Sezel and Vesta skidded to a halt just in the nick of ti, the soles of their boots scraping harshly against the cracked pavent. Sothing had fallen from the sky, slamming into the ground just ahead of them with a concussive force that felt as if a teorite had struck the earth. A thick, choking cloud of dust and debris erupted from the point of impact.
Sezel's eyes were wide, his heart hamring a frantic, wild rhythm against his ribs. Beside him, Vesta was frozen, her body locked in a state of instantaneous, paralyzing shock.
As the dust cloud slowly began to settle, the horrors that it had concealed ca into view. It wasn't a rock. It was a body. The corpse of the muscular man, his eyes wide with a final, eternal shock, his impressive muscles now just so much dead, broken at. His body was pinned to the ground by a long, stick-like formation, a construct of withered vines and dead wilderness, all of it entangled and hardened by so unseen force.
At a closer look it was a spear, it had pierced the man's chest completely, passing through his sternum and pinning him to the earth like an insect.
A pool of blood spread beneath the man's corpse in no ti. It was a rather unpleasant view for Sezel as it reminded him his worst ti in Spirit Realm, that ti when beardy was killed and eaten by the beasts. He had learned then, in the most brutal way possible, that a bigger build, that impressive strength, ant nothing in this hell. It was a lesson he was now being taught all over again.
Vesta, however, seed to be in an even greater state of shock, her face pale, her eyes wide with a horror that seed to transcend the simple gruesoness of the scene.
Sezel, pushed all the thoughts out of his mind and grabbed her hand, the instinct to flee, to survive, overriding everything else. But his intention died before it could be put into action.
A voice descended upon them as if so greater entity had laid his eyes on them, Sezel heart skipped a beat and started hamring frantically against his ribs. '*What is this ominous feeling?*'
Before he could think of any options, their worst nightmare stood right in front of them, or rather he floated in front of them. A man, with a lean, sharp body, clad in a pristine, all-white suit that was a stark, almost offensive contrast to the filth and ruin around them. His long, black hair, a silken river of darkness, ran to his waist, and his eyes… his eyes were hollow, empty voids of darkness. He was, by all appearances, a true gentleman if one only saw looks.
He floated in mid-air as if he were free from the petty constraints of gravity, as if he were weightless. Slowly, with an almost bored elegance, he descended, placing one perfectly polished shoe on the very tip of the grotesque spear that impaled the dead man. He stood there, effortlessly balanced..
"Where are you going?" he spoke.
A jolt of shock passed through Sezel's body, '*How...How can he speak our language?*' But that was a secondary, almost trivial question. The first, the only question that mattered, was the man himself.
Vesta was frozen, her body trembled at the sight of this man and Sezel could feel sothing was off, she wasn't trembling from fear, but rather a profound anger, and a deep, festering resentnt. She stared at the man with an intensity so fierce that Sezel felt if she could, she would burn him alive with her gaze alone.
His own gaze shifted back to the man on the spear, there was sothing... absurdly wrong about him, he didn't feel human at all. Earlier Sezel had accused the muscular man of being a beast, but he didn't knew how he would describe the man standing in front of him. He was fear itself.
And they were re children standing before him. Sezel felt as though he were standing naked in a blizzard, every weakness, every fear, laid bare. He bit his tongue, feeling the sharp, coppery taste of his own blood, he gathered the courage to speak. "Let... Let us pass." he spoke, his words and embodint of defiance.
The man simply gazed at the sky, the three moons were completely hidden behind the dark clouds and a bizarre silence had enveloped them, the suffocating quiet before a storm. Then, he looked back down at Sezel and Vesta, a faint smile playing on his lips. "So," he said, his deep voice echoing through the broken ruins, "you want to hide because the poison rain will soon fall."
Suddenly, Vesta jerked her hand free from Sezel's grip. With a single, fluid motion, she unsheathed her sword, its blade aid directly at the man. Sezel saw her with wide eyes, '*Has she lost her mind, she can't possibly defeat that monster.*' The man in front of them was at least ten folds stronger than them, and his experience would give him a huge advantage.
It was a fool's audacity, an act of suicidal rage that could only end in a death sentence.
"What are you thinking, Vesta." Sezel spoke, his gaze fixed on her.
But she ignored him, her mind completely consud by a hatred so powerful it had blinded her to all reason. The next mont, her eyes lit up, the familiar particles of her Fable dancing around her body, and a primal, roaring fire erupted from her sword. For a brief, breathtaking mont, she shone like a defiant star against a dark, dying sky.
The man's expression slightly changed, he studied her for a mont, and then a jagged, ugly grin split his face, a look of such pure, predatory malice that it made Sezel's stomach turn. The next words he spoke, low and venomous, made Sezel's mind reel with a confusion that was even more terrifying than the fear.
He laughed, a cold, mocking sound that echoed like a trumpet of mockery. "So," he said, a disgusting smirk on his face, "you are their child. I see your hatred now."
Vesta finally lost it. She launched herself forward, a blur of motion and rage. She didn't aim for him. She slashed at the spear he was standing on. An arc of flas appeared in the air which cut the spear the man was standing on in half. But only the stick, the physical component, fell to the ground, where it unraveled back into a pile of dead, lifeless vines, the strange energy that had bound them together gone.
The man still floated in mid-air, now standing on nothing, one leg elegantly crossed over the other, his posture a deliberate, insult to their inability to even reach him. Vesta took a few steps back, the flas on her sword burning brighter, hotter, fed by her fury. She slashed it through the thin air, sending a massive arc of roiling fire hurtling towards the man.
But it was useless. The man simply raised a hand and the arc of fla, which could have incinerated an enhanced beast, stopped dead in the air as if it had collided with an invisible, unbreakable barrier. It dissipated a mont later. Vesta took a few heavy, ragged gasps, her body trembling with the effort, before aligning her blade again, preparing for another futile assault.
Her gaze flickered to her side, to where Sezel was supposed to be. But he wasn't there. He was gone. She shifted her gaze back to the man, and her eyes widened with a profound, earth-shattering disbelief as she saw Sezel, a silent specter, already in mid-air, his leg extended in a powerful, desperate kick aid directly at the man's face.
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