NOVEL SIMPLE Chapter-104 Despair
They yelled, they hollered, they shouted. They even tried to stop the other customers from entering and tried to convince them of Ewan’s fraud.
And thereon, Ewan took the stage as planned. Five minutes later, he shooed the embarrassed group away while everyone watched the amusing play. They’d acted well, considering he rushed the hiring—well worth the coins, even though he had to pay extra to buy their silence.
“What a sham. They didn’t even think of buying the potion first to get the certificate,” one of the customers said.
“The business boomed, it was only a matter of time before this happened,” another customer said.
“What if there’s really a problem with the potions though?” one customer asked.
“Think for yourself, mate. How gullible you are to be led by those thugs?”
“If you ever ran a business, you would be familiar with this. It’s a sign that other business owners hate Brewed Awakening, and it’s a good thing for us. More competition means we get stuff cheaper.”
“Heh, those idiots can only fool the first timers. I’ve already bought these potions before. I don’t need others to tell me of its quality.”
Ewan couldn’t stifle his inner grin when the conversation fell on his ears. His plan was a stark success. He had to establish and show this pattern of harassment to the customers before they could do some real damage. Because he paid those ‘thugs’ and did it himself, he controlled the damage and pulled them to his side.
This was a stopgap measure though. Ewan’s capital and reach couldn’t fend off his competitor’s attacks forever. Sooner or later, they would damage his business, it was inevitable. It was all a matter of playing with the sharks for as long as he could. In the end, they would either accept him in their pack or fight to the bitter end and rip each other apart, their corpses left bleeding in the waters for the small fishes to nibble on.
…..
[Havanna]
Havanna barged through the bushes, sprinting past the dense trees and vines, the sharp branches shredding her skin. Her lungs and throat burned as she gasped for air, her chest tightened, and the sense of suffocation drowned her. The world wobbled before her; the tree trunks snaked and squirmed. Her lead-like legs weighed her down, but she still lugged them and ran. Her heart couldn’t sustain her anymore, but she still had it beat for her and ran. Her vision blurred, but she still ran…
The means didn’t matter as long as she and her Astylinds survived—she learned that from Ewan and it was what fueled her forward, away from the menace chasing after her.
She expected some sort of danger when she explored the island. But what she met was not within the realms of her prediction, it even topped the bizarre of the skeletons tied in the trees. These pale blindfolded ‘humans’ or whatever they had become after living inside the caves for so long attacked her on first contact. They didn’t even speak the common tongue, neither did they know Atarin, her hopes for peaceful communication went down the drain.
And so, with scant information as her only gain from the dreadful trip, she bolted before their hostility drowned her.
The pursuer chanted with clicking tongues and snorting noises, and the resulting spell hammered Havanna’s soul. The same spell had already injured all her Astylinds and now it came for her. The wobble of the world worsened; the forest spun before her eyes. Her ears buzzed, her nose bled, and she stumbled forward as her strength left her. She rolled on the mossed earth before coming to a rest on her back, facing the blurry canopy of the giant forest, and the roped skeletons on the trees met her gaze with deathly cold stares.
Why was she running? Where was she running to? The questioning thoughts emerged as her chest heaved. The beach was her dead end. Could she survive in the ocean? At best she was delaying her inevitable death. It was better to give up, it was easier to surrender. She didn’t deserve to live anyway…
“@%#%#$@.” Even though the woman had blindfold on, she still looked down at Havanna and spoke her tongue. Her figure twisted, her voice undulated, and the more Havanna heard her, the more her condition waned.
She flumped on Havanna’s stomach, pulled her up with her neck as her nails dug into her skin, and slapped her. Once, twice, thrice, the hard hits pummeled her and planted her face back into the ground, then the woman pulled her up again, clawing her neck. The thwacks echoed in the forest and silenced the chirping birds. They all fluttered away without a tweet as the woman thrashed Havanna.
But in contrast, each heavy slap that came in refreshed Havanna’s fight against the despairing thoughts. She regained her clarity with the sharp bouts of pain and soon overcame the hypnotic effect of the soul spell the woman had hit her with. Her eyes gleamed, her pupils constricted, the bitch bashing her up had her full focus. She waited, one slap came after another, her head flung left and right with each smack, and she still waited. Soon the weight behind the attacks dropped and the slap only pushed her face away—this was her chance.
As the woman straightened up and heaved for air, though with a euphoric grin, wiping her sweat and gulping, Havanna took out a knife from her pendant and shanked her side. The woman grunted and grabbed the blade. But Havanna snatched it back, slitting her palm, and shivved again. And again, and again.
“@#$@#$!!!” The woman screeched, blood spurting from her side, and held Havanna’s arm down. Her breath broke and she grimaced, touching her wounds with trembling hand.
She’d locked Havanna’s arm—the knife became useless—so she rolled over and pushed the woman down. But before she could attack with her free arm, the woman grabbed it too and locked her in place with her legs, baring her yellowed canines at her—she nullified all her means of attack. Havanna lost against the woman in strength, but she still tussled to get free. Alas, she failed.
Finally, as the woman chanted again, as despair engulfed Havanna again, she swooped in, bit her throat, and crushed her windpipe with all the power she could muster. The chomp took all of her. The crunch that sent a shiver down her spine wrote the woman’s death sentence. She choked amid the chant, trying to breathe, but her lungs never got the air. She struggled, ripping her neck’s skin with her nails, but to no avail. Soon her lips and cheeks purpled, her nose bled, her eyes reddened and bulged. With a hitched hiccup, her heart stopped beating.
