Nathanial Ark

The nagging at the back of my mind to follow the naked man is making my foot itch.

The way he just squeezed out of thin air implies strong magic and being able to take that kick on naked flesh and still get back up let alone the way he finished that death-dealer. He’s very strong.

Texas, like usual is starring off into nothing while mechanically making new arrows. He has that vacant gaze you see on soldiers broken by war. On the bright side, I don’t think he even has to think about his actions the way his fingers move with such surety.

*Sigh. He won’t take well to the idea.

‘’I think we should follow him,’’ I say.

‘’What?’’ Texas is startled awake.

‘’The naked man that took out the death-dealer.’’

First stupefied silence, then suspicion. ‘’Why?’’

‘’We could shelter in his wake from further attacks. If we could get across the plains we could get deeper into populated areas and get lost with other people fleeing eastwards. Those cities probably haven’t even been attacked yet, we could get lost in the crowds. Stock up on supplies and be on our way to the eastern border and out of Rabat in no time.’’

‘’You know where we are? What makes you think there will be people east? There are other things hunting people every which way I’ve been, east could be worse.’’

‘’The invasion came from the west,’’ isn’t that obvious?

‘’I am not running from your invasion, I have things you know nothing off after me.’’

‘’You’re running from death and we have better chances of staying alive in the shadow of someone we already know can deal with the death dealers easily.’’

‘’We are doing fine, that person could easily kill us for trying to follow. I did see what he did to that death dealer, in two hits? I have trouble even downing one with 6 arrows in the heart so I don’t think jumping from a boiling kettle into ragging fire is better.’’

‘’He’s not one of them though, didn’t you feel it? He didn’t feel as... alien as the death dealers do. Come on, even you have to admit we had no chance getting away from the brute that was chasing us this time.’’

‘’The way he’s going takes him straight towards that which seeks my death, I’m not going that way.’’

‘’You can see the future can’t you, it’s how you found me and set up that ambush that saved us both. Do the thing now.’’

‘’I need to sleep to see ahead, and I can only see my own possible futures.’’

‘’Then sleep.’’

‘’It doesn’t work like that and it’s not so easy. I can’t control what I see or don’t see. I won’t be going east tomorrow so I won’t dream about going east and I’ll never know what awaits me there. I can’t see imaginary futures-‘’

‘’Just sleep already, I’ll take watch till you wake.’’

He sleeps, the night eerie with wild cries and it's cold, we’re both tired so as soon as he lays down I hear his breath even out. He’d have made a good soldier being able to sleep like that.

‘’Noo!’’ he startles awake quicker than I expected. Eyes wide in panicked horror, sour sweat having spontaneously drenched him in an instant.

I let him look around until that distant look leaves his eyes and he notices where he actually is. He grunts dropping the arrow and lying back down.

I let him be as he calms himself, I wonder how crazy I’d be if I died in my dreams every time I slept. Died in ways I’d have died in real life so not just dreams.

He’s asleep again in no time, tucked in a foetal posture like a scared child. His gift has kept us alive and that’s all that matters, without his foresight we’d long be dead.

*

Texas

We jog quickly within the canyons, attacked by rock badgers and a pair of feral-cats we fend off but otherwise it’s quiet between the walls of the ground. Time has no meaning but we go far, only when we come out of the twilit passages for air I notice where we are, I notice where the sun is, I notice we’re going east.

Why would I allow myself to be led towards my own doom?

We travel a ways under an unnaturally stifling heat of the elements, the air heavy and hot blanketing the plains the further inward we go. There are no attacks by death-dealers, there is no further attack by the creatures that are native to this place. Everything is quiet.

A grey cloud blankets the horizon.

My heart stops as there in the distance, under the unnatural haze of the blazing sun a mist persists even in the zenith of the day. An unnatural grey, black thing of floating blood innards and all manner of unsavoury vapour congealed into a horror that hides greater horrors within its unclean shroud.

Fear grips me tight as my doom coils and boils with excitement sensing my presence so near exciting the filthy sanguine cloud billowing over the horizon like the waves of an ocean. The black cloud is unstoppable with the bottomless power of the unnatural things fuelling it.

Fear grips me as I face the thing that's taken my villagee and been hunting me from the Myrkwood across lands unknown, my death coming for me. Even from a distance the cold whispers within that unholy cloud reach me with their suffering, people i loved now twisted into hunting me till my soul is added to that filth.

*Shudder.

What is that?

To my utter amazement, there on the edge of the cloud stands a figure in stolen undergarments fighting the mists and rending them apart with his bare hands as they take myriad forms trying and failing to engulf him. An immovable rock around which the mists part as they swallow everything else in their path,

...me included.

[HA!]

I wake with a start holding my throat, just another dream. I breathe in relief, breathing clean air. I’m not being strangled from within, I’m not being rung out from the inside, I’m not being reduced to an apparition of horror to feed the things in the mist with my corpse left to rot in a contorted caricature of death. The way their bodies looked when I found them...

I sigh, relieved to be alive but still shudder at the phanton feeling of death lingering.

These deaths are only dreams for now but one day they won't be. I don't want to die like that, devoured by those creatures like Silvia, like Uncle Vled, like Lilian...

That man can fight them though, that man can stop the mists maybe.

‘’Well?’’

I look up at Nate, he’s tired and hungry but clear-eyed and determined to live. That’s what I like about him most, that will to live.

‘’We go east.’’

He nods like he expected nothing else, I don’t understand how he could listen to these gods of his and blindly do the things they whisper.

"Let me sleep again so we have a working plan.’’

‘’Sure,’’ he says without missing a beat.

After taking a piss I try to work myself back to sleep, it should be easy with how fatigued I am but the memory of my death is still fresh in my mind. I keep my bow close as sleep takes me.

* *

Sachihiro van Damage

Being back, it feels different than I expected it to. Maybe I romanticised getting out of that gaol at the back-end of the world but I’m quickly realising that being here isn’t going to be much easier than it was down there.

According to the map, I’m thousands of kilometres away from where I need to be, months away and I no longer have that flying shield-board to get me there quickly. How long has it been now since last I saw them, it feels like ages.

Steadily I jog onwards, towards the direction my spirit points. Without those blood-crystals I have no idea to whom I’m actually heading but it's definitely one of the kids I clearly sense. It’s roughly on the way towards the Foothills so at least I’m not going too far out of my way but is one of my kids really where I feel?

Maybe the map is wrong or my spirit senses are just going haywire. Could it be another connection like the one I have with Katya? I tap into that to attempt communication with my ‘summoned’ creature but getting nothing but noise in response again.

*Sigh, I thought I’d be able to get in touch once I was out of there but it seems not.

With a bit of concentration, I listen to my spirit again, feeling the threads within me comparing them to each other. Without much doubt, one of my children lies directly in the direction I’m heading, at least if any of the shit I feel spiritually is to be trusted at all.

I break stride slowing as I feel something getting ready to ambush me from the uneven rocky soil. Stepping lightly-

It shoots out of the ground with coiling tentacles I jump over, I duck under, swerve around backhanding with spirit-chakra infused strikes slapping away tentacles that explode like shattering clods from the impact.

The ground rumbles, more tentacles coming at me from the soil camouflaged creature. I manoeuvre around them slapping away any tentacles I can’t avoid leaving organic dust choking the air in my wake. I’m through the creature’s reach an instant later and continue my jog away from its immerging lumbering form.

I don’t wait around, leaving it in an outraged state billowing shaking the ground but it's not fast enough to pursue. An underground ambush creature, interesting speciman but doesn't look tasty so I ignore it bellowing in indignation.

That was the first creature I’ve sensed to be close to the 3rd tier I’ve come across and I feel that was relatively easy to deal with. Hmm...

The sun gets heavy in the sky the deeper into the plain I go, keeping to a steady pace I eat the distance. There are birds gliding through the clear sky, their rich calls reaching far across the plain bringing to the fore remembrances of better times passed. Many of the creatures abound in these parts are ambush or scavengers avoiding me as they sense my passage, I take it all in as novelty.

Being out here, being on course, being so close to being able to protect my family. Even having lost everything but the Library Orb I’m not ungrateful to the Draug for getting me here. I’m happy, a bit excited but also scared that something else will delay me, something else might go wrong, I might get lost again. I may even be lost now.

A lot scares me about being so much closer to a goal I’ve been striving towards for so long. I hardly remember any of the plans I had about our exodus from the 'calamities' way back when. I hate the word now, 'calamity', it just isn't enough to fully describe what has befallen me. I wonder if that was a world gate the Draug used to get me here, truly a powerful creature that. I wonder why it didn’t eat me, Herald of the Draug. I pray I don’t come to regret the title.

I feel like I’ve been released from captivity with how gluttonously I’m taking everything in. Life is hard and being a man is tough but fuck if the world isn’t a beautiful place. Everything in creation is amazing, even the dust under my feet creates a soft film especially compared to the hard rock Underworld I’ve spent gods know how long transversing through.

To feel sunlight on my skin. Do people understand how crazy a phenomenon it is to feel the sun on their skin? The light dances on my arm creating a reflection that reveals much about me physically. Is that how it works, does light expose objects for those with eyes to perceive?

My skin is soft, yielding yet it’s tough. Flushed with blood and heat yet there are shimmering glitters scattered about that speak to the metal pieces embedded and dispersed within my body, pieces of Kata and Razor and Honour stuck in my skin. Easily perceivable now that the actual sun shines on me, no wonder I never lost connection to them.

The tone of my skin is different than I’ve grown up with, I’m darker toned surpsingly enough. A golden honeyed malay I previously didn’t have keeps attracting my gaze to my skin. I wonder what I look like now.

Up ahead an anomoly has my heart pounding with my neckhairs erect. That cloud isn’t normal.

It’s low on the ground misting forward from over the towering wall of an escarpment in the distance, far off still but everything about it is off.

My route curves left somewhat, best try to avoid anything that might delay or otherwise inconvenience me in any way. Especially something so eerie, especially so close to getting home.

The rest of the cloud drapes across the rest of the escarpment stretching much further in the distance than I can reach to go around it. Not unless I run like crazy maybe, and even then I may not make the edge in time, I’m definitely curious how long I can run at top speed though so let's test ourselves.

I shoot off at full sprint amplifying everything with spirit enhanced aura, I feel like I’m floating. I dig with every step taken, one thing I’m not doing is turning back.