Woosh
Noel continued sliding through the snow, rolling with no brakes, his entire body aching from the constant, automatic rolling.
His mind that had been racing with multiple ideas and thoughts had suddenly froze upon seeing the first danger in his path.
'Adrenaline? Where's the adrenaline?'
And out of sheer shock, his fight of flight response had frozen as well, his expression going blank.
'No, no, no, no, I can't die here! Not here of all places, and because of rolling off a mountain? $#@#$'
Somehow, out of spite of Exile, his mind had foolishly forgotten to critically consider his current situation of being in another world as if he had been infected with dementia, making him childishly roll down a mountain-like slope with zero calculation on potential risk.
No wonder Exile had called him a fool the first time he had landed his eyes on Noel.
Truly a considerable skill to judge people from the first meeting.
On Noel's part, he was attempting to find a solution in his mind that had suddenly blanked out, yet to his hopelessness, nothing arose.
And so he prepared for his inevitable end.
A few moments passed relatively normal.
The impact that Noel expected to kick him to the heavens had yet to come, prompting Noel to slowly try to open his eyes that kept rolling. Yet, unable to focus on a single spot, a massive headache and nausea hit him like a tank's artillery.
'I, I... guess this is the end? Is this really the end?'
But even so in his automatically rolling body, his eyes caught sight of an object a few inches apart from him.
He blankly blinked his eyes in a fraction of a second cluelessly as if unable to understand, his heart dropping to the final level of an abyss.
Pak!
The sound waves of an impact hitting the black-white covered object travelled to his tympanic membrane, yet his momentum did not stop, his body continuously rolling helplessly like a ragged object down the slope, his body numb from the cold that had seeped into his clothing.
A few moments passed when he suddenly snapped back to reality, and reached out his hand to a certain part of his body that felt immensely hot as if searing oil had been poured directly poured on his bare skin.
"Bloody hell"
A cursed slipping from his lips as an intense pain assaulted his ankle, his teeth gritted so hard as if they would crack, the back of his nape sore from the constant stress on it.
'.... So I survived at the cost of my ankle shattering against that rock? B.l.o.o.d.y. f.*.c.k.i.n.g. h.e.l.l. Fuck, Blyad, Al lanah'
He started cursing inwardly in every language he knew at the intense pain that radiated from his ankle to the rest of his body, and closed his eyes as his headache intensified.
Thankfully, he continued rolling cleanly for a few more seconds, minutes or hours, well, Noel was unable to calculate.
At a certain point, his body had slowed down, before stopping completely.
"....."
Noel's face was directly planted on the snow on the ground, but instead of immediately getting up, he stayed in his position for a while, as if his mind had long escaped from the limitations of his skull.
His skull was throbbing with a headache, his sense of directions null, and his vision still unstable, his head an ornament on his body that felt lighter than a feather yet heavier than steel.
"....."
As suffocation slowly blocked air from reaching his desperate lungs, Noel's figure moved slightly, starting from his knees, as they shifted and slowly supported his bodies on them, following by his red, freezing and strained hands that gripped the snow, moving his body slowly.
"Ah ...."
He placed one of his wet hands on his scalp, his vision blurry and still rotating, before he snapped his eyes shut and opened them once more in a state of daze.
He couldn't even think of any internal thoughts, his senses only detecting the numb feeling on the tips of his ears, figner tips and knuckles, and freezing ace.
"Wheere am ... I? Ex ... ile?"
No response.
Just the howling wind and blizzard and a far off whsitling sound is what he heard.
Noel attempted to stand up, his speech slurred, yet his vision refused to stabilize, making Noel stumble from his spot and fall a few meters in front of him.
He stood up again, supporting himself by pushing against something ... sticking to his hands and felt hard?
The whistling sound now much clearer, reminding Noel of a certain thought amidst his sea of dizziness, accompanied with the clear mechanical sound of machinery.
'I ... s t... h ... at a tra... in?' He looked down to where he had supported himself, brownish-bronze lines standing parallel to each other a distance away.
'Wow ... th.. at must be a big train ... for the d.. istance to be so large.... between. the rails.'
No, no, no!
Shaking his head from side to side in irritation at the pain, Noel's vision slightly cleared out a bit.
"A train !?"
Noel turned his head only to be met with a raging odd-shaped front of a vehicle before him, its height alone dozens of times taller than Noel, perhaps ten or 15 times his height alone. At the very least 15 meters.
Noel stood there, his mind blanking again for the umpteenth time. In just one day he had died countless of times, this time being the third or fourth time at this point.
Was it sheer luck that he managed to stay alive after rolling off a mountain-like landscape with minimal damage?
His expression twisted in anger.
First it was Elias that tried to kill him, second it was the cold that made him endlessly tremble as the frost crept up his body at the risk of frostbite, third it was the slope, and now a train.
'What have I done in my previous life to be treated like this?'
Noel wondered for the first time in his life if he had done a deed that warranted such malicious intent, his expression blank as if his fight and flight response had lost function once more.
"... You idiotic Fool ..."
A weary flat voice was heard behind him, the corner of Noel's eyes catching a figure before a burning pain hit his ankle.
"Ow, ow, not my ankle, stop it, not my ankle! Ugh.."
At the last moment of getting run over by the behemoth of a train, a cane had hit his ankle that had been bleeding earlier from the fracture he had gotten down the slope.
"You should thank the deity you believe in that the snow accumulated on this mountain has been doing so for the past hundreds of years, or you wouldn't have left with a mere scratch "
His nerves burned, yet he couldn't retort at Exile, which made him even more frustrated. After all, Exile had saved his life.
He wanted to say 'Couldn't you show even some concern for me?' but he chose to stay silent instead.
The only thing Noel could do was glare in anonymity at Exile, his teeth gritted.
".... Couldn't you at least pull me back properly without having to hit my ankle?"
Exile did not answer him, ignoring him. In response to his attitude, Noel let out a sigh as he attempted to shift his focus to the train that had nearly run him over in displeasure.
The train had stopped down completely, steam coming out from the top of the front of the train, as it landed in front of the rust station that seemed to be out of place in this harsh weather.
Looking at it, Noel's sulkiness vanished, as he suddenly realized the source of dim light he had seen from afar.
Dim yellow-white light came from a hung oil based lamp, white, moth-like insects hovering around the glass as if praising it for its glowing warmth in the callous whether.
"Get up, the train will be departing in three minutes. We have a long way ahead to The Empire. I'll be explaining alot on the way, so you better be prepared. Because whether you are ready or not, that is of little concern to me."
Noel turned his head with a tilt of confusion towards Exile.
"What are you talking about ... ?" He muttered, irritation still laced in his voice.
Exile didn't answer his question.
"You'll know soon enough. Board the train. And ..." Then after a moment of thought, he added after a pause, his eyes unmoved as he walked towards the train with the cane still under his armpit.
"Don't make me repeat myself. I'll be disappointed"
Noel ran a hand through his semi-frozen hair and closed his eyes as the wind blew towards it, as he looked at the sky in wonder.
Did he really do the correct choice? Should he had accepted Elias's offer in the first place? Why was he doing all of this in the first place? Was it really just because or boredom?
His emotions were complicated; a mix of disbelief and resignation, yet he shook them off.
".... Well, whatever. Its no use thinking about it now."
He silently looked at Exile's moving figure, before letting out a white cloud into the dry weather, following right after Exile.
+
Little did he know, that this decision would change his fate.
In the worst.
Or in the best?
Who knows,