“AHHHHHHHHHH-”

“-OH FOR CRYING OUT LOUD STOP SCREAMING” Palock almost wades through the wall of noise emitting from the man as he pounds the floor, hands bloody and body scarred with ripped skin.

He produces a mirror as he approaches and points frantically toward it.

“GET THE CHTHON IN HERE” His words are barely audible over the screaming, and it seems the man didn’t notice in the slightest.

Huffing, Palock shoves the mirror closer to the man, as close as he deems safe from the spasming of the man.

“LET GO” He raises his voice, and the man seems to hear him and tries to top his head from flinging around in the least.

Making eye contact with Palock, the man seems almost pleading. Not really surprising since he’s been screaming in pain for close to an hour now, fighting for something Palock doesn’t know nor understand.

“GET IT IN THE MIRROR” He jabs at the mirror once more and the man slowly, with a single digit of his left hand, draws a response in the dirt floor, while trying to keep as still as possible.

After a few pained attempts, the words become a legible sentence.

Will it hurt her?

Palock almost slaps himself in wonder and shock at the man, who is literally skinning himself alive with his own fingernails, yet still is concerned for the Chthon above himself.

“YES, BUT NOT AS MUCH AS IN YOUR BODY AND NOT BOTH OF YOU” He shouts over the screaming din.

“NEVAAAAAAHHH” He vehemently roars his refusal as he tears out his own eyeballs, crushing them in

his hands, engulfing them in yet more vile liquids.

…

“FOR CRYING OUT LOUD YOU TWO!!! IF YOU’RE ANY LOUDER THIS BLOODY KEEP WILL CRUMBLE” Kura comes screaming from the keep, overpowering both Palock’s frantic and forceful shouts along with the man’s hellish, tongueless wails.

No eyes look towards her, but both of them still turn their heads towards Kura as she bursts out from the doorway.

“JUST TELL ME WHAT IN THE FOURTEEN HELLS YOU’RE DOING?”

Palock winces under her voice, meekly responding, but the words being drowned in the non-stop wails of the man. Though after a few tries, he overspeaks the man.

"I'M TRYING TO GET THE CHTHON IN THE MIRROR, TO STOP HIM SCREAMING”

“LOOK! PUT THE DAMN CHTHON IN THE MIRROR BEFORE I PERSONALLY TURN YOU INTO ONE” Kura rages towards the man, skull cracking slightly.

“IAAAGOTHROUAAAAAAALLLHEAAAAPAAAAAHHHINAAAAH” He tries to speak in the midst of the screams, most of the message passing across.

“IF YOU WANT TO GET OUT OF HERE, PUT HER IN THE MIRROR, ONLY FOR A LITTLE BIT”

Almost instantly, the Chthon rockets out of the man, flying into the mirror and is engulfed by it with ease.

The man, with a few deep, gulping breaths, calms down at an alarming rate, until he stands up in prime condition…that is if one ignores the skinned arms, lack of tongue, eyes, teeth, nails and some ribs.

“Tandra, why’d you go?” He speaks to the mirror, concern lacing his tone.

Palock looks into the mirror too, to see Tandra, in Chthon form, miming incomprehensibly to the man, not that he can see anyway.

“Well whyever you did it, you’re coming back in when we get out of here” The man wags a finger at her before turning away from Kura. “Now you mentioned something about leaving here?”

Kura nods. “Yes, I’ll show you a way out” She starts walking back inside.

The man quickly dives around in search of his tome, and with the help of Palock, he quickly grasps it.

Both then quickly stumble after her, the man requiring a bit of help due to a few broken toes and lack of eyes.

Passing by several reapers, they all dart around the corridors, running to wherever they need to be.

“Do you have a preference of location?” Kura asks as they briskly walk.

“I don’t really know a good location…somewhere evil?” The man shrugs, not really caring it seems.

She abruptly swings right and rushes under a sign saying Caniia.

Turning right again, she walks through an open door with ‘North’ stopping inside, surrounded by a small ring of portals.

“Well I can’t see what’s going on, so explain?” he states obviously as he looks around the room without seeing anything.

“This is a room full of portals to the northern side of the Kingdom of Caniia. The portal on the side of your left arm, is where you should be going. It’s near Quercus” She explains, and Palock helps direct the man.

As they near the portal, Palock turns the man round and with his hem, places the mirror in the man’s free hand and is about to let go when Kura coughs.

“There’s no need to do that Palock, because you’re going with him”

He turns round “What? Why?” He asks confused.

“Well firstly, you don’t give random humans reaper equipment. And secondly, you know a lot about the Overworld, that’ll come in handy”

“But my reaper duties, and not to be rude or anything, but he’s just a human and not part of our duties” He raises his hands in the air, utterly confused as to why.

“Tell me priest, what are you trying to achieve?”

“At this point, find Norac” The man answers to the wall without doubt.

“You see Palock, something like that is definitely the job of a reaper”

With a loud sigh, Palock concedes and heads through the portal, mirror in hand.

The man, turning towards Kura, gives a wild grin. “Three years by yourself, praying and hoping wouldn’t really keep you sane really…revenge though…that’ll definitely keep you sane”

Laughing madly, the man stumbles into the wrong portal, to which Kura slaps her head, bones shivering from his dumbassery, as well as the way he saw right through her, even with no eyes.

…

“Graty, Chee, your turn” Doronius grunts as he stops, huffing from the hard work of lugging Cannith.

A young looking woman with two brown ponytails slings her simple shortbow over her shoulder before swapping places with Doronius. A smaller and younger version of her bounds after her and picks up the second rope from the lanky guy.

With much grunting, they both slowly drag the stretcher along, giving Cannith a slightly bumpy ride, but nothing too severe.

It had been two days since they had left, dragging Cannith behind them in the moonlight. Through those two days, it had been a series of small encounters with the wildlife, which all ended with a shower of arrows pincushioning them.

However, it had been two days and the monsters didn’t seem to get easier. Rather their difficult spiked a bit, almost killing one of them in a certain fight against a bear with spiked bones down its spine and sharp fur, till Cannith went into shock, accidentally punching off one of this strange bear’s legs.

They’d almost lost Cannith due to the shock, but with a lot of cpr, herbs and makeshift electric shocking as a defib, they brought him back to life.

That was their main highlight in the past two days.

Since that strange, bone spiked and feral bear, nothing else had attacked them. Actually they hadn’t even spotted a single malicious woodland creature in the past half day. It was odd and quite disconcerting for them.

“Alright, we’re official lost” The elderly fellow, Graf as everyone calls him, wrings his hands in the air.

“No we’re not, just keep going straight and we’ll soon find it” the small kid with brown hair, Lip as everyone calls him, snaps his fingers and continues to march forward.

“Can’t you see the trees have all changed, the lighting, the ambient music?” Graf lists the different things, of which some everyone missed; the change of ambient music.

They had gotten used to the music just playing softly in the background; they kind of forgot it was there.

Actively listening, they find that it is indeed quite different, a lot more wind instrumentally.

“Hmm, looks like Graf has a point” Panthress speaks up from the side to which most of them nod. All except Lip, until he finally concedes and nods too.

“Dammit, this map is all wrong, bloody thing” He takes out an old, hand drawn map and tears it into pieces.

“Wait” Doronius looks at Lip in shock “Why did you do that?!”

“It was annoying me” Lip shrugs non-commitally.

“IT’S THE ONLY ONE WE HAD” He blurts out, unable to contain his rage.

“Hey hey Doronius, calm down. He’s just a kid” Sleek, the slightly elven looking archer puts a reassuring hand on Doronius’ shoulder.

“A lippy little fucker that’s for sure. But look at this mess Sleek. That guy is going to die, and we are in the middle of nowhere with no idea where the nearest settlement could be and he’s going to die!!” Doronius clasps both of Sleek’s shoulders, rattling him to make sure his point goes across.

“There’s no point walking back, he’ll definitely die then. The only thing we can do now is go forward and hope” The lanky guy, Rick, butts in, clapping them both on the shoulder and motioning for the others to go forward.

He then walks up to Lip, squats down and looks him in the eye.

“Promise me you won’t break other people’s things ok?” His tone is not quite patronizing, but when one talks to a twelve year old kid, there is always a certain lacing of it.

“Fine” He rolls his eyes and continues on.

Shaking his head, Rick goes back beside Doronius, who finally calmed down and continued walking, on the left flank, watching the surroundings for enemies.

“I do hope we find somewhere for him soon” Graf sighs solemnly.

“Well, hope no further, nufufu” a light and merry voice sings from the trees above.

Everyone stops abruptly and look up, to see a small group of long haired men and women with sharp eyes and porcelain skin.

A gargle of sound comes from the direction of Sleek, who seems to have fainted upon sight of the elves, much to the shock of both parties.

…

“Well, I’m pretty sure her definition of evil is very different to my own” The man chuckles lightly as he slowly revolves around, taking in the beautiful sights of giant, thick trees, the canopies linking together to make a light green blanket, holey enough to allow much light in.

“Hauta!”A voice calls out from the trees, to which the man’s head swivels round to spot a lanky man with luscious and sleek golden hair pointing a drawn arrow at him.

“What?” The man spins his body towards the elf and continues spinning, utterly confused by the foreign tongue, and gets an arrow through his eye.

The man just looked up at the elf in mild confusion as to why he just got shot through the eye. The elf, faints due to the sheer shock of seeing the man show almost no reaction to the deadly wound.

Catching the elf as he drops almost twenty feet, he lays the poor man on the grassy floor.

“Ok, maybe this place could be a little evil, I see it now” he muses as he looks upon the unconscious elf.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-Author's Corner: Heyyy, short chapter today, just for setting up a nice little mini-arc as well as sort of moving away from Khthon which was a brief adventure for our little duo!

Anyways, hope to seeyou soon so please comment and review :D

-TRUE NORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRD