Zaldizko - Chapter 14 Red Brick Cell

I felt that something or someone else had been tossed in behind me as I was falling. I landed on a warm ground with a heavy thump and braised skin to my elbows.

Someone else had dropped down next to me; I glanced in the face of the unexpected tagalong Leinard had identified as Colin Treinaton.

_”Freend? Where we? You okay?”_ I heard Small Cap’s voice stir back to consciousness and detected his rustling in the belt pouch.

Fortunately, he had been passed out inside the pouch throughout the whole affair with Possessed Death, since his body couldn’t handle the extreme cold.

I sighed with relief that he hadn’t suffered any serious impacts, especially to his brain. It seemed being in a warmer place was able to awaken his body.

“Ok, I guess,” I slurred with drool oozing out of my mouth, which I roughly wiped off on my sleeve and winced at the jarring pain I felt to my arm.

The break was healing but the pain was still present. I allowed myself a moment to deal with it better, warm up and be less of a stiff. It was hard to ignore the heated gaze I felt on my face.

“I’m Famine,” I blurted before the man had a chance to voice his question on my identity.

The man huffed, scornfully, and moved around to push himself up off the ground.

He seemed the same age as Trix and tallerover six feetand leaner but far from being a skinny runt like me based on the way his dark patchwork overcoat was fitted, smoothly, to his body and his broad shoulders.

Like Trix and the others of the Wisteria Garden Squad, he wore a white shirt, navy-blue vest, tie and pants tucked into black calf-length boots. However, his vest had a pair of slit pockets where a Single Albert chain, of silver quality, was dangling down between the loop hook connected to the middle buttonhole and the left slit pocket that had the top of a fob watch peeking out. He wore stylish thin-framed glasses, which drew out his green eyes rather than hide them. They sparkled, especially, against his smooth tanned skin. His hair was as black as mine, cut short and slicked back off his face, which held an impression of stoicism softened to one of a mild manner prince due to his delicate features.

Despite his appearances, I suspected he had an acerbic attitude and astute mind.

My eyes widen when two of his fingers did a swooping scissors action near his chest. Was he using sign language?

I decided to test the theory and responded back with my name, spelling it out by raising and closing my fingers in a certain sequence and making a paw here and there against my chest. I added further hand movements to say that I wasn’t the idiot he had mistaken me for earlier.

The man’s features relaxed into one of laughter; he flashed me a lopsided smirk.

_”Fine. I’m Colin, Captain of Orion Squad,”_ he signed his name, title and some additional chatter.

_” Now that formalities are out of the way. Let’s get out of here.”_

I cocked my head to one side with curiosity when Colin had pulled a smoky white glass coin from his right slit pocket and pressed it to his natural right eye, causing the coin’s material to transform into a thin layer of silver-grey film that clung to his eyelid.

“What’s that for?” I signed my questioned and growled at his response.

_”A maplink. I can’t be bothered to explain it to a dumbdora,”_ he signed and moved around the red-brick room we were in for a way out.

Colin’s hand tapped and felt around the red brick, making it glow and fade in the places where he touched. He eventually stopped his touches to a section of wall near the south of where I stood, removed a small clear quartz shard from an inner pocket of his overcoat that he placed it on a part of the wall to transform it into an opening.

We entered an obsidian stone corridor with the occasional red brick on the walls and walked in a direction that I hoped led us back to Trix, Leinard and Death.