"Get out of my head."
"I have stopped reading your thoughts... now." Nubira blinked, the gold spun in his eyes—weird, what is he?
"I am what you could refer to as a proxy," he answered.
"You won't stop, would you?" I asked, a bit defeated.
"I have no reason to. You somehow are already shielding a lot from me..." Nubira walked past me. I turned around.
"What are you?" I asked again, still not getting what this whole situation was.
"I just told you, I am a proxy... a stand-in for my lord and savior." Nubira's back faced me as he stared into the starry night, gazing at the stars that hung so low, as if waiting for someone to reach for them... so they can fall.
"The real question here is, who are you, Ren?" he asked as he turned around. Against the backdrop, the gold that he was wearing was accentuated, making him look like a deity.
"That's high praise coming from you," I muttered. Nubira was still reading my thoughts.
"I might start cussing you in my mind constantly," I clicked my tongue in defeat, as I was now able to move comfortably.
"You already are doing that."
I don't know how, but he somehow managed to hasten the pace of my recovery a hundredfold, as if it was not already quick with my Phoenix physique.
It felt good, at least.
"It's weird... sometimes it feels like something is just cutting me off from reading into your soul," Nubira said out loud.
'And that should be me,' from the depths of my own mind, I heard a voice familiar to me.
Smokeball! I was starting to get worried, where were you?
'Well, I am kind of a bit far from you right now,' Blaze replied. He couldn't be too far, as I can hear him clearly in my mind.
'I am still at the centre of the crater that the falling star left. After coming out of the void, I was unable to sense your mana signature, so I thought... anyways, I went back, and well, things are a bit interesting here.' Blaze's voice was filled with intrigue.
Behind me was a massive crater that was left behind by the impact of the falling star. It spanned miles, and its edge was about hundreds of meters away from me.
Blaze is still there.
'How'd you do that?' I asked inside my mind.
I know he used Umbra Mana, but that still shouldn't be enough.
'I just hid in shadows,' Blaze replied in a casual manner, but somewhere in there it felt as if his whole focus was not on what I was saying, but something completely else.
I got up as I began walking towards the edge of the crater.
Passing Nubira, who did not say anything but just kept observing me. Immediately, he tapped the bottom of his staff, and I was hovering.
"Wha—" I yelped. In a span of a second, I moved from the place I was in to the edge of the crater.
Teleporting?
"Are you searching for that beast over there?" Nubira asked as he stood beside me, pointing in a very specific direction.
I strained my eyes, but without mana, it was hard to see so far into the darkness.
"Yeah, if that beast is what I have in my mind... you see that, right?" I rubbed both my temples.
"No, I don't." Nubira tapped the staff, and off we went. In the span of a second, I was at the bottom of the crater, glittering crimson sand beneath my feet and—
'You fucking scared me!' Blaze screamed loud in my mind while he did the same with his beastly roar.
I was standing beside him in his shadow form, but more than that...
Innards... everywhere, as I stood at the bottom of the endless vermin, the same one that was about to grind me in its saw-like maw.
It lay flat over the sandy dune, half of it just vanished as everything in its body spilled onto the desert. It smelled foul, and blood pooled around my feet.
It just... something glinted.
Somewhere in its leviathanic body, there was a faint glow under its translucent skin, as if something was burning slowly with an aureate hue.
The aureate hue then spread around till it completely swallowed the whole carcass, and once it did, everything just crumbled into fine gold sand.
Just a few minutes ago, there was a gigantic carcass lying here; now it had turned into a pile of gold dust, which was being carried by the wind.
"Now I am left with two fewer of these... magnificent creatures," Nubira materialized beside me and Blaze.
"What happened?" I asked with genuine curiosity. Is it dead? It should be, but what happened...
"Greed," Nubira said quietly, as if unsure whether the word fully fit.
"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked.
"It... wanted flesh," Nubira replied after a brief pause. "So it moved toward the sky." His gaze drifted upward. "It seems it did not understand... that the sky is not something it can reach anymore."
That was cryptic...
"It is not," Nubira added, then hesitated slightly. "Well... not for most." His eyes returned to mine.
A small pause, like he was arranging the thought before speaking it.
"I would like... to speak with both of you."
I watched Blaze jump out of my shadow onto my shoulder in his cat form.
I closed my eyes for a few seconds, took a deep breath, and calmed myself down as one thing dawned on me...
The Crimson Desert. It spanned in all directions, glistening with gold that was visible to the naked eye... available in abundance—the same gold that I just saw form in front of my own eyes.
From the carcass—and it made my skin crawl. How many died?
"I can talk, but let me ask you one more time," I said. I know he can read my mind to a certain extent, so he should get what I mean when I ask him this. "Who are you and Where am I?"
Nubira took a moment, as if searching for an answer—and then, as if he had found something close enough:
"I am... Nubira Kilwas Ra," he said slowly. "A servant of Geb—my lord. He presides over Kushret... and what continues beyond it."
It is Geb—something I guessed because the name of the place is the forgotten land of gold—but that was still not what I asked...
Though my answer did not come from him, but from the horizon. The sun had begun to rise again.
"I stand in his place," Nubira continued, voice quieter, like he was aligning the thought as he spoke. "I guide what remains of those who fall... or lose their way. Toward him. Toward what he is." A brief pause. "It is... called salvation here."
Nubira stopped, as if he had answered what he was asked—but that was nowhere near what I meant... maybe simply because he did not understand my question, even after being in my mind, because it was foreign to him.
I asked where am I—as in where is this Kushret—but he couldn't understand that because, for him, everywhere is Kushret.
There's nothing else...
Only one sun had risen over the horizon—to throw me into the dark.
