Chapter 68: Silenced

Zan was luckily within the range of his eldritch senses, and he used them to sense the life force of all the surrounding creatures near him. For some odd reason the bird in front of him was able to completely evade the bloodlust nose of his senses, but everyone else was noticeable to him like a candle in the darkness.

The youth sensed that Gayle’s lifeforce was still burning, even brighter than he had thought under that venom too. That bit of information gave him a sense of reassurance that it was not too late to speed on over. First however, he had to deal with this little bastard.

Zan’s gray muscles ballooned, noticeably enlarging in size by a few inches. In response the white owl simply stared at him with those harrowing, large black eyes. In the next moment the youth hammered his legs into the ground and beamed into the skies like an uncoiled spring. An explosion rang out into the air, followed by more booms that frightened the servants still inside their carriages.

Peeking out from the windows and doors of their carriages, they were met with the scene of that stranger fighting their previous leader’s pet. Surprisingly that normal looking owl was matching the boy in strength. Yet, as they continued to watch the shocking scene, their own eyes started to turn fully black just like the owl’s. Suddenly, they fell into a weird trance where all that they saw was the darkness of the night. Later on when they awoke, they would find that there was a gap between their memories that they could not remember no matter how hard they tried.

Over and over the two collided. One stayed in the skies while the other challenged the heavens with the help of the earth. Despite the youth’s physical superiority, there was a black aura swimming around the white owl that seemed to meld its form with the element of darkness. It boosted the owl’s physical ability to an incredible degree, while allowing it to even slip through some attacks as if it was a shadow rather than a physical being.

No progress was made, and Zan was becoming increasingly frustrated that he was being held up by this random bird.

BOOM!

The youth smashed down towards the earth again, holding an impatient expression on his face.

“Get out of my way, you little shit.”

Suddenly the owl saw a red aura start to manifest from the boy, before he commanded his energy to fill up the pathways of his eldritch limbs. His two legs and left arm could only be partially filled, a single red pathway reaching down towards the very end of each appendage like traversing a miniature maze. In contrast, his right arm was fully bathed in red light, and it started to turn metallic black.

‘So young yet with such ability…’

Immediately the owl summoned its own will, and a grayish tint was added to the black aura surrounding itself. Its intuition warned that if it really got hit by that monstrous right arm, it might very well break all the bones in her body. Even if she shifted the physical structure of her being into darkness for a moment, the incredible force was still likely to displace or even disperse her form, doing much worse than breaking her bones.

‘You fight with great might and force.’

‘But you too are young, boy.’

‘Do you really expect your foes to fight you on your terms?’

Swirling gray and black energy concentrated into the owl’s eyes, and suddenly reality shifted.

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Zan looked up at the owl and an uneasy feeling welled up within his chest.

‘Tigers and dragons might compete in a test of strength.’

‘But why should I do so when such a thing isn’t my gift?’

Mysterious, invisible circles of energy expanded out of the owl’s eyes. Within Zan’s vision, the endless blue sky shifted into the darkness of night. Suddenly large, towering trees pierced the clouds of the sky and the bright moon replaced the sun that was hanging overhead. The boy found himself lost in the endless expanse of a colossal forest, and within the darkness of night, multiple glowing eyes laid their gaze on him.

Zan’s eyes turned totally black just like the owl’s, and he stood there trapped in a different reality. After a while, he too should fall unconscious and forget his memory of the whole event between them.

Meanwhile, the white owl looked back towards Gayle’s plight, observing how the girl would get herself out of the mess she made.

Outside of the owl’s senses however, a reanimated hand was crawling up Zan’s back. Once Quin reached his head, he bonked him over the head with one of its enlarged fingers, trying to wake him up. When that didn’t work, Quin struck at the area of his black heart.

THUMP!

Outside of everyone's expectations, instead of snapping Zan out of the illusion, the strike instead triggered a memory within the eldritch blood that was not his.

The dark night of the great forest was erased totally and completely, and instead the boy found himself in a much more incredible scene. Suddenly he was no longer in a humanoid body at all, and he found his horror of a form careening through the beauty of outer space. Planets, star systems, supernovas and blackholes filled his new senses.

The boy had never seen space before, so he had no idea what he was looking at. It was strange and beautiful, and the sensory glands within his new body were observing every detail of everything that was around him. He could literally taste the air of a planet that was ten million miles away from him.

In fact, his newfound senses were so strong that despite the emptiness of space that separated each celestial body, he was experiencing sensory overload just from being able to hear the sounds of the planets and stars. Their music was strange and deafening. It was so loud that it was going to burst ears that he never knew he had, and the sound was nothing like he had ever heard before.

Suddenly behind the owl, numerous tentacles and tumorous outgrowths grew from out of the boy’s eldritch limbs. Eyes and new sensory glands formed on his skin, and the boy she thought was trapped in her illusion was now staring at her as if she was food. The eldritch limbs started to shift and snap, trying to transform into a ghastly, hideous body more suitable for devouring life forms and planets.

The white owl was looking at the monstrosity with nervous tension. It could tell that whatever the boy was, he was not a threat the previous generations of Eok’s guardians faced. The owl wondered if this form was enough to stop him should he look to eat her alive.

Though luckily, the transformations ended and reverted as soon as Zan regained consciousness. The abilities that he held in that cosmic form of the illusion, neared the ability of gods, and he was not ready for an inkling of that power. Nor was his current body enough to support the immense amounts of energy that it demanded.

There was one benefit to it all however. Although he could not recreate the complex sensory glands of that cosmic abomination, he found he could somewhat enhance his physical senses.

Zan jumped into the skies and focused his vision. Zooming in from a few hundred meters away he was now able to see the fight more clearly, instead of having to feel the life force of each being.

As Zan landed on the stone ground, the boy and the owl locked eyes with each other. The owl was readying itself for combat once again, intent on using more of its ocular powers to suppress the boy. Zan looked at the owl as if he wanted to beat the shit out of it, and he was sure that the owl could feel his intentions from the way it was perking up. Yet in the end…the youth started to walk away.

The owl looked back towards the scene of the fight. It’s incredible hearing was keeping tabs upon Gayle and her struggle all along the confrontation with Zan. It seemed now, that her fight was just about to end.

Earlier…

In her blurry vision, the girl saw red blots of fire and heat swiftly approaching her. The frontline of her squad rushed to her aid but it was too late. Gayle was drowned in a sea of fire, and her party watched as her figure was engulfed in flames. The explosion of all the combined strikes resulted in a thunderous blast, and a large cloud of smoke enveloped the vision of everyone at the scene.

A few of her members dropped down to their knees, processing that their valiant leader had just died right in front of them. Yet in the next moment, screams were heard from the opposite party and the more experienced members of the group once again rushed through the smoke and fog.

Contrary to everyone’s expectations the girl was still alive and breathing, her talon sword bathed in the blood of two unsuspecting individuals. Sometime within the explosive blast and the following cloud of smoke, she assassinated two members of the backline and dove into the smoke once again.

She made herself known to her party, and under the guise of the smoke, she formulated a plan to pick off member by member of the group. The smoke only lasted thirty seconds, but within that short interval of time the only remaining member of the group was Vera.

Whether it was her plan all along, or simply the cruel predatory instincts of a bird of prey influencing her decisions, but Vera was forced to watch as each member of her party died right in front of her.

What the white owl and Zan saw at the end of their confrontation, was Gayle flying in the skies once again with her gray wings, enjoying the sight of Vera madly running away.

The girl descended, and her talon sword pierced right through Vera’s neck, not even allowing the snake girl a chance to plead for her life again.