[https://i.imgur.com/vXCUEUl.jpg]
Several spheres of darkness appeared in front of the massive monster’s chest; these spheres were untouched by the glow of fire beneath them. With a swift movement, the entire cluster of shadow balls shot forth across the sky. They blasted through the smoky air and into the distance at an unbelievable speed. When the scattershot struck the outskirts of the city, where all the helpless citizens desperately tried to flee the city, every shadow sphere detonated with a blast of blue fire. Hatasuko could feel a score of souls fall silent in reality and then awaken in the tempest; their cries empowered the symphony of screams in his head. He could feel their misery take the form of a tear that rolled down his ash-stained cheek.
“Please… give me your strength,” Hatasuko whispered as he pulled back his arrow.
[https://i.imgur.com/nTZ0YVA.jpg]
As he stared down the shaft of the arrow, Hatasuko tilted his body and aimed his arrow at the golden eye of the Interfectus. He kept his arms completely flexed so that he could sustain the force of his powerful bow, and now that he was ready, he took the shot by releasing the arrow. His shot would have been perfect, but the Interfectus was simply too tall. The strong northwest wind blew the arrow off course before it ever reached the monster’s eye. It instead struck the hard surface of the demon’s body and broke without even leaving a scratch. Hatasuko felt his heart skip a beat because this miss was critical. The Interfectus now knew that it was under attack, and its golden eyes pierced through the smoky air until it found Hatasuko.
“I don’t have time for failure. I have to hit its eye!” Hatasuko said as a sense of urgency overtook his shaking body.
Hatasuko quickly pressed the nock of a second arrow against the bowstring on his weapon. He could feel the sweat on his skin evaporate from the extreme heat all around him; sparks swirled through the smoky air as he drew back another arrow. But before he could even tilt his arms and take aim, he saw that the Interfectus was ready to fight back. A cluster of shadow balls now floated in front of the massive demon, and its eyes glared directly upon him.
Despite his overwhelming urge to aim for the monster’s eye, Hatasuko chose instead to do the only thing he could to protect himself. He fired his arrow at a shadow sphere in the same moment that the Interfectus unleashed its scattershot. The arrow struck the sphere, so it detonated immediately; the burst of blue flames engulfed the other spheres and forced a massive explosion in the sky. The air in between Hatasuko and the Interfectus erupted with a bright blue inferno and a deafening roar. A series of fiery shockwaves struck them both, but the Interfectus was unaffected by the flickering flames. However, the same shockwaves knocked Hatasuko through the ashy street and engulfed him with sparks and smoke.
Before he could tell where he was, before he could even stop his ears from ringing with the echo of the fiery bursts, Hatasuko rolled around in the ashy street to extinguish every flame on his clothes. Though his whole body now ached in searing pain, he stared up through a thick cloud of smoke and watched the Interfectus float by overhead. It floated toward the citizens who helplessly tried to escape it.
“I used to believe it’s a miracle that I’ve survived as long as I have, but I stopped believing in miracles somewhere along the line. I used to believe that God was protecting me so that I could fulfill my destiny – so that I could free this world from misery. But somewhere along the line, I learned that my survival is no miracle. It is my penance for being too weak to save her. It is the punishment for daring to save this world from this nightmare, and my punishment is to see that nightmare again and again. My punishment is to relive the horror of the Interfectus, and to continuously relive the reality that I cannot save them, no matter how hard I try. I can only pray that it is temporary.”
[https://i.imgur.com/X9DrywV.jpg]
As the smoke swirled all around him, Hatasuko saw that his sweat had evaporated long ago. As he struggled to climb upright, he fought through a rough episode of coughing due to the smoke. The heat was so powerful that he felt like his light skin was turning red, so he dashed away from the searing flames. His legs struggled to uphold his weight, but he had no time to falter in any way. Instead, he started chasing after the Interfectus as quickly as he could. As he ran through the smoldering streets, Hatasuko had to continuously jump over wreckage or veer away from fiery debris, but he kept his eyes focused on the demon. He watched it fly over the city of Bartric at a speed that no human could possibly escape. The transparent layer in the sky looked as turbulent as the ocean in a storm, but the light of the stars could still pierce the darkness. The starlight even pierced the pluming smoke, though it was overpowered by the glow of the burning city.
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The Interfectus suddenly stopped flying over the smoldering rooftops of the devastated city. Its massive feet came crashing down in a street that had already been leveled by a scattershot earlier in the onslaught; a cloud of dust and debris flew up around its feet. A collective shout went up from the people in the distance as they scattered to save themselves from the monster, but their bodies were weak and tired. Hatasuko knew that they had probably already accepted their inevitable end. They had probably accepted it long ago. Everyone in the world of Agrideī knew that this threat was looming in the shadows; everyone knew that the darkness could take any one of them at any time.
Now that the Interfectus had set its feet on the ground, it activated its weapon and summoned a scattershot of shadow spheres. Though he saw this, Hatasuko charged on at full speed through the ashy streets with his bow in his left hand and an arrow in the right. He managed to hook the arrow on the bowstring as he ran through the smoke. He knew that he had to take the shot as quickly as possible, so he crashed himself into a large wooden wagon just to slow himself down; the impact knocked the wagon onto its side. With his golden hair glowing from the orange flames in the background, Hatasuko pulled back his arrow and then shot it into the sky, but he was too slow. The Interfectus had unleashed its scattershot of shadow balls at a crowd once again, but something miraculous happened first. A projectile struck one of the shadow spheres before it approached the civilians, and then every sphere exploded harmlessly in the sky with an eruption of blue fire. Every building was illuminated by a sudden flash of azure light. Every wide eye watched the blue flames fade away in the city streets. Before the light disappeared entirely, Hatasuko saw his arrow hit the roof of a building in the distance.
“I don’t know what stopped the scattershot, but this is no time to celebrate. The people will be more vulnerable now than ever before. Our eyes are adjusted to the darkness of a world illuminated only by starlight. Light is beautiful, but it is also very dangerous. It blinds us to the reality of the darkness, so now they’ll be left to stumble with half-blind eyes in wreckage that they cannot see,” Hatasuko groaned as he forced his tired legs to dash from block to block.
As Hatasuko ran through the dirt street with his eyes glaring at the motionless monster up ahead, he saw something at the corner of the next block. The building at this corner had been destroyed earlier in the onslaught, but he knew that an Interfectus would never attack without a specific target. As Hatasuko ran by, his golden eyes stared into the home and saw splashes of blood stained across the walls and floor. There was a mother on the ground, holding her bloody child in her arms. Both of their bodies were barely recognizable. Even in death, Hatasuko could feel their anguish. Even in death, he could hear their lost screams.
[https://i.imgur.com/AJvgzQl.jpg]
“They are my curse and also my fuel,” he whispered as he ran on by.
A shout of terror echoed through the sky as the Interfectus levitated its feet off the ground once again. Waves of darkness rolled across the transparent plane in the sky. At the end of the block up ahead, two brothers hid in the street behind a wooden wagon, though their curious eyes glared at the demon of flashing blades and shifting shadows. Hatasuko ran by the brothers and hooked another arrow onto his bowstring, but he chose not to shoot it now. If he did, he risked endangering the nearby boys.
“No, honey, please! Please get up! You can’t stay in the street,” yelled the frantic voice of a woman, just a couple blocks up ahead.
Before he could even see the people, Hatasuko watched the Interfectus unleash its first weapon – the blade-arm of shadows. It shot down faster than an arrow and dismembered the woman in a single strike. Hatasuko could feel rage and anguish both flood his heart, but the Interfectus did not stop here; it then slashed its blade through the man she called after with a lethal speed. In the moment before the monster could retract its blade from the flesh of its victim, it was struck by a high-speed arrow that harmlessly bounced off. The Interfectus turned and glared at Hatasuko once again with its piercing golden eyes. And though bruises and ashes scattered his body, Hatasuko fired a second arrow straight at the eye of his enemy. This time, he had aimed perfectly with regard to the monster’s height and the northwest winds, but the Interfectus blocked with its second weapon; it summoned a shield of swirling shadows.
“I’ve drawn its eyes!” he yelped.
[Author's note: Please do note that this chapter is not over. There is one more part to this chapter. I'll post it soon. For information about my AI-generating practices and the inconsistencies therein, please check out the blog linked in my profile]