Chapter 16

        It had not been the easiest task, but Add had managed to keep his still unknown enemy at bay for another month. The number of nasods that snuck past the barrier at night never went past two, and he got more efficient at taking them down the more times he fought them. They were still far too accurate, and he himself was changing for the better.

        Dynamo was still unaware of the danger that he posed to them, and Add wanted to keep it that way. There were only so many times he could lie to the nasod servant.

        To prevent the situation from getting any worse, Add decided that it would be best for them to move on from Bethma. Elrios was a vast place. There had to be other places where they could venture and eventually put an end to this chase. Leaving would also keep Add from fighting his urge to get to the floating island in the sky. He had immersed himself in his medical studies to keep his mind off the topic, but constantly feeling the beckoning call from that island made it hard to completely put it aside.

        "Add, where did you put my cloak?"

        "Here." Add picked up the cloak and draped it over her shoulders himself. He used it to pull (y/n) closer to him, but stopped himself from doing anything more. "Make sure you keep this on until the morning passes. It's still going to be cold until then." He pulled the hood up to cover her ears but stopped halfway through the action.

        "What?" She kept still and watched him. He loved that innocent stare. He wondered if she had any idea of what sort of thought went through his head just then.

        "It's nothing. If you start feeling sick, let me know immediately." He finished pulling the hood over her features and pet the top of her covered head before going to grab his bag. "Dynamo, how are you holding up?" he talked to the box that he'd placed Dynamo back into. It served to keep him hidden from any strangers whether they were enemies or not.

        "System functioning under regular standards. No abnormalities detected," Dynamo replied.

        "Good." Add ran his hand across the surface of the box. "Go into sleep mode. I'll wake you when we get to where we're going." He put his bag onto his shoulder and picked up the box. "Ready to go?" he asked (y/n).

        "Mhm, that should be everything. Stella already knows that we're leaving. No one else in Bethma is sick thanks to you. I'd say we did well for the short time that we were here." (Y/n) took one last look around the room. "I won't miss this place, but I did make a good memory here."

        They left under the cover of the night. Most residents of Bethma were asleep and the ones that weren't paid them no mind. Their destination was the kingdom of Velder. Stella had suggested they go there since she trusted that they would fare well. Add saw no reason for her to lie to them.

        For a while, they traveled across the seemingly unending plain with nothing but the sounds of their footsteps keeping silence away. In order to get to Velder, they had to pass by the island that called out to him. The closer they got, the stronger the feeling was.

        "Add." (Y/n)'s voice produced a tone of authority.

        "What?" he snapped at her. He blinked when he realized how far away she was. Just like that, he had completely zoned out. Their paths clearly differed with his steps vastly straying off to the side slowly taking him towards the floating island even if he could not actually reach it from so far below. "I didn't..." Add's words trailed off, and he took his place by (y/n)'s side again. She grabbed his hand when he was close enough.

        "It's so you don't go so far next time." He merely nodded. "It really is different traveling at night," (y/n) continued to speak as they continued onward. "It's peaceful. Reminds me of when I used to go outside the village and practice alone so that I'd make my father proud of my progress. He liked to see how quickly I improved."

        Add realized that she was telling him something new about herself. Her past, the information that he longed to know. It easily kept his mind off the beckoning call of the island above. "Improved on what? You told me he taught you to throw knives. Is that it?"

        (Y/n) sadly smiled to herself. "That was the only weapon I was good at wielding. He wanted me to master the sword like him, but it just wasn't my type of thing." She looked up at the stars for a moment before continuing her tale. "My father was an assassin. He used to be an elite member of a group called Night Saver. They were sworn to protect the people and help keep the peace between all beings. He got kicked out of his homeland, Eldemyr, because he left Night Saver and chose to kill people for a living. I'm capable of doing the same thing." Add cut her a look out of the corner of his eye. Upon doing so, he saw that she had been waiting for such a reaction. "Does that scare you?"

        "Not particularly. If you wanted me dead, you've had plenty of opportunities to kill me." He knew she would never even think of doing so. Not after their moment together back in Bethma, and the others that they had shared afterwards. "Why tell me this now?"

        "It was quiet. We're traveling, and there's no one around to overhear me. I also thought you'd like to know more about me since I did promise to tell." He saw her pull her cloak around herself with her free hand as if to hide. "I can stop if that's what you want."

        "No," Add immediately said a bit too quickly. He almost stopped walking. "I'm listening. Keep talking. I'll hear every word." He wondered who it was that had told her not to talk about herself. Maybe it was her kidnappers or someone she used to trust. Whoever it was, Add just wanted to have a nice little talk with them. People didn't just pick up the habit to silence themselves when it came to things they deemed important.

        "As I said, my father was an assassin. By leaving Night Saver to willingly commit murders for money, he not only betrayed their trust, but also the trust of all elves in Eldemyr. I wasn't even born then. I heard all of this directly from him. He never told me why he did it though." Her steps drifted a little closer to his own. "He was good at what he did. It got harder for him to keep up his work with so many people also wanting the bounty for his capture, so he went into hiding, even stopped killing for a while. A good few decades went by like that actually."

        "Sounds like a dangerous individual. Are you sure the same person raised you? You don't seem like the cold blooded killer type," he joked. "I could be wrong. I don't think I am." Hearing her laugh was exactly what he wanted.

        "Just listen like you said you would. I'm getting to that part," (y/n) said with a playful elbow jab at his arm. "He met my mother in the village that I was born in. I never knew if she was aware of his past. He never told me so. I always assumed she found out about it because she chased him away. He took me from her. Didn't want to leave me behind and be alone by himself."

        "Do you hate him for it?"

        (Y/n) shook her head. "No, not really. I was too young to understand anyway." She didn't seem to have much of a reaction to it either. "After we left her, father took us out into the depths of the forests and we lived out there by ourselves undisturbed. It wasn't an easy living. I remember him apologizing to me so much when I was younger." She laughed a bit, melancholy laced within it. "I miss him. There was so much I wanted to say. I didn't get to apologize." She stopped and stood there for a moment.

        Add saw that it was a painful memory for her. "You don't have to talk about it." He watched her wipe her eyes.

        "No, it's fine. I need to talk about it. I want to." They continued onward. "We finally found a place where we could pass as simple travelers. It was a small village among a network of many without a name. Travelers were frequent but few ever stayed. That's where I had spent the rest of my life up until about four...well now it would be five years ago. I delivered mail, messages between the villages, but the one I lived in was the primary one. Ironically, I was raised to value life, and my father didn't tell me about his past until after he'd taught me the many ways he had learned to kill. I never bothered to ask either. I just assumed he was an old mercenary."

        "They came for him, didn't they," Add deduced. "Night Saver. That organization."

        "Yeah, they did, but they didn't get to him right away. They only sent a couple elves at first. It was the first time I ever saw him kill. Everyone got scared of him and me because I was his kid." (Y/n) narrowed her eyes in disdain. "A local sold him out to a passing merchant who hired some supposed to be mercenaries to do the job of killing him. He protected that village as best as he could when it turned out that the mercenaries were mere plunderers. We ended up having to leave the place behind, and it all went up in flames as we left. I couldn't stop it." She absent-mindedly shook her head. "I didn't care about the villagers anymore than they cared for me. I was just upset that I couldn't save my home. My father was injured and was never the same after that. Night Saver came shortly afterwards when I got into a silly argument with him. I wanted to follow his footsteps even though I knew how dangerous it was." She frowned. "He refused to allow it so like a child, I got upset and wouldn't talk to him for a couple days. I understood well what it meant to take a life, but after seeing those mercenaries carelessly slaughter all those people, I realized why my father became an assassin." She let out a long breath. "That's when Night Saver came to kill him. No questions were asked. They just came to take his life. I couldn't win against those veterans of battle. My father begged them to spare my life and take me back to Eldemyr with them to live safely, peacefully. They agreed to spare me but refused to take me with them. I was a product of his disloyalty and therefore tainted by their standards."

        "That's why you dislike both elves and humans." None of them had tried to see things from her perspective at all. They both rejected her. "He was your only family." Add thought back to how his mother had been mercilessly killed by Nasod Ruler. Based on their own justice, she had been executed to make the world a better place. "Hm, I can see why you don't like being called an elf. They didn't accept you." But she didn't reject either side of her heritage. It was interesting to him.

        (Y/n) simply nodded. Whether she was right to hate them or not, he was not the one to judge that. He just knew that she seemed to have moved on. For the most part, she had put it behind her and wanted to follow the path of normality that at her father had tried to seek for her. Add wanted to give her that. A normal life. They could live one if he put his knowledge to good use. He too wanted that kind of life. One where he wouldn't need to worry about anyone trying to go against him. Peaceful. Powerful.

        He was about to ask her about the stones that she carried with her, but the chance to do so was now gone. (Y/n) tensed up and quickly looked ahead of them. Add followed her gaze to see a line of nasods, six of them, waiting for ahead of them. They simply stood there which Add found odd. "Wait," he noticed too late. He looked to their east and west sides finding nasods also approaching but stopping once he looked in their direction. He dreaded to look behind him, but did so anyway just to confirm what he already knew to be true.

        "I didn't hear them," (y/n) said in apology. "I didn't even see them until now." How was that even possible? Now that Add knew she was practically an assassin, those nasods shouldn't have escaped her senses.

        It had all been a set up. Add felt his anger boiling within him. "How did I fall for such an obvious trap? Again!!" The nasods sent past his border had served their purpose to draw him out of Bethma. They wanted him away from civilization. Nasods were extinct as far as anyone knew, and these nasods' creator wanted it to stay that way. "How could I have been so foolish?!" He felt (y/n)'s hand tighten around his. She had only ever fought two of them by herself, and it had taken everything Add had to fight the seven that were initially sent after him.

        "Stay directly behind me," Add told her, but she had already backed up to him before he even finished speaking. He had no plan, not one that could succeed. They all had high failure rates based on the mental simulations that he was running through his mind while the nasods resumed their slow progress towards them.

        Add found himself being pulled down to the ground by none other than (y/n). He would have asked her what she had done that for if it weren't for the missiles that landed around them to decimate the entire area. The cool night air was replaced with a wave of heat as smoke and dust swarmed across the area. Add heard (y/n) yelp, but he could not tell what sort of injury she had obtained because of the new obstruction to his vision. He pulled her closer to him as they huddled down to the ground in hopes of surviving the bombardment.

        Just when everything was starting to clear, Add caught sight of more of the deadly explosives shooting across the sky. He only had time to see the terrified expression that (y/n) held while she covered one of her ears with one hand and clung to his shirt with the other. A missile drew a little too close to them, and everything went dark.
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Just a little reminder that Add is still Affect Tracer at this time. Until next time you amazing readers!
       

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