Initially, there was a lot of shocks going through Simyon’s system. The horror of the task and the reality of what might happen to him if he were to fail. The hardest part of the task was not knowing truly how difficult it would be.
It wasn’t as if Simyon had attempted to stay awake for three days; as for the other conditions, he had experienced them before, it had been a long time, but the combination of all those things would have surely been different.
One good thing was, for now, he hadn’t asked a lot of questions. Eventually, Kron had returned, and when he did, he had asked the children a few questions about what they had seen.
He didn’t go into detail with his questioning because the kids were all giving him roughly the same answers. They hadn’t seen much because he had only been at the temple for a few minutes and didn’t say a single word.
Eventually, nighttime had come, and Safa and Raze had agreed to take it in turns to look over Simyon. Raze would stay in his room the first night, making sure that he didn’t sleep, hitting him whenever he felt drowsy or talking to him.
Safa would take over the second night, and Raze would look over him for the final night, which would be the hardest. All of this was to give him the best chances of survival.
As for food and drink, they had a plan for that as well. They would inform Kron that Simyon wasn’t feeling well, and that they would bring his drink and food to his room. Either Safa or Raze would then gobble it up, preferably away from Simyon.
When in a hungered state, the worst thing was having it shoved in your face when you could do nothing about it, and so the first evening had come, and Raze was standing up against the wall with his eyes closed while Simyon was sat up on his bed.
The two of them had stayed silent for a couple of hours now, and Simyon couldn’t take it. “Hey, I’m just going to start rambling on, if I don’t do anything, then I think I’m going to doze off before I know it. That’s alright, yeah?”
Raze opened his eyes and gave a slight nod; he clearly wasn’t a person of many words. “You know, when I first heard what this earring might do to me, I thought, why me, why is my luck so bad?” Simyon asked.
“I came from a town, only a little smaller than this one, maybe you would call it a village more than a town. It was a place where everyone knew each other, and out of all the places possible, a portal break happened right there in my village.
“Horrid monsters came out, killing everyone left, right, and center. It wasn’t something that happened in an instant either. The adults tried to fight back, but they were no match, and me and my sister… we hid. The two of us hid from the monsters with no food and no water for a few days.
“At first, the pain was unbearable, but eventually, I got used to it. It’s strange, the pangs would come and go, intense but the feeling would go away. Even now, it’s almost impossible to remember the pain.”
Simyon then placed his hand not on his stomach, but on his heart instead. “But, there is a pain that I can’t forget. My sister, she had given me all our food, all of the water we had at the beginning, and eventually, she passed away, and the pain of losing her has never gone away. So, now you might understand why I have a go at you, now and then, for not looking after your sister, but I’m glad you secretly care.” Simyon chuckled.
Raze didn’t comment on anything that Simyon said, but he made sure to listen to his story well, because it reminded him a bit about his past. Back then, if there was someone who had listened to him, someone who had guided him, would he have taken a different path and never have become the Dark Magus?
‘But there’s a large difference in our stories,’ Raze thought. ‘Simyon’s anger can be directed towards the beast that killed his family, while mine is towards other humans.’
“I know a part of your story from before,” Raze said. “But how did you end up surviving, was it because of Kron?”
Simyon shook his head. “I told you I wanted to become a Pagna warrior because one saved me, but it wasn’t Kron. It wasn’t even someone from the Dark faction, actually. There’s this clan called the Crimson Crane. They’re probably the biggest and most famous wandering clan there is.”
“Wandering Clan?” It was the first time Raze had heard of something like this.
“It’s what it sounds like, it’s a clan that doesn’t belong to any of the three major factions and roams through the lands. At the time, a man named Tilon had killed all the beasts from the portal break and then found me. That’s why I want to become a Pagna warrior, no, not a Pagna warrior.
“I just want to become strong, so I can stop these portal breaks before they make more people like me. So I don’t care how I get that power, if this earring can grant it, then I’ll fight through this and survive.”
The words Simyon had said, ‘I don’t care how I get power,’ were the same words that Raze had repeated through his head a few times, and hearing it, inside, he was rooting for the kid.
‘Just don’t end up like me, otherwise, you’ll live a sh*t life like I did.’
The first night was relatively easy for both of them. Raze was used to a lack of sleep due to him going out during the night anyway, and Pagna warriors didn’t need as much sleep either.
For Simyon, he just felt a little hungry once in a while; the worst feeling for now was the first, as his lips were drying up a little, but they all knew that the first day would be the easiest.
The two siblings went through their plan, with next to no trouble at all. They informed Kron that Simyon was feeling sick, and when he went to check on him, it certainly seemed that way.
Simyon had managed to stop Kron from taking him to the physician, saying that he would get better in a few days just with some rest, and if he wasn’t better after five days, then they should take him to the physician. It was quite surprising how slick Simyon could be with his words.
Things went by quite quickly, and Raze was also surprised by the determination of Simyon; he had come in a few times and could see nail marks in the palm of his hand. While the two of them were away, he must have been close to dozing off but had tried to inflict pain on himself in order to stay awake.
Now, it was the second night which had come, and this was where things were starting to worsen. Safa couldn’t speak, so she tried to communicate with books, pointing to the words, but it was hard for Simyon to focus. His head was banging with pain, and his stomach felt like it was trying to eat itself, as his muscles tensed up hard. When he tried to look at the words, he was reading them but they weren’t registering in his head, as if he knew what he was saying but didn’t understand the words.
“I don’t understand, okay!!” Simyon shouted, as another wave of the hunger pangs came over him.
“I’m sorry, Safa, it’s not you, you know it’s just everything I’m going through. Please, whatever I do, if I snap at you, shout at you, forget all of it, it isn’t me,” Simyon said.
Rather than speaking, Safa decided to go with another technique for the rest of the night, and it was slapping Simyon’s leg every time it looked like he was dozing off. At first, the slaps started off small, but they got larger and larger until his leg was raw red.
“Ah!!” Simyon screamed but held it in, trying not to wake up the others. Tears started to fall down his face, not because of the pain, but because of everything he was going through; he felt like he was going mad. All he wanted to do was sleep; why couldn’t he just rest his brain for a moment!
The second day had finally come to an end, and Safa was thankful that she didn’t have to go through the third night with Simyon because she had no clue how she was going to help him get through it. Seeing everything, she began to tear up but made sure that Simyon wasn’t there to see her tears.
While the two were away, they had to trust that Simyon could get through it for a couple of hours on his own. The children were busy having breakfast when they heard a loud horn noise from the outside.
“Isn’t that the Red Brigade Clan’s signal?” Kron mumbled to himself as he stood up and ventured outside.
In the courtyard, he could see not just a single member of the Red Brigade but it looked like a full squad of six, one of them including Sonny. 𝑂𝒱𝑙xt.𝓬𝒪𝑚
“I, Rapsen, squad leader of the second division, am here on orders of the Red Brigade Clan, to collect Raze, on suspicion of harming a Disciple of the clan!”