“Errrm. Kiyo. . . did you see it?” Daisuke mumbled aloud as he slowly came out of his secluded rest.

“I—found one.” Daisuke swung his arms amid his rest. “They’re real. I knew it.”

It all came back to him in pieces. Fragments of the journey turned into tragedy. Nightmares that plagued Daisuke’s young mind, vivid scenes of the teratoma hurling his body through the woods resurfaced little by little. Glimpses of broken bones and bloodied skin ruptured by its fearsome talons embedded themselves deep into his subconscious. Concussed from the fall, Daisuke struggled to regain control. To pull himself out of the dream.

But then he saw it.

Creak. Thump. Thump.

Daisuke rolled side to side, mind unable to make sense of the flash that tarnished his eyes. A glimmer of Kiyo fighting the monster leaked in. Blurry backseat visions of him punching the beast. A wild rage subdued him. But, what was the green glow emanating off of him?

“Kiyo. What are you—-Kiyo!”

He lunged forward in a cold sweat that trickled down his back. Sat upright, he hung his head forward to catch his breath, to reel in what he saw. Streaks of pain shot out across his chest from the gashes left behind by the teratoma. Daisuke wrapped his arms around his stomach to muffle the jolts of agony, every second too agonizing to sequester as he collapsed onto his back.

Through it all, his friend remained ever-present in his mind. That image burned into his vision.

“Kiyo,” Daisuke glanced around the room, face scrunched inward by the opaque wood that surrounded him. “Wh—where am I?”

Gloss rubbed off his eyes, Daisuke took notice of the drastic change in his surroundings. The dead woods were long gone. Now laid on a weaved vass mat, coar hair used to bind the strands together, he scaled his gaze up from the floor to the ceiling. The room itself was similar to the very one he was born in, a matted floor encased in tarred crimson-soaked boards.

It was a secluded room with a single double slide door entrance. The roof was lined with gray wooden beams nailed in by obsidian spikes. No other living soul was present, Daisuke left to his lonesome.

Wait, but the teratoma hit me. It killed me. Daisuke thought to himself, head fuzzy from the entire event.

Hands raised against his face, Daisuke peeped through slits in his eyes. Expecting to find blood on his hands. To feel the treacherous mark of the beast, his horrid wounds. He gritted his teeth and slowly reeled his eyelids back open. Disbelief filled his gaze, hands shakier the longer he stared at his healed hands. It was like it never happened.

How am I alive?

Surprise masked Daisuke’s face as he patted at his chest wound in tight-knit layers of worn bandages. Blotches of blood seeped through, and three faint lines were left behind in their wake that imitated the scars beneath them. His first day in the woods impossible to forget.

“Woah, cool.” Daisuke took a second to admire the medical work and then reeled his focus back to his environment. “Hello?”

Shifting forward onto his knees, Daisuke honed his senses on the slightest details around him. The faint pitter-patter of rain leaked in through the creaking shift of footsteps throughout the sanctuary. Regardless, there was no clear way to know on his own where he was. Communication with the outside was his best course of action, his only course.

“Anyone there? Kiyo?” He called out through cupped hands.

Thump-thump-thump-thump.

Footsteps raced down the hall that sped around the outline of the room to its entrance. Daisuke followed the clamor of noise and narrowed in on the thin hide doors, a shadow cast onto them from the right end of the hall by the radiance of a glowstone lantern. It was small but still, it was another person.

“Thank Sun . . . wait.”

Relief shrunk into scowled fear across Daisuke’s face drawn out from the realization of his and Kiyo’s actions. They were caught like many before them. Punishment was expected as uncertainty tainted his thoughts with memories of the past public chastisement. The equivalent sentencing for leaving the sacred grounds before granted passage was a travesty on the most high. Scrambling back, Daisuke bumped into the wall, his jaded palms extended out in front of him as he tried to ward off the person.

“Wait, I didn’t mean it, I swear on the Sun,” Daisuke uttered as he waved his arms around wildly.

To be fair he couldn’t know, being only seven years old, the conceivable price to pay appeared infinite in his prepubescent mind. His teeth chattered relentlessly, unable to contain the terror that ruptured his mind. Old age came early as panic coiled around his heart, his face wrinkled beyond recognition. The end was in sight for his young pagan eyes.

“I’m sorry!” Daisuke wailed in a pitiful spout of tears.

Swish!

The door slid open but Daisuke refused to look. Gaze blocked behind his forearms, the boy petrified by what waited for him beyond the darkness. Faces phased through his mind for his executioner in front of him, what they came to tell him. To do to him. What did they want?

“Master Daisuke, are you okay?” A gentle and sweet high pitched voice called out.

Daisuke fell still. Arms split apart, he peeked into the sliver of light that shone upon his face to identify the voice. Slumped against the frame of the doorway, Aiko stared at him with dire concern. Her face flustered from the sprint up the stairs, called into action by the mere panic in Daisuke’s shrill cry. She panted in the stagnant air and awaited the marked child’s response, the all-clear.

“Yeah. I think so.” Daisuke muttered as he lowered his arms to his sides.

“Are—-you sure?” Aiko inhaled a long, much-desired breath. “It looks like you were cry-”

“I’m fine, I swear!” Daisuke blurted out as a blush washed over his face, hands clasped onto his cheeks.

Whew! Aiko wheezed in relief, a little smirk creasing her face. “Thank Sun.”

“But where’s Kiyo?”

“Oh, the other boy?” Aiko straightened herself upright with a gracious exhale. “He’s with the high priest right now.”

Daisuke’s eyes widened, the idea of speaking with the most high of their people was something unable for him to comprehend. An unfathomable circumstance for any citizen of Nippon. The first guess of why was all he could surmise: punishment. 

“Oh no.” Daisuke gasped aloud.

A colossal wave of worry sloshed around in his head, fear contorting his image of the priest to be some monster that would consume Kiyo. The prophetic holy one was reduced to someone who could wipe his friend off the face of the earth without consequence. Ayame’s stories of the priest banishing all children who went outside fed the hysteric fiery thoughts that echoed throughout his mind.

Gulp!

“The—high priest?” Daisuke asked in a shaky tone, body riddled with shudders.

“Yep! Must be so magical to get to talk to him,” Aiko said as she spun around, a cheery grin spread across her rosy scrunched baby face, her lime green eyes full of childlike wonder.

Daisuke had a polar opposite reaction as depression slithered in and rippled across his face. Skin paler than usual, he grappled at his hair.

With Kiyo on his mind, Daisuke could only stare into the grooves of the floor, lost in the overwhelming concern for what was happening to him. What torture he must be facing now for something Daisuke roped him into. Biting onto his left pointer finger, Daisuke pondered and wondered and worried. He couldn’t shake the nervous shivers, mind succumbed to guilt.

Aiko ended her spinning and gazed over at Daisuke. A tug of dismay drained her happiness, her smirk pulled aside as she strolled across the matted floor toward Daisuke. Weighed down by worry, he rocked back and forth biting away at his nails. With a bubble pout on her face, Aiko squinted at Daisuke. What was he thinking?

“You were crying, weren’t you?” Aiko asked with a jammed finger in his left cheek.

“N-n-no. I’m just—” Daisuke whined, but he couldn’t even finish his sentence, words stifled.

“It’s okay I cry sometimes too. Like earlier when I tripped and fell.” Aiko said in an overly energetic tone.

“You did?” Daisuke murmured as he rubbed the tears into his puffy cheeks.

“Yep. And another was when a bishop called me giftless. But it’s fine now because I know what I am.”

“What’s that?”

“Someone who helps others cause I can’t help myself!” She announced, arms raised to the heavens.

Needless to say, Daisuke didn't get it. Smile dropped and eyes squinted, he failed to find a reason to rejoice in her words. Her declaration was nothing more than a self-acknowledgment of her uselessness. Most Paladinians would disgrace themselves for such a thing, but she rejoiced.

“Also, this other time—” Aiko’s stories fell silent as Daisuke drowned her out, focus pinned on the situation at hand.

What does the high priest even want with him? Daisuke pondered intently, only able to imagine what it must be like. He took a deep breath and sighed it all out.

“But I can’t forget when the High Priest—” Hand raised, he planted his bare palm on her mouth and brought an end to her exposition. Concentration redirected to Daisuke’s narrow pensive gaze.

One request was all he had on his mind.

“Take me to him.”