Eliona's War 1: Hesitant Healer

Chapter 30

They reached the dungeon portal before everyone else.

Severance observed the swirling gray light of the portal, feeling a strange conflict of anticipation and worry. His friend was bringing two other players, and he knew nothing about them. What if they turned out to be a pair of Queenies?

He chewed on a thumbnail. He knew Awesome Dude meant well, but sometimes he lacked a few screws in the judgment department. Besides having no sense of self preservation, he seemed to find trouble wherever he went. Based on those two characteristics alone, Severance wasn't feeling very positive about these two unknown players.

Then again, he was bringing a murderer along to play in a dungeon.

"I can hear your brain cooking," Maun said. "What are you fretting about?"

Severance turned away from the dungeon. "I'm not fretting."

"Is that so?" Casually, Maun unsheathed one of the long daggers at his side, and used it to clean out his fingernails.

The sight made Severance cringe. It was both frightening and disgusting. He turned and squatted, trailing fingers through the long silvery grass. It felt cool to the touch. He plucked one and observed how it was different from Earth grass. Besides the color being off, the texture was weirdly slippery.

"You know," Maun said, "I once knew this fellow, years ago. He liked to worry about everything. Whether it would rain, whether the neighbors were spying on him, or if he'd trip before a krako and get trampled... In short, if it existed, he worried about it."

"So?" Severance stuck the end of the grass in his mouth like he'd seen cool characters do in the movies. It tasted like old straw and he quickly spat it out.

"So he spent his whole life wondering when the sky was going to fall on him. By the time he was twenty-five, his hair had turned completely white. The stress aged him terribly, you see. His heart couldn't take it, and he died at thirty-two." The man in black sheathed his blade, apparently finished with his manicure.

Severance frowned. "Are you saying I'm going to die from stress?"

"Not at all. I just thought I'd mention it, since you're halfway there already." Maun smiled, and touched his own hair, which was completely black without a single strand of gray.

It made Severance feel rather attacked. And insulted. "It's not white. It's ash blond." He would know. He'd looked it up to find the correct term. Apparently it was a popular color amongst young people like himself.

"Sure, if that makes you feel better."

Unable to come up with a comeback, Severance just turned his head away. It was weird for the man who'd kidnapped him to make a lame joke like that. Even weirder was the fact he wanted to feel irritated over it, but he didn't quite dare to.

"Hey! Hey Sev!"

The one and only Awesome Dude arrived at that moment. He waved energetically the moment he spotted Severance, and bounded over like a drooling hound, tail wagging a mile a minute.

"Ne, wait for us!" A cute little girl called after him. She wore a pink frilly dress, and had brunette pigtails tied off with pink ribbons. With her shorter legs, she couldn't cover ground as fast as Awesome Dude, so she got left behind.

"Hey." Severance was secretly relieved to see his friend. "How's it going?"

"Whoa!" Eyes growing wider than dinner plates, Awesome Dude stared at him. Then he actually trotted a little circle all the way around him, with Severance turning a little in confusion. What in the world was wrong with the Dude now?