"A WHAT!?" Aziel yelled out in disbelief, his face growing closer and closer to Arthur’s by the second. His eyes were wide with shock, pupils dilated in the darkness as if trying to absorb every detail of Arthur’s expression.
"A-a castle," Arthur repeated, his voice barely above a whisper. He was still staring with blank eyes, his gaze fixed on sothing only he could see. Far in the distance, barely seeable even with Arthur’s enhanced eyes, stood a castle. Multiple pointed-tipped towers reached toward the star-filled sky like accusing fingers, standing far above what looked to be a wall that surrounded it.
Aziel’s smile took over his face, stretching from ear to ear with an almost manic intensity. His teeth glead in the moonlight as he began to pace back and forth excitedly, kicking up small clouds of dust with each energetic step. The prospect of refuge had transford him from a weary traveler into a bundle of restless energy.
"A freaking castle?? Are you kidding ?" he exclaid, running his hands through his hair in disbelief. His voice cracked slightly with emotion—relief, excitent, and perhaps a touch of hysteria born from days of deprivation. "In the middle of nowhere? This is... this is..."
Arthur did not respond, still staring transfixed at the distant silhouette. There was sothing about it that didn’t sit right with him. The castle seed both a salvation and a warning, and the contradiction rooted him to the spot.
Aziel noticed the odd expression on his friend’s face and slapped him on the back, the sound sharp in the quiet night. "You good?"
The slap knocked Arthur out of his trance, the physical sensation dragging him back to the present mont. He blinked rapidly, as if clearing away cobwebs of thought, and looked at Aziel. "Oh, um, yeah, yeah, I’m fine."
Aziel raised an eyebrow, giving him a questioning look. The excitent on his face dimd montarily, replaced by small concern. "...Ok," he said finally, deciding not to press the issue. "Well, we should get your training in. After that, we’ll get so rest and make a sprint for the castle tomorrow, ’kay?"
Arthur forced a smile and nodded, grateful for the change of subject. "Sounds good." The familiar prospect of training would give him sothing concrete to focus on, sothing that didn’t involve the unsettling mixture of hope and dread that the castle inspired.
With that, they went on to his training. The moonlight provided just enough illumination for them to see each other. The night air had cooled considerably, making movent a welco relief from the dayti heat.
Arthur did one thousand downward slashes, his sword cutting through the air with increasing confidence. The exercise took much less ti than it used to, his muscles having developed both strength and mory over his relentless practice. Sweat beaded on his forehead despite the cool air, glinting like silver droplets in the moonlight. Each slash was accompanied by a controlled exhalation, his breath visible as small clouds in the night air.
After the prescribed repetitions, they moved on to a quick spar that ended in Arthur’s defeat, like usual. But sothing had changed in their dynamic. Now Aziel actually had to try—he couldn’t simply stand still and defend anymore. He had to move, had to strategize, had to respect Arthur’s growing skill.
While this was an accomplishnt in and of itself, Arthur did not take much pride in it. The improvent felt hollow, insufficient. He wanted to beat Aziel, to see genuine surprise replace the confident smirk on his companion’s face. Only then would he be satisfied. Only then would he feel he had truly advanced beyond the helpless novice he had been when their journey began.
They finished up training, both breathing heavily, their exertions having temporarily banished thoughts of hunger and thirst. Without discussing it, they fell into their established routine, taking shifts sleeping—two hours on, two hours off. While they had yet to run into any monsters in this barren region, they could never be too careful. The castle’s mysterious presence only heightened their vigilance.
After getting plenty of rest, pretty soon, a new day ca. They rose from their slumbers with renewed purpose, the stiffness in their limbs eased by the prospect of reaching their destination. Hunger gnawed at their bellies, thirst scraped at their throats, but these discomforts seed more bearable now—temporary afflictions hopefully soon to be redied.
They continued on their journey, now with a destination in sight. The castle looked different in daylight—less mysterious, more tangible.
They were walking much faster than the previous days, their pace energized by purpose and the hope of reaching the castle by nightfall. The cracked earth passed beneath their feet at a steady rate, each step bringing them closer to potential salvation.
"Co on, hurry up," Aziel complained from up ahead, his impatience palpable. He was much more excited than Arthur, practically running ahead. The prospect of food, water, and shelter had brought out a childlike enthusiasm in him. But unlike Aziel Arthur wasn’t as giddy to make it to the castle.
It wasn’t that Arthur wasn’t excited; of course, the thought of filling his belly, drinking so water, and possibly even sleeping in a bed sounded nice and all. But for so reason, he couldn’t shake the feeling that sothing was deeply wrong. The castle seed too perfect, too convenient—a fairy tale solution in a world that had shown them nothing but harsh realities.
He grinned lightly before speeding up his walk nonetheless. "I’m coming, I’m coming," he called out, unwilling to dampen his friend’s spirits with his own inexplicable misgivings. Perhaps his instincts were wrong. Perhaps they had finally caught a break.
Arthur and Aziel were hurrying to what they hoped to be salvation, the distance between them and the castle shrinking with every determined step. Hope, that most fragile and persistent of emotions, had taken root in their hearts once more. Their anticipation grew the closer they got, almost palpable in the air between them.
But then they were stopped in their tracks, feet freezing mid-step as if the ground had suddenly turned to quicksand. They stood rooted to the spot, looking ahead with grim faces and drooped arms, as if all the energy had been suddenly drained from their bodies.
Aziel’s excitent was imdiately zapped away as he stared at what lay in front of them, his expression morphing from eager anticipation to horror in the span of a heartbeat. "What. The. Fuck," he said, completely lost in shock, the words coming out as barely more than a breath.
Arthur simply stared wide-eyed with scrunched brows of concern, his earlier premonition of danger vindicated in the most terrible way possible. A cold feeling washed over him, starting from the top of his head and flowing down to his feet like ice water.
Ahead of them, littering the stone ground for miles in front of the castle, were bodies—and thousands of them at that. The twisted, desiccated forms of the dead replaced the ground in a grueso carpet of mortality. They wore the remains of armor, clutched broken weapons in skeletal hands, and wore expressions of final agony frozen on what remained of their faces.
Just as disturbing were the insanely large fissures that scattered the landscape of death like jagged wounds in the earth itself. So were as wide as a car was long, dark gashes in the stone that stretched out for a hundred feet or more. From within these chasms ca a faint, unsettling sound—sothing between a whisper and a moan, carried on a cold breeze that seed to originate from deep within the earth.
Arthur and Aziel stood staring blankly at the scene before them, all thoughts of food and shelter montarily forgotten in the face of this grotesque tableau.
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