Chapter 3
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You stop for a moment to rest your legs.
Sunlight was finally beginning to have a proper hold over the eastern sky, blazing hues of orange on your left while the purple nighttime retreated to your right. Your journey had been an uninterrupted one, traveling over slopes of grey and the black rocky road, fully expecting it to turn into dirt and loose gravel as you further isolated yourself from modern expansion.
If only you had gotten to the bus on time.
It was all thanks to that cosplaying kid you were lugging over your shoulder. If he had been a little more compliant with being hogtied and didn’t bring a tray of food down on your head you might have made it. You begin to ask yourself why you didn’t just break his neck and get it over with, but the answer - not out of virtue or empathy, no -the real answer came readily to your mind: It would’ve traumatized Cordax.
But he was lagging severely behind after getting too tired from walking and collapsing. Maybe you could simply get it over with here and… Say that he fell? No, too late; you hear his heavy panting and the clicking of his footsteps.
“Oh of course NOW you rest.” Cordax gasped out at you, clearly irritated and exhausted from running. “Sure if I wanna rest I get left behind passed out in the middle of the road, but if you wanna rest YOU can just-”
“There’s a bench here.” You objected, pointing out the bus stop. “Plus, this is where I was heading.”
“Oh really?” Cordax began to retort, but the satisfaction of being able to sit down on an actual seat defused his argument. With an incoherent grumble he plopped down, forcing you to give up a bit of room for him.
“What about him?” Cordax murmured after a moment or so, nudging you and motioning to the bound figure over your shoulder.
“My guess is he fell asleep.” You offered. “It’s not like there’s much you can do face-down in the middle of the night for three hours. But with any luck, he won’t be on my shoulder much longer.”
“…Head…” Winger mumbled, slowly roused by the sound of your voices. “All the blood… Where are we?”
“We,” You began, fully prepared to spin him a wild tale of how you were on your way to sell him into slavery for blood money, before the distant churning of a motor drew your full attention. Slowly standing, you noticed the shining singular headlight of a bus traveling south, and immediately stood in the middle of the road. The bus slowed to a halt right in front of you and Cordax forced open the door.
“What’re you doin’?” The driver said. He had a snappy voice, spoke extremely quickly, and was barely taller than Cordax, yet had a significant number of years under his belt, as his roughened hands jabbed a finger at you as you entered. “This is my transit bus and my paycheck you’re interrupting, and- Hey! Are you paying attention?!”
You plop your captive down in one of the back seats and turn to the driver. “Sir, you are going to turn this bus around and return to the train depot or I will throw you out the back window and do it myself. We are in a rush I might add, so make it snappy.”
The driver’s metallic face set in a vile scowl as he glared into your perfectly spherical head. “Fine. But only because I pay for damages.”
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