Chapter 166 - Perplexing Crash

"Sora---!"

Yelling out only caused his voice to be sucked away into the void of mist, turning back to see if at least Lucas was still there. To his surprise and relief, the boy was still clinging desperately to the side of the carriage. 

Carefully, Sirius inched his way over, extending his hand towards Lucas as no words were exchanged, watching as he gritted his teeth, straining; he stretched his arm out as far as he could. As their fingertips met one another, it all fell apart. 

An outside force crashed into the carriage that was already hanging onto a thread, sending Sirius' vision to go into a complete spiral as his body was flipped around this way and that; feeling a sense of weightlessness. 

He soon came to the realization that this sensation was directly linked to the wooden coach; it had been sent directly off of the side of the cliff, yet still the fog clung to its presence. 

--Ah, shit, Sirius thought. 

There were no rays of sunlight that graced his parting eyelids, greeting his hazy, exhaustion eyes with the bountiful, warming red. 

"Ngh…"

His ears only met with a constant chime, finding himself unable to tell if he was facing right, left, up, or down with the odd lightness he felt to his body. Blinking once more as his vision began to adjust; it was all fog around him, the heavy mist hiding the answer of his location from him. 

--What the hell happened? Sirius asked himself. 

Holding his throbbing head, he sat himself up slowly. As he had thought from the prickly, almost ticklish feeling against his neck, it was indeed a bed of grass beneath him. 

"Right...Something intercepted our path--damn, I was really flung right off a cliff, huh?"

Realizing this, Sirius rubbed the back of his head, thankful his reinforcement saved him from the colossal fall. 

--All those grueling years of training paid off; passive reinforcement is a damn life-saver, Sirius thought. 

Standing himself up, he brushed the layer of sediment from his previously immaculate uniform with a disgruntled sway to his movements. Though the natural presence of the thick mist was jarring; he couldn't feel any nearby presence--leaving him to relax his guard, but not completely. There was no songs of birds perched within the many trees to be heard; in fact, there wasn't any sound meeting the core of his ears but the subtle hum that threaded the enigmatic fog. 

--Still, what is this fog? Where did it come from? It's one thing that it was with us at the peak, but now down here as well? Something just isn't adding up here, Sirius pondered. 

Pushing past thick foliage, he found that shattered planks of wood were planted into the soil. Running the tips of his white gloves over their form, he recognized them without a doubt. 

"The carriage…"

Seeing the debris of the fallen carriage only spurred more questions than answers; the rest of the vehicle was nowhere to be seen. 

--There's no way I could've landed that much further from them or the carriage, Sirius thought. 

It was only as he stood back up that he realized the dropping temperature of the surrounding area, watching his breath leave his lips in the same mist he stood in. 

Feeling this gnawing coldness set in, doing nothing to aide his anxious mind as he questioned the safety of his comrades--he stopped in place for a moment. 

--I guess there's no choice. Even if I have to give my position away...I need to find them. 

Lowering his stance a bit, he took a deep breath before launching into the air with a bolt of lightning discharging from his body, breezing past the ceiling of evergreen. It took no longer than the air to travel from his lips to his throat for his body to be far above the trees, hanging in the sky as a trail of purple lightning clung to his path. 

Looking back down at the forest; it was shrouded in the fog, reaching as high as the trees themselves as it acted like a faux prison. 

"Sora----! Lucas----!"

Sirius yelled out as loud as he could, his voice being carried across the entirety of the valley of endless verdancy. 

"Is that you, Sirius?!"

His call was met with the response of a well-known, deep voice. Hearing this, a relieved smile came over Sirius' expression as he took note of the source of the call back as he landed back down in the bowels of the fog-covered forest. 

--It wasn't far at all, guess I freaked out for nothing, Sirius thought to himself. 

"Yeah, it's me--I'm headed your way!"

Sirius assured the man, heading west of his current position, scanning past the obscured trees as they only became visible when they were no more than a foot away from himself. 

Swinging his arms against the blockade of evergreen, bursting through the leaves, he found himself in a medium-sized field within the forest, walled off by the thick, obscuring foliage. Sitting against the grass was the familiar sight of red locks. 

One look at him was enough to tell that his usage of passive reinforcement wasn't quite up to par; his body was layered in dirt from the fall, accompanied by superficial scratches across his skin and a bruise resting on his cheek that seemed to swell up. 

"Yo."

Giving a cheeky smile to Sirius as the man was clearly staring a bit too long at his injuries, Sora gave him a thumbs-up. 

"...You're alright?"

"I'm A-OK!"

As if confirming as much, Sora slapped his own bicep with his wide grin, wincing as the smile seemed to incur a sting from his swollen cheek. 

"Yeah, you don't look so hot…"

Sirius squatted down beside the fiery Outlander, reaching into the pouch on his belt as he retrieved a verdant orb from it, the size of a piece of candy. 

"I don't need that, like I said--I'm great!"

Attempting to reject the heilen ball, Sora gave a bright, trembling smile as he clearly invoked the same pain once more. 

"Take it."

"I'm--"

"Take it."

Insisting, Sirius had nearly shoved the rejuvenating orb down the man's throat, pressing it against his mouth with an annoyed look. Knowing it was the only way to please Sirius' worrying nature, Sora accepted the heilen orb, tossing it down his throat and swallowing it whole. 

It didn't take but a minute for his cuts to slowly close up entirely, a surge of vigor running through the man's veins as he stood up. 

"Man, I'll never get used to that feeling…"

Sora commented, running his fingers over the freshly sealed cuts on his arm, shivering a bit from the freakish sensation. 

"Where's Lucas?"

"I was going to ask you the same thing."

Sora looked at the man with a perplexed look, just as out of the loop on the whereabouts of their friend. Hearing this answer, Sirius clicked his tongue.