The Beast That was Promised ✔

THREE: Minisia

Isiah and Rina were heading east towards the small port town of Liman, the best place to find a boat and get to the island the Mother and Father had pointed out to them. Walking along the bottom of the cliffs was the easiest, it meant they could only be attacked from three directions.

Getting down from the Sanctum had been difficult. The path had been hard to find at first, his panic stopping him from seeing anything clearly. Rina had been the one to find it, guiding him towards it while he shuffled around in overwhelmed silence. He'd never seen so much blood before, not even when Emrick had been attacked near Huton.

And once again, they'd been separated. At least this time, he knew for certain that Emrick was still alive. He knew that Emrick would stop at nothing to get back to them, for the sake of the Beast and the realm, and for his sake as well. But that didn't stop Isiah from panicking about it.

The path that led down the cliff face hadn't been used for a long time. Snow and rocks covered it, ice sitting beneath the snow that made them fall far too close to the edge. Rina continued to freak out whenever it happened, grabbing hold of anything she could, including him. Her grip hurt, but he never told her, not wanting her to panic anymore than she was, not when he was panicking too.

Due to their slow travel, it took them hours to get down, neither of them wanting to fall. The whole time, all he wanted was to go back up and somehow find a way back to the other side, to Emrick and to safety, but it was impossible. Emrick had left them quickly with the promise to get to them as fast as possible, while he'd still been sitting at the edge of the bridge.

The sun had set long before they'd gotten to the bottom of the cliffs, where ruins familiar to those at the fake Sanctum of Ishin sat. He and Rina had stayed the night in the only one that still had the majority of a roof, but he had barely slept, his dreams plagued with the events of the day before.

He'd almost lost Emrick again. It was as though he was cursed to lose the people he cared for the most. The Mother had been the first, then the rest of the fake Sanctum of Ishin, then Emrick far too many times. His dreams showed him scenes where he told Emrick to leave in order to stay safe but when he awoke, he found that it was the last thing he wanted even though it was so dangerous for him.

Watching the bridge fall had been like a nightmare and he still hadn't registered the fact that all three of them were alive and uninjured. Jonin was dead, fallen into the misty abyss. There was no way he should have survived and an awful part of him, the same part of him that had killed all those weeks ago, was grateful. He wouldn't be a threat to them anymore.

His dreams had also tried to show him what would have happened if Emrick hadn't tangled himself in the rope bridge. It was awful and he'd been unable to wake himself up from them. Watching the bridge fall had been bad enough and for the first few minutes afterwards, he'd thought his partner was dead.

It was the one thing that had scared him the most, what he'd wanted to hide when they'd been in Askarune's Sanctum because he'd only just met the people in his visions. But Emrick had found out anyway through a complete accident. He hadn't wanted them to be together because of it but he'd stupidly convinced himself that because they were together, nothing could happen. His eyes had been opened to the truth the second the bridge fell and Emrick disappeared into the mist.

He still wanted them to be together, but he should have been ready for the dangers. He'd thought he had been, but he wasn't. The whole time, he'd known that everything they did would be dangerous, but he'd just wanted Emrick by his side, as if their relationship would somehow protect him from harm. Previous experiences should have told him otherwise.

When Rina had woken from her seemingly peaceful sleep the next morning, she'd smiled at him and helped him get moving. Even with everything, she was still with him. He'd lost the Mother and the Sanctum, Nerin had been left behind to go back to his brother, Emrick was stuck on the other side of the falls, desperate to get to them, but Rina had been constant from the moment he left the Sanctum.