Luka swallowed the saliva in his throat that was suddenly as hard as rock, as he began to realize that he was covered by the Aura of the Lord Captain and all the Senior Scribes when he ca here and his head had been pretty much glued to the ground, and now that he was here alone, he could now truly appreciate the magnificence, no, the dreadful nature of this place.
The massive gate of tal and stone in front of him, which was crowned with spikes and what he was sure was the fossilised bodies of snarling demons on both sides of the gate, greeted him, and for more than two minutes, Luka stared at the gate without moving.
After those two minutes, Luka regained a bit of himself, and he looked around, suddenly realizing how silent the area surrounding the Asylum was.
The city of Stormfall was a prosperous city, and there were lights, festivities, and all manner of shenanigans happening. The noise of the city had been so loud before that Luka was a bit irritated, but now that he was in front of the Asylum and the light of the city was so far away, Luka almost felt like he had moved from reality and into a dream.
A cold wind blew across the road, and Luka tightened his cloak around him and pushed his hood back so he could see more effectively. Braving himself for what was to co, Luka began walking towards the gate. Suddenly, his surroundings brightened, and he heard the sound of thunder above.
Looking up in surprise, he could not see any clouds in the sky, and there was no lightning... where did the thunder co from?
Luka was not aware, but forty-eight hours ago, Elias had erged from the tunnels beneath the walls of the palace, and he had heard the sound of thunder, and when he looked up, he had not seen any lightning, but none of them knew of each other’s experience, and what this occurrence could an was still unknown for now.
He was about to look down when one of the last particles that fell from the void entered his left eye. Luka blinked when he felt his vision was covered by sothing, and he rubbed his eyes to clear it.
What should have been a minor matter turned into sothing else as a blinding pain suddenly shot through Luka’s left eye. He gasped and then froze as if he was transford into a statue.
Luka would never have known that the mont the particle had touched his eye and felt the warmth of flesh, eight tiny spiles had shot out of it and dug into his eye, and when he rubbed his eyes to clear them of the obstruction, he had inadvertently pushed the particle deeper into it.
The spike that erged from this particle was extrely small, but it contained a paralytic poison. Since this particle was as small as a dot, if Luka had washed his eyes with running water when he sensed that sothing had entered his eyes, he would have been fine.
The strength in this particle was nearly gone after it had fallen from the heavens, and it would not have been able to push through the mbrane covering the eyes of a Fury Forge, but Luka’s action had aided it, and the spikes were able to do their thing.
Pressed inside Luka’s eye, the particle began to feed and convert the surrounding flesh into a unique Void Matter that closely mimicked flesh, but it was not, and in a few seconds, Luka’s limbs began to twitch like a dying bird.
CRUNCH! CRACK!
Sickening cracks and pops began to erge from the cloak around Luka’s body, and his limbs began to bend in ways that his joints should not be able to, with a disgusting squelching sound, another pair of limbs burst of from his back that resembled hands, yet a bone spike like a spear was erging from the palms of both of these new limbs.
The Junior Scribe called Luka was dead, and what remained behind was a thing out of madness. Hunched like an insect, the creature looked at the Asylum, and whatever it saw made it flinch, and with a high shrieking sound, it turned around and ran towards the darkness.
Cora and Fenwick, the Gate-Wardens of the Asylum, had been called for a short eting by Brother Valerius, and so they had just missed the opportunity to see the transformation of Luka, but when they returned to their post, there was a weird sll in the air like fruit that had been left too long in the sun to rot.
"Do you sll that?" Cora said to Fenwick as he frowned.
Raising his armpit and slling it, Fenwick shrugged, "I bathed last week; I should be good for another month."
Looking at her partner with disgust, Cora brought out a spyglass and looked around, not seeing anything, but then she caught a glimpse of a shadow running across the rooftops in the distance, and she focused back on it, but the shadow was gone. For a mont, she thought she had seen a giant spider wearing black robes, maybe she was wrong because she would have sworn that the shadow looked back at her, and even from a distance, she had seen two red dots that resembled eyes.
She shook her head; she needed more sleep after being awake for the last nine days as she worked on her personal projects, but who knows how much ti they would have on their hands again once the training for Elias, a new Ascendant Candidate, began.
"Still can’t believe the runt has beco a freaking Ascendant," she muttered as she kept her spyglass and found a comfortable position on a perch above the main gate.
"He always had the air around him," Fenwick laughed, "That Olden air... like sothing out of the stories you know. , I am not surprised, always knew that lad would outlive us all."
Fenwick spat to the side and settled beside Cora, "The world is changing, but we are here to do our small part and leave it all behind. Inside that boy would be our legacy, Cora. It ain’t such a bad thing... although now that I think about it, wish my pops could see now, that slly old goat. But I think he is dead, gotten no letters from him for thirty years now."
Cora looked at her fellow Gate-Warden and sighed, "I never knew that when I was selected for this position seventy years ago that I would be training an Ascendant Candidate... the pressure that..."
Whatever they were saying was lost in the darkness, as hovering not far from them was the second particle. Unlike the first one, the second particle was healthier and was not in a rush to find a host.
It stayed and watched the two Gate-Wardens for hours until the dawn was just about to break, and when it could not see its target, the particle began to drift into Stormfall... it drifted for miles until it ca across soone that it deed worthy enough.
It was a small child of about seven who was dying with a grievous stab wound to his stomach.
The person who had stabbed and torn open the stomach of the boy was not gone, infact he was not far from him and was currently raping a woman who was sorrowfully looking at the dying boy with tears running down her face.
If Elias were here, he would have recognized this boy as the mysterious child he had seen inside the Fragnt and his dreams.
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