Chapter 3: Part 2: The Girl of Blue Flames
"I asked: did you do this!?"
The blue haired beauty shook her enflamed hand at me, completely ignorant of whatever pain the fire should have put her through.
Curious.
Obviously she was immune to her own flames, else she would be screaming. That, or perhaps the flames weren't real? Or maybe they weren't fully manifested? Could I stop it if I took the initiative? I shook my head quickly, trying to shake away any distractions.
A surreal feeling took hold of me with, you know, the whole accepting magic as real already. The encounter with the Bad Guy Squad really hammered in the reality — or perhaps unreality — of the situation.
This world operated under different rules — under magic of all things. That meant there were a series of rules as to how it worked. Rules I could learn, manage, and possibly exploit.
If I didn't adapt, I was going to die.
If there's no way around, then there's only through—!
Plus having magic would be pretty awesome too.
I can already picture myself firing off cool energy blasts, summoning magical swords to float around me or something. Or maybe I could learn to heal and just power-level my body with super exercise and healing magic!
Ringing in my ears brought me back to the situation at hand, as the girl seemed to be yelling something right at me.
Shoot, I didn't have time to put my earplugs in before the fight. Even with the Fischer Dev silencer mounted on Mary-chan, the sound on it was still enough to cause light ringing. Usually I have a pair of Blackout Foam earplugs in, the kind that still let me hear conversations, but I wasn't expecting to have to shoot someone so I left them out from earlier.
Smacking the side of my head, the sort of thing you see swimmers do when they're waterlogged, I tried to shake off the ringing and refocus back on the conversation.
Thankfully I had just enough time from coming to my senses that I was able to dive out of the way from a small, bright-blue ball of flame hurdling towards me. It slammed into the ground next to me, kicking up a bit of dust. It probably only had the firepower of a heavy basketball, but it still wasn't something I wanted to get hit by.
"That was a warning shot! You have five seconds! Five, four, three — if you don't want to be burnt to a crisp you better say something already — two--!"
Panicking at the alarming lack of time, I flailed my arms around as if that would somehow stop the ball of death in her hands.
"Woah woah woah there! Don't shoot! I'm mostly innocent!"
"Mostly!? So you did do this! Attacking this poor wagon driver, stealing his wares! I should send you to the Hells for this!"
"Oi, what part of this guy looks like a poor wagon driver?" I asked, using my foot to shift his body slightly.
"And desecrating the dead!"
Another ball of flame shot out again, purposefully missing me, but close enough to my face I could feel the heat rush past by cheeks like a hot breeze in the desert. Yeah okay so maybe I deserved that.
"Hey hey! I'm saying I'm like, ninety-percent innocent here. Yeah okay, so it looks bad. He's dead, there's a toppled off wagon here, and he's nursing a bullet wound the size of my thumb, but — in all honesty — it was self-defense."
"Percent? Bul—?"
She looked momentarily confused, her features softening for just a moment before erupting in anger again. This time her flames turned this weird silvery-blue color. Her dark eyes shifted to a bright, shining white, as well. Something was telling me whatever was happening was bad.
"Don't try to trick me with your words! Now tell me what happened! Last chance, else my flames of judgement shall char your blackened soul to ash!"
Oi. How am I supposed to do that without words? Should I mime it?
Don't be unreasonable!
"Look miss, I've honestly got no idea what's going on. I woke up on some random hill without any memories —"
The flame in her hands immediately grew bigger and brighter. Okay, alright. Fake amnesia wasn't going to work here...
"Alright alright! Fine! I'm from New Haven, Connecticut! America! I was on the range one day talking with a friend of mine then out of nowhere I fell into some weird black void! Then I woke up on that hill over there, walked down here, found a completely abandoned wagon and this weird magic orb that taught me the language so what's probably why we can even talk right now. THEN, this asshole comes at me and I'm pretty he and his cronies were responsible for attacking the wagon in the first place. He then attacked me with knives and I had to kill him and I didn't want to but I really really had to, then you came here trying to kill me too!"
After saying all of that in a single burst, I started dry heaving as I desperately tried to catch my breath.
I looked up to find the blue haired girl staring dumbfounded at her hand and the fire held within it. The silver-blue fire had dissipated to no more than a lemon in size.
"...Alright," she said, closing her hand and letting the flame fully dissipate. Her eyes returned back to their original dark color.
"I don't believe you, but I also don't believe you're lying. So you're either crazy, or actually from some far off country. Perhaps you came into contact with some sort of portal magic? It's not exactly unheard of..."
Nodding enthusiastically, I never felt more grateful for telling the truth than I had in that moment. From what I gather, she had some sort of flame related truth-telling magic. Alright. Good to know. It was convenient, but something to file away for later.
"Yeah I'm from America! It's a country with all sorts of things there. Like great technology, weaponry, and science! I ended up here from some weird void or portal thing and I'm completely lost. I could really use some help."
She pursed her lips together as if in thought.
This was honestly my chance. Alone in a world with no background — especially in a world rife with magic — was like going into a wolf-den covered in steaks. At least with some sort of support or guide I could find out more about where I was and what kind of rules I was operating under. Hell, maybe she could even teach me some of her magic.
"I can take you to Arden at the least. From there we can figure out what to do with you."
Even now she looked at me with rippling suspicion.
I mean, I wouldn't blame her.
Finding your newest ward next to a dead body wasn't exactly an ideal first-encounter.
With a sigh on her lips, she slowly walked over to me. She opened and closed her mouth several times, as if trying to find her voice. Eventually, she stopped in front of me and placed her hands on her hips, her body language reticent.
"...Sorry for jumping on you like that. Can't really be too careful, y'know."
"Oh!" I was surprised. "It's okay, no harm done. I mean you could've harmed me, and then I'd be dead. But this timeline is pretty good."
"Timeline—? You say the oddest things. Either way, I'm supposed to protect the weak and innocent. I should've known a scrawny guy like you wouldn't be instigating trouble like that."
"Hey, I have, like, 4 inches of height on you!"
"Yeah but those arms look like they've never even held a sword. So you're no fighter, and if you were a mage I would've seen magic floating around here but I don't."
I'll have you know I have plenty of swords back at home! She was mostly on the money but damn, it hurt!
"Didn't this start off as an apology?" I asked, my teeth gritting at her bite.
"Did it? Right, I'm sorry I suppose."
She pushed her right arm out and grabbed mine roughly, shaking it roughly as she held a confident, toothy grin.
"I'm Rosa, Inquisitor of the Royal Church. At your service."
Up close it was easy to tell just how beautiful she actually was. Her short, bobbed hair framed a cute and adventurous face, and her body was more than toned with whatever passed for exercise in this fantasy world. While her personality seemed to be brash, trash, and more than unruly, she still radiated an ethereal, almost holy sort of beaut—
—...Hold on, did she say inquisitor!!?
By inquisitor she meant like, inquisitor-inquisitor, right? Like, 12th Century heresy hunting? Like blood and guts torture those that didn't align with the faith?
If she was one of them, at least by the definition my world went by, this was bad bad bad bad bad.
Were my palms sweaty? They felt sweaty.
"An inquisitor? What's that?" I asked, playing dumb and forcing a confused smile on my face. No, don't smile too much. Don't make it obvious you want to book it immediately.
"Don't have em where you're from? Well you should be honored then!"
She pulled away, placing her hands on her hips. She puffed up her chest, big and proud.
While not the biggest I'd ever seen, she definitely had enough to be proud about.
Focus, man.
As we started walking on the dirt road she started to talk. She walked with the kind of confidence only someone of great confidence, or great stupidity, could carry themselves.
"Inquisitors of the faith, heroes of justice! We right the wrongs done by the people to protect the people. We act as independent agents of the Royal Church and report on all the deeds we accomplish. If there's ever a problem, we gather all of us and swoop down with Holy Justice!"
She did a stupid pose, pointing her arms to the sky, one arm crooked back as if notching an arrow. She reminded me of the kids that watched too many superhero shows.
Alright, so maybe the inquisitors of this land were all morons. That would be way, way easier to deal with than the historical ones from my world, to start.
Pulling out from her pose, she looked back over to me.
"So what's your name anyways? You never said."
"Oh. Right. My name is Eno-"
Wait.
I'm in another world. If there was anytime to reinvent myself it was RIGHT NOW. Enomoto? A relic of the past! I could be Siegfried, or Arthur, or Landwain, or maybe Maddox, or Knox, or Pascal or Wynn. Maybe Hendrix, Apollo, Huxley, Falcon, Luther, Dante, Aries, Zion, Archer, Cannon, or Desmond. Wait, what about Flint Lock? Flint Lock!
"Actually it's—"
"Eno?" She suddenly interrupted me. "Weird, but I can see it. Nice to meet you Eno!"
Damn it.
...
As we walked and talked down the dirt road I soon spotted a large wall of worked, yellowed stone in the distance. I realized that we had, at some point, stepped away from the vast meadows and instead into farmland. There were fields of what looked like wheat, as well as rows of vegetables as far as I could see. Guards wandered up and down the numerous dirt roads, all wearing some form of leather armor and wielding a spear or sword and shield.
I turned towards Rosa, pointing at the stone wall ahead of us. As we closed in, I could also see towers peaking over stone in the distance, likely bound within its walls.
"Is that where we're headed?"
"Yeah," she said, grinning excitedly. "Welcome to Arden, the City of Slumber!"
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DiceQueen
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