Location: Forest of Village Uri, South of Diptabhumi
Time: 9:00 PM
Day: Second of Crown Days

Now, as an elder sister, it was Eka's inherent obligation to save her younger sibling's ass and fix every mess he left behind.

People always advised her to leave her brother to his own devices. He had to learn to face his music.

She told them, yes, it was his mistake and he did suffer the aftermath but people stood to oppose. They argued back that he should have straightened his actions by now. He was to be the young master of the house. All the land, the house, the livestock- he would inherit once he came of age.

That made Eka pause. That was something to think about. She had confronted the snapping jaws that were their kin and yet he would get what she accumulated throughout the years. She even had a niece to take care of. (She was the product of an adventure gone wrong.)

Society can be vicious when you take advice from them. They can be so wrong and yet so correct.

Why has she been so forgiving of her brother? Is it because she raised him like a son more than a sibling? Was it that she knew the hungry lebrouts that were their relatives would swallow him whole in the label of giving them the perfect home after their parent's passing?

Moreover, was it a sound decision, twelve years ago, to raise him when she, herself, was a teeny fifteen-year-old?

If Eka did a good job then why was she rocking a toddler who was not her child? Her brother should be the one putting her back to sleep when he decided to bring her home hours after she was born. Just because her grandparents decided to give her to the orphanage and he could not withstand their judgment. He realized, ultimately, Eka was the best option and it took him half an hour to carry this baby and be the best father of the year for that night. All was forgotten when he reached home and handed the basket to Eka and declared, "Didi, you are to be her mother as you have been mine."

And all Eka could do was stand there like a wall of the house, ready to accept the hammering of a nail into her. It did feel like a nail stabbing her head that time. Like the ever-loving and ever-forgiving elder sister she was, she welcomed her niece home and never stopped to think about putting her brother on a leash inside the cow shed.

Eka should have treated him like the bull he was and rained hell on him she was sure she felt then.

And oh, why was she thinking all of this?

As she was towed by the leader of lebrouts to his den to be a feast for his colony, Eka was questioning her sensibility and as well as worrying about her brother and her niece. Then came the concern about how she should free herself from this situation.

She was drying the clothes and the next thing she knew was being dragged by her feet. The best scenario could have been caught by the assassins. It would have a favourable outcome in the form of a dead body and all her possessions in her brother's name. But that seemed to be a distant dream as she watched her unavoidable doom.

You might be wondering why she was so calm. Oh, she had her time throwing her limbs all around and managing a stone or two towards the monster. She has grown passionless, you see. So numb she had forgiven her brother for his biggest blunder yet.

The sky took on a beautiful hue of crimson. It was probably seven in the evening. She could have finished picking and folding the clothes and then on her way to collect wood for dinner. Instead, she was on a journey to be food for someone else's appetite. She could not tire of referring to herself as food.

Did she taste that good? She wanted to ask but her mouth was tied. She had pushed them to the limit, especially the leader, with her incessant questioning when her feeble strength failed to save me. She did hope her chattering could kill at least one of them.

Eka knew nothing to none about this arrangement among the lebrouts and that the most accomplished one could spare an intelligence similar to a human preteen. There was nothing like this mentioned in the encyclopedia of monsters. Just like a mound of flesh capable of only emotional eruptions and indecisive opinions. Surprisingly, the leader managed to organise his band of lebrouts into a tactical ambush and capture her.

In her questioning, she learnt behind this capture the underlying cause was none other than, ladies and gentlemen, her brother. He stole the Onyx egg that they had waited for a millennium to hatch. He stole their Queen, for crying out loud.

On one hand, Eka was pleasantly surprised that he was capable of such dangerous feats and escaping alive and on the other hand not planning enough for the aftermath.

The lebrouts had sniffed his scent at her house and upon not finding her brother and their egg they were willing to wait another millennium for the rise of their Queen by sacrificing her heart and essence and feasting on her body as that gave them some sort of weird strength.

That begged the question of why were they telling her these. The answer was the disappearance of the egg also resulted in choosing another lebrout to be the vassal for the nest queen. And the purpose of telling her the gory details of the process was that they had a tradition of not educating the next vassal on what would happen but instinctively knowing what was needed of him when he ate her brain.

Eka hurled her undigested lunch all over her clothes. Not even a hair of hers would be left behind. The distant dream of being abducted by the assassins seemed beautiful with every moment she had spent getting dragged.

The sun had set. The surrounding wilderness was impressive to look at. Some leaves glowed neon verdant above the glimmerbug, the protagonist of every love story under the starry night sky.

The band arrived at a grotto. Intricate veins of glowing purple veins snaked from the ground to the stone walls. This continued throughout the walls of the tunnel they entered. They marched towards an altar where the veins stopped and surrounded an altar like a crown of branches.

The lebrouts solemnly bowed to the empty altar and did not get up until Eka was dragged and deposited on it. Like a proper priest in a temple, the leader lebrout changed into dark robes of leather that looked like human skin by the limp shape of an ear near his armpit.

Eka shuddered to imagine her skin also being altered into leather. The world's a stage, she knew. So her role of struggling all her twenty-five years in Diptabhumi was to end up as apparel?

Her hands and legs were tied. Her mouth was tied. She wishes her eyes were too. No, she should be killed in the most painless way possible before all her assumptions came true.

The monster leader brought a sharp stone to his neck and with a quick cut he bled in his place. The purple veins absorbed the green blood while glowing brighter and brighter until it hurt to look at. The following step would be for the chosen next to finish the ritual by offering her heart, her blood, and a little of his blood and eating her brain. This was the part she dreaded most and wished for something like lightning to strike her and obliterate everything into ashes.

Eka squeezed her eyes when she saw the sharpened rock advance towards her chest and sucked in a last breath. She waited, her heart beating a hundred hilus a second.

Eka felt it, more than heard, the sling of an intense gust of wind cutting through the air as if the air was permeable. The refracted purple light stung her iris even though her eyes were closed.

Within a fraction of one heartbeat chaos descended. After another twenty heartbeats, the place was a massacre. The band of lebrouts lay motionless and over each one of them stood a dark-clothed and heavily veiled human figure carrying deadly weapons.

Eka realized there was a human standing where the chosen lebrout was before. Judging by their profile they were a man.

She was utterly grateful to him for saving her life. Tears that should have been the first thing shed after her capture trickled down her face in streams. She was so thankful she would have kissed his boots if not for her tied hands. But everything had an extraordinary climax in her life.

Her parents died on her birthday. Her brother betrayed her in the most unexplained way. She became an aunt before she had her first romance.

And now this saviour, this god, this...everything shattered her impression.

"So, have you fallen in love with me? We are under the starry night, surrounded by glimmerbugs...", he murmured while looking into her eyes.

If her mouth wasn't tied she could have spat on his masked face in disbelief. Did it look like she was waiting for her lover to confess his feelings for her while she was strolling along the lakeside? She could imagine her face taking an ugly expression because the person next to her saviour shifted uneasily.

By the way, glimmerbugs are native to this country and every two steps you can find a nest between two leaves. They were more a pest than a symbol of love. She wanted to head-bang that poet on a nearby rock where he was waiting for his lover. She would have torn his notes for composing that stupid love ballad for his betraying affair.

World Encyclopedia :

Hilus s̶o̶u̶n̶d̶s̶ t̶o̶o̶ m̶u̶c̶h̶ l̶i̶k̶e̶ p̶h̶a̶l̶l̶u̶s̶

Hilus is a horse-like creature that was one of the first animals to be tamed after humans of this world evolved and gained intelligence. The appearance is more like a hybrid cross between a polar bear and a horse (as you guessed it).

Lebrout

Lebrouts are beings somewhat like goblins but are more human-like in appearance. They are like gorillas and cannibals by nature.