed that it would not be something that extreme. After all, it would be bad for business.