So now it's time to mix things up a bit. After presenting you with a pretty beefy backstory on Sky, here's a rather interesting section that unusually took me quite a bit of time to finish. Don't worry, I won't be centering in on my OC as much as the previous chapter, and I'll refrain from doing so most likely for the rest of the story.

CHAPTER 7: Encounter

Fox shifted around in his attire to make himself more comfortable. Due to the intense weather he had endured, there wasn't much sweat to be noticed anywhere on his body, but it was clear that he was starting to become sore because of how he had worn the same outfit for a few days. Thankfully, before the Great Fox was thrown into the massive vortex, he had prepared himself for the soggy scenery of Aquas by donning a pair of green cargo pants and combat boots as well as a thick cotton tee shirt and a light blue survival vest.

He had woken Falco from his resting period a few minutes earlier in order for them to get ready to leave their shelter and continue their search for civilization through the heavy ice storms once more. Fox had also advised that his teammate wear similar clothing, except Falco sported a type of red jumpsuit with boots that weighed significantly less than Fox's.

Falco cleared his throat, stretching out in his worn-out garbs, "Hey, we need to get to town pretty soon before it's too late."

"What do you mean, too late?" Fox replied while retying his boot laces.

"I'm freaking starving. Plus, that dragon fruit thing tasted like shit."

So what if it did… It's better than nothing. Fox rolled his eyes and smiled from amusement, exhaling, "Alright… Well, the sooner we head out, the better."

As he finished his sentence, Falco had already opened the flap and emerged from the tent, "Let's get this show on the road, whaddya say?" The vulpine nodded and rushed over quickly to exit the shelter, following close behind and bracing himself.

The two-man squadron resumed their trek into the howling, snowy hills.

…

There was nothing visible except for darkness. A wandering pair of eyes searched around frantically for some source of light, but it was too far from reach… or nonexistent.

Sky's pupils strangely did not possess any sort of brightness, as if the dimness of depression and anxiety had overshadowed the once optimistic and positively gleaming lynx and taken most of the energy he had left within his weakened body. The Celestian spirits seemed to have been silenced inside of him as well…

The young boy somehow found the strength to stand up. It was at that moment in which a blurred concoction of swirling color began to materialize before him. Sky blinked and rubbed his eyes as his sight gradually brightened and became increasingly detailed. Silence was still dominant in his surroundings as he realized he was regaining his conscience from some earlier event that he couldn't recall.

Finally, his senses returned to him… Sky took in his environment as he stood upon a small area of elevated ground. The air was dank with the putrid scent of dried blood and burning vegetation. As he directed his focus above, he noticed that the atmosphere was completely static, exhibiting a ghastly contaminated gray shade that covered the sky completely. There were no traces of any light or fresh air anywhere… Div Sablast was nowhere to be found, nor the two suns.

He looked down upon where he stood… He was without a shirt and badly lacerated in some areas of his upper body, and his woolen pant legs and sandals appeared to be worn down tremendously, stained with dense blobs of ash. The earth was lifeless… The lack of moisture in the air presented breathing difficulties, and the ground remained arid and cracked throughout the vast expanse.

Sky focused ahead of him once more… Memories flooded back into him as he gasped sharply at what his mind registered. Broken weapons projecting from the surface, heaps of ashes and unstable remainders of familiar crystalline structuring, limp bodies as well as a few skeletal frames scattered in various locations, crumbled stone statues that steadily dissipated into rubble, splatters of dried crimson fluid that coated a large portion of the land…

Zelenoa was laid out in a destructed field of ruins.

It didn't take long for the full effect to set into Sky… Every horrifying image he had encountered during the disaster flashed in his mind one after another, and every ounce of composure he possessed had fallen apart. His eyes welled up with heavy tears as they began to stream down his cheeks and drip onto the earth, each painful sight sending a piercing feeling of raw agony straight through his stomach.

Sky again saw the murder of his fellow villagers… The steady flow of tears hastened.

The magnificent holy site was cruelly destroyed… He choked out sobs and clutched his stomach.

His parents were killed before his own eyes… His back heaved violently as he grieved.

His homeland was now nonexistent… He collapsed onto his knees with no strength left.

Worse yet, Sky was chosen by the Celestian ancestors to be the embodiment of Zelenoa. Mudarduh had placed in a hopelessly feeble ten-year-old the hopes of the village's prospering for eons to come as they were built upon a millennium of life…

Sky grabbed his chest and doubled over from excruciating exacerbation, moaning loudly as he mourned the enormous loss of everything he once owned.

He felt as though his own label of Millennia Sky had been damned. Even with the ancestors' spiritual gifts, he still could not protect those he loved from such awful demise. He couldn't return to the village in time to warn the unsuspecting passersby of the danger lurking from the other end of the wilderness… Now, the horrid flashbacks of the unfolding Zelenoan genocide began to rend his heart viciously.

Who was it that purged the village anyway? And… what was the purpose behind the mass slaughter? An idea formed inside of Sky's brain that filled him with sudden rage along with his suicidal melancholy.

It… It was that wretched Siva… That was his name.

He remembered how the harsh and intimidating figure had called him worthless along with the rest of his race. Perhaps he had intended for the young boy to die while enduring his own shame and his realization that he didn't deserve to survive.

Sky trembled and slammed a clenched fist onto the earth furiously, still hunched over in his convulsions… He grit his teeth while he opened his eyes once again, wanting to rid his mind of every remembrance of Zelenoa he experienced since birth. He especially wanted to kill Siva for the suffering he caused.

Sky lifted his head slowly into the air, letting his remaining tears slide down his face as he looked towards the bleak atmosphere. He opened his mouth and let out a shrill scream, one that was filled with resentment and anger to mask over his deep sadness. The cry echoed through the landscape at a tremendously loud volume and finally died out half a minute later.

Then, the physically and emotionally worn lynx was left with barely any energy to keep himself conscious for much longer. His loud bellow had expelled much of the leftover emotion he had yet to force from his body, and so he stood on his hands and knees, letting his tears dry as he breathed in and out slowly from exhaustion.

The image of Siva faded out of his brain as he felt a subconscious force grow within him. Sky questioned his own fate and whether or not this would be the place he would truly perish. He pondered the afterlife of both his own spirit as well as that of Celestia. He knew that he couldn't die… He desperately did not want to. Even though his friends were deceased, Sky was the one who lived on, the one the great ancestors chose who would bear the weight of the whole of Celestia. Sky Felis refused to die at the hands of such a cataclysm.

Yet once more, he felt his own senses grow faint… His tiredness had finally overcome him as the numbness returned. With his vision blurred and his breathing slowed down significantly, the lynx sprawled out onto the earth on his front.

The force that had amplified inside of Sky emitted an azure aura from his body while he slipped away. Where his body was lying, a thin line began to trace around him to form a circle which illuminated the decayed ground. He was then engulfed in a mystical flame, the essence of Mudarduh himself, causing the particles of his body to dissolve into thin air.

After another minute passed, Sky had disappeared from the ruins. Deep within his own mind, he drifted through a spiritual void seemingly into another realm…

You are many generations ahead of your own time, and your real journey has only just begun…

Your real journey.

…

"Yo, Fox. Check the connection, will ya?"

Falco and Fox had been nonchalantly trudging through a weak flurry for what seemed to be an hour or two after they finally left the shelter. Falco, who was obviously exceptionally bored, stayed a little ways behind his comrade and kept his wings in his pockets while sightseeing in a carefree. Fox looked down at a device on his wrist which displayed a few numbers on an LED screen, but sadly neither the satellite indicator nor the cellular meter showed any signs of a signal.

He frowned slightly while replying, "Nope. I got nothing."

Falco laughed as a new thought crossed his mind, "Hey… Ever considered the fact that we're not in the Lylat anymore?"

"Oh, totally. Anything is definitely possible. I don't know what to expect next."

"I'm just sayin', what if we come across a bunch of really trippy aliens?" Falco's rumbling stomach became noticeable, "And what if they had a lot of food?"

"I wouldn't be surprised, that's for sure." Fox raised his eyebrows and redirected his focus ahead of him, "I'd say we're pretty lucky. The weather's been merciful."

"You can say that again. Remember the beginning of this when we had just gotten outta that burning heap of garbage?"

Fox turned his head around briefly to catch a glance at his teammate before looking straight ahead again, "Whoa, don't say that about good ole' Foxy. She's gotten us through a lot more than you'd think. And of course I remember what happened… It was just a few days a-"

Falco noticed his comrade's break-off after a few quiet seconds. "Uh… A few days what?"

Now, Fox had stopped walking. He was motioning for Falco to do the same as a silhouette came into view in the distance, seeming as though it was making its way towards the two-man team slowly but surely. Falco took his wings out of his pockets and squinted his eyes to see better.

"What the hell is that? Or… who is it?"

Fox shifted uneasily and kept his guard up as he recognized a tall figure walking at a moderate speed in their direction. After twenty more seconds passed, a few more details could be made out clearer.

The figure wore a sleeveless black shirt of various fabrics and training pants which bunched around the knees, displaying decently sized torso and leg muscles. A belt with a sheathed katana was fastened around the waist of the outfit, and the figure's appearance overall presented an apparent masculinity.

"Falco, you seeing this?"

White fur could be seen on his body with a small pattern of black stripes. He had long lavender strands of hair that reached down to his shoulders and two ears with furry tufts protruding from the top of his head. His countenance, mainly his glaring yellow eyes, gave off a rather serious expression, closely resembling that of a certain species of cat…

Strangely enough, he didn't confront the team, instead going straight in between them without giving any sort of acknowledgement. Fox and Falco were left bewildered as they stared after the weird swordsman.

"Fox… Now's our chance. Let's see where he's heading off to." Falco whispered over to his teammate, who nodded quickly in agreement. As the figure furthered the distance between them and disappeared into the horizon, they both proceeded to track him by following his footsteps through the light snow.