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“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon! Where in the everloving hell could that damn thing be?”

Demvare grumbled as he scoured the woods, followed by a rather large number of people. Nearly every person was helping him in the search, but none of them had successfully found their objective.

Spoon walked up to Demvare, putting an arm on his shoulder. “He just had to up and leave, eh?”

Demvare grunted in response, pushing Spoon away. “If you’re gonna lean on someone, do it to Shaf. And if you’re not looking, you can just high-tail all the way back to the castle!” he barked.

“Woah there, you need to chill, boss!” Spoon said, backing away. “But we’ve been looking for five days now! Isn’t there an easier way-”

“There you are!”  A person walked up to Spoon, grabbing him by an ear. “What do you think you’re doing? We’re supposed to be looking right now!”  Shaf glanced at Demvare. “Sorry about Spoon, Dem. We’ll get back to it.”

“Hey, what do you mean ‘sorry about’- hey! Stop that! That’s my ear!”  Spoon’s complains became more distant as he was dragged in a random direction by Shaf. If he hadn’t been so peeved by the elusiveness of the artifact, Demvare probably would have chuckled at the antics. Instead, he sighed, tired of all the bullcrap. If they couldn’t find it by the seventh day, then it would be hopeless.

 

Two days went by in the blink of an eye. More and more people were complaining about the pettiest things, and tensions were high. Many people had noticeable twitching in their eyes and arms, while others just sat on the ground, devoid of hope and strength. In one, last-ditch effort, the Chancellors destroyed an almost impossibly large section of the forest- but to no avail. It seemed as though the Creator, a small, orb-like device that could bend the shape of the world at will, was gone for good.

 

On the eighth day, the convoy was back at the castle. Demvare had sat down at the office, fiddling with random drawers and such. Everything in the castle, from the walls to the very chair he was sitting in, seemed too flamboyant for his taste. He had hoped that the Creator would not only help solve that, but also help give him the power to bend the area to how the people wanted. Political stuff.

In one such drawer, he pulled out a stack of papers alongside a quill and an inkwell. He began to doodle mindlessly on them but, as he soon realized the ink ran out much faster than it should have. And by much faster, he meant that there was none.

“What the…?” he muttered to himself, picking up the inkwell and examining it. After a moment of thought, he smashed it against the wall, and a small, metallic orb appeared in the midst of the shards, unharmed by the glass and untainted by the ink. He tentatively picked it up, and the world swirled around him, distorting color, shape, size, sound…

He began to form an image in his mind- a dark, gloomy city, with clouds constantly overhead and only a few flickering lights. The stress of the previous days began to seep into the image, sharpening the edges and clearing out the fog. Demvare could almost hear the faint pitter patter of the rain as he was absorbed into his thoughts, the image only becoming more clearer and more detailed. And, as gradually as the image began to form, his own vision became blurred, darkening around the edges as he eventually passed out.

To be continued?