Saka had about a second to react before a thick spikey branch shot at him.
He used his weight and the all-encompassing fluidity of the water to perform an underwater sidestep. The spikey projectile shot past, barely missing his gorgeous face.
He had frowned in confusion when April's thoughts shrieked:
"Behindyou,Saka!"
But instead of turning around to find another giant underwater fly trapper… it was rather, another creature. A spikey, thorny creature. It seemed to be a cross between a scarecrow and a bramble bush, very thin with sharp thorns all over its black body.
Another freak?!
April was about to scream again when the seaweed tentacle creep was assaulted by several of these scarecrow bramble stick figures. One of them grabbed at Weed Trapper's neck and broke off a branch.
Weed Trapper's sucking suddenly stopped, and the golden light vanished into thin waters. The tentacles came loose around April, and she floated upward, vigorously trying to get away as the creature roared in agony, tentacles waving around wildly.
Just a meter above this new development, that creepy bramble stick scarecrow that had engaged in an eyeless staring contest with the whitehead savagely grabbed at his neck with capriciously fast speed. His eyes slightly widened as it did and April suddenly grabbed at her neck simultaneously, as if an imperceptible force was taking a tight hold of her neck.
She slowly sank to the bottom of the pool, cheeks reddening…
* *
At the edge of the pool, Semacoar, Safatore, Eon and Akka gaped in silence. Safatore had a subtle look of worry on his manly face, green eyes seeming to pierce through the surface of the water. But alas, the motion of his shoulders rising and falling at the magnitude they did, showed he could not.
Semacoar turned to him with a curious eye and said:
"They've been under there for quite a while now – April the longest. Do you think they're still alive?"
The older blonde's face twitched before he gave the younger blonde a reproachful smile.
"They're elves! They can hold their breaths for three full hours. Remember?!"
Semacoar raised his arms and stood silent. After a few seconds he asked:
"But what if they can't make it out?"
Safatore's smile twitched.
"They'll make it."
"How sure are you?"
After a while, however, the only response he received out of the man was:
"They're elves."
* *
Underneath the surface, April parapsychologically screamed:
"Getoffofme,creeps!"
A Bramble Scarecrow grabbed at her leg, driving its wooden claws into her calf. She screamed telepathically while above her, Saka cringed to the same pain while another Bramble Scarecrow strangled the life out of him.
"Get off me!"
She folded a fist and directed it at the creature. In the blink of an eye, she was pinned to the pool floor, more golden light wafting out of her chest. Her telepathic screams filled the mental realm. Three thorny creatures grabbed her limbs, each one pulling this way and that, the fourth one greedily devouring the golden light. A sudden, heavy cloud of darkness stormed into her mind and began strangling her consciousness. She lost that breath she had miraculously held onto and gradually began drowning.
It then dawned on her that even the person who had jumped into the pool to come and try to rescue her from her own blind undoing was succumbing due to the tether… the tether he had created, purposefully or accidentally or, however!
She was going to die again, wasn't she?
Whatever this golden light was, it was what kept her alive under this airless pool, wasn't it?
At this thought, when her own head seemed to want to crack and her lungs begged her to inhale and free herself from misery, she felt a sudden kick. Something was fighting back against this familiar feeling of death.
Ignoring the Bramble Scarecrow that slowly fattened itself on the ethereal light swimming out of her chest, April turned to the right. There she saw a blurry Saka ripping some of the sea creatures apart. Although she couldn't exactly make out the beautiful features of his face, she could tell there was a certain savagery in his movements, allowing him to be twice as debauched as he was before. He grabbed one Scarecrow's faceless head and crushed it in his left hand, grabbed the one that was gnawing on his neck and – grabbing its lower and upper jaws with both hands – tore the top of its head off.
Another bramble creature propelled its thorny body to the boy. He propelled himself toward it too and met with it halfway, grabbing both its arms and pulled them out of their sockets. In this impossible scenario, Saka finally turned to April and the freaks piled on her. His face was tomato red with fury. Not a hint of that startling white appeared anywhere. Even his right arm was blood-red. He landed on the riverbed, and as if he was an astronaut landing on the surface of the moon, took two virtually slow steps and suddenly lunged at the monsters in inhuman speed. Clouds of wet sand kicked up behind him as he did.
By then, April's sight was murky, so whatever happened, she only perceived it through muffled sounds of crunching and breaking wood.
A minute later she felt her body being lifted and gently pulled upward. She suddenly stopped experiencing that cold wetness. A pressure fell on her chest three times, and something even colder touched her lips. A warm almost airy sensation entered her flooded lungs and caused a tingle in her toes. The same pressure befell her chest again and the sensation followed.
* * * *
The minute she jerked her head up, she threw up a considerable amount of water and coughed. However, the desire to also heave out her guts soon followed, and she naturally leaned into it, vomiting until she felt as though she could spit out her heart as well.
When she was done, the redheaded Eon led her into some gentle inhales and exhales to calm her down. She had just almost drowned and truly speaking, she shouldn't be alive.
Suddenly remembering something, April jerked her head aside and finally noticed him.
Her savior.
Saka.
But he was lying supine on the mossy ground, eyes closed, hair sopping wet and face still as pale as when she first met him.
"Saka!"
She threw herself at his side and pulled his hulking figure into her lap before a tear ran down her cheek.
"Is he alive?" her voice cracked.
The girls knelt next to her while the two blondes stood up, staring down at the girls with complicated expressions.
"Yes," Akka answered indifferently. "If he weren't, you wouldn't be either."
Right. There was that reality.
Safatore squatted down and took one of April's delicate and moist hands in his dry masculine one. With a consoling smile he gently said:
"Let him rest now. He just gave you mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and eventually lost consciousness. For the time being just…"
He couldn't finish his sentence because the girl pulled her hand out of his and clutched her arms protectively around the unconscious elf.
"We drowned ten times over… he saved my life. You wouldn't understand, please."
A single streak of water slid from the corner of Saka's robust lip to the other. April ran her thumb across its red skin and clenched her jaw. Removing the sopping wet hair that plastered on the sides of her face, she sniffed back the imminent tears that ardently fell from her eyes.
Of course, she knew wholeheartedly that all he did was in the name of self-preservation… but hey, she's a sucker for those selfish, pretty boys.
She gently shook his shoulder, sniffling.
"Hey, paper boy. Wake up." She squeezed his shoulder.
Saka's eyes opened at once. His eyes locked onto April's who stared down at him with teary eyes. He blinked once.
"What the hell are you doing? What's with that face? Don't you drop your salt water on me."
The girl pouted and scoffed.
"You almost died, you idiot. Of course, I'm gonna cry and drop salt water on your face."
"I'll gouge out your eyes, little brat." Saka mumbled, his gray eyes looking somewhat like hematite.
"Then we'll both be blind, idiot!" April whined, unable to control her tears. She burst into more tears and tightened her arms around Saka's shoulders, who looked at her blankly like he was looking at an idiot.
The rest of the elves were watching with dopey expressions as the girl clung to the young man, crying like a small child, just sobbing and sniffling relentlessly.
Semacoar scratched his cheek with a wry smile. "I've never seen anyone expressing so much... emotion for Sakature."
"Hmm," Safatore hummed, a bit of a bitter expression on his face.
Semacoar stiffled his laughter.
"It's giving me goosebumps!"
Eon came and elbowed the young man in his abdomen:
"Hush it. If it was the same between you and me, I would be the same, no matter how grotesque you are."
Semacoar paused and looked at the redhead with an insulted look. "I am grotesque?"
The next day at midday, they were standing at the foothills of the Jagged Mountains…
"Oh, I forgot about this."
There was a sheepish smile across Safatore's face. His hand made its way to it, wiped down and came to cross under the other one before he turned to his friends with a broad smile. He said a bit ominously:
"Kuri and Kakuro."
The other elves, for some reason, paled. They turned to look at Saka with apprehension. Before long, their weapons made their way out. Semacoar's longsword was unsheathed, Eon's wand slid out of her blue sleeve and Akka's crooked scepter instantly formed out of dozens of broken pieces before she gripped its wood tightly.
In front of them was the base of the tallest mountain. It had seven jagged peaks and a sharply sloping side. Most of it was covered in green ordinary trees. The area left exposed was made of rock, rock and more gray, steel-like rock. It could have been hematite. A wide naturally made path led up the side of the mountain.
The sun stood in a standstill right above them.
What could have made them tense so much?
April was about to ask this when she felt a hand grip around her waist. She was pulled and held tightly against someone's firm and muscular torso. Her body tensed and her heartbeat quickened. Her breath stiffening, she parapsychologically asked:
"Wha… whatareyoudoing?"
Another hand wrapped around the other side of her and gripped her shoulder.
[Stay as close as possible.]
The girl trembled and felt as Saka's steady heartbeat gently beat against her back. Why the frump would he need to hold her this close so… so intimately? It felt so weird and uncomfortable. So awkward. Even as Safatore took out his broad falchion and the four made a defensive square around April and Saka, his hands were was all she could think about.
The sheer invasion of her personal space!
That cold left arm around her waist could make any girl shiver.
That hot breath blowing over the top of her head. Her tails curled.
…Everything was silent for the first five minutes. Time seemed to slow down almost completely. April's heart throbbed. Who or what the heck were Kuri and Kakuro and why did everyone shrivel up to the mention of their names?
Safatore slowly inhaled.
"Everyone… proceed slowly."
And the square moved as a unit, taking quiet steps onto the rocky path as they ascended up the foothill.
Two minutes later, a strong urge to sneeze came over April. The others vigorously shook their heads warningly. But she couldn't help it. She opened her mouth… and Saka placed his index finger under her nostrils at the last second to stop her.
Everyone sighed…
But their relief was short lived.
A sudden cracking sound tore through the air. The ground sharply trembled, threatening to topple them, and a huge shadow loomed above them.
Safatore raised his head.
His eyes grew wide.
"Scatter!"