| TAKE ME TO VALHALLA WHERE MY BROTHERS WAIT FOR ME | |
Terith had seen many ominous indicators back in his day, but not one of this magnitude, and it was the kind where he expected the eruption of hysteria over a wide area as soon as the chaos descends, swallowing the town whole with its grim intentions. From his position on the ground, he'd count down at the seconds that it would take for the disturbance to happen, his blue gaze wide with desperation as his expression was placid with a tangible sense of fear, and doubt, and the inability to comprehend the events that followed after, marring his sharp features.
What was all of this? What even was this? Why was he here? He could have a ton of questions flood his psyche, but nothing could ever come as close to supplying him his answers, much less a repose.
The sky would break out in a roar of noise and smoke, where a dragon of bone all but tore through the paper sky with an impressive set of wings, generating a sense of dread with each deliberate move of its white-washed limbs. For a moment, the situation seemed to have paralyze not just his legs, but his lungs, too, reaching a point where his entire being felt like it was running out of breaths to spare. He'd stagger back as the beast made its landing, scrolling through the various households with its twisting body, and there had been nothing to steady his fall as he hunched over, stepping back and falling ungracefully unto the streets.
"What the hell..." he muttered, realizing the imminent prob of death at his dulled senses. At his waist, Kushinada's violent rattling made the realization all too clear to him. Shirotsume was under siege, and he'd been unfortunate enough to be muddled into it. It was too early to think that this'd be a leisurely stroll through a fancy town, perhaps, and it was more than late to assume an escape route then, not after the earth rumbled with the rising of the dead men from their graves, groaning, moaning back at the citizens as they desperately tried to flee.
He wasn't too sure what he could've done if he opted to run with them, find safety, maybe, live, maybe. But a part of him dictated something else entirely. It wasn't his spirits or a berating voice numbing his skull. Instead, it was a soft presence, a smile that beckoned him to get up, to brandish Kushinada, fight with his morals reaching higher than the boney arms that grasped at the grey skies.
Could he really do it with his sub-par abilities? Of course not, but...
'I believe in you, dear.'He...needed to do it. He was compelled to do it. His being wanted him to do it and...maybe it was just the something he'd been looking for, inspiration beyond belief, beyond doubts, beyond reason.
The swordsman's head rose, the sunless sky reflected with a thin stream of light from within himself. He stood, but not without inhaling sharply before. His legs were stiff with an icy feeling, but he kept running, somewhere, closer to where trouble was brewing ever prominently. The dragon was...gone? However, its wake seemed tangible enough as the hoards of undead gathered, and if he was even allowed a light jest, he'd compare the fright to a zombie apocalypse that he'd seen in some movies, back in his golden days, when his world wasn't Fiore or Ishval, for that matter.
As he ran, his thoughts seemed to race as well. He was human, and a man could only do so much against his fears of perishing under a great, impenetrable force. Perhaps it was inevitable to halt death, but it was human nature to have an inner desire to defy those mechanisms to any extent. He'd dig a hand beneath the fold in his belt, undoing the deftly tied knot at his hip and letting the rope slid off his form before safely tucking the flimsy thing into his spare pocket. In an instant, his body began to fizzle in a pale blue light, the colors in his hair falling off and revealing stands of white beneath the melting process. The material of his clothes seemed to shift, where the blue energy tailored an entirely different ensemble for him, one that had been dyed white. Then, the blue in his eyes seemed to pale, blurring into a mix of oranges and reds before steadying into an uncanny golden light.
Biting at his lip, the swordsman took a short glance at his reflection from a passing shop, briefly catching the whiff of white hair and strange clothes. Though he'd seen it before, it was still weird to consider this other appearance as his. But more importantly, the shops were being ravaged with several packs of skeletal fiends, the remainders of their rotting flesh falling off their limbs as they clawed at the doors.
"Khh." he whispered under his breath, visibly appalled by the progression of events as he made a bee-line for the tops of the houses, feeling the winds beneath his feet as he hauled himself upward in a jump. As he perched himself atop a mansion's rooftop, his eyes would gloss over the full extent of the damage, seeing the mortified faces of the survivors as they hurried to evacuate to a shelter somewhere, corpses dangling off their bastions, and so much crying, anguish as far as the eye can see. In the absence of a clear objective apart from eradicating the threat, Terith was prompted to search for any other wizards, eyes skimming over the town as it neared a state of mass tragedy.
At his shoulder, a bakaneko stirred, but only barely. Nikuko had been silent the entire time, and he couldn't blame it. There weren't any proper words, or emotions, for that matter, to perfectly commit to the actual weight of the incident.
"....I'm scared, master." it mewled, shrinking into the size of a baseball. Terith thread his fingers through its fur briefly, passing it a gentle smile, a curve of encouragement, or something close to it.
"I'm sure most of us are." he simply said, unsheathing Kushinada from its scabbard.
"But survival depends on how good you can put up a resistance." He'd run a hand down the silvery length of his weapon's blade, beckoning to the spirits and pleading for advice.
"This time, it's not just our's, but a whole town's resistance. Right?"The yokai cat would only nod, staring back at its master's hazy golden eyes.
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WORDS ● HELLO YA'LL ● LONG POST