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“Miko, I think it would be best if we stopped here…”
“And what? We cannot make Lord Shojo wait any longer!”
“But we found nothing…”
“It’s the nothing we have to report!”
“I doubt Lord Shojo would even believe such a thing anyway. Why don’t we take a little rest?”
“You cannot rely on a sanity of a man whose private consultant is his cat. And would you be so selfish to rest while Hinjo might worry about us and decided to send a scout team that will waste more time?”
“Let’s take a little rest.”
“No.”
Then he surprised Miko. He sat down and ordered the rest of the team to follow in his suit.
“Are you disobeying me, your higher?”
“We need a little rest, leader. A good leader should know how to motivate her crews. Forcing them to run for seven days straight is not one of them.”
“Will you all follow him?” Miko glared at the three soldiers that followed her. They looked at her nervously, afraid to say anything. Even if they weren’t afraid, they still wouldn’t talk. They were gasping for air.
“See, Miko? We are tired.”
“I am really embarrassed, to say the least, that a Sapphire Guard would succumb to their fatigue so soon!”
“We weren’t trained to be automaton horses, Miko.”
“Soldier, I order you to stand,” Miko said as she lifted her sword.
The sitting soldier dropped his halberd and proceeded to remove his armor.
“What are you doing?”
“These things are heavy. If I remove them, maybe I could follow you for a few more hours.”
“Do you want to discard your proof as a Sapphire Guard so easily?”
“You know who I worshipped other than the Almighty?”
“What?”
“I worship Lord Shojo. Why? At least he’s human. Human that knew when to stop, to start again, to clean the litter, and to stop again. I want to be a Guard so I could guard that kind of human who is worthy of every protection possible. I don’t become a guard so I must follow a heartless, super strong …”
The last word was a mumble. Miko still heard it.
If the forest they were currently on stayed silent, there would be a fight between Miko and her disobeying underling. A fight in which Miko would certainly win. Fortunately for the sitting soldier and the rest of the soldiers, a sound was heard.
The soldier quickly grabbed his halberd and stood up. The three soldiers behind him soon lifted their swords and looked around. Miko had already moved to the source of the sound, slashing through thick leaves as she walked deeper.
What was that voice? Miko asked herself. She was the most senior of them all and she had heard many sounds. The cracking of a bombed wooden bridge, the dying scream of a small bird with lung disease burned alive, the long soliloquy of a man who had been haunted by the dreams of his father, the silent scream of a man who met his deepest fear that skewered his very concept of reality, the teasing growl of a promiscuous tiger, all kind of voices. She searched her memories, trying to find the correct combination.
“Do you have any idea what that sound is?”
“It is the sound of…something wooden being crushed under pressure…by…likely a wide object…a pillar made from…iron. It’s the sound of an iron pillar crushing a wooden ship as it was dropped from above.”
“That’s frightening.”
“Indeed. I never believed the silly rumor, but I think this is the Island of Falling Iron Pillars.”
“One island in a cluster of ten islands that was told in folklore as The Region Where God Had Fun?”
“Yes.”
“That’s just silly.”
However, as Miko cut through one last leaf, they all saw the truth: a wooden ship had almost been split in half and an iron pillar that mysteriously appeared at the crack made when the ship almost split in two.
“It might be silly, but it’s the truth.”
“An iron pillar dropped from the sky and destroyed a wooden ship?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you think that’s just a little weird?”
“Yes. Iron pillars tend to be very heavy and it would be very hard to drop them from the sky.”
As if to prove her wrong, another iron pillar dropped from the sky, landed a few feet in front of Miko, and buried itself deep into the sands. She blinked once and quickly ran back to the forest. The others also followed due to fear of being crushed by falling iron pillars.
As they got back to the forest, the soldier with a halberd asked, “Any plans?”
“We tell Lord Shojo of this island. This will end the iron deficit on Azure City.”
“Yeah, we should do that. We should definitely do that,” He said.
“Do you remember the other nine islands?”
It took a few seconds before he realized, “There’s the Island of Absolute Animal Instincts, where humans would lost their minds and rely on their instincts alone…”
“The Island of Superficial Excess,” One soldier wielding a sword said.
“The Island of Endless Pleading,” Another sword-wielding soldier said.
“The Island of Indistinct Geography,” The soldier with a halberd said.
“The Island of Total Truth,” Miko said, “The Island of Presented Pastimes, the Island of Fluffy Marshmallows, the Island of Bland Bleakness, and the Island of Teleporting Beasts.”
“You sure remember a lot of them.”
“My parents often used the story of the Island of Bland Bleakness to scare me to death when I was small.”
“Oh?”
“Be on a lookout, all of you,” Miko said, “The Island of Teleporting Beasts had cruel and vicious teleporting beasts, but you never know where the Teleporting Beasts of the Island of Teleporting Beasts might teleport.”
The rest of the team looked at her, confused by her words. Suddenly, one of the sword-wielding soldier said, “Wait, Azuma?”
“Who?”
“Azuma! Another one of us! He’s gone!”
“What?” Miko said. She looked around. When people looked around, they were used to not seeing things right away. Hence, Miko was surprised when two pairs of floating eyes glared at her right when she looked at her right.
“Gah!” One of the sword-wielding soldiers screamed. When Miko reflexively looked at him, she found out that he was lifted off to the sky and suddenly disappeared.
“Duck!”
Miko instantly ducked as the soldier with a halberd swung his weapon at the pairs of eyes, only to attack empty air.
“Duck!” The remaining sword-wielding soldier said, and the soldier with a halberd quickly ducked, “No, it’s what I think is a duuuuuuuu-“
The halberd-wielding soldier and Miko looked helplessly as their companion was pulled away by what looked like a giant yellow duck that held the soldier by the neck and ran into a hole in the sky.
“What?”
Miko suddenly saw the two pairs of eyes looked directly into her eyes again. She was hypnotized. Before the soldier wielding a halberd could do anything, she was teleported. Soon he, too, was teleported by something.
When he opened his eyes, he saw nothing but what looked like white pillows dropping from the sky. When the pillows started piling up, after it got to a certain height, the pile would disappear. The rain of the white pillows never stopped.
“The Island of Fluffy Marshmallows?”
Re: That Guy with a Halberd
