Leo was full of suspicion. All his life, he always trusted his instincts. He always knew when something was wrong and would fight solely against it. The first day he saw Diane, he didn’t necessarily fight her, even though he had his reservations about her.She was stunning then. She was still stunning now, but most of that allure faded when he discovered that she wasn’t even a good person. Worse of it was that she killed him just because he got in her way. Her heart was full of darkness. He knew that now and he was weary of her.He thought that Draven knew this two. The both of them had stayed up to discuss how they didn’t trust her, and even then Draven wasn’t fully on his side. He kept wavering, kept looking for unnecessary reasons as to why she would have come to him. Leo wasn’t as stupid as his friend, nor did he let his compassion get in the way of what he wanted. And all he wanted was Diane to be gone forever and out of their lives. How hard was it? Why would Draven say one thin
The journey was tense. Draven and Leo had not said a word to each other, while Lara and Diane seemed to be getting along—if Diane scowling at her for several times in a minute was considered getting along with one another. None of them rode on the mountain bear as they had not yet concluded their arguments. Leo would not speak to Draven until he had made it clear if Diane would be staying or not, and Draven on the other hand didn’t know how to send her away without revealing his secret.And so they continued to walk in silence until Diane stopped the bear in front of a flower field, forcing the rest of them to stop too.“I’m just going to feed baby boo so she doesn’t doesn’t find any of yall attractive,” she explained to them.Draven saw this as an opportunity, however a slim one. If he could convince Diane to feed the bear and catch up to then later, then they can use that opportunity to escape her.“You’re feeding him grass?” Lara suddenly blurted. “He eats grass? You should have to
“What are you doing here?” Draven asked harshly.Diane shrugged as she approached them. “I followed, why? Although I must say that the change of route was unexpected. Whatever for?”“We were running from you,” Lara admitted.“Running?” She shook her head regrettably. “You guys, am I some monster to run from? Although those attempts are futile because I have this beast with me. She can smell you from a mile away.”“You said she’s dying,” Draven chipped in, eager to remove the running away rumor. “What could she be dying from?”Diane stared directly at him. “I heard you guys discussing a moment ago that everything here is dying. I guess now that everyone is noticing these changes, I don’t need to keep it a secret anymore.”Leo stood up from his spot. This was it. This was the one thing he knew that wasn’t right.“What aren’t you telling us, Diane? Are you responsible for the silence in the forest?” Leo laughed. “It’s got to be way more than that.”“You’re right; it is way more than that
Timothy Sinclair laughed. He turned away from the screen and looked to the three other people in the room—two executives and the game changer. He gestured to the screen as he spoke to them.“Can you see that? She’s plotting ways to kill me.”One of the executives coughed self consciously. He was a man in his late thirties and he had better things to do than sit and watch his boss prowl over and fold over some girl.“Why don’t we just let her be, huh?” he asked. “She has proven time and time again that she’s dangerous… and powerful.”Timothy laughed. “Are you saying I’m not the powerful one?”“I’m saying that you’re obsessed with her. It’s unhealthy. We don’t need to destroy everything we’ve built just because you want to fish out some girl.”Timothy looked back to this screen, his hand in a fist. Diane had found new puppets that she would play with, it seems. Did she think a couple of guys would stop his wrath? Ha. What a joke!“I cannot it go,” he said to the room. “Henry, I want you
Diane was lost in her own thoughts. When she roasted the cubs that Lara had so happily given out, she fazed in and out. Sometimes she was back at home in her bed and other times she was at that cave with Timothy, torturing him. Poor Timmy. He probably didn’t understand why she needed to do all of that. When it had first happened, she was elated with happiness. She thought for sure that she had sucked someone from the outside realm, not knowing it was just on the outskirts that she had brought him from.“Did you ever imagine seeing humans with such power?” she asked him then. “Imagine if we have thinsg like this in the real world.”“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” he’d replied, and then he called her a “Flight bird.”Diane was furious, as usual. She thought he was insulting her. Whatever he said didn’t bother her, all she knew was that she’d found the perfect person to use in her experiments. He was defiant, which challenged her even more. There was nothing Diane liked more than challeng
She pushed away from him and saw that she was drenched. Diane looked around in confusion. She was in a shallow stream and was probably brought out from there. It was so shallow that she could see the sand underneath. Draven, Leo and Lara gathered around her, fluttering about.“What’s the matter with you?” Draven hissed. “Are you begging for death or something?’Diane looked up at him. He was sort of holding her up. She saw that his legs and hands were drenched too, which told her that he had been the one who pulled her out of the water. He was looking at her now with the kind of judgmental eyes people looked at those who were selfish enough to kill themselves.Diane shook her head adamantly. “I didn’t do this, I swear!” she said desperately. “It was Timothy! It is all his doing!”“Who’s Timothy again?” Leo asked on a side note.“He’s the one haunting her; the owner of the game,” Draven responded.“Ahhh, the one who built this game,” Leo smirked as he looked down at Diane. “You tried t
“You do know that none of this is our business,” Leo said as they began their journey. “I know we agreed to help you, but this is as far as our help go. No one is staying awake just because you can’t sleep.”“He can perforate you guys’ dreams!” Diane argued hotly. “I’m trying to protect you, don’t you understand? I’m trying to protect all of you!”“It is your dream that he can come in, not in ours. You’re just trying to make everyone as miserable as you are,” Leo said.Before they could start arguing, Draven raised his hand in the air.“Guys, let’s not start. We’re all going to sleep… except for you, Diane.”She grunted in frustration. “Ugh, what do you guys think this is? Some child’s play where anyone can do whatever they want?”“We know it’s not a child’s play,” Leo said. “We’re just not trying to be actively involved in your fight with this guy.”“You’re traveling with me! You’re potentially now a part of my crew—”“This is our crew, Diane. You just came out of nowhere and joined
The search spanned into midnight. They searched and searched and searched, but Diane was not satisfied with the couple of materials that they came up with. She wanted more, and so they moved to a couple of other different locations.Draven did not fail to see how each location was a little darker and quieter than the last. They were all exhausted from moving too much, but she didn’t seem to mind. She wanted more, wanted to check out so many spots, wanted to see a better quality of crystals.“I know a witch’s lair around here,” she said at last, when they got to the last location and didn’t come up with anything reasonable.Draven grabbed her hand and drew her close to him so no one would hear. “Why do I feel that you’ve been leading us by the tail since morning?” he asked.“Why would you even think that I’ll do that?” Diane asked him. “You’ve been sincerely helping me despite our past relations, so I won’t want to spoil that by playing you guys, would I?”“Good, because if I suspect a
Draven couldn’t believe it was over. Three months later he was still thinking if he was making the right decision. Assistant David sat in his living room with a bunch of documents in front of him. He paced up and down, not sure what he would do.“You can just sign here,” the man said for the umpteeth time. “It’s not really that hard. You sign that you’ve taken ownership of the game and you decide what you want to do with it.”“But I don’t want ownership of the game,” Draven said again. He had repeated this exact words countless times but the guy didn’t seem to be hearing him.“You should have known what you were getting yourself into when you challenged late game owner Timothy—” David paused and looked to the heavens. “May his soul not rest in peace. You should have known that killing him would automatically make you the owner of the game. Those were his rules.”Draven rolled his eyes. He was sure that Timothy had made that rule because he didn’t believe anyone would be able to defeat
Timothy laughed. His laughter was vivacious and full of life. This was what he wanted, after all. The very end of judgement day where he would punish all those who failed him; those who went against him and those who was party to his torture.Here was Draven, the strongest man to ever grace his game. Timothy knew he was going to be a lot of trouble in the future and so he had specifically looked into him. Now that Draven has waged war with his full chest over a woman, he was ecstatic. This was historic, and he was living a historic time in the present. How many men brought knives to fight for their loves, anyways?Smiling, he snapped his fingers. A single door opened and his assistant ran to him carrying a box.“You’re about to experience an historic moment with me,” He said to Draven. “Diane will be our goddess Diana, and we will be the lowly men who are fighting for her love.”Diane scoffed. “You don’t have to do it, Draven. The guy is nuts. Let’s just get out of here.”“But darling
Draven panicked for a minute. He thought for sure that the darkness and pressure meant he was losing his consciousness, but that wasn’t the case. One minutes there was stark darkness and the next minute they fell into an extremely white room with hard cardboard. They fell through the sky, hitting directly on the wood and groaning in pain. The stark white color of the room blinded them. It was brighter than a sky or white paint. It was so bright that Draven closed his eyes and tried to regain his or he r senses. He knew there was a betrayal in the group—which wasn’t surprising as their group was made of weird, diverse people, but he needed to see who exactly did it.He won’t even be surprised if to was Lara. She was the one who had led them to the cage, after all. She was the one who offered to test the waters and make sure the portal was okay. Who in their right senses tests water and portal to make a point of the portal not working? Unless he or she was working with Timothy and knew
No one said anything after Diane’s statement. They were so tired and hungry and unsure of what to do next. Draven’s goods felt heavy to him. His sword even felt heavier than normal. He didn’t believe he came back to this game to be ridiculed and placed in a very unstable condition because of a silly fight that was going on between two lovers. When he looked at Diane, he wondered if she was toying with them again. Was she afraid to meet Timothy or what? He knew that the portal might likely take them to Timothy as the owner can easily manipulate events, but at least he was ready for that stage. He could exactly tell what Diane was thinking when she was looking her nose down on the portal.“We cannot just stay here,” Lara said. “Do you want us to keep waiting for him to keep finding opportunities to kill us? We’re certainly going to die of hunger if we keep waiting!”“She’s right,” Draven concurred. “We can’t keep lying about in wait like lambs to a slaughter. We must make the first move
Everyone was super awkward after the kiss. Leo avoided for the rest of the morning. He didn’t want to talk about it but it was too late; Draven had seen them and announced to the whole pack in the morning that the kiss was probably the most hottest he’d seen.“Whoa,” Diane said excitedly. “You two kissed? That’s great. Are you like a couple now or something?”“It’s nothing like that, okay? It was just a kiss, and a mistake at that,” Leo piped up.Even though he didn’t want to talk about the kiss or look at Lara’s face, he was glad that Draven brought it up. At least he’d air his opioid publicly about it so he won’t have to be in an awkward space with Lara.“Ouch, Leo, you’re a player!” Diane said, laughing. “You can’t say those kind of things to someone when you’ve kissed them!”“I didn’t kiss her, okay? She’s the one who kissed me,” Leo defended hotly.“It’s still hurtful that you say it that way. Have some feelings, pal,” Diane said, her laugh increasing.It sounded mocking and cont
Leo could not sleep. Draven had been out for close to an hour, yet he wasn’t back yet. Lots of thoughts assaulted his brain, but the one that stayed the most was Diane.Diane. Diane. Diane.He bet she was here to true their life again, and that bet was true. If Leo was the one to handle this, he’d definitely not want to help her out the way Draven was. It was as if the guy didn’t want to learn any lessons about why it’s dangerous to just not help anyone for too long. Draven was lenient when it came to Diane and he didn’t like it one but.He turned his head to the side and saw her sleeping peacefully.“Yeah, like you didn’t just send someone to their death,” he murmured to himself.He wondered if Draven was still talking to the game creator or if he’s been killed. If he was truly killed, Leo won’t honestly know how to handle that. He tried not to think about it because it was depressing enough. He sat up now, still watching Diane. If she had been careful, they won’t be in this shit hol
Draven waited until everyone was comfortable with him being their security for the night before he left into the woods. Diane was surprisingly quiet and compliant. It was like she was into her head too much to care about what Draven wanted to do. Seeing that all odds were in his favor, Draven waited a bit before withdrawing to the forest. He walked deeper and deeper, wondering if he should just sit on a log and wait for Timothy to appear.“Hi Draven.”He yelped and fell to the ground, startled. His shouts of surprise startled the forest a bit, and so Draven waited it out to make sure no one was coming to check what the noise was before turning his head slowly to the side. There was Timothy, standing under the moonlight. He looked attractive and mysterious and just too handsome to be standing there. Draven sat up as he brushed away the small dirts on his body.“You scared me,” he hissed at Timothy. “You know you should learn not to sneak up on people like that.”“I didn’t sneak up on y
They camped inside a cave, just as Draven wanted. He’d taken his time and made sure they covered a 12 hour distance just so he could find the perfect place for them to camp. Finding a cave was not just the problem—and caves were pretty scarce. The problem was finding one that was deep and big enough to accommodate more than three persons. When he finally found it, it was nearing dark. The blanket of darkness that fell over them was just the right thing Draven needed to carry out his plans. He’d been thinking for hours how he would get away with talking to Timothy without anyone noticing and this was the best part.“A cave?” Lara asked in disbelief when they stood before the place. “Isn’t this kind of weird, Draven? Some crazy monsters might be in there!”Draven nodded in understanding. “Leo and I are going to check it out and see if it’s free of monsters; how about that?”“I thought you said we were getting to the end of the game,” Lara moaned.Draven gave her a confused look. “Lara,
They walked a long mile, Draven and Leo leading the way while Lara and Diane walked behind. Diane stayed at the far end so she won’t walk on the same lane with Lara. There was something suspicious about the young girl that she didn’t like. Diane wasn’t usually suspicious of people but when she does, her instinct was definitely right—just as it was right with Draven and Lara. Leo cleared his throat and glanced at Draven. “So… were you lying?”“Was I lying about what?” Draven mumbled.“You know… about what Diane said?”“Why would I be lying about that?”Leo cocked his brows at him. “Don’t forget that I know you all too well, Draven. I know when you lie out of necessity and when you lie out of leisure. I usually don’t catch the leisure one but the necessity one is very obvious.”Draven glanced at him with an amused expression. “Really?”“Yup. You get all tense and defensive and violet most times if you’re pressured about it. It’ll make you want to protect that little lie of yours quite