Chapter 12

It took them almost ten minutes to reach the forest on the other side of the small valley. That was only because Turtle fell down four times, as he couldn’t heavily lean on someone, which lead him to constantly spit out curses under his breath, as he dragged his sore body over the beautiful grasslands.

As they went into the small forest they felt, contrary to their expectations, the vanishing of the spooky feeling. A new feeling filled them, one of vigour.

‘This strange fragrance is causing this feeling, as we inhale it…’ Dragon thought interested. He was not alarmed as he had never met a poison which would let him feel vigorous before killing him.

On the other side…there was a first for everything. So he decided to carefully breath in and out as to let as little fragrance as possible into his lungs.

Turned out that was a pretty bad idea, as his sore body collapsed without of the help of the fragrance. He immediately gasped for more air.

‘This is pretty strange, but…well as long as it doesn’t kill me’ Dragon thought and stood up again.

“Quit laughing!” he said annoyed as he heard the muffled sounds of restrained laughter behind him. He turned around, but whoever laughed had wisely put-on his pokerface. Dragon could only grumble and started walking towards the sounds of splashing water again.

It didn’t take them long to arrive at a beautiful pond, filled with blue, but opaque water and a small fountain, which was happily splashing water out of the stone wall into the pond.

Strangely the water of the pond was an opaque blue, but the spring water was crystal clear, as pure as a polished diamond. But that was of no concern at the moment as the five brothers were immersed in the strange magical feeling of this place. It was the first place they ever felt peaceful. They felt like they could drop their guard around here, that no one and nothing could hurt them.

They were immersed in this feeling for an unknown amount of time and as they woke up from it, they were astounded to see that they were sitting in a meditative pose on the ground, spread around the pond.

Each of the brothers was sitting on a smooth stone plate, which looked like nothing special.

It felt right to sit on the stones, around the pond, peacefully meditating, so they wanted to continue, but Dragon remembered the pressing task they had at hand: They had to search the whole valley for possible dangers. The peaceful feeling could be a trap to lure them into meditation, so that a predator could sneak up to them and devour them.

‘Wait…we are five or six year old kids anyway….what difference makes it for a predator…’ Dragon thought grimly ‘Still…its better to be cautious!’

With this thought he stood up and made his way towards the stone wall.

He then walked, with one hand on the stone wall, from the pond, through the forest, over the grasslands, to the entrance of the valley. Then he did the same on the other side back towards the pond. He didn’t find anything suspicious, not even a single crack in the wall.

‘Strange…strange…it seems like this valley is made by intelligent beings, but…how can that be?! Not even the things on the technologic pinnacle in our old world could possibly create a valley looking this natural. The only strange thing is the wall. I guess it’s a wonder of nature?’ Dragon thought and decided not to think anymore about it, as it wouldn’t help him right now.

As he reached the pond he saw that his four brothers were peacefully meditating on the same positions when he left them. It didn’t seem like they would wake up soon, so he decided to care about the two most important things himself.

First water: That was easy as there was a pond and a spring directly in front of him.

‘I don’t want to drink that blue water though…it doesn’t really look like its supposed to be drank…hmm lets try the spring water’ Dragon thought and stepped next to the spring.

Out of habit, he sniffed at the water, searching for possible poison.

A unbelievably rich smell of purity slammed into his nostrils, stunning him for a short moment.

‘What the hell is that water…? Is that even water? Maybe it’s the sweat of angels or something?! What the fuck?’ Dragon thought shocked and after a short moment of considering possible dangers he formed his hands into a bowl, put them under the splashing water, lifted them up to his mouth and took a sip.

‘….’

His whole mind went blank. It was like a nuke blew up in his head, which destroyed every thought and Dragon just stood there dumbly looking at the stone wall.

After an unknown amount of time Dragon slowly came back to his senses.

“Holy…shit! WHAT KIND OF DRUG IS THIS?!” he shouted completely mind blown. (WN: LITERALLY! ...sorry…again. I’m writing for eight hours already, cause I want to have some chapters produced before I have to work next week…its 04:00 am right now…still a lot to write)

His shout instantly woke up Tiger, Hawk, Snake and Turtle who had saliva drooping from their mouths and a dreamy glint in their eyes. After a few moments of dreaming they realized why they woke up.

In front of them, Dragon was standing with his hands stretched into the air, staring into the splashing water of the spring like it was the most beautiful woman he had ever met.

“Oi brother..brother…BROTHER!” Turtle tried to get Dragons attention, but ultimately failed.

So he stood up and walked next to Dragon, who was still immersed in his thoughts. What Turtle hated the most was being ignored, so he put his mouth softly next to Dragons right ear…AND ROARED: “DRAGOOOOOOON!!”

Dragon jumped backwards in fright, and a shocked and pained expression was seen on his face. He stumbled and fell into the opaque blue pond with a loud scream, his right ear ringing endlessly.

‘SPLASH’ a small amount of water splashed onto the other brothers.

“Oh shit…!” Turtle said slowly as he realized what had just happened, then he started laughing loudly.

Dragon surfaced from the pond, completely soaked and with still ringing ears.

His face was distorted into a terrible grimace and he looked at Turtle with a murderous gaze.

As the other brothers saw his face, they too couldn’t help but laugh loudly and after a short moment of trying to maintain his grimace, Dragon laughed with them. That was the first time they were laughing for real, since they had come into this world.

It was a special moment.

They laughed for almost two minutes straight, without stopping, then as they were slowly calming down Turtle opened his mouth:

“Haaaah that was refreshing! I am really sorry about that, bro, but you know how I react at being ignored…what exactly happened to you that you didn’t hear my calls?” he asked and sent a somewhat pleading look towards Dragon.

“Yeah I would like to know that too…” Snake said and observed Dragon carefully “Did you find something?”

“…” Tiger was trying to breath, but was interrupted by outbreaks of laughter, so he didn’t say anything and Hawk was staring interested at Dragon.

“Yes I indeed found something, and I swear to god, even though I don’t believe in him, this will blow your mind!” Dragon said with shining eyes (WN: again…hah :D I don’t know why but I somehow have to laugh a this ‘blow my/your mind’ sentences…every time…quite annoying^^)

He pointed towards the spring. “Try it!” he said.

Turtle, who was already standing near the spring didn’t think twice and took a sip of the crystal clear spring water.

As soon as he tasted the water, the mimic of his face instantly blanked and he foolishly stared at the water, similar to Dragon before.

Dragon could almost hear Turtle’s mind being blown to pieces and a knowing smile appeared on his face. (WN: I’m sorry…:D)

Tiger, Hawk and Snake looked astounded from the blank face of Turtle to the knowing smile of Dragon and decided they had to try for themselves.

They hurriedly rushed towards the spring, trying to be the first to take a sip and soon three more soundless ‘boom’ sounds happened (WN: I just can’t….stop…help :D)

Dragon, who realized that he was still standing in the pond hurriedly jumped out of it.

‘Huh..?!’

He realized that his former totally exhausted and sore body, which was painful all over was now completely fine, as if he never stepped over the boundaries of his body. He felt even more energized than before.

‘That water…should be the source…holy shit this is amazing…we can train ten times as hard with this…what is this?! Disneyland for martial artists?!’ he thought astounded and excitement filled his eyes.

“The only problem is…what is there to eat?!” he murmured observing his surroundings, seemingly not even realizing his wet clothes.

Without proper nutrition, even if they trained a hundred times as hard as on earth, there would be close to no results and they would quite possibly die early.

‘I already walked through the whole valley…no berries, no mushrooms, nothing…except for the trees…but we can’t possibly eat woo-…WAIT?!’ Dragon thought and an idea suddenly took form in his mind.

He ran towards the nearest tree and started to climb it. It wasn’t easy with his weak body, but after a minute or so, he was at the same height as the lowest leaves.

‘As I thought!’ Dragon thought excited as he grabbed one of the leaves and sniffed on the surface of it. The strong vigorous fragrance came from these leaves. Now he had to gamble…if they were eatable, then everything was settled and they would have the best training ground possible, but…if not he could get poisoned in a light case and worst case he would die. Light or worst case, either way he or the others would have to leave this valley to hunt animals for food, or search for eatable plants. Then again if they weren’t strong enough…how could they hunt?!

‘If I am wrong…then we all will probably die, either of hunger or wild beasts…’

Dragon thought and looked towards his four brothers, who were still standing around, mind blown. (WN: GRAH! WHY!)

“Brothers…pray with me!” he murmured and slowly put the leaf in front of his mouth. He inhaled sharply then he directly put the small leaf into his mouth, chewed a few times and swallowed it.

At first nothing happened, he didn’t even taste anything.

Then, all of a sudden, a fiery feeling spread from his stomach through his whole body. A really sharp taste filled his mouth and he coughed a lot, tears streaming down his cheeks.

“What…the….hell….!” he said while coughing and he grabbed his throat with his hands, trying to ease the pain, which obviously didn’t work. After a few moments the sharp taste disappeared completely and he stopped coughing and choking himself.

‘That was the most awful thing I’ve ever done…holy shit!’ Dragon thought and rubbed his throat.

‘But, I am not dead and I also don’t feel ill or weak, on the contrary I feel refreshed and full, as if I had eaten a whole chicken on my own’ he continued thinking: ‘So it turns out its indeed eatable, what a relief…even though I almost choked myself to death because of the taste…anyways that are brilliant news!’

Dragon looked up and plucked a few more leafs, to let his brothers taste them too. Of course, only out of concern. Of course!

After he plucked nine leaves he climbed down from the tree and walked to his brothers who were still (WN:………) mind blown.

He sat down on his stone plate and waited patiently.