Neia could pinpoint the exact moment they entered the creature's territory. It wasn't a drastic change by any means, but she could tell: the sun didn't quite shine as brightly; the wind had just a little more bite to it than you'd expect; the air felt... heavier for some reason. It was unnerving in a way she could not really explain. It reminded her of the times she would sneak into the storage rooms in the middle of the night when she was younger. A prickling at the back of her mind warning her to turn around and leave, the sharp awareness that she should not be here.
Looking around, she quickly realized that she wasn't the only one having these sorts of thoughts. The entire garrison had descended into an unnerving sort of quietness, too unusual to be simply attributed to the weariness of the journey. The clanking of the armor, the screeching of the carting wheels, the trooping of the horses, all the expected noises were there, but they felt subdued. Such a number of people simply should not be so quiet. Even the usually laid-back adventurers felt more on their tip toes than usual. The constant chatting had basically devolved into quiet mumblings, and the occasional laughter that still echoed was a far-off sound, too strident to be entirely genuine. It was like everyone, herself included, was holding their breath for something to go wrong. To her dread, they didn't have to wait for long.
While she always disliked the narrow shape of her eyes for making her look so intimidating, she never thought she would end up cursing her good vision as well. At that moment though, she wished she had been born as blind as a gardening mole, for then she wouldn't have been among the first to spot the statues. Peering just beyond the small clearing of torn-up trees and debris (had a tornado passed around here?), they stood there, carvings of stone or maybe even marble, so perfectly detailed she would have mistaken them for regular people if not for the granite-like coloring. What's more, there were hundreds of them, all sprawled around the field as if they had stood there since the dawn of time itself. Most of them were still in pristine condition, but Neia could spot some cracks or even missing limbs in some of the ones closer to the edge of the exposition. Just their presence alone would have been unsettling enough, but it was the expression on their faces that was going to appear in her nightmares from now on. Every single one of the statues' features was contorted in an impression of pure, unfiltered horror, depicted so incredibly realistic it circled back around to being surreal. Some of them had been depicted laying down on the ground, others trying to run away from a certain direction, and yet some more who simply stood straight, as if the act of moving would have been as unfeasible as Neia suddenly gaining wings and flying.
She spotted one of the commanders stopping to inspect the nearest sculpture, speaking hurriedly to the men gathered around him, but the young girl had no intention of listening in. Not when she had spotted the all-too-familiar armor plating draping the unmoving figures surrounding them. The incredibly life-like, vividly realistic figures. No, she kept her eyes solely glued to the ground and proceeded to tune out any surrounding buzzing among the troops. If one of the people near her were to gasp in recognition when staring at one of the statues, she didn't know if she'd be able to take it.
The young Baraja could hear people shouting at each other, scrambling to relay conflicting orders. From what she understood, however, the consensus was to continue their expedition. A good number of the soldiers looked ready to bolt out at any moment, but at the end of the day, they were still Holy Knights. With the pride of the kingdom resting upon their shoulders, turning back had never really been an option.
Just as they were about to make their way, a sudden flare of bright red-orange lit up into the sky from the west. It was a signal from one of the adventuring parties scouting ahead of us. The color of the flare, achieved by combining a simple First Tier spell with the corresponding coloring powder, served as a means of fast communication and coordination. The periodical green announced that everything was in order, and blue was for changing direction due to uncrossable obstacles, yellow for small parties of monsters we couldn't afford to waste time on, and so on and so forth. For higher priority signals the team would make their way back while flaring the same color so the main force wouldn't lose sight of them. Red meant the Creature was spotted.
In unison, thousands of blades were unsheathed at the same time. There and then, the spell of fear and unease had been broken, the hundreds upon hundreds of hours of training taking hold of their movements. They were an army, the enemy was ahead of them; there was no room for any other thought. Neia scrambled to pick up her own wooden bow, silently cursing at her shuddering hands. If there were any additional orders shouted, she hadn't heard them. Everybody waited with bated breaths, their eyes peeled to the late-afternoon sky awaiting a second flare that never came.
A slight coiling sound reached her ears just as she was about to knock the first arrow on the string. After looking around to confirm it wasn't coming from around her, she brought a hand to her ear as she leaned in. The words of her father on one of their first hunting outing together were circling in her head, as clear as the day he had spoken them. "Focus on the world around you. Feel the wind running through your hair, the grass beneath your feet. Everything is alive, and everything is willing to talk to you if you're willing to listen. Discard what you don't need, reach for the thread you're looking for, and follow it to your prey." So she did. She could feel her senses honing to their utmost as she explored further and further, until...
"It's here!" she shouted, head snapping towards the opposite sign of the signal. Her sudden shout startled the nearby knights, but she didn't bother to check if her warning had managed to come in time or not. Her attention was completely on the noise creeping closer and closer, familiar yet completely alien to her., heralding the monster's arrival.
Neia didn't know what sort of abomination she had constructed in the back of her mind, but she knew she couldn't have been further from reality. It towered over them like ants, a giant shadow that seemed to block out the very sun itself. She must have been at least 10 meters in height; the giant feathery wings that sprouted from her back stretched twice as much in length. Only the upper part of her body bared any semblance of humanity. Beginning from her torso downwards was a massive scale-covered tail, the soles subtly refracting with a jewel-like quality to them. If that hadn't been obvious enough, the long magenta hair that seemed to subtly coil and twist in spite of the lack of wind would have been just as good as a giveaway for the snake-like qualities of their opponent.
What shocked her more than anything, however, was the unmistakable, uncontestable beauty of the woman ("No, not woman. Creature." she had to remind herself). Even as parts of her body had shifted into that of terrible monsters, with wings, sharp teeth, and claws like blades; what remained was a testament to the stunning brilliance that once was. The slender lines that outlined her body, the alabaster-like skin, unblemished since the day she was born, the soft grace and refinement of every feature of her face, they spoke of her inhumanity far more than her more grotesque aspects ever could. There was no way a mortal could ever be so beautiful.
Then her eyes, twin pools of shining gems, turned to face them, an expression of such anger and hate encompassing every fibre of her being, turning her from angelic to demonic. Her mouth burst open like an abyss, and an unholy sound filled the air. Neia felt it as it filled every facet of her being, a piercing shriek that dissolved all thoughts and reason. Neia fell to her knees, her hands desperately clutching and pulling at her ears in an attempt to rip them out. Anything to stop that maddening sound, like a symphony of despair and anguish where every note was off-key yet executed perfectly at the same time. The girl was vaguely aware, like in a far-away dream, that the girl was scrambling around the ground like a lunatic, bumping and hitting on the nearby people running away. The girl didn't care. the girl wasn't Neia Baraje now, she wasn't even human anymore. All that remained of the girl was a primal instinct, one that humans had abandoned when they decided to become 'civilized' yet still remained rooted at the base of their subconscious. The surety of death that can only be truly experienced by the prey when faced with their predator: fear.
The world around her soon began spinning and darkening, and the part of the girl that still experienced but couldn't form any cohesive thoughts felt a rush of relief as the quiet embrace of the void surrounded her.
It wasn't the discomfort of the cold hard dirt that awakened her. Neither were the piercing screams that resounded not too far away from her, but those were starting to begin to nurse a headache from her. No, it was the warm liquid slowly dripping on her face, one drop at a time, that did the trick. She grimaced, and a drop of it managed to get into her barely. open mouth, the taste of iron blooming on her tongue almost making her gag. She wearily opened her eyes, only to be greeted with the sight of a man sprawled over her, not 5 centimetres away from her face. She scrambled to get him off of her, and he fell to the side without any resistance.
With no small effort, Neia struggled to get to her feet her clouded mind trying to pierce together what had happened. Then her eyes fell over the man next to her, and all of her labour went in the wind as she brought her hands to her lips to block her own scream leaving her throat. There, resting on the ground, his mouth twisted into a pained grimace and glassy eyes fully opened for once, laid Dayne, The Swords of Darkness' own druid. And piercing through his chest was a large slab of stone, parting flesh and clothes alike to make way for the dark crimson to dye everything it touched.
Neia scrambled next to him to check for his vitals, but her mind had already figured out what her body was too slow on the uptake to get. That man, the one she who not a day ago had shared the warmest meals she could remember in a long time with, the complete stranger who had treated her with more kindness than anybody outside of her family ever did, was long gone. It was all she could do to get a couple of steps away from the body before her stomach emptied itself on the grass without her consent.
Oddly enough, the act brought with itself an odd sort of clarity of everything around her, horror dawning on her face as she realised that Dyne's fate had not been unique. That was when she realised it wasn't a hill that she was staying on. It wasn't even a battlefield. She was floating atop an ocean of blood and corpses, with only those horrific statues raised above the sea level like solitary islands. And their numbers had increased!
Neia didn't know how long she stood there, unmoving, just staring at the carnage surrounding her. All that she could think of was that if not for Dyne who had hovered protectively over her, she would have probably joined in, just another disfiguring corpse to add to the pile. She was thankful that at least she couldn't make out any other of the Sword's members. "Maybe they escaped." she tried to reassure herself. "There were thousands of us. I'm sure at least a couple of them managed to get away. It would be impossible for all of them to have-" except she was already living in an impossible reality. The mightiest force of the Kingdom, slaughtered so easily by a single... a single...
The girl frantically looked around her, but there was no trace of the monster, safe from the desolate destruction she had left in her way. Even the distant screams she was hearing until a short while ago had stopped. Everything was impossibly still, safe from her. Death had come descended upon that place, and once more she was the lone outlier: the single one that dared to still draw breath.
Then another scream pierced right through the silence, this one a thundering cry that threatened to split the heavens. Heart to her throat, Neia recognised it: the monster's shriek. But this one was not like her previous one, the assaulting wave of rage and despair, it was a pained sound, and that could only mean one thing. There was still someone alive and fighting the monster. Maybe not all hope was lost, maybe all those lives could be avenged!
Neia looked down at her traitorous feet as she realised they were heading towards the sound. "No, no, no, no! Even if there are people still alive, there is nothing I can do to help them. There were actual legends fighting amongst us, and they were still ripped apart. All I would be doing is marching straight to my death and waisting Dyne's sacrifice!" But even as she told herself all of that, she found it hard to turn away and leave. She would have liked to think that it was because some part of her had the resolve to fight that thing, to put her life on the line for the slightest chance she could make a difference for her Kingdom, but she knew the truth. She simply couldn't stand to be alone any longer in that place without losing her mind. Even knowing how unlikely it was for whoever was fighting to win against the monster, it was still better than going insane.
So she got down on the ground and began to slowly, painfully make her way ahead. Each muscle protested furiously with even the slightest of moves, not from exhaustion but from sheer fear. Marching to her death was supposed to be a noble end carried out by a fierce warrior, not by a short mess of a girl crawling through the mud with tears in her eyes. She extended her arm to carry on forward, only to be met with resistance. She turned her head, and she couldn't help but snort. Her bow was still on her back, and it had gotten stuck to one of the statue's legs. For some reason in that moment that was the funniest thing in the world for her, and it took her every ounce of self-restraint to not double over from laughter. Look out monster! You may be able to cleave through steel like butter, but you shall be no match for Neia Baraje and her trusty bow!
She had half a mile to simply leave the piece of wood there, but in the end, she simply nudged it free and continued on her journey. The agonizingly slow journey that she hated but hoped would never actually end. She couldn't tell if she had been crawling for minutes or hours, time seemed to have lost all meaning. All that was left to her was the next step, and the one after that. She ached for a break but she knew that if she broke the spartan pace she had set for herself she might not be able to resume. So she swiped the sweat off her forehead and carried on. And on. And on.
Until suddenly a cloud of dust enveloped her as the ground beneath her started violently shaking. She lunged for one of the statues for support, grabbing its leg in a desperate hug. Coughing slightly into her sleeve to rid the foreign substance from her lungs. Thankfully, the tremors quickly subsided and she peered her eyes slightly open, waiting for the dust to clear out. And when it did, she was greeted by two silhouettes standing not 100 meters away from her. The gigantic one was obviously the monster, while the other one appeared to slowly rise to its feet, dusting off the debris of its black robe, one that seemed somewhat familiar to Neia. The person was from Silver Thread Bird. Or Kalgra? She couldn't remember, but what she could see was that there was no sight of any of her party members. "Was he truly fighting alone?" The idea felt ludicrous, but she was staring right at the proof.
Except that something was not quite right. Shifting for better cover behind the statue, she noticed that the creature was acting strangely. She was not lashing out or attacking or doing anything for that matter. She simply stood there, slightly hunched over, her hair covering the entirety of her face.
"Finally!" a distinctive female voice exclaimed, one that belonged to the robed person. Neia tried shuffling around for a better look, but even with her eyesight, she could not make out any distinctive feature from the woman. "You certainly are a feisty one, I could expect no less for a Servant of your calibre, but that's over now. You'll play along from now on, won't you?" All the monster did in response was to slowly nod, and although she could not tell for sure from that angle it looked like the woman was rubbing her hand on its tail.
Head spinning from trying to process what she had just heard, she almost missed the woman's next words, spoken in a soft, alluring voice: "Now before we go, dear, do be good and get rid of that human that's spying us from behind the statue. I'm sure you're still quite hungry, after all."
Panic overwhelming her, Neia tried to turn away and run, only to trip on her own legs and fall to the ground. The bow on her back all but forgotten, it was all she could do to stare as the spectre of death rushed towards her, clawing and snarling like an enraged animal. Closing her eyes in fear, that meant Neia didn't see as a purple hue briefly, illuminated the sky above them, but she did hear the bellowing that followed:
"RULE BREAKER!"