Tobi and Amais had been waiting for a couple of hours now, simply waiting. Nothing of note had happened as of yet, other than the fish going bad Tobi had simply burned the remains to fuel their makeshift campfire.
"Huh, Moosey's sure taking a while," Amais murmured.
"Yeah. I'm going to sleep then, Amais," Tobi said directly.
"Yeah, I should too..." and he tried before sighing. "Never mind."
He couldn't really sleep anymore anyway.
Amais looked to his side, into the unending darkness of the maze, and gazed into it. Something moved, flickering like a light as he simply stared at it, curiously and wearily.
Is it an angler?
The light flickered again and again in the unending dark. It seemed clearer than before, and perhaps that was why he could see it now. The white light flickered once more then stopped and all returned to normal. It was strange, to say the least. Though he felt uneasy, he simply turned back to the fire, staring into the flames. He wasn't sure if it was his mind playing tricks on him or if he had actually seen it. Still, he felt self-assured, especially after the skinwalker incident in the maze so he looked back into the darkness once more. He would check it out himself… but then he would have to leave Tobi.
"Hey, Tobi. There's something in the dark," Amais said, waking the hunter.
"Is there?" Tobi asked as a flame on his arm roared to life and shot upward, alighting the maze for a moment. It was a single flash but enough to see the maze's hall, the rock it was made of, the sea above, the moss cramped into corners or clinging to the walls, the puddles of dark water littering the floor and the silhouette that didn't belong in the light.
"You saw that, right?" Amais asked, weariness creeping into his voice.
"Yeah," Tobi said honestly, lighting the maze again.
The shadow was gone.
"It's playing with us," Tobi muttered coldly.
They stared into the dark and Amais saw something that made his heart drop. Two eyes appeared and flickered like static… then a smile, which was wide and unnatural, before it all faded to black.
"It's it," Amais gulped. His hands trembled as he staggered back before gritting his teeth and regaining his footing.
"It's that damn shadow," he snarled.
"Everybody who meets it says the same thing, it seems," Tobi said calmly as he let the fire stream ahead. But the shadow was gone.
"You know about the shadow?" Amais asked warily.
Tobi nodded. "Yeah. It seems it was just making itself known this time. That shadow is a follower of Fate. It's a sadistic creature that likes to play with its prey and it followed us here, maybe even the reason we are here."
"You know, whenever you talk about Fate, you make it sound like a person," Amais said honestly.
"Oh, Fate is a god. And I'm playing a cat-and-mouse game with said god. And though I'm the mouse… I'm trying to kill the cat," Tobi explained plainly.
"Oh, thanks for telling me this information now," Amais said sarcastically, annoyed but not caring, not at this moment. Even if this brought up a lot of questions he wanted to ask, now wasn't the time.
"Well, I did say it was probably Fate's fault we were here," Tobi replied innocently.
"Maybe clarify that it's an actual god. I thought it was the concept, like, 'this is a fate you can never escape'," he said mockingly, before getting back to the topic.
"How do we kill it?" Amias asked.
Tobi looked deep in thought before speaking again.
"When it gets to that point… we'll figure something out," he said bluntly.
"Can we? I've fought that thing. Besides, if it's a follower of a god, then what chance do we stand? And, well, you only have one arm," Amias said just as bluntly.
Tobi nodded solemnly.
"One arm's plenty. Besides, fear makes the wolf bigger than he is. As long as it lives, it can die. There's nothing that can escape the inevitability that is death; even gods cower in the face of it. So what of a mere follower?" Tobi responded coldly.
"Isn't that too arrogant?" Amias laughed.
"Well, of course it is. I'm a hunter, after all. It would be counterproductive of me to let myself be hunted," Tobi joked, and they both laughed.
"It's watching."
"No doubt."
"I'll kill it myself," Amias said.
Tobi looked at him. Who knew what reaction hid behind that mask before he gave a low chuckle.
"If that's your wish, Gravewalker," he said.
Then they heard it, a tremendous crash from above. Water came pouring down in torrents, quenching the flames as a wave of steam burst into the air. The smell of dying embers filled their lungs. And now they stood in absolute darkness, both weary of what they might see.
Tobi lit his hand as fire blazed, lighting the surrounding area.
In the glow, they saw the guests from the lake above: two women. One was a redhead with freckles, green eyes, and pointed ears, gasping for breath and holding onto the other, a lithe, white-haired, red-eyed woman who looked deathly tired and dazed.
Elentera, Amias thought, puzzled.
In an instant, their eyes met.
She leapt at him, clinging to him as he stumbled backward. Then she sank her teeth into his neck and began to drink.
The elf was too stunned to speak as Tobi looked at it curiously, but even that didn't compare to Amias, who was now experiencing one of the most confusing moments of his life.
It lasted a solid few minutes before she finally sighed in relief and looked up at him, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She gave him an innocent grin, then nuzzled in close, purring contently.
"You got bigger," she murmured honestly hugging him tightly.
Amias was still speechless.
The elf shouted something sharp in a language Amias didn't know, her face flushed with secondhand embarrassment as her friend clung to him like a koala.
Tobi, meanwhile, just looked at him, that dazed boy pinned to the ground by a girl who had just drunk his blood. Tobi's eyes gleamed with amusement at the scene.
Amais, meanwhile, hadn't registered a single thing.
Amias wasn't suffering from blood loss, not that it would have mattered. He regenerated too quickly for any blood loss to remotely matter.
No, in this moment what he was feeling was something far deeper.
And he really hoped it wasn't showing.
Especially not with her curled up in his lap.