POV Rio
I was pinned under Cait, and she looked at me with a slightly dazed look. I cleared my throat, but she didn't respond.
"Get off of me!" I say with a joking tone.
That seems to snap her back to reality, and she hugs me tightly.
"Oh uh, you're okay now," I say while patting her on the back.
"It was horrible. I had relapsed and you... And the others abandoned me. I lost everythin' all over again," Cait says while crying.
"Shh. It's okay. That won't happen; we won't abandon you even if you stumble," I say while comforting her.
After she cries for a bit, she gets up, and we take a break. After the break, I look at the door and try opening it from a distance. The door doesn't like that and slides across the walls away from my magic grasp. I try several times and eventually stop after Cait starts laughing at me.
"Stupid door," I say while shaking my fist at it.
I sigh and decide to bite the bullet and open it manually. The door opens, and I feel my mind rush somewhere else. When I blink my eyes, I find myself in a chopper, and music starts playing.
(AN: Play CCR-Fortunate Son from YouTube.)
I was extremely confused as to what the heck was happening.
'Am I in Nam?'
As I am on the chopper, I see someone I haven't seen in a while.
"Woods?" I ask.
"Huh? What is it, Rio?" Woods asks.
"Uh, nothing," I say while I look out the window.
What followed was a reply to the events of S.O.G. Mission from Black Ops. Except I was on something even harder than Veteran Difficulty as I kept dying over and over again. But despite that, I cleared the mission and everything went white, and when I opened my eyes, I was back to where I started.
'Oh no.'
After the 3rd time, I was certain I was in some sort of Time Loop as I just kept repeating the mission over and over again. The thing is, I wasn't scared, just annoyed. After the 37th time, I was getting really sick of the mission. But at least I was breezing through the mission now.
'When is Cait going to get me out of this spell?'
POV Cait
I take a breather after trying to move Rio. I had tried just about everything I could without hurting him.
"Sigh. You can't blame me for this, Rio," I say while getting out my baseball bat and aiming for his family jewels.
'If this doesn't work, nothin' will.'
(AN: Play Cat Gets Turned Into A Piñata | The Cat In The Hat (2003) | Family Flicks at the 2 minute and 55 second mark for a visual of what is happening for Rio, the sounds fit as well.)
"NEEIIIIGHHH!" Rio screams while dropping to the floor.
POV Rio
My entire world was pain right now. I couldn't speak, but I knew what had happened.
"Uh, you are right, Rio?" Cait asks while dropping her bat.
"I prefer Nam. Even if the trees spoke Vietnamese," I say with a strained quiet voice.
"Nam? What? What did the door show you?" Cait asks.
I stay quiet while slowly healing, and then I get up and glare at Cait.
"What?" Cait asks.
"Why didn't you start with the head?" I ask.
"Oh... Huh, yeah, I guess I could have tried that first. But you know... The crotch is a sure-fire way to stop a man. It worked plenty in the Combat Zone," Cait responds while avoiding eye contact.
My eye twitches, and I have to hold myself from getting even. I took a deep breath and calmed down.
"Well, that was eventful, but I am done with this," I say while shooting a spell at the door that freezes it in place, then I force it open with magic.
Through the door is a small room that was nicely decorated. It had a bookshelf that was empty and a desk with some papers on it. The desk also had a book stored in the drawers. When I walked in, the light fixture at the top lit up. I sat in one of the chairs. It was very comfy. I started to read through the books and papers.
"Haha, I can't read," I say aloud.
"What?" Cait says while coming over to look at the papers before grimacing and walking away.
"Welp, I will need some time to decipher this language, so you can do whatever you want while I do this," I say to Cait.
Learning to read the new language wasn't that hard. I had 18 Intelligence, and with my skills, it made it much easier. It helps that you can use patterns to figure out what words mean what. It only took me around 2 days to learn the new language, and I was sure there could be a few things I didn't have a translation for, as I didn't have access to the words. I also found it very interesting that the language was likely Latin.
'Hmm, most curious.'
The papers were notes on sealing magic. And the book was on Magic. The magic in question was Crystal Magic. The creation and manipulation of Crystals. It was basically a specialized version of Earth Magic. The book had plenty of personal notes by the owner.
Speaking of the owner, I had an idea who owned this study. I wanted to say it was King Sombra, but I couldn't say for absolute certain. This study might have belonged to someone else, as no evidence could point directly to King Sombra. But it didn't matter as this place has been abandoned for a long time. It was hard to say how long, but my best guess was at least a few decades.
'It still doesn't explain what the heck happened to this world.'
I decided we had stuck around long enough, and it was time to go. But before I left, I took everything from the study and then closed the door. I wanted to test my theory. I used emotion magic again, but this time I focused on light and love. Then I opened the door and found nothing had happened.
'Hmm, then perhaps I was wrong.'
Our next stop would be the tomb I spotted a ways away. When we were about to leave, I noticed something odd. The interference that messed with electronics had been massively reduced. I was somewhat confused by this situation.
'Could it have been from releasing the spell on the door? Or maybe from unlocking the passage.'
Regardless of the source, we got in our speeders and went to the beacon I left behind. I parked the speeder and stored both the beacon and the speeder away. Then it was time to start digging again.
Several Hours Later...
Crash
"Finally! That took forever," I reply as we enter the tunnel leading to the tomb.
The more I dug, the more certain that it was some sort of tomb, as I could see the massive corpse of what I believe to be a Dragon. And when I say massive, I mean massive. It was likely around a football field in size. But before going into the tomb, I wanted to see where the tunnel led. It was stupid long. If my calculations were right, it was around 30 km long and ended with a cave entrance that had been buried with snow and ice, like everything else on this god forsaken planet. At least we could use the speeders as the tunnel was wide enough for them.
When we got to the tomb entrance, I started to rethink my guess. There was a massive dead dragon, but there was also a massive cavern behind it. And inside made me question if I had gone insane. For one, the cavern was larger than I could visually see, and secondly, it was filled to the brim with gold and treasure. At the very least, it was enough gold to crash the prewar value of gold far enough that it was worthless. I was so distracted that I didn't realise we made it to the dragon corpse.
The dragon had beautiful sapphire scales and was in surprisingly great condition. But when I checked the temperature, it made a lot of sense. It was -10 °C (14°F) even this far from the surface. But then again, with the planet only getting as warm as -60 °C (-76 °F), I wasn't too surprised. Then again, usually at this depth it would be much warmer, but I had a feeling this world's condition wasn't natural.
Now the real issue was how to get past the dragon. It was definitely dead. But its body was sealing the entrance to the cavern full of treasure. And from what I could tell, this dragon was old. Really old. Which meant it was ridiculously magically resistant. Grabbing it with telekinesis was very unlikely, not just due to the magic resistance but due to the sheer weight. I tried storing the corpse, but it failed for some reason.
'Maybe it's too connected with the ground to be labeled as separate. Or maybe it's the scales that are very close to minerals that make it too blurry. Or some other third option.'
I had an idea, but I was hesitant to try it. I could open the mouth and go down the throat. But willingly walking into a dragon's mouth seems like a very dumb idea. For all I know, the dragon is playing a very convincing game of pretend and is hungry. For the time I decide to rest and see if I can think of a better solution.
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Author's Note:
Rio doesn't really have much of a greatest fear. At most, he fears being stuck in a time loop with no friends. That, and I thought it would be funny to send Rio to Nam. That and Rio just has a strong resistance against such enchantments, not immunity, but fairly close. As for he study and the abandoned ruins, it will be explained later on. I will say Rio couldn't store the dragon because it was technically alive. That technicality will be revealed next chapter. Until next time, Ciao.