By the side, Hasanu and Nostalgia were dumbstruck. By this time they were certain that Armad, no matter where he came from, must have received special training.
They knew how strong Kiru's blade was. So Armad must have been strong to withstand it.
Hasanu took a deep breath and focused on Armad. He looked at him up and down, and after a while, he frowned, as if he was expecting to find something in Armad and he didn't.
He almost looked away when his eyes fell on the red scarf covering Armad's forehead. Looking at the scarf for a few seconds, he narrowed his eyes.
Confused, he murmured to himself, "Is that eternal miyura... No, that's not possible." He took a step forward and inspected it closely. "But it looks like it, and even if it's just a variant, killing him will be a mistake. I have to take him back to Sisiya and take a closer look at it. I will cross-check it with Jana's list of miyura. Even the King will hear about it if it turns to be the real thing."
Hasanu decided to put an end to the ongoing battle between Armad and his brother so he could take Armad to Sisiya for further examination. But Kiru had already launched another attack.
It was clear to Armad a normal lightning blade wouldn't withstand another attack from the white blade, so he decided to use another sword form as well. A powerful attack that would defeat his opponent without giving him any chance of retreat.
"Pol Blade!" He intoned.
His sword emitted some dark smoke that soon covered the area around him. It became difficult to even see him.
But that didn't stop Kiru, if anything it made him more aggressive. His sword glowed with bright light as if to counter the invisibility effect of the smoke.
They slashed at each other, their swords clashed in the air, resulting in another deafening noise that forced Nostalgia to cover her ears with her hands.
A gust of wind blew the sand away, pushing both Nostalgia and Hasanu back, and breaking smaller branches of the nearby trees.
The resulting dust mixed with the smoke from Armad's sword to become a thick mist that made seeing difficult. And the ground beneath their feet continued to shake.
"This is a result of a single exchange... What a promising start!" Hasanu murmured to himself as he watched the dust settled.
Simultaneously, he was sensing peculiar energy around him. At first, he thought the new energy was coming from Armad, but upon closer examination, it appeared to be coming from the wall behind them. After assessing the energy form, Hasanu took a deep breath, his face flushed with fear. The energy form was familiar. It belonged to an undead creature lurking in the wall. Dordor it was called.
He remembered tales of the walls and its undead creatures. Whenever people talked about the two great walls, they would remember the dordor and would say, 'the wall is a refuge for death'. The saying originated a long time ago when people believed that the soul of the recently deceased took refuge in the walls before passing on to the afterlife. And that belief was based on the many undead creatures living in the walls. Some people had reportedly seen ghosts of their dead spouses while traveling on the walls.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
The Dordor was just one undead that ate human flesh and overturned ships to eat the passengers inside. If there was one such creature running toward them, then other undead would be coming as well, Hasanu thought.
But when he tried to warn his little brother about the incoming threat, the combined attacks of the white blade and Armad's misty sword caused a small quake, which instantly reduced the ground in the five-meter radius around them to rubbles. It began just around Armad and Kiru, but it quickly spread around.
The two young Benders jumped to the remaining ground in front of them to avoid falling into the crumbling earth, but the quake kept spreading.
It spread to where Nostalgia was and the ground beneath her feet shattered in an instant. Hasanu tried to grab her, but he sensed the dordor getting closer to Kiru.
Seeing no other option, Hasanu activated his pol. He grabbed Nostalgia with lightning speed and put her to safety several meters away, and then turned to Kiru all within a second.
Kiru was already aware of the approaching undead but he was having trouble escaping it. He and Armad ran in opposite directions. Kiru ran westward, trying to escape from the undead, and Armad ran eastwards, trying to avoid the hole created by the quake.
It soon became obvious to Hasanu that the approaching dordor was exacerbating the quakes with its energy.
Any place they stepped on would also crumble. The rapidly crumbling earth caught up to them a few seconds later. Armad and Kiru used their hands to catch the edge of the remaining ground. They tried to quickly climb up but the soil gave in and they fell into the bottomless hole beneath that was created by the quake.
Hasanu arrived just in time to grab his brother and pulled him out. He turned to Armad and his eyes went wide.
"Nostalgia?!" He exclaimed, his eyes bulging out in shock. Nostalgia, the sister he just saved, was lying on her back on the dirt, trying to pull Armad out.
He was confused, unable to understand what his sister was doing. Had she gone mad?
Even Armad was looking at her with narrowed eyes and knitted brows. She just appeared out of nowhere and caught his hand as he was falling. For a split second, Armad felt as if he was imagining it. But he could feel her grip on his skin.
He opened his mouth to speak but he immediately closed it. There was no point in asking her why she saved him, or even if he was imagining it.
As he debated on what to do next, the young woman's face changed to fear and panic. She frantically tried to pull him out with all her strength. Her eyes were fixed on something behind him.
Armad tried to turn his head around. But then he saw Kiru and Hasanu running toward them.
"Let him go," Kiru shouted so loud that his throat sounded torn. "It's not just any undead. It's the dordor. You will contract a disease if it touches you. Let him go!"
"Dordor?" Armad murmured to himself. He quickly turned around to see the terrifying figure approaching him with super speed.
"You want to die because of this nobody?" said Kiru, who was running even faster to catch up with his older brother running in front of him.
Hasanu, whose face was full of surprise, confusion, and especially fear considering he was given the responsibility of protecting his siblings, begged her. "I forbid you to die. Do not underestimate your importance to your father and the people of Sisiya. You shouldn't do it no matter what you saw in his mind and how empathic you feel. It's not worth it." When he realized his pleading wasn't working, he resorted to other means. "Damn it, Nostalgia. I command you to let him go."
The undead creature was faster than both Nostalgia, who was still pulling Armad out, and her siblings, who were running toward them to save her. As they spoke, the creature was just a couple of meters away from Armad.
Armad understood what they said. They were afraid that the creature would arrive before them, so they wanted their sister to let him go so he could die alone.
He hadn't fought a dordor before, but he read a lot about them and their ability to infect people with deadly diseases through touch. Assuming the dordor arrived before the siblings, so everything would be left to the young woman and him. She could let him go and save herself, or she could take her chances and try to pull him out before the dordor touched him.
However, it seemed she had no intention of letting him go, despite her siblings' warnings and threats, and how the creature was dangerously close to touching him.
Armad looked into the young woman's eyes and he saw compassion. Somehow she understood his suffering and she wanted to save him. But, could she pull it off despite her siblings and the dordor? And what would happen afterward? Even if she saved him, the siblings would still want him dead.