02 - WHERE THE VIPERS RULE

At present, in the Valley of Vipers.

As the giant viper was growing strong after consuming Arei’s body, Edgar tried to get away with his crippled leg. The beast swung its tail, caught and tossed him into its mouth and swallowed him alive. Even though he couldn’t see anything at all, he could tell what just happened. As his body went down the snake’s throat, his skin got peeled off at an abnormal pace. “Am I going to die here?” His heart felt heavier than ever as his sister’s image came to his mind.

Frustration crossed his face. “I’m truly useless. But I don’t want to die,” as his flesh melted, his resolve strengthened. “I still have things to do. I still have someone who needs me. I can’t die here.” All the central fears in him shrank as a sea of fortitude surrounded it. “Failure is not an option.” He squeezed the plate tightly as acid corroded his body. “Help me… Help me, please!”

Edgar’s voice was so low that it couldn’t even be heard, but the plate in his hand glowed and expanded in size and destroyed the hideous beast from inside out. Half of the snake was blown to bits, leaving Edgar in shock and stupefaction.

The warm glow emanated by the plate touched him and repaired his damage. He screamed from pain as his skin and muscles regenerated, and what’s more, even his broken leg was repaired, and his lost teeth grew back. The whole process hurt more than just a little.

After it was all over, he stared at the plate in disbelief, and the plate shrank in size, back to its normal size, and it no longer glowed, leaving the boy in total darkness again.

He carefully walked over to the plate and picked it up. “T-Thank you,” he thought of that woman. “I would have died if not for you. Now I’m sure that you’re the one who helped me survive the fall. You even brought me to this place. I don’t know who you are, but I didn’t even get to thank you.”

He stayed silent for a moment and then took a breath.

“Glow,” he said. But nothing happened. “Please glow,” he urged the plate, but there was no change.

He kept asking it again and again, but to no avail.

He suddenly remembered something. “Those words she wrote… If I’m correct, they should be somewhere around here…” even though it was dark, he crawled his way to the spot where the words were written, sculpted in the rocky part of the floor. He kept memorizing the letters and words by running his fingers over the text.

Surprisingly, he kept remembering the words and their meaning better than before, for his sister had always made him write letters and words in sand inside their room itself. Still, there were words he couldn’t remember.

At this point, he felt a bit frustrated about the fact that he didn’t go to school regularly back when he was living with his parents. Even though his mom had always scolded him, he always played around with his friends. Fabby dragged him to school along with her, but soon after going to the school, he sneaked his way out soon. Because of those reckless habits, he had been suffering to learn the written language since the nightmarish night.

The words he deciphered were live, you, and will. It actually took him some time to realize that ‘you’ll’ was a truncated form of ‘you will.’

“If I join the words I’ve gotten so far, these make up the first line: Trust, and you’ll live. As I thought, this is the key to living. I don’t know four more words, and I don’t think I’ve written them.” As he was pondering, he suddenly realized something. “Wait, if I can make up their pronounciations correctly from the letters, then I might know what those words are.”

Since he knew the letters better than words, he was able to use permutations to eventually decipher what the rest of the words are. It took him half-hour, but he got it right.

“Trust, and you’ll live. Beg, and you’ll burgeon. Redress, and you’ll reign.”

“I don’t know what exactly the rest means, but right now, I should make this thing glow somehow. I can’t see anything here. If a snake like that comes again, I’m as good as dead.”

As far as he knew about the valley of the vipers, it was a place filled with some of the most poisonous creatures in the world, and vipers ruled them all. He knew nothing more. This only uneased him further.

He kept begging the plate to glow or do something that would help him, but there was no effect whatsoever. The bronze plate looked like any other ordinary plate now.

He wanted to flame a torch, but there was no wood he could find. Even though there were rocks and stones everywhere, crunching and moving underfoot as he walked, there weren’t any signs of trees or wood. As someone who knew about cultivating plants, he felt that it was almost impossible for him to find any trees in a place of utter darkness.

And the more he searched for things, the more he felt out of breath. It was hard to breathe in general, but it got harder when he was walking. He was forced to rest every once in a while. More than ten hours had passed, and he was still in that closed space, hoping that the bronze plate would respond. Eventually, he gave up on the idea of sitting and waiting in that room and looked for a way out. It didn’t take him long to find the exit hole. However, he couldn’t tell the structure or anything about the place he just stepped into. Was it a long tunnel, or was it another room? He didn’t know. He had to find it out for himself through touch. The walls were dry and full of cracks. Some stones underfoot bugged him as he walked. The air was unpleasant as well, not that there was dust or anything, but something about it discomforted him. At this point, he really missed the everyday standing on the grass and breathing cool air every morning.

His clothes had mostly been eaten by the acid of the snake. He wasn’t wearing any footwear either.

He knew very well that if any creature were to show up, he’d be a goner, but he had no other choice. He had to take the risk. Still, he was always asking the plate to respond to his words. After all, since he personally witnessed how the plate had killed the beast and saved him, he realized that it was the real deal.

He knew his strength more than anyone else, and in a place crawling with cruel beasts and where vipers ruled, the bronze plate in his hands seemed like the only way out.