Asher felt his entire body engulfed in a familiar inky blackness. His body felt as if it was descending down into the murky abyss, a place truly cut off from everything. It felt like he could see everywhere and everything all around him, yet he also had the impression that he wouldn’t be able to see his own hand in front of his face. The urge to breathe overtook him and when he opened his mouth the air felt thick and viscous, had he died? This feeling was one he’d felt before but it lacked the sense of comfort he remembered.
As these intrusive thoughts took over, he could see a white dot out in the expanse. As the dot grew larger, he realized it wasn’t a light far off in the distance but rather a massive hand coming towards him. He tried to move away but only found himself pointlessly flailing in the all encompassing space. His eyes grew big as the massive hand reached out and grabbed him, he closed his eyes and let out a muffled scream. He thought he was done for and when he cracked open an eye to check, he found himself standing in the massive hand with a familiar humanoid shape joining him atop the great palm.
“D - Dolos?” Asher managed to stammer out. It had been a good bit of time since he’d last seen the enigmatic god. The figure nodded. The once perfectly porcelain white mask worn by Dolos now had a small, but noticeable crack that seemed to have originated from the center of it.
“Asher, I see you’ve settled in quite nicely.” The smooth, bassy voice bounced off the walls in the interior of his skull. Dolos really seemed to favor sarcasm, but Asher guessed that a god could probably favor whatever they wanted.
“Yeah, I guess you could say that. Am I dead right now?” The god shook his head in the negative.
“Nope, just unconscious until they manage to resuscitate you, or you recover.”
“They?” Asher said as he lifted an eyebrow, “Who’s ‘they’?”
The god gestured into the air and something that looked akin to a display window popped into existence. Two figures moved, one female and one cloaked. The cloaked figure was walking towards Asher’s limp body while Tom seemed to be regaining consciousness. His attention was pulled away by Dolos speaking again.
“You’ll need to start being more careful,” Dolos moved towards Asher and looked down at him, its body looming over Asher’s currently childish form. “Things are going to get dangerous,” the god’s voice lacked its obvious sarcasm and playfulness. Asher frowned a bit as he looked at the mask that made up Dolos’ face. He could see a new, almost imperceptible crack beginning to form and spread until it joined the webbing made up by the others.
“What’s going on? What do I need to look out for?”
“I can’t explain, otherwise they’ll catch on if I scry on their avatars.”
“What are you talking about?” Asher said as he stared at the strange god. The area once again felt oppressive and suffocating. A couple more cracks formed on the mask as Dolos looked off to the side, seemingly in a different place entirely.
“Time’s up.” The god said. The massive hand they were standing on top of disappeared and Asher began falling back down into the abyss, while Dolos stayed in place. The god stayed floating in place. He looked up towards the god as he fell, the pull from the darkness growing stronger. As he stared, in an amount of time so quick, Asher didn’t have the words to describe it or verify its validity…he thought he saw the world change? The figure of Dolos was replaced with that of a haggard old man, bound with chains and anchored to massive floating circles. He blinked and shook his head. Everything was the same, there was no man in chains, only the cracked mask of Dolos watching him as he descended.
It felt like he passed through some invisible and barely tangible membrane. As he did, the center of the abyss became a plane of light that slowly expanded proportionally up and down. As the entire thing was replaced with this light, he realized his eyes had opened on their own.
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Mary Sue watched in awe and horror as she saw the unconscious body of her husband on the ground. It was gut wrenching to see the man she loves and the father of their child almost become snake food, but something that was equally awe inspiring was the little figure of the boy in front of her. The boy who had held his ground against the massive monster and almost single-handedly killed it. She understood by watching Asher fight why he had been sent in to replace what was typically a team of skilled members of the Syndicate. He was faster than the others she had seen work the fields and was just as capable of doing the same amount of work. Outside of the ability to be everywhere at once, Asher by himself, was a one - man working party.
All these thoughts were racing through her head which is why it took a moment for her to notice that a man wearing a cloak and holding a shortbow had approached the massive snake. The cloaked figure turned and gave her a polite wave.
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“Revenant is that you?” The cloaked figure nodded in agreement and Mary’s eyes brightened with joy. “We haven’t seen you in so long, how’ve you been hon?” She said as she sat Tom up and rested his head in her lap.
“I’ve been well. Just watching over this one,” he said as he gestured at Asher who was still laying on the ground, “Sorry we aren’t seeing each other over a more casual setting.”
She waved him off. “Don’t fret, we know you’re a busy body, thanks for helping us out. We were in a bit of a pickle.”
“Nah, the boy had it handled. That snake wouldn’t have made it much further regardless of me shooting it.”
“He’s a tough one huh?” She said, her eyes were soft as she looked at Asher.
“That seems to be the case, but this time he just got lucky that he didn’t bite off more than he could chew.” Revenant’s eyes were stern, the same eyes a teacher would have when a student didn’t live up to expectations.
“Don’t be too hard on him.” She said as she softly gave Tom’s head a pat until he fully regained consciousness. “Without him reacting as quickly as he did, poor Tom would’ve been a goner.”
“Well…true as that may be, the fact that he almost died doesn’t change.” He said and Mary looked at him curiously.
Tom had woken up and gotten past the initial groans of pain. Now he was rubbing his ribs where the snake had wrapped around him. When he finally registered the massive snake in his mind, he shot up like a rocket. He began to rub his hands together as he looked at the massive creature.
“Well I'll be damned, when life gives ya lemons.” He smiled at his wife and Revenant as he pointed at the snake. “That’s a whole lot of bacon right there.” The other two had a bit of a chuckle, which sounded odd coming from the usually stoic Revenant. Tom had happily moved a couple paces forward when he saw something that filled him with dread.
The huge snake had begun to rapidly disintegrate right in front of all of them. This wasn’t any normal decomposition that Tom had seen, even for their humid climate and from his own personal experience with these beasts. At least their corpses, the actual killing was always handled by other people and he simply paid to reap the meaty-bacony benefits from their hard work.
“N-no…” Tom said softly. He lumbered over to the snake’s corpse, his lungs felt like they had fire ants crawling in them from the exertion, but it was a labor of love. He realized when he put his hand on the snake’s body that it was just a husk, the body caving in under the weight of his hand. As the body crumbled and he felt the dust slip through his feelings, it all began to float and ‘fly’ towards Asher.
‘No…this can’t be happening.”
The dust resembled something more akin to a massive cloud of gnats and the entire thing was being absorbed by Asher, who seemingly didn’t seem to be reacting negatively towards the ordeal. Tom had grabbed some of the snake’s essence and he looked at his hands as even that floated off and drifted towards Asher. He dropped to his knees, and stretched his arm out as if to hold onto the specks of dust for just a moment longer.
“Don’t go…please.” A small tear ran down the farmer’s face.
The last particle left his hand only to be absorbed by Asher’s unconscious body shortly after. The total erosion of this creature took less than a minute once it started and the hum of the snake’s essence dancing on the wind near Asher soon died out. The natural sounds of the jungle came back to the forefront - the buzzing of natural insects, the songs of birds, and the calls of various other creatures that make the deeper, less civilized areas of the jungle, their home.
“No…NO!” Tom doubled over, both of his hands on the ground. A manly, solitary tear had managed to carve a path of its own down Tom’s face ending at the tip of his nose, before falling to the ground.
“Oh honey!” Mary Sue said as she ran over and kneeled down next to Tom. He let out a slight groan at the tight embrace he found himself receiving from his loving wife. “It’ll be okay.”
Revenant had been near Asher’s body when Tom stirred awake, but backed away once he saw these particles buzzing around Asher’s body. He’d heard a report of this phenomenon from the Guild Master, Asher’s now adoptive father, but it was still a strange sight to see for himself. He’d been ignoring the lovestruck couple and chalked up Tom’s ramblings to those of a man in shock.
He watched as the last particle was absorbed by Asher, this specific one seemed to float down into his mouth, and saw Asher’s body react to it. He observed as there seemed to be a small tremble that traveled through Asher which manifested itself in a brief full-body tremble. Then Asher’s eyes groggily blinked open as he slowly sat up.
The aches and pains that seemed to be in places that Asher didn’t even know existed, only solidified the fact that this fight had been a rough one.
“I feel like shit…,” Asher grumbled to himself softly. He gave himself a quick once over visually, then flinched at the pain when he began to run his fingers over the most severe injuries. A searing pain made him pull his hand back as he ran his hands across his own torso. The image of the monstrous snake clamping down on this exact spot flashed into his mind. His attention was grabbed as a hand holding a waterskin appeared into his view.
“Drink. You need it.” The familiar voice Revenant said in a matter-of-fact tone. It was always business with him. Asher simply looked at him and nodded in the affirmative before grabbing the waterskin and gulping down all of it in one go.
“Thanks. What’re you doing out here anyways?” Asher asked, shaking the last couple drops of liquid life out of the waterskin and into his mouth.
“My job, and you should be happy that I was here,” He candidly strolled over to where the singular arrow was and placed it back into his quiver. “Otherwise you’d be snake shit in about a couple weeks, after this thing was done digesting you.”
“You helped with that snake?” Asher said a bit incredulously.
“Help in the loosest sense of the word. You already had that beast at the edge, I simply gave it the gentle push needed to finish the job, but technically yes…I did help.”
To Revenant’s surprise, he watched as Asher had managed to stand up and offer his open hand.
“If that’s the case then, thank you. Thank you for helping me, I promise to get stronger and do better next time.”
Revenant reluctantly took his hand and shook it. “Good, and you better. I have more important things to do than babysit you.”
Asher had just noticed that he had some notifications in his HUD that he needed to acknowledge. Before he could do that, both Revenant’s and his attention were drawn to Tom who had let out a wail while being comforted by his wife.
“MY DAMN BACON!”