As he stood in the sand, he looked over the horizon in the direction the old man pointed to. He strained his eyes but could not see anything in the distance, but his vision was partially occluded by the sunlight. As he walked on, he thought about his brief encounter with what he felt to be Yuria and Metas’ presence earlier but did not have the time to think about it during the battles and serious situations. There was an influence or force behind their encounter, almost seemed like there were factors changing and shaping his destination from behind the scenes.
Felkin looked on, the path was long but it was a path, machination of some hidden being or not, he “wanted” to move forward, perhaps he could learn more. ‘Long distance away, can’t see anything except sand.’ Felkin then brought out his sword and coiled it up. He hopped upwards and faced his sword towards the ground. He uncoiled and lengthened his sword causing it to strike the ground with a strong force and propel him into the air, as he flew upwards his sword continue to extend from the ground to his altitude. As Felkin flew across the desert, his sword dug into the sand, it extended and dragged along behind him, leaving the sword to tower across the wasteland as he was in mid-flight.
He briefly turned his head and looked at the temple growing ever farther in the distance. He focused and strained his eyesight, his eye reddening as he looked down on the desert's ground. He saw faint lights, the creatures reacted to the movement of Felkin's sword as it dragged along the ground, the basilisks desperate for sustenance burst out from the desert's surface, lunging upwards towards Felkin.
Three of them emerged from three points from the nearby desert, Felkin quickly pulled his sword back and even as fast it was, it took a few seconds before it fully retracted. Just before the beasts came upon Felkin, he slashed one in the roof of its mouth as it opened its jaw. To stop his fall, he jumped on the basilisk's head, kicking it as he hopped upwards. Another basilisk was attempting to breath its miasma towards Felkin but was halted as the other basilisk's body collided into it. The third one rose above the other two and opened its jaw, positioning itself just above Felkin as he was falling midair.
Felkin raised his retracted sword towards the creature. It noticed and closed its mouth, and struck forward, threatening to crush Felkin with its sheer size and impenetrable scales. It head-butted him with extreme force, and the creature continued to lunge through the air with Felkin holding onto its forehead. He reeled from the impact and the winds he experienced because of the basilisk's speed. He struggled as he held the sword forward and extended it into its eye.
The second basilisk was waiting, with its mouth open preparing to strike. The injured basilisk opened its mouth in pain and was beginning to position itself to allow Felkin to fall into its mouth. The second serpent struck, disregarding the other and opened its jaws to attack Felkin as well. The basilisk sped towards Felkin, and he removed his sword from the other basilisk's eye and intercepted the lunging creature with his sword. He then stabbed the lengthened blade into the gullet of the basilisk. But as his blade was stuck into the other, the injured basilisk clamped down on Felkin.
But as soon as it bit down, it howled in anger. Felkin stabbed the roof of its mouth with the wooden spear, and then pulled his sword back and stabbed it upwards as well before it could use its petrifying breath.
The last basilisk fell to the ground, and Felkin opened its jaw and exited brandishing both weapons. He panted and wiped sweat off from his brow and looked at his clothes, now bloodied. He sighed as he leaned on the corpse of the last basilisk he felled and walked around to each of them to check if they were still alive. He looked at the ground and the trail that they travelled in. They were most undoubtedly from underground but lived through the nightly activation of the curse. He noted the creatures’ ability to petrify others with stone and the similarity between it and the curse turning material into sand.
He wondered how they lived through the curse itself and remembered that the creature’s were rumored to be the old god’s offspring or creations. As he was wondering he was startled by shadows from up above. Scavenger birds were circling the corpses of the felled basilisks and they were looking to descend. One of them tried their luck and flew down towards the corpses. Noticing Felkin, it squawked loudly and charged towards him. With one flick of his sword, the bird was slain with a direct impact to its head. The other scavengers decided that the risk was not worth the reward, perhaps they weren’t as desperate as the basilisks.
Moving closer, Felkin inspected the carcass. The creature then reminded him more of a lizard, scaly and had similar eyes. He remembered having to peel off the stone scales from the large basilisk carcass he killed earlier. He also remembered Solis saying that her magic arrows couldn’t pierce through their skins when they were collecting meat and thought that their scales may be the key to staving off the curse. He went to the giant serpent’s corpse and began carving from the inside of its mouth. He ended up having an entire flap of skin which was sinewy on the other side but had the stone hard scales on the other. It was enough to envelop him like a blanket, and he rolled it up and put it inside his pack. Even though it might be a solution, there was still a chance it would have no effect and the curse’s influence was more because of the kinship between beasts. Felkin thought this and looked around.
For a moment he was worried that he had already lost the direction that was pointed to. Then he felt something, like a sudden sharp ring in his ears, only it was more of a feeling than a sound. And then he instantly realized the direction he was supposed to go, he turned to it and continued walking. He then came upon a few large holes in the ground, looking down he discovered a deep crevice, filled with hardened stone crystals that the basilisks breath out. Not getting too close to the edge, he surmised that it went deeper and further down, but it didn’t seem like a traversable surface.
He looked towards the horizon and could make out a faint shape, he looked at the pit one more time and then began to head out once more. He coiled his sword once again and breathed deeply. He shot upwards after hitting the earth but reverted his sword back instead of dragging it across. As he neared the ground, he coiled his sword and released force once again, propelling him in the air once more. The impacts left craters in the earth, gusts of sand in the air with each bound and blast off.
The object in the distance became clearer and clearer, he could spot it as he fell to the ground once more. He marveled at the sight, he seldom did to any sight he had already seen. A massive mountain, colored dark obsidian like the basilisk’s crystals. Tall crystal spears, narrow and reaching far above the clouds. The mass of spears and peaks situated itself as the only landmark in the wasteland and was massive as it was far away.
He looked at the sky, the sun was still shining bright but was far from the east where it rose. He breathed deeply and bent his knees, coiled his sword, preparing for another leap into the air. “Ack!” Felkin knelt, strained and in pain. He reached to his temple, the source of the pain and held his head. He felt a knot, a constricting and tightening feeling behind his eyes. ‘It’s been getting worse and worse lately.’ Ever since he first acquired the wounds which changed the properties of his eyes, he felt like the influence or root of the abyss, spread as the power he gained from it grew. The knot strained and gripped tightly onto his muscles from his head to his body and even towards his legs. He uncoiled his sword and tried to stand back up normally and began walking.
‘There’s still time left before nightfall, if I proceed like this I could rest for a while and exert myself later.’ He began to continue walking in the monotonous hot desert. He shielded his eyes with his hand from the sun, and the occasional winds that blew through the area. The distant towering mass appeared to get closer ever so slightly, as Felkin continued to traverse the sands. As he walked, his mouth and throat became drier and his sweat evaporated due to the heat. He came upon a tall dune and seeking shade, he sat down opened his pack, stuck his sword into the ground, and opened the container of water to drink. With one gulp, he instantly felt refreshed and closed the container.
He decided that now was the time to attempt to leap a great distance once more. He had set his pack down and opened it again to stuff the container of water into it. As he did so a swarm of small serpents swiftly sprang out of the sands and directly towards Felkin. The shower of tiny basilisks came down upon Felkin and he quickly grabbed his sword, extended the blade, and swung it in a swinging motion, shredding the creatures upon impact. Curious, he walked down to the origin of the attackers. He saw that they originated from a small hole in the sand. Peeking in, he saw the same of the obsidian crystals that the basilisks form. It was an opening he could not see the bottom of, and he stuck his sword in the nearby sand and lengthened it until he hit something hard under the ground.
He used his blade to dig up and push away the sand and discovered more of the material. He traced his sword across the ground until his sword reached soft sand, he plunged it further down and felt no more of the substance. He walked a radius around the area and attempted to measure out the size of where the crystals were. He ended up with a small circular area, he lengthened his sword and measured it to be about the length and height of it would be roughly two of him, lying straight down. He brushed away more of the sand and again went to the hole in the ground.
He coiled his sword and struck the floor near the opening, cracking the crystal substance. He repeated this process until the entrance got larger and larger allowing sunlight to pass and reveal what was underneath. He saw something flowing, like a body of water rushing underneath the surface. But then he stumbled back at what he saw, but then walked forward almost excitedly curious. He saw scales; a massive, moving mass. He walked forward and peeked down, it was a large tunnel and was spacious as well. Felkin marveled as the giant serpent kept moving forward seemingly at no end. He looked at the direction it was going towards and let out a “huh.” It was moving at a rapid pace towards the spire which pierced the heavens, his destination. He looked at the structure, at the surrounding hot desert, and then down into the pit.
He then jumped down onto the serpent’s back. It felt like he had hopped on a large boulder, and as he landed, he was briefly knocked back by its speed. Before he slid off, he stuck his sword into a gap in between its scales. He pulled himself up and crouched looking forward in the tunnel ahead of him. He could see absolutely nothing up ahead or all around him. ‘This was a bad idea.’ He suddenly had an interesting thought, he took off his right glove and put it into his pocket and pulled his sleeve back up to the end of its forearm. He tapped it with his left hand, and concentrated his eyes for a split second, and his arm began to glow.
There was a mark on his arm where Solis touched him, much like the one on her own arm. It appeared ghostly, like a shape made from mist or fog. It was a circle with stretching out rays of light that wrapped around his arm. As the dark tunnel lit up he immediately felt and heard the presence of wriggling creatures in the dark. From the sides of the giant beast and under it, crawled forth a swarm of young basilisks that almost looked like a uniform mass. They quickly crept towards the light and towards Felkin. The mass showered out, like silky threads twisting and unfurling into a swarm of winged snakes. Felkin spun his sword around and slashed at the onslaught of enemies, he pushed back a tidal wave’s amount of them and slash after slash cut down plenty, but it was still continuous.
Felkin ran forward, and away from the wave of enemies. One of them sprang up and shot forward, Felkin caught it just before it reached his face and crushed it. He noticed its scales were hard but did not possess the extreme durability the grown versions had, and that they possessed wings that carried their light bodies through the air. He looked back and saw the swarm of snakes flowing through the giant stone body of the basilisks. He looked around with his light source and saw that the walls and ceiling of the tunnels were the same black crystalline material. In the other end of the tunnel, he saw a faint spark of light.
He began to run as fast as he could, trying not to lose balance on top of the speeding serpent. The swarms snaked along the gigantic creature’s back, twisting and crawling as if it was an extension of its skin. Up ahead of him a swarm of snakes hopped on to the basilisk’s back from the walls and fell from the ceiling, cornering Felkin. The wave of snakes behind him all simultaneously breathed their putrefying fog, creating growths like small stone hills and crawling on top of them, rapidly approaching him. He ran forward and coiled his sword and raised it up.
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“Hmph!” With heavy exertion he brought down his sword in front of him as he ran, crushing or blowing away the serpents that were in front of him. But as soon as he did this the body of the great basilisk reverberated as it emitted a powerful howl that blew a shockwave through the tunnel, scattering some of the serpents and causing Felkin to cover one of his ears. Then the giant serpent began to sway. It moved from side to side, from slow to gradually faster movement. The small snakes were scattered and fazed but quickly began to stir and re-form their mass. Felkin was struggling to keep balance, as the movement became quicker and more erratic. The giant basilisk bolted diagonally upwards, smashing one of its sides against the tunnel’s walls.
Felkin realized what was happening and moved to the other side of the serpent before it smashed against the wall as well. Felkin tried to walk ahead but was slowed down by having to avoid the serpent smashing into the sides of the tunnel. As the wave of serpents grew ever closer, Felkin looked ahead of the tunnel to see how far he was from the exit only to see two giant glowing eyes staring down on him. The view of the way was blocked by the giant serpent, it partially raised its head upwards to look behind and towards him. The giant serpent then moved its body rapidly upward and smashed a section of its back upwards into the roof of the tunnel. The darkness in the tunnel returned once again.
The giant beast looked forward once again and the wave of serpents halted their pursuit. They moved forward cautiously, some were going to the sides, and they all sticked out their tongues trying to sense and sniff out Felkin’s location. Some of them crawled down to the underside of the creature, where Felkin clung. He coiled his sword around the creature’s body and hung on under the giant basilisk. As they drew nearer, their eyes glowed faintly in the dark and so he could tell exactly how close they were. Their movement stopped.
Then they immediately swarmed and crawled rapidly towards Felkin. He hung on and was defenseless and exposed, the snakes opened their mouths hissing and preparing to breath again. Felkin activated his eyesight and held out his hand, causing a bright flash of red light which repulsed and drove back the serpents. Felkin uncoiled his sword from being wrapped around the basilisk and used the momentum to throw himself back onto its back once again.
The small serpents came pouring in from both sides, attracted by the harsh light. Felkin swept his partially lengthened sword and sliced a bundle of them coming up on his front, and then from behind. The giant basilisk howled once again and prepared to smash Felkin onto the ceiling. The serpent’s back raised and moved upwards, Felkin looked up and coiled his sword. He used great strength and swung rapidly onto the crystalline substance, smashing it open and revealing the outside sunlight once more. A portion of its body curved upwards as he was thrown into the air and landed back on the basilisk. Only that portion was exposed to the outside as the rest was still in the tunnel, the giant serpent’s movement halted as it tried to make sense of what just happened to it.
Felkin was breathing heavily, as he stood overlooking the sands and wiped sweat off from his forehead. He looked at his destination, but as he turned around the first thing that caught his eye was not the structure, but the immense shadow that it cast upon the nearby land. “Whoa.” For a moment he forgot his predicament and looked all the way up even his neck strained in trying to ascertain the size of the structure. Some of the crawling serpents were crushed in the tunnel’s roof, but most moved out of the way and were now beginning to crawl up to the surface, where Felkin stood.
Felkin looked around for a method for escape and spotted strange tree-like structures growing in the shade of the rock tower. He looked down and prepared to jump off into the sand but before he could the ground in front of him fissured and broke open. The entire length of the serpent emerged from the earth. It was far larger than the other basilisks Felkin fought and its tail was fully still submerged underground. It raised its body, carrying Felkin rapidly high into the air. It was longer than it was wide and had weathered dark grey color instead of the lighter stone scales of the others.
Felkin stuck his sword into its scales, desperately holding on in the high altitudes and strong winds of the rise. He could now see the peak of the construction of crystals but paid no mind to it as the giant beast began swaying and slithering in the sky back and forth. It was as if it swam through the air, and Felkin was left to just only endure the onslaught. He had a sudden idea. He looked at his right arm and saw the mark that Solis had given him had faded and was smaller and less prominent. He waited and observed the pattern of the creature’s movements and once he saw that it was about to lunge forward, he removed his sword from its scales, and he came hurtling forward.
The speed and the wind carried him along the back of the giant basilisk, rolling and flying through the air alike someone being thrown from a speeding carriage onto a cobblestone road. He moved forward and as the serpent moved to another side, he held onto it with his left arm and had attached himself to its back, with his sword and sword arm still free. He used Nox’s ability with the energy he imprinted on his left arm and created a layer of ice to affix himself to it. Felkin sent out his lengthened sword towards the basilisk’s head, it bounced off harmlessly.
He tried to reposition it and strike its eyes or its mouth, but his sword flew about in the wind, due to the serpent’s movement and the turbulent gales. He then broke the ice to free himself and he got thrown about on its back once more. The serpent twisted itself midair, throwing Felkin off before he used his sword to wrap around its body and he held onto its underside with the ice. He noticed that the other mark fading as well and feared that it would disappear from his impromptu misuse of it. He was closer to its head now; it couldn’t turn or move its head to strike Felkin as he was unable to be reached because of his proximity to its mouth.
He tried to think about it as clearly as possible through the dizzying movement and the turbulent winds. He looked at his frozen side, his sword and surmised that he could not hang on and attack at the same time and decided he would strike it with one great attack. He coiled his sword and aimed it towards the top of the serpent’s head. He then released the immense force, propelling the extending blade like a loosed arrow. It struck the basilisk hard on its head, emitting a powerful shockwave that ran along the length of the serpent’s body, shattering the ice that bound Felkin to its back. The creature howled and flailed wildly, rapidly losing altitude as it erratically shook back and forth.
To avoid falling, Felkin wrapped his sword around the creature, him being directly above its eyes and constricted it hard, around its neck. The creature still thrashed and Felkin held down the edge of the blade with a lengthened portion to complete a loop, his hand slowly being cut by the pressure he pressed down on. He coiled his sword to apply additional pressure and the creature’s eyes rolled into the back of its head as it stopped moving and fell straight down into the earth. It nosedived rapidly and they were quickly falling towards the ground.
Felkin struggled and exerted great force as he pulled back to somehow slow their descent. He gritted his teeth, strained his flesh and an extraordinary amount of pressure he placed on his muscles. As the mighty serpent’s head fell, it crashed into the trees in the spire’s shadow, creating a crater and destroying the nearby landscape. It was dragged across the sands and through the strange foliage until its snout touched one of the massive narrow stone structures. The basilisk’s head was deeply submerged in the sand and unmoving. Felkin let go and stood up.
He noticed the cut on his hand and winced in pain, he closed his hand tightly and looked back at his surroundings. He was now in the shade, and out of the hot sun. He noticed trees all around him, strangely grey in color. He looked up as he heard cawing, a swarm of the flying creatures had gathered all around, circling the area. He looked around more and observed a few of them were nesting at more distant trees. He looked at the surface of a nearby tree and looked at what appeared to be scales, he looked up at its leaves and they were a faded dark red. He moved forward to touch them but sat back down due to exhaustion.
He turned his head to the strange scenery, the gigantic spire in front of him, the strange trees, the flying creatures, and the felled basilisk and marveled at it, Felkin smiled in an almost child-like manner. The serpent’s eyes opened, and it reared its head from the ground. It howled loudly and the base of the spire where it collided with cracked, and the birds overhead scattered to all directions. Felkin stood up quickly, but his knees were shaking as he struggled to stand up. The crack in the gigantic formation broke apart, revealing a dark entrance, to its interior.
“Leave them here.” A voice echoed from the darkness. The serpent obliged, gently turning its head to the side, and dropping Felkin to the ground and it then promptly and swiftly slid off back towards its tunnel. Confused, he stood up and patted the dust off from himself and entered. There was a small, cramped tunnel leading into another room, the walls were made from the same material in the underground passageway, and the floors were stony as well. Felkin entered the room from which a faint light illuminated it.
As he stepped into the room, and the ground he walked beneath was sand once again. Suddenly, the sand on the ground moved rapidly towards him and blasted through him like a raging sandstorm just occurred. The sand floated around him and desperately tried to cling onto him, like a swarm of flies, but stopped just short of him. He was startled by this and raised his sword and tried to ascertain what was in front of him, but his view was clouded by sand. They were stopped by a barrier of light that formed around him, and it felt like they were pushing against it.
Having occluded view and no immediate solution on the matter, Felkin quickly ran forward and raised his blade above his head. But as soon as he did this, the turbulence and force of the sands pushing in on him immediately increased and shattered the barrier. The sand then fell harmlessly to the ground. After this happened, Felkin stopped moving. He quickly observed his surroundings, at the faint light being shone down from an opening in the high ceiling of the structure, at the rigid flowers that grew in the room, with thorns on their petals and then on the figure sitting in the room’s center. He began to walk forward but was stopped by the figure’s voice. “Stop. If you move one step closer, you will return to the earth as sand itself.”
Felkin slowly turned his head to look at his arms, his sleeves pulled up. He saw that both markings to ward off the curse were gone, removed by the recent attack. He looked around on his person, but found that his bag was missing, along with the snakeskin he collected to attempt to find a solution to the curse. “You are welcome to join us down here.” The individual had long grey hair, enough to cover their face and entire upper half of their body, as they were simply sticking out of the ground with both hands face down on the nearby sand. Felkin felt danger, like a cornered, threatened beast in face of a force of nature.
They raised one of their arms to gently touch the nearby wall. Between the lengthy mess of their hair, Felkin could make out two green glows, which appeared to be eyes. “You can sit down if you like.” They invited. Felkin slowly sat down in a cross-legged position, cautious and observant. Felkin’s gaze followed their arm, he noticed that the skin up to the edge of the forearm was covered in serpentine scales. But then he noticed the “wall”. In the cave’s faint light, he could make out a circular shape on the wall, he thought it was some sort of large indent or some form of damage carved into the wall.
Then as the being’s hand traced across the wall, a ray of sunlight reflected off from Felkin’s sword and shone some light on the cave’s interior. Felkin then realized what was on the wall, and that he only recently noticed because of his strained eyes. The wall had a large circular hole, its construction seeming like stone and it was different from the rest of the cave’s material. “Behold our slumbering god.” Felkin looked on cautiously. “Our history is marked down on stone. So, our tale will outlast countless lifetimes, recorded on eternal godly flesh.” She grabbed a small chunk of rock and began etching something on the stone surface. The symbol looked like an extremely simplistic depiction of a human figure, with only three lines on their hand to represent a sword. The submerged figure then put down the rock, and then the markings began glowing a sickly bright green.
The light revealed more detail to the wall, and Felkin was surprised as he saw what remained of a gigantic eye socket, with a diluted, inactive pupil, with the rest of its head submerged deep underground. At first, he thought it was a basilisk, but the frills and horns on the top of its head proved otherwise. He quickly scanned the illuminated room, seeing remnants of a claw sticking out, embedded in a nearby wall and looked up to see a wing stretching upwards, also within the wall of the cavern. “I see. The runes reveal their meaning to you, but it appears you refuse to see them, or something is stopping you from doing so.”
Felkin turned his head confused but noticed that in his concentration he failed to see that the sword he held in his hand was furiously shaking. He looked at the writing on the dead god’s brow and could slowly see images of events unknown to him. Suddenly, his sword moved on its own and tried to coil and clasp onto his arm. Felkin noticed and quickly threw it away, it writhed on the floor like a dying slug or insect. It attempted to leap back to him but was quickly submerged beneath the sands, which swallowed it whole.
“Let me help you see.” The shrouded figure had their hand buried under the sand, and then Felkin noticed the runes glow brighter. He stepped back and turned around to exit, but the sandy ground burst upward, enveloping him. Outside some distance away, an old man in armor stood and observed the trail of destruction going all the way to the spire’s shade. He picked up Felkin’s pack and checked its contents before putting it onto his back. His eyes were shielded by his hat, and he looked on to their destination. “Let’s hurry, I don’t want to stay in this heat, my back hurts already.” He ran forward carrying both of his weapons on his back, with two pairs of footsteps following behind him.