Arthur’s eyes widened visibly as he looked at the prostrating man in front of him. This was by far the last thing he expected to see from Miro. The seemingly prideful and stoic man was now on his knees asking for help.
It took him a few seconds to realize what just happened before he quickly snapped out of it. “Huh? Stand up. Why are you doing this?” Arthur asked hurriedly. “Please stand up. I don’t know how to deal with such a situation.”
Hearing that, Miro shook his head. “What I’m about to say is something too heavy. I am requesting something really hard from you.”
“What is it? Do you know anything about this, Nina?” Arthur turned to the woman. However, Nina simply averted her eyes as if she were ashamed.
‘What the hell is going on here?’ The boy felt even more lost when he saw their expression.
“Sigh, what I’m going to tell you now is a secret. It’s something that nobody should know and we kept it hidden for a long time now.” Miro replied as he slowly stood up. “But, I believe you are the person that was mentioned to us. So, you should know.”
“…”
“Child, when you look at both of us, what do you see?” Miro asked.
“… What am I supposed to see? Just two normal people?” Arthur raised an eyebrow. He didn’t understand why Miro was asking him such a question out of nowhere and what it had to do with their current topic.
“Well, I wouldn’t say we are normal people,” Miro said as he turned to look at Nina as if he was giving her a signal to do something.
The woman pursed her lips as if she was hesitant but she sighed before she put her hand slowly on her face. Her fingers tapped her forehead very gently but the result of that was not so simple.
Upon contact, a weird shiny engraving appeared on her forehead. It looked like some kind of rune or shape that Arthur couldn’t recognize.
Then, that blue light slowly grew in brightness till it almost blinded Arthur completely. When he was able to open his eyes again, he saw something completely different standing in front of him.
In Nina’s position, he saw a creature that was a mix between a human and what seemed to be some kind of fox species. She stood on her legs like a human but had long pointy ears, a long furry red tail, and tattoo-like engravings across her entire body.
The aura emitting from her yet, was so mesmerizing that it took his breath away. It felt like he was witnessing the birth of a divine creature right in front of his eyes.
“… N-Nina?” He muttered in a daze. “Is that you?”
The woman opened her eyes slowly, revealing a pair of beautiful red irises. She looked completely ethereal and he didn’t understand how that was even possible. While Nina was certainly beautiful before, her beauty had now gained a whole different side.
“This our true form.” She spoke. “If you didn’t figure it out yet; we aren’t really humans. We are actually. Me and my grandpa come from a different race. ‘Beastmen’ to be exact.”
“Beastmen…” Arthur muttered. “So, you two were hiding this fact from everyone in this village?”
“We arrived in this village a few years ago. I have made sure we hid amongst humans. We couldn’t afford to let anyone know our true identity.” Miro continued. “If they knew, they would’ve killed us.”
“What? Why would they kill you?”
“Because we are considered enemies to humans. In fact, the reason we even arrived here was because that we were able to escape on our own from the clutches of humans far away from here. We were prisoners along with many of our people under humans.” Miro’s face grew darker as if he was remembering some truly horrible stuff.
“…” Arthur simply listened with a blank expression.
“We have been under the mercy of humans for a very long time now. They treated us like inferior scum that shouldn’t even be alive. We were killed, abused, imprisoned, and turned into their playthings.” The old man’s fists clenched as he tried to hold back his anger from resurfacing.
Nina noticed that and tapped her grandfather’s back slightly as if she was trying to make him calm down.
The old man gave her a nod of acknowledgment as he continued. “For decades, we have been trapped in that god-forsaken prison, not even allowed to see the light of day.”
“Prison?”
“… The Abyssal Bastion. It is the biggest and most notorious prison in the Divine Realm. The Last Empire built that hell to put every single creature they deemed ‘Criminal’ there to rot and die. It was said that those who enter through its doors never see the sun again and that was the case for us. I have lived my entire life there.”
“Wait, your entire life?! That means…” Arthur blurted out as he realized what Miro was insinuating.
“Yes.” The old man nodded. “I was born inside that place and grew up there. Nina is the same.”
“For the first several decades of my life, I’ve only known the walls of that prison as my home. I didn’t even know an outside world existed.”
To say that Arthur was shocked was an understatement. He stared dazedly at the two people, unable to say a word. After all, after hearing such a thing, what could he truly say?
These two have been born and raised their entire lives in a prison. He could never imagine how that felt. Not to mention the torture they went through. Even though this story was brief, the weight it left on his shoulders was heavy.
“Then, how did you escape? Didn’t you say that nobody can escape it?”
“That’s what we thought. But, that changed one night. Although we tried to escape countless times before, we never succeeded. However, that particular night, our people took a different approach. Instead of trying to escape secretly, we decided to do a sacrifice. We decided to simply fight our way through the doors and run away. Our goal was for a few of us to find the way out and run away.”
“Wait, fight your way through? That sounds like…”
“Suicide? It was. We knew that doing this was going to cost us countless lives and would make the lives of the rest even more miserable. But, we knew that this was better than staying there forever. We chose our freedom over our lives.” Miro said. “We had a belief that if we can get even one single person out, we can have a chance.”
“… How?”
Arthur didn’t understand how making one escape was going to save the rest. This sounded like something impossible to pull off.
“Because we were taught from when we were children that one day, one individual was going to reach us in the depths of that hell and pull us all out of it. An individual who was chosen by the Supreme Entity to be our hero. We knew that if we can find that individual, we can get our people out and save them.” Nina explained. “It’s a prophecy to our people. We knew that the time of their arrival wasn’t that far away either which is also the time when you ‘Gifted’ were bound to arrive. Which meant that our chosen one is one of you.”
Then, she pointed at Arthur as if she was trying to prove her point. The boy blinked slowly as he tried to take everything in. “So, you two were able to escape and you ended up here because you knew the Gifted would arrive?”
“Yes.”
“But, how are you going to know which one is the one you’re looking for?” Arthur asked.
“We didn’t know,” Nina replied. “We simply had to find them with our guts. We didn’t even know if they would be in this particular village. But, as my grandpa said, we had to believe that fate would bring us to that person.”
Miro and Nina then silently looked at Arthur without adding anything else. He felt confused for a second but then it slowly dawned on him.
“Don’t tell me…”
“Yes, we believe we have found the person we’re looking for,” Miro said. “Arthur, I’m asking you to help our people. It’s a very dangerous and almost impossible task to infiltrate the Abyssal Bastion and leave it. But, if it is you, then it can happen. No, it will happen. So… We ask you for our freedom and we will give you anything you wish for.”
