Mist curled through the trees like living tendrils. A Blond haired man with a fine body was walking through the dark forest.
Edmond was searching for the carriage that got separated from the other carriages when the Name Eater attacked. The boy named Stark Arriate and his clown incarnation was traveling in that carriage.
"Curious boy~ This Stark Arriate" he mused while taking a sharp turn to the right.
He Really is. They had found him, unconscious in the Dark forest, bruised and battered. After regaining consciousness he said he had forgotten each and everything about himself, Other than his name. Such absurdity!
"Stark Arriate... I think I heard the last name somewhere, before."
Edmond shook his head slightly, looked to his side and took a measured step and abruptly stopped.
"..."
Edmond moved his head from left and right and waited for a moment.
After a long silence, he nodded and moved to his body to the right.
"Agh..."
"Why am I doing all the tiresome work?!'
The other incarnations of his were probably having a delectable meal right about now.
"What gives!" he snarled, broke a tree branch and moved to his left.
Navigating the dark forest effortlessly, He walked while thinking about how the other incarnation should have switched places with him for this.
"Where is that carriage!"
Edmond was annoyed, really annoyed. He had searched the whole pathway, but could not find the lost carriage.
Lamenting his luck, he stopped for a moment, observed the trees and moved another 90 degree to his left.
However, after walking a few more steps, Edmond suddenly paused paused.
Iron stench clung to the back of his throat.
"Blood?"
He moved his body side ways and saw a obsidian spike piercing the branch of a tree. There was a small lump of flesh clinging to it.
"Hmm..."
Edmond narrowed brows and peered through misty fog with his deep Crimson-red eyes.
One lay atop the other, twisted and broken. There was blood pooling around them. There was bloody spikes everywhere.
Edmond creased his brows and moved sideways without looking back. He had no intention of lingering.
One should never get involved with the strange things that happens inside the Dark forest. After all, the dark forest is closest to the Abyss. And the abyss is not something one should get involved with.
Edmond moved his right foot forward but before he could take a step his eyes fell on A short-sized dagger, half-buried in dirt.
"Hmm...?"
He looked and looked at it some more. After a while, he gasped.
'Isn't this dagger mine?'
he left it in the carriage, the lost carriage.
He leaned forward, fingers curled around the dagger's hilt, lifting it effortlessly.
Then, His cold gaze flickered back to the scene, Crimson red eyes falling back onto the blooded corpses.
He took some slow cautious steps forward. After a while, nearing the corpses he crouched down and moved the corps on top. But just as he did his pupils constricted.
"One of the Name Eater's vessel."
The sharp, jagged obsidian teeth, four hollow eyes, deathly pale skin. And then his eyes fell on the spike impaling its chest, Crimson liquid still flowing out of it.
Edmond was just about to inspect it further when—
"Who?"
A voice. Hoarse, broken.
Edmond stilled. Slowly, his eyes went back to the corpse underneath the corps of the vessel—the corpse that had just spoken.
Silence stretched. Edmond looked at the corps covered in crimson blood smeared all around it's face.
Then After a long while, Edmond spoke, his tone impassive. "What is your name?"
The boy beneath the body stirred. He sucked in a shallow, rattling breath.
"Stark. Stark Arriate."
Edmond looked at it for a moment and then exhaled, relieved.
He then turned his attention fully to the boy, studying him with detached curiosity. "What happened?"
'I found him. Yay~ go me!'
Stark let out a slow, pained exhale. "I got lost in the forest. Then, got attacked by a vessel of the name eater. But I somehow managed to Killed it."
Edmond took in the wreckage of the Name Eater's vessel again.
He then stretched his browse slightly and made a face.
'He really killed that' Edmond mused, curious.
"Are you hurt?" Edmond finally asked after a small pause.
Stark let out a breathless chuckle. "Yes. I am really hurt. Can you help me walk?"
His voice was dry and barely audible. Edmond didn't respond immediately. Instead, he shifted his focus elsewhere.
"The carriage. Where is it?"
Stark's half-lidded eyes twitched slightly. "No. I don't think I can. I, myself am lost."
Edmond clicked his tongue softly, barely audible. He left a small sum of his money inside the carriage. What was he to do now? He did not want to lose the money.
'Agh...'
While Edmond was thinking about such important matters, Stark spoke again.
"Mr. Solomon gave his name to the Name Eater's vessel,"
Edmond looked at Stark with teary eyes.
"I saw his corpse inside the carriage." He paused, then said bluntly. "Should we perhaps go and make sure it does not become a vessel?"
Edmond was a bit stupefied hearing that.
'What does he mean by that?'
Stark continued, his words lazy. "I didn't do anything to it because I thought the Name Eater doesn't take frail, weak bodies as its vessel. But now…" He let out a low chuckle. "Now I'm kind of unsure."
'Hmm...'
Edmond looked at the boy named Stark Arriate then at the corps of the Name eaters vessel.
The way he said it, rubbed Edmond the wrong way.
'There is something wrong with this boy. How can he suggest to do something like that to the corps of a person he had traveled for three long days? Especially if it was the corps of one my own incarnation.'
Edmond turned his gaze back to him.
Stark was watching him.
Something about those dark, hollow, disturbingly empty eyes gave Edmond a pause.
Not out of fear. He wasn't the type to fear anything. But there was something unnatural in that gaze.
A long silence stretched between them. Then Edmond reached into his coat and pulled something out.
"Here." He held the dagger near Stark and said, "You lost it."
Stark looked down at the weapon. Then blinked and glanced up at Edmond. "Oh, thanks… " Stark paused, "wait, but it's yours."
"Then it's yours now. I'm giving it to you."
Stark was silent for a moment. Then, slowly, his lips curled into a smile. A bloody, unsettling smile that made Edmond a shiver slightly.
"Alright." Stark said.
Edmond looked His injuries. His broken body. The corpse of the Name Eater's vessel. The eerie way he smiled despite everything.
Finally, those dark, hollow eyes of his.
And for the first time in a long while, Edmond, the former ruler of the second abyss, was mildly curious about the boys true identity.