Inhuman screeches clashing with Pyrei’s pain-driven screams rippled throughout the night tropic. The beast swung the humongous, blood-drenched cleaver back with a single hand, splattering stone and foliage with red. The horned beast beneath the night blanket rose the blade overhead before the crystal moon, glistening its trophied vermillion liquid in its celestial greatness. Its head turned down to Pyrei and brought down the blade again. A splattering of the crushed rocky ground sent aloft pelted the rolling Pyrei. In a sudden strike, she planted both of her legs into the animal's abdomen. The retaliation seemed only to fuel its bloodlust as the animal shrieked a blood curdling cry. With a single hand, the hunter swung the blade moonward and ripped it toward the downed Pyrei in an unhinged flurry. Four maddened slashes chomped at the nimble light mage, but only the final flail was able to feed – a chunk of flesh off her left leg.
The wound ran red but the damage hadn’t been profound enough to hinder adrenaline from carrying her flee. She disappeared into the black forest, maneuvering around tree and boulder as if native to the island. The beast, however, bore down on its prey, causing the ears to cry as a mix of its shrieks and the terrible sound similar to rough metal battling chalk polluted the once silent night as the long cleaver dragged along the stony ground. The rocky scratching softened into the aggressive rustling of dirt, bush and occasional collision of rock and tree in its deranged hunt. Perhaps an amplification brought about by the hundreds of trees, the huffing, roaring and growling of the demon seemed to grow hungrier the longer it pursued the sorceress. Its head began to twitch and jitter as its legs' cycling rate increased. The breathing of the monster tickled the bolting woman’s neck, triggering her to dive behind a great forest tree and fluidly rolling back onto her feet and continuing her sprint. The beast, however, failed to match her agility and tripped over itself in its unsuccessful attempt to adapt to the sudden change of direction. It plunged the blade into soil to push itself up and released an enraged high pitched roar. In a flood of frustration, it swung the cleaver at the tree, sending chunks and bark aloft as the towering giant collapsed.
What is going on… Is that a thing that's really there? Am I still in a dream? Her thoughts stormed with the gazing of her bloodied hands. Her hands clenched, forcing an increased stream of blood briefly. Her body jolted with a surge of pain from the squeeze of the palms, delivering her the answer she sought. There are countless tales of sea monsters but I’ve never heard about any being terrestrial! Yazzalo said no one was here– but that thing undoubtedly is. By technicality he's correct but would he really not speak of this? Was this a choice of semantics? Wait a minute… wh–why is it so quiet?
When the ghastly pale, sweat-monsooned faced Pyrei glanced behind her in her escape, Pyrei’s heart plunged into her intestines. A horrible, terrible sight from behind scarred her. The thumping and bumping of the blood-pumping organ played in her ears like a hundred drums being pounded around her all at once. Several syringes of consternation were injected into her brain, each increasing her heart at a seemingly endless rate. Oh no, no, no… this quickly descended from horrendous to atrocious… Where did it go?!
The only sounds accompanying the doe were the chirping of tone-deaf insects, the careless breeze and the incessant, pounding of her heart. Like the arid land, her throat dried and grew sore with her frantic panting. She continued to move, but was hindered by her toes falling beneath an exposed tree root. Instinctively, her hand prevented her breathless collapse when it impacted a nearby tree to support the weak legs. A profound nauseousness fell on Pyrei as the overwork of her heart and lungs’ caught up to her and piled on. An omen from the guts delivered through sickening salivation of generating regurgitation built in her throat as the simultaneous strive to collect even an ounce of oxygen wrapped a chain around her lungs. Her mind screamed and cursed at the legs but their thirst for even a sip of energy overpowered the commander’s howls. Feeling pain grow in her left hand, she uplifted it from the bark and examined the bloody palm. Chipped wood invaded the blade-born wound and the chips punctured out the back of her hand. With her index and thumb, she grasped the chips and paused for a bracing. When enough courage had intoxicated her blood, she yelped in synchronization of each pull, tossing one after the other for the bloody splinters to adhere with the dirt.
The detrimental soul clenched her hand and her eyes welled. “What d–did I do?” her voice chopped. “I’m damn tired of this… The ghost of Windview, the Moon, this… thing, and the others ever since Klazza– no, even before that. What is with it all– at this point it may truly be better to just submit.”
The rustling echoes of leaves and the crunching of branches crawled into the ears, almost as if licking the meatus' to lubricate the path for its trailing brethren. Amongst the ambience, miming behind each wave of sound, a low snarl. Pyrei's chest tightened with anxiety at the subtle growl, but her focus fell upon her gored hand. She stared it at and, similarly to before, clenched it. Except now, her fists steamed and glared like the morning sun.
"No, I did it again. Zolton already scolded me for this, yet I did it again…” the shining conjurer uttered with tight teeth, “What is wrong with me? Why should I submit? If I don’t fight back then I’m just bone to the dog; a vapid, flimsy chew thing. But if I do use my magic, I’ll at least be able to leave a mark on it that it’ll never forget, even if it shortens my life. Should I regret my decisions in the future, I will smile proudly knowing I caused this infernal spawn to suffer even some...”
The echo of stressed wood and crunching leaves pierced the tree-backed Pyrei’s ears. She closed her eyes and took a heart-calming breath with her glowing hands before her chest. Quickly, she ripped off the right sleeve of her black jacket and wrapped it around the cleaver-struck portion of her leg. With another snap ever so tiny, a little twig drifted down in the wind. It drifted with lackadaisical, landing finely onto the shoulder, where it rested. With the most insignificant uptilt of her head, a terrible hand devoured her face and ripped Pyrei upwards through the tree and beyond its canopy. The great terror scaled the towering plant with terrifying speed like a spider racing up a wall. Just before reaching the peak of the lofty tree, it grabbed onto an object protruding from the bark and ripped a familiar grand cleaver from it before leaping high into the moon-bright night. It stared down at her, seeming to quiver with adrenaline-drunk blood. The white luminosity from the sky titan of the dark hours showered the beast and the mage, providing a clear sight for both. Portions of the beast’s head gleamed bright, even paining the eyes should they stare directly. “What is that? What type of skin does this thing have?” she uttered with gravity tethering her spine.
Beneath her left foot a yellow light manifested. It flowed steadily for, but soon began expelling a grand show, rotating the sorceress so that her legs were nearest to the ground. Immediately upon her feet touching the ground, her upper half leaned back as the cleaver flew over stomach. As if on springs, a flip backwards saved her from a goring of the beast's horns. As if now trying to mimic human movement, the thing trotted over to the blade. Its knees seemed cemented and it had to work to overcome the stiffness. The weapon began to glow an ominous gray as it stayed impaled into a boulder. Its hand shadowed over the brown hilt and a blinding explosion devoured the beast. Following the flash, all was black. Demolished log and stone shifted aside as an arm breached from beneath the rubble. The devil delivered a guttural hiss with its freeing and brought its hand about its head to let it rest there as if an intoxicated sailor. Its body steamed and smoked from the searing strike, but it did not seem too bothered. With a sniff of its nostril, its attention was pulled forward where a second shining explosion blasted it even further through the forest, collapsing several more trees.
This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
An unsettling silence filled the forest’s natural aroma with a strong scent of incompletion. The ground had been desecrated with obliterated stone and plant matter, burying much of the dirt beneath it. But amongst the desecration, a small gleaming. Pyrei lifted her foot, but paused. Instead, a faintly violet Light Magic circle manifested in her palm faced outwards and unleashed an outward explosion. The smoke cleared and the dust settled but although the debris littered upon the former forests’ floor was not any less overwhelming, not even a hint of life reared itself. With caution guiding her toes and bloodlust readying her hands to annihilate a mouse should it squeak too loud, the wizard crept through the rubble. Each step played in her mind at a volume amplified by her hysterical nerves but at last, the shining piece awaited right before her. It was a curved object with a pointed edge jutting from beneath the piles of demolished wood and a rock. Her left palm wrapped around the pointed cylinder and she pulled it up from just below the point, freeing the silver colored object from its makeshift prison. With only a glance, Pyrei recoiled and dropped the thing, startling her once more when its collision with some of the broken rock made a loud clang. “Is that not— hold on…” she mumbled.
She grabbed the item again and turned her back to the moon. “This isn’t its head…” she said, holding it up high for the lunar light and examined the piece, discovering it to be a sort of helmet. It was silver in most parts, rusted and stained with glistening red in others. It had a pair of symmetrical, long forward facing cylinders that curved upwards into points like horns. Just beneath them were two symmetrical slits, with the one on the right having been chipped some at the lower half while the left had suffered some scratches and a bit of peeling. The lower part of the helmet covered the face completely, bestowing a look of a metallic face. Only at the bottom did it widely open; the location for the insertion of a skull. At the nasal region of the metal head cage, an ovalish opening was ridden with jagged, chipped inner sides. Pyrei gently rubbed her thumbs on the opening and they seemed to slide inside instead of dropping within suddenly. There must’ve been pressure applied at this point, something blunt. Likely from the scuffle, she concluded. At last, at the bottom of the mask, three parallel rectangular openings stood vertically in front of the area where a mouth would hide behind. They ran from the mouth to just above the ending point of the chin.
Yazzalo has some explaining to do, she seethed. I’ll take this back with me and force him to speak of this conundrum. The shifting and crushing of debris barged through Pyrei’s muse. Stiffened by reluctance and denial, her sights slowly turned her left. A back of spine-hugging skin rose from the debris like a breaching whale. Its visceral hocks and guttural gasps beat on the eardrums like the reverberation of vile regurgitation. It was rendered onto its wobbling arms and knees as the destruction overwhelmed it. The limbs fought direly to keep the thing supported, subjugating it into another fit of excruciating coughs and revolting spitups. The thing glanced at Pyrei for barely a full second before whipping its head away. It seems this is not a mere ‘thing’ – no beast of the wild... At least not in a literal sense.
She outstretched her arm and sent a hazy white sphere of light. Slowly, it drifted towards the creature and almost completed its short journey, but the animal released a throaty hiss at it before leaping away from the shining sphere into some distant shadows. Although the darkness blanketed its body, a silhouette could still be made out. The two stared one another down, with Pyrei refusing to give it an escaping opportunity should she blink. Eventually the creature's wounds drained too much of its fluid and the beast collapsed. She moved cautiously to it, yet still confident with each step. The thing rolled onto its stomach and in desperate maneuver, dragged itself along the dirt and through the debris. Alas, her feet were before the incapacitated being. She squinted with skepticism and raised a light above the body, but it still squirmed about. In agitation, Pyrei placed a foot over it and reeled back her heel, rolling the thing onto its back. “I’m going to need you to stop for a moment,” she warned.
"In the air before the bright moon, I noticed it. A head of metal; the body of man. And here your 'skull' be – in my hands," she mused.
She looked upon him with eyes of shame and anger. "There is enough evil in the world, yet you wish to bring more to it. Do you live the life of a serial murderer?"
The beastly man twitched and jittered on the ground, panting like an old overworked cur. His eyes were deep and sunken into his skull as if the greatest horrors had flashed before him and ingrained themselves into his mind. His great abundance of hair was stiff and plastered with all forms of old plant matter, crushed insects and seemed almost like a very infested mane. Contributing to his dross features were deep wounds at the sides of the nose. The two punctures leaked white fluid with tinges of green and yellow in them. He grumbled, groaned, and babbled incoherently, but not as a maddened man. But more so like a frustrated dog. Pyrei recoiled with unease, but her disgusted gaze began to fall into one of sympathy and mercifulness. Repulsive, poor man… I do not know if this is a desperate act for survival or if you truly have succumbed to the wild, but I think it’s best I put you down. Both for your good and all others.
The Light Mind hovered her right index finger above the creature, pointed at his head and manifested a ring of light cast at the tip. The circle’s light became increasingly vibrant in preparation for an expulsion of the brilliant beam. It reflected in the maddened man’s eyes as he stared at it, but he seemed to lose interest in it. Instead, his crazed pupils turned down to her much less aggressive hand and stared at it. The shining metal helmet hung in her left grip, shimmering in the reflectance of her light. His throat gurgled before eventually spitting up some fluid that traveled down the side of his face, “Th– that’s not yours! That’s mine! Give it back to mmm–me! That’s mmm–mine! Y–y–you stole it! You stole it from me! Give it back!”
Pyrei froze in awestruck, yet somewhat bewildered with her surprise that a human was able to speak. She was unmoved as she processed. She tracked his stare’s path and ended at the horned helmet. He wants this back? I was to bring this back to Yazzalo to interrogate him, but I suppose allowing him to keep it long enough for the duration of his execution is fine. Although, he does seem captivated by it so what if I am to give it to him and he runs off once he has regained possession? I believe that it is best that I keep it on me.
She stared at him with a demeanor of stone and the small, hazy, moonlight violet beam flashed forward into his forehead. The unsightly man’s jaw fell agape as his head tilted back from the impact. A tightness compressed Pyrei’s heart as she watched the executed one before her. A black dot at the center of his forehead steamed. She looked into it from her distance and found flesh and bone within, bringing her the confirmation she sought. “I apologize— if you even deserve to have one,” she uttered beneath her breath. The wizard turned her back to the corpse and made her way back to the falls. As she was pacing back, a dimly lit object caught her attention. Just a dozen or so feet before her lodged into a stone was a faint thing jutting out of it. She studied it from afar with unease for a moment before it returned to her. Oh… That’s his blade, she recalled with a glance at her bleeding palms.
As she looked down at her palms, the ground beneath her began to illuminate. It was a color familiar to her; a faint purple. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her right forearm and found that the light was still there. Have I been awake for too long? I would not be surprised to find that I’ve become crazed with all that has happened in the past twenty-four hours… At least I think that’s how long it has been… It has felt much more like a month… I need to get back and rest–
A breeze blew past her left side, fluttering her hair in the direction of the abrupt gust. She stared at her left palm, frozen. It swayed in the wind, empty. With reluctant, yet a steady upwards motion of her head, she saw it. Before her, a body tripped onto its hands and knees faced away. From its neck, veins illuminated a pale purple stretched down to just below the shoulders before fading into the rest of the more or less humanoid, natural body. Its head rose and stiffly turned to face her, revealing itself to her. The helmet fixed upon the neck of bright veins like illuminated roots, outpouring the ghastly violet light from every opening of the metallic head cage. The strange light seeped out of each gape and crack and crashed into the ground as if a dense purple gas being pulled down by gravity. “You—you stole Father’s great blessing from me. That— that makes you a thief! And thieves,” he growled with increasing luminosity from his eyes beneath the metal, “must be punished!”