Chapter 74 - Beach

"Guards! Scatter around the store and see if there's any place that Venedette might have gone to! Check everything!" Sir Grand said frantically to the Guards while looking around the now-empty shabby store again for traces of where the old lady could have disappeared along with Venedette.

"The last time I sensed her was inside this shabby store, looking for Von and Lei at the back, then when I started talking to the old lady that was here a minute ago, she suddenly disappeared." Sir Grand thought out loud while following Venedette's footsteps in his mind.

"Are you sure you saw an old lady here, Sire? Villagers say this place has been abandoned long ago and no one was selling anything here when our team checked this place earlier." the guard, who was obviously being weirded out by what Sir Grand was saying, saluted nonetheless.

"No. I'm sure I talked to an old sales lady here. She even sold me back Von and Lei's earrings here, see?" he insisted even more while showing him the silver earrings which he bought just earlier.

The guard gave the earrings a swift look before nodding reluctantly to Sir Grand, "We'll dispatch more people to search the area, sire." he said before finally leaving the old cranky place and Sir Grand alone inside.

Consequently, while Sir Grand was looking around at the very corner of the poorly lit wooden store, in between the aisles, he noticed a faint light coming from the gaps of the wooden floor where there seems to be an empty place inside. A perfect place for a hidden door to a basement, perhaps?

So Sir Grand used his night vision to search for an opening to it, but since he couldn't find anything, he decided he should just punch the wooden door open instead of wasting time looking for a decent way to open it.

And there it was, a deep black hole that looked just like an old empty well, built using medium-sized rocks that stretched all the way down to a dark crystal-filled one-way tunnel.

Sir Grand noticed the tiny bits of laser-like rays that stretched from the end of the tunnel until the roof of the store thanks to the black crystals on the wall that seemed like they were positioned cohesively to direct the sunlight to each other perfectly. 

Which was undeniably amazing, but since Sir Grand had another priority in mind, he quickly swooshed over to the exit, ruining some of the crystals' positions on the way since the tunnel was too narrow for his mediocrely built body.

At the end of the tunnel, there was an open cave directly beside a cliff that seemed to be part of the floating island's underlayer. Furthermore, the ceiling of this place was wider in comparison to the cave's floor that was full of sand, similar to that formation of a beach hidden inside a cave.

But instead of water, it was a sea of clouds that connected the morning sunlight to this hidden cave beach inside Yvandir, lighting the place up perfectly from the horizon with its lively bright sunlight that stung Sir Grand's night visioned eyes abruptly before he could even turn it off.

"Grandoise!" he heard Venedette's voice call him from a distance.

When he went to look over the beach's cliff, he found Venedette on a lower level with Von and Lei by her side.

"Oh my gosh, thank god you're okay," he said and flew to them flawlessly.

"Are you okay?" he asked Von who was not talking behind Venedette with a frown directed towards Lei who, on the other hand, was just ignoring him by taking his time on coiling the long sticky rope on the floor together.

"What happened to them?" he whispered to Venedette who was just too happy and relieved to have finally found them after a cold and long night of looking for them throughout the whole island.

"He's a traitor," Von said while glaring at Lei while Venedette only shrugged.

"Why? What happened?" Sir Grand kneeled in front of him in hopes of finally being able to communicate with his son properly but Von shook his head with no plans of saying anything regarding the treacherous thing that Lei did to him earlier.

"Nothing. I'll just handle it on my own." Von said stubbornly and even 'hmph'-ed to his father before quickly hiding behind Venedette again, still glaring his eyeballs at Lei who was just peacefully enjoying the view now.

Sir Grand let out a deep sigh, surrendering from Von's stubbornness, and opted to ask Lei instead.

At least Lei would be more responsive towards him.

"What happened?" he asked with that baritone voice of his that Lei instinctively saluted to immediately.

"No need for that," he said calmly while shaking his head which made things more awkward for Lei.

Lei thought deep and hard about how wrong his decisions were and how he would be punished because of it. But no matter how he thought about it, he just thought those were not enough reasons for them to run away just like that.

They were still kids after all, and as much as Von felt like he was being ostracized inside the castle, it was still their home. Something that they were lucky enough to have compared to most of the kids back in his hometown.

As the more mature one, he felt like it was his responsibility to bring Von back to the right path of life. He wanted to teach Von how to do things the right way and not tolerate his twisted logic anymore. Even if it meant breaking Von's trust and expectations that he would always be there to defend him no matter what.

Sometimes, the right way isn't exactly the easiest way around a problem. Lei needed to take a risk to finally change how things work between him and Von.

"Von asked me to come with him down there and start a new life without everybody else. I didn't think it was a good idea so I pulled him right back here and tied him to this rope. I just thought he'd need some fresh air and alone time away from you since the castle was suffocating him. That's why I accompanied him outside of the protective bubble, but I didn't really think that he would plan as far as running away from the island completely. I'm really sorry, Sir Grand." Lei said regretfully before putting the sticky rope back to his tool belt.

"It's okay. You did a great job protecting Von, Lei." Sir Grand said and patted the kid's head softly.