Chapter Twelve: The Nameless City Part Two

Rashid stands to his full height on the back of the cart, standing on who knows what, and puts his hands on his back while he leans backwards and pushes forward with his hands, and creates some very loud pops and cracks while letting out a satisfied moan. He stops for a moment seemingly satisfied, but he then leans forward to continue stretching out and keep making his skeleton creak and moan.

While he’s stretching I can’t help but notice again how thin he is. I mean the man is practically skeletal, his bones are pretty freaking visible and with how his skin is so stretch thin on his face he looks like he could cut somebody on his cheekbones. His cloak doesn’t help either, unless he’s going for the tall, dark, and looks like a scary fucking scarecrow look. Now that I think about it he is pretty scary looking, hmm if I tied him up could I use him as a scarecrow? Definitely would get rid of those freaking birds from my lawn. And if I could mass produce him...

Rashid makes a one eighty to me and says raspily, but bland “Why do I feel like you’re thinking something idiotic?”

What?! How does he know?! I open my mouth to speak but close it, when he narrows his eyes at me and unleashes his aura while saying harshly “You know what don’t answer. I feel I’ll you’ll only make me want to hit you more and in fact...” He trails off as he lifts a hand into the air where a stake materializes onto his palm.

A volatile mixture of fear and excitement bubble through me from my stomach and all throughout my body, as I look at Rashid’s weapon in hand. My eyes focus in on it, watching for the barest of movement for his arm and hand, and secondarily the rest of his body, if he turns his waist, feet or shoulder, I’d know now that I’m prepared.

A single twitch in his arm gives it away, and I give myself a half a second before he attacks. I furiously quick bring up my legs and lift my lower half up and shift my upper so that have all my weight on my hands, before lowering myself on my hands and tensing my arms with tremendous strength and force, before launching myself into the air as my instincts are screaming with horror to get away. In the air I fly dozens of feet up, and I feel it before I can see it. A powerful shockwave hits me in the air, and interrupts my flight and sends me from my controlled jump to an a horribly uncontrolled fall.

My body spins in the air, and my stomach is doing backflips. But I bring myself into a ball, and control my fall, and before I hit the ground I do backflip and land on my feet to see... nothing but craggy cliffs. Shit turned the wrong way.

My instincts warn me and I jump several feet to the side to avoid sudden death as part of the cliff explodes, and another shockwave hits me and tosses me like a ragdoll. I hit the ground hard and start rolling, but I pull myself to a stop and a into a crouch looking at… barren dirt and a distant city, shit wrong way again.

Ok, ok third time's the charm. I tense my legs and propel myself with immense strength up into the air and flip around to see Rashid on the cart still with another stake in hand. I smile wolfishly, and flip around so that I’m falling face first. I tense my legs again, and gather my strength, before kicking out and sending me towards Rashid with his stake at flesh rending speed.

I keep barreling closer and closer to Rashid, and I raise my fist and tense it ready to smash his face in. And after what felt like a moment later, I get ready to strike him and he grins maliciously and raises his stake at me. I bring back my fist as far as I can, before striking prematurely, Rashid raises a eyebrow and I flip around using my momentum so that it’s my leg striking him.

He raises both of his eyebrows this time as my kick is about to collide with him. He hastily brings up his stake, and we collide as a screeching boom tears through the air.

I feel something give, but can’t look down as Rashid’s stake is giving off a unbelieveably amount of light and have to shield my eyes. But then I feel something break and disappear, but don’t feel hitting anything. Then just as I open my eyes I see Rashid next to me winding up his own punch and then launch it at my side. I hastily bring up my arms to protect myself, but his punch still hits me hard enough for my insides to rattle and send me flyin.

I toss in the air, and land on my feet. I look at my arm at where Rashid hit me, and notice that it's numb and a dark purple. I grin, and let my arm drop down to my side, and my blood really starts to get pumping. Yes this is what I’ve been wanting a true fight between warriors, one that won’t end till one or both is dead-

“Ready to get a move on?” Rashid calls out to me from the cart. Huh?

“Wait what?” I ask confused

“Well I’m ready to go, so if you need to take a shit or something go do it.” My brow furrows and scrunches.

“But we were fighting.” I say with a pout.

“Eww, don’t do that it’s creepy.” Rashid says dryly and with disgust, before adding “An that really wasn’t a fight I just felt like beating you a bit boy. Now are you ready to go or do you need to take a shit?”

I sigh dusting myself off “Yeah I guess-,” My stomach disagrees with me as it growls and rumbles. I look to Rashid with danger in my eyes “Give me five minutes, and do you have any wipes?” He chuckles and throws me a roll from the cart, and I run off to answer natures call.

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Nature’s call having been answered with due process, I made my way back to the cart to find Rashid tossing some of his stakes in the air and juggling them. Each of the stakes give off light, but they’re not the dull silver ones or the blinding ivory one, no this time I see them they’re completely different than the one’s I’ve seen before. The one’s I’m seeing now are an assortment of colors the like’s I’ve never seen outside of a rainbow, each stake shining in a welcoming glow that the eye couldn’t help but track and follow, only to be gently, if not slightly regretful, pulled off by the next stake in the cycle.

I stood there being mesmerized by the show being put on before me unable, no, unwilling to look away from the sight before me. I watch as Rashid tosses one stake into the air after another almost mechanically, and only catch them the moment that seems like they’re about to fall out of his grasp in a surprisingly human motion.

He continues to juggle the heavy, and dangerous looking stakes in the air for what felt like hours, till he seems to drops one of the stakes, and it seems like it’s going to rip through his foot. But then at the last second he lifts his foot, in a startling display of speed and kicks it into the air. It hits the other six stakes and piecing through them and then turns around falls into Rashid’s hand, who then takes a bow as the stakes slowly fade out of existence.

My body reacts automatically clapping with reckless abandon, as the air shakes each time my hands hit each other with full force. Rashid chuckles light and raspy at my enthusiasm at his show.

With a light and leathery smile he says “Thank you, thank you, you’re too kind.” Almost sounding like any other performing I’ve heard before, if not for his sandpaper voice.

I open my mouth, but no words come out as I cannot find anything to say, but I eventually just say “That was awesome!”

He chuckles a little more before saying “Well it should be, I’ve been doing this since I was a boy, and that was a long, long time ago.”

“No wonder you’re so good then, did you use stakes back then too?”

His eye’s became a little distant for a second but shook his head and look at me “Nope no aura, so I used daggers instead.” He looks away toward the city “Anyway time to get going.”

After saying that Rashid began walking towards the shadowy city in the distance. I give shrug at no one and grab the cart, then start to run to catch up with the old man. When he notices my presence behind him, he begins to pick up speed but he doesn’t try to pass me or sprint ahead of me. He stays just ahead of me as I run behind him.

We soon settle into a brisk pace, as the dull land around us blurs as past us. The city only seems to get closer and closer as we run, It doesn’t seem like it’ll take more than a hour or so to get there, that’s the benefit of running on flat, even ground. Speaking of the ground it’s like the rock up in the cave, but not to the same extent, but still absorbs a lot of force. If the pattern continues maybe the city’s will also be shock absorbent.

As we get closer to the city, it starts to get darker as It becomes closer to evening down here, and also something less noticeable is that the air taste different. The closer I get the more evident it becomes, at first I figured that it was some air pockets or something, but now it taste so strong I can’t ignore it. The air taste kinda artificial, sterile, and very, very clean. Like the type of air that’s been purified, and belongs in labs. I don’t like it, doesn’t belong here.

My face falls into more and more of a scowl as I get closer to the city. I almost began to gag, and Rashid looks back at. “What’s wrong?”

I answer with a slight snarl “The air! Something’s wrong with it!”

He sighs “You’ll get use to it, the city has a air purifier down here somewhere to keep the air clean and flowing down here.” I just give an annoyed grunt and sigh, accepting I’m going to have to deal with this, so I continue running to the city.

By the time we got within spitting distance of the city, it has almost gone pitch black outside the city, but the lights above it had completely lit it up. Revealing open winding roads between the titanic building before us, It’s mesmerising to look at. I tear myself away from the labyrinth of a city, to see Rashid wearing an excited and smug smile. He turns to me and say “Come on, the real adventure begins now.” Then he turns to the sky, no wait ceiling. “Wait, never mind it’s kinda late, it can wait till tomorrow. I need my beauty sleep.”

He then points to a short and squat build a couple hundred yards away, “We can camp out over there.” I shrug and get moving.

Making our way to building, I discover it’s not the small. In fact it’s actually about the size of the guild’s arena, but still pretty low to the ground and I had duck down going into it because going inside it led down. Inside is pretty empty, and dark, till Rashid produce a stake and stab it into the floor and lit up the place.

I took a look around, but found nothing particularly interesting, or that I found interesting and sat down in front the stake ready to sleep. But the Rashid said “Oh, I just remembered something, I was gonna show some tricks to use your aura.”

I all but yelled “You were?!”

“Yeah, but that can wait till tomorrow I need my beauty sleep.”