Saving Neba

𝐕𝐈: Superhuman

I was standing in a rectangular room.

There was a long rectangular table in the middle of the room and sixteen dining chairs were around the table. The chairs were occupied by people who had black hair. The room was painted orange with short black horizontal lines at the edges. Crypta was seated between a boy and a girl who looked his age.

Everyone was looking at my plain top and jeans and my brown eyes and I couldn't stop my cheeks from getting heated. "I. . .Am I interrupting something? Sorry, I only came to return this notebook. Crypta left it at my place."

My eyes stared at the people who were observing me and a much older man stood up. He looked like someone who could be Crypta's father. His eyes were blue and his lips were rosy, finer than Crypta's. He opened his mouth to speak but all I could hear was gibberish.

Crypta turned to the man and did the same, speaking in a language I couldn't understand. However, I heard my name being mentioned.

The room went silent. It was as if everyone was afraid they'd say something they weren't expected to say. I looked around the room and then down and noticed the fitted carpet which had the representation of a long dragon in a moving position. Flames were around the image and the dragon breathed fire. It was the same as the drawing in Crypta's notebook.

I looked up and the man was examining my outer shell, and I could only wait for him to utter whatever thing. I turned to Crypta and he gave me an encouraging smile. The man said something again and Crypta nodded, and they both left the dining room.

I was directed to a bedroom by a guard who was in what looked like a knight suit and a helmet which prevented me from seeing his facial features. No one could have a conversation with me. When the guard did, I couldn't understand a thing.

The wall of the bedroom had a similar orange-with-black-short-strokes design as the dining room. The bed was wide and the floor was carpeted. A dragon symbol was illustrated on a rug at the foot of the bed. The window was more of a French door that led to a balcony. I was too scared to go anywhere so all I did was sit on the bed and wait for Crypta, the notebook still in my hand.

It felt like an hour before the door opened and Crypta walked in. He smiled at me and gave me a cup. I stared at him and the cup and accepted it, figuring he wanted me to take a drink. "What's that?"

He didn't reply. He couldn't understand me. I took it in a go and set the cup on the table, then pressed my lips and stretched them. The drink looked like water but tasted like tuna oil. "This is. . "

"Awful. I know," he sighed. "It's the only way we'd be able to communicate. I didn't think you'd make a choice so soon, Emery," he said.

"So I came at the wrong time then," I felt a little disappointed. "Sorry, here have your book. I'll just go." I handed the book to him and stared, waiting for him to say something.

"I didn't say that." He turned so that his back was to me. "I haven't told my family about you. They didn't believe that I really had merwinian stones, or that I could alternate between earth and Neymen so easily, or that you could do the same."

"Where's Neymen?"

"Here." He made his hands go everywhere, referring to the entire surrounding.

"What happened to Neba? Am I at the wrong place?"

"No?" He answered it as if stating the obvious. "Neymen is in Neba. Neba is us, the entire people, all diversity brought together."

"I'm not following."

He smiled and extended his palm. "Let's go to the training room."

***

The training room was on the ground floor, at the back of the house, but inside it. It was weird, heck; everything was weird and all-confusing.