(SHING)
Like the time before, and the one before that, the bandits viciously pulled out their daggers from their saggy pockets, ready to engage with the wanderers.
Although this same occurrence happened twice, one without Aletha, both of them could remember everything that had happened before their awakening.
"Haven’t you two had enough of us?!" Said Asahi.
Before the thief could even respond, as had happened before, Aletha stepped in and growled, expressing with a confused and frustrated tone.
"We told you all before, but we don’t know what you are talking about."
A disgusted sneer came from the bandit’s dirt-tattered face, hoisting his dagger upward.
"Grr... then die!"
Asahi couldn’t believe the familiarity rising up in this situation.
It almost made him sick knowing that he had experienced this same event over and over again.
But then, as his fingers laced and wrapped around the thin string of what could be presumed as Belial’s Bow, thoughts flooded Asahi’s mind.
(Wait a minute. Out of all my time being here, why have we never asked the bandits? I know that my sister and I replied to those thieves many times before, but that was out of shock. There was no value in those words. Now that I remember everything, maybe I can try to change the flow of events? Let’s see.)
After Asahi had pondered, he dropped the bow onto the muddy floor and warned the thieves.
"Hey. Could you please stop doing this? We are not here to hurt you."
The tall, brown-haired, crooked-eyed thief spat on the floor and kicked Asahi’s toe, replying.
"Like hell! You’re going to try a little harder than that if you want to persuade us!"
A silver dagger cut through the air and nearly missed Asahi’s arm. Asahi realized that interacting with the thieves may not be easy. And so, exquisitely stung by his second thoughts, he reached for the bow and stared at the thief, warning them once again and asking.
"Please stop! We won’t kill you! All we want to know is what you three mean by ingredients."
Yellow streaks stained the air in the room, and multiple clashes of sparks and light flew back and forth.
As their swift attacks exchanged heavy blows from one another across the room, the brown-haired, blue-eyed thief responded as he lowered his blade in interest.
"Why?"
Finally, after all this time experiencing the same situation, the thieves acknowledged Asahi’s warning. Could it be that now, after all the two occurrences in this strange dimension, the siblings would be given answers? Asahi continued as he saw Aletha approaching from behind his shoulder.
"Because... we might give them to you if you stop." This was a complete lie; even Aletha could detect it as if it were a sore thumb. But no matter, Asahi knew that the thieves would believe him. And so, they fell for it.
Suddenly, every glimmering dagger clutched by the hands of the thieves dropped onto the ground like rain. One by one, the sounds of weapons falling into the ground echoed over the walls. Now that the battle has ceased, Asahi and Aletha could finally see the thieves’ appearances without trouble.
One had unruly squinty eyes, skin plastered with a deep brown color, scarred and bruised. Another had an elongated facial structure, with a turned-up nose, and mutton-chop sideburns. The last one, despite the wretched affiliation, had a dimple in his chin, with flawless skin and storm blue eyes. In a tumult of self-approval and towering exaltation, the bulky, scarred-faced man gave a suspicious glance at The Wanderers and rasped.
"Oh, is that so?"
In moments of swift and momentous decision, Asahi hid his gulp and answered quietly.
"Yes. Not only that, but that girl and I came from a different dimension."
"Different dimension?" The turned-up nose thief uttered confusingly. "The hell are you on about?"
Correspondingly, Aletha stepped in. She gave a glaring sneer at all three of the thieves before she held up her hand and answered the thief with a covertly triumphant voice.
"We’ll tell you as long as you promise that you won’t hurt us anymore."
In response to various acts of rudeness they caused, the thieves looked at each other and huddled up, murmuring while the Wanderers stood in the background.
"Ah, I don’t trust ’em! Landon, what type of dumb idea emerged in your brain when you decided to go in here? Those two look nothing like the people from this world."
Landon, the blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy, nodded his head and spoke in a calm voice.
"I know that, Dawn. But still, don’t you think it’s weird for people to suddenly appear here? It’s been years since we’ve seen anyone healthy here. I suggest that we should talk with them. Forget about the ingredients, they can wait."
A crop of disappointment emerged in Dawn’s face.
"Oh, come on, man. We were this close to solving what’s happening."
The turned-up-nose man added as well, with a shrug.
"Well, if you say so, boss."
Crossing her arms, Aletha tapped her toe on the ground impatiently and hollered at the group.
"So, have you all thought about it?"
With a strain of exaggerated gallantry, the thieves replied.
"Yes, we promise."
Asahi, in the face of disillusionment, snapped his fingers and said with a calm tone.
"Then it is settled."
Just before Asahi revealed, Landon uttered as he pointed to the doors just a few meters away from all of them.
"Actually, let’s find somewhere else to discuss. This place is teeming with enemies and monsters."
Without resistance, both The Wanderers nodded.
"Understood."
They then followed Landon, Dawn, and the other thief up the stairs, exiting the repulsive room, and revealing yet again the same view of the strange dimension. As they walked, the Wanderers saw rotten vegetation lurking and swallowing every building, emitting a scent so repulsive that many found it deadly. Just by the sight alone, Asahi could guess what happened to the people here.
(This place is very similar to the layout of the city in the other dimension.)
But as time elapsed, he forgot the thought. The thieves led The Wanderers through a familiar bridge, toward a vast hallway and canopy of lush vines coiling around the brittle structures. Every centimeter of this dimension was ruined and shriveled into nasty proportions.
As the thieves and The Wanderers approached a covered block, Landon scratched his chin and peered over to Asahi. He gasped, noticing a golden book attached to Asahi’s leg. In a broad sense of curiosity, the blonde-haired boy asked.
"What in the heavens is that next to ya?"
Aletha replied to the thief without thought.
"Oh, that’s the Forbidden Book. My friend, Akwan, gave it to us-- I... I mean, a Librarian."
Landon and all the other thieves raised their eyebrows in curiosity.
"A librarian?"
"Yes, they gave us this book in a library."
The bulky thief raised an eyebrow in confusion/
"Library? There ain’t no library here, boy."
"Are you kidding me?" (There they go AGAIN with the library. What is it with this place? Why is time and events repeating themselves?)
With a cold expression, Asahi suppressed his anger and admitted.
"Okay, okay. Maybe it was just my imagination." Then, his instincts warred back to him, continuing to raise his voice in his certainty. "But still, I am positive that Aletha and I have been in a library before. Right, sis?"
In a remarkably astute manner, Aletha shrugged and replied quietly.
"Bro, I... don’t know what you are talking about."
"Are you serious?! Stop messing around. Right now is NOT the time for jokes."
Aletha sneered and looked away, crossing her arms and sighing. (My brother knows how to look like an idiot sometimes.) She muttered in her mind.
Losing his patience, Asahi looked down at the ground to calm his nerves. As he stared at the winding roots and disgusting mud puddles scattered across , Asahi suddenly felt a premonition creep over him. Memories flashed and bounced around in his brain, memories that belonged to the happenings before the third awakening in this decrepit dimension.
. . .
"The very actions made by an individual in the parallel dimension affect this dimension as well. The rest of Pladtioa City in our dimension is the first full board, while the objects and artifacts from the dimension are the pawns."
Pawns, Chess Boards, Connections. Asahi remembered it all and the importance of Akwan’s symbolism.
"Asahi and Aletha may therefore alter the ’pawns’ AND the ’Board’ to create various instances and different events of the same day."
He could even recollect his sister’s metaphors.
"So... it’s like moving puppets around in a playset and watching them wander around and do stuff, or creating and controlling your ant colony and watching them do what they do."
This symbolism, this sheer idea... motivated Asahi to explain. With the chastened mood he was left with, Asahi stopped to discuss with the thieves and explain.
"Okay, to speed things up a bit. My name is Asahi, and the girl to me is my younger sister, Aletha. We came from a different dimension similar to yours, but instead of the city being covered in vines and vegetation, it is filled with prosperity and cleanliness."
Landon and Dawn backed away in shock. They knew that The Wanderers would say that, but they never expected them to admit it so carelessly. Not only that, but the thieves were now questioning whether it was a great idea to intrude upon the room. On that condition, the man with scars on his face queried.
"Prosperity and cleanliness? That sounds like a dream. Our world is nothing but mud and destruction. But your realm... it sounds like a paradise to me. Landon, I think these two are..."
"Yeah, I know." The blonde-haired boy interrupted as he looked heavenward at the green sky. "They are otherworlders, people from a different place. I think they know more than all three of us combined. Say, what seems to be your problem? I know that you two awakened in this dimension, but I was wondering if you came here by choice."
"No, we didn’t," Aletha said with a light smile. "We only came here by force."
"Force?" The turned-up nose, bald man murmured. "How did you come here by force?"
[The Wanderers explain to the thieves all that happened to them.]
"Oh, strange. So, determined by what you are explaining right now, both of you are experiencing a recurring day? That’s... unnatural. Can you tell me more about you two? I’m curious."
This moment right here was the moment that the eyes and thoughts of The Wanderers, from the perspective of the thieves, altered completely. They ran off toward a familiar clean place the siblings had discussed before, sitting on the same exact bench and showing and explaining the thieves about The Forbidden Book. After they showed them the list, pages, and illustrations in between the two hardcovers, Landon stooped down on the ground and scrutinized.
"Ah, that’s strange. There are symbols here that match the symbols of the ingredients we are looking for."
Both the siblings’ eyes rounded in shock.
"Wait, really?"
"Yes," Landon remarked as he flipped the pages. "To give you further insight, what Dawn, Chip, and I are looking for are three special ingredients. These ingredients would be enough to create a potion that could be powerful enough to wash away the taint of the city. Not only that, if we use it correctly, it can also serve as a way to eliminate all the pesky creatures here as well."
Aletha’s eyes flared alight with interest, nattering on the blonde-boy’s words.
"So... what you are saying is that those ingredients will do something good? How so?"
Dawn bleated.
"Gosh, this girl is getting on my nerves."
A warm stripe of crimson embarrassment shone on Aletha’s face. She nattered.
"Hey, come on! I was just trying to help."
Chip, the turned-up nose guy, delivered an expression of doubt afterward, mumbling.
"You ain’t doing anything. All you did was ask a question. We want answers, girl, not worthless questions.
In complete disapproval of the heinous act Chip and Dawn committed, Asahi stepped forward and, with a sense of yield and protection, intoned.
"Enough of this foolishness. Just get on with the topic and answer my sister’s question. My patience is running thin right now."
Although two of the thieves countermanded Asahi’s demand, Landon assured himself of giving him respect. He shouted down at Chip and Dawn.
"Alright, enough, you two. I have seen too much of both of your carelessness today. If we want progress, we must trust these two otherworlders. If you two refuse to comply with my orders, you will be abandoned by the likes of my group. Got it?"
Shivering with fear and the thought of being abandoned in a dangerous place such as this, both Chip and Dawn gulped and answered.
"Yes... Landon."
Without delay, Landon, Chip, Dawn, Asahi, and Aletha all gathered up in a circle around The Forbidden Book, forming a long discussion of what to do in a situation. Aletha was still angry at Chip and Dawn for being impolite to her. As determined by her cold glare, they knew they had messed up. But to not waste any more time, Landon pried the book open and pointed at the three symbols drawn on the page.
One was the form of a four-edged star.
Another, the form of a leaf.
And the last, a symbol of a tree-trunk.
Landon began his explanation.
"Okay, what you see here, Asahi and Aletha, are the symbols of the Three Ingredients of Purity. The Star, The Leaf, and The Trunk. These are not literal, but symbolic. Once all three are combined into a specific bottle, then we may be granted the authority to use the Potion of Purity."
Aletha blanked owlishly.
"Okay, so do you know the whereabouts of the ingredients at all?"
Despite Dawn having heard Landon’s warning, he spat out in irritation at Aletha’s cluelessness and babbled.
"Are you kidding me?! What other reason would you think that? Why else should we be here?! Goodness, this girl is stupid!"
Landon squinted at the man and pushed himself down, ordering with an incisive and intimidating stare in his gunmetal blue eyes.
"What did I just say to you, Dawn? Be quiet."
Then, he looked back at Aletha, answering with a gentle tone.
"Sorry about that. To answer your question, not exactly, but I can recollect some of the clues I saw in an ancient tablet." Coincidentally, Landon flipped to the page with Aletha’s list drawn in. He grabbed a pencil out of thin air and wrote on the empty page next to the list, explaining.
"All three elements are fragmented together. Only by the help of a force outside would the ingredients be melded back together again." Landon retorted as he wrote the clues on the page.
"The Leaf rests high near a gigantic forest of bristles covered in the luxuriance of green. It is not to be guarded by people, but nature itself. Outside, it is to be located on the direct opposite of natural and artificial. This represents the towers that had scraped the heavens four hundred years ago."
As Landon continued speaking, Asahi and Aletha leaned forward, nodding their heads and imagining what the meaning of these clues could be.
"The Trunk serves as the foundation for the leak. It is to be located in multiple areas where no one was interested in going. A spire of blue and a stone of green. It is to be guarded by the ugly and the weak, because those two signatures are what sustains the beauty of purity as a whole."
"And last but not least, the Four-Edged Star; the last element to complete the foundation. It is to be located where most dream to be, and to be guarded by the highest security. Be wary about this one, for it shall not be an easy task to overcome."
For Aletha, all the clues looked and sounded like meaningless walls of words for her. She was never good at comprehension. On the other hand, Asahi was fascinated, almost appalled by this, trying to decrypt all of these texts. But little was to be found from him, for all he knew was...
"The Outside’’ could serve as a metaphor for our dimension, Aletha. Other than that, I have no idea what these clues are hinting at."
Landon leaned forward, nodding, with strong eye contact with Asahi. After he wrote the third and last clue, followed by the symbols, the blonde-haired boy put his hand on his heart and proposed with an honorable tone in his voice.
"You may be right about that one, Asahi. If that’s the case, then I wonder how you two would manage to solve this."
With a loving and painstaking confident smile, she elevated her body up and insinuated.
"Oh, don’t worry. We know how to handle it. Right, Asahi?"
A bitterness of uncertainty crept into his face.
"Not exactly. The only thing I know is what Akwan said before we awakened."
"And what is that?" Dawn and Chip uttered rudely.
A faint accent of reproach dawned in his quizzical stare.
"It’s... something about connected dimensions and how actions inside this realm may affect the other realm as well."
Landon, shocked and rebuked by Asahi’s claim, leaned forward in curiosity and asked more of him.
"Connected dimensions? Explain more."
"With pleasure."
. . .
"So, what a friend of mine told me before was that our actions in this dimension could reflect on the other dimension as well. Meaning, we could produce certain scenarios on the same day, as this dimension would reset. For example..."
Asahi sprinted over to a pile of boxes dotted about the circular portion of the block. There was a knitting store, a pancake diner, and an apartment located inside this block; all were covered in coiling roots of course. As the group followed Asahi wherever he wanted to go, he demonstrated.
"If this actually works, then if I were to kick this pile of boxes down..." Without thinking, Asahi swung his foot and smashed the bottom row of light wooden crates. The thieves and Aletha watched as it propelled and slid from the alleyway toward the gateway, noticing another greater portion of the pile toppling down afterward.
One by one, thanks to Asahi’s kick, boxes flew into the air and piled up near a gateway like a group of stones, obstructing the pathway on what could be assumed a royal passage. Although he hadn’t known what he was doing, he was confident that this could mean something. He continued as Landon, Chip, and Dawn raced with him to the passageway. "Then, afterward, just like what happened with the bow, it could mean that what I did here would block both gates in this dimension and the other, thus changing the situation in the other dimension as well."
"Oooo." Aletha expressed with genuine fascination. She winked and gave a cute gesture, smiling as the thieves scratched their heads. "I knew you were a smart brother!"
A smile full of subtle charm was released from Asahi, scratching his head, flattered.
"Oh, that’s... nothing." But then, as he bent over and observed the boxes, he found a strange lavender-shaped object lying on the stone.
"Huh?"
The object looked heart-shaped, with black tendrils coiling around, with a mere figment of a purple glow illuminated on the top. It itself presented an aura of uncertainty and mystery.
But for whatever reason, Asahi picked the ominous item up and slid it into his pocket, thinking it looked cool. While he, Aletha, and the group walked back to The Forbidden Book, Landon thanked him.
"You know what, I’m thankful that you two helped us. If it wasn’t for your question, you two might have been slaughtered by us."
Aletha muttered with an incisive stare.
"Thank goodness that wasn’t the case. You know, I’m kind of glad that we--
Before Aletha could even reach the end of her sentence, suddenly, Dawn cried out in his gravelly voice.
"The sun is setting!" Followed by that warning, the sounds of croaks, chirps, and inhumane growls surrounded them. Asahi bent over to Landon and asked as they prepared to flee.
"What does that mean?"
While their feet threaded through the stone streets, Landon answered.
"Every night, in this dimension, monsters will appear."
"Monsters?!" Aletha shrieked. "Why are there monsters?"
"The same reason why we came to look for the ingredients. Now, come on. Before it gets..."
Suddenly, as they began running through the corridors, streets, and vegetation-infested houses, loud shrieks and screams sounded behind.
"RUN!"
What Asahi never realized as he was running back to the room he awakened in... was that...
"Wait, where is that heart-shaped object?"
The mysterious object slipped out of his pocket. Having not known where both the bow and object were, just as the moonlight started to slip and flood the sky...
"I can’t see!"
Both the wanderers’ visions flashed white, almost as if they had happened several times before.