Revy jumped from tree to tree, each time hiding her figure in their shadow. With each leap, getting closer and closer to the building that was being robbed. The revolver in her right hand was heavy, a constant reminder of the inevitable confrontation. Revy looked towards Rock. He was still behind the tree where they had been hiding together, looking towards her. Revy, with a pissed face, motioned for him to hide. He quickly gave a thumbs up and hid more closely behind the tree. Revy sighed and then turned again towards the building where the three masked men were standing. She moved forward, avoiding the light and any sticks on the ground that, if broken beneath her feet, could expose her. She ran a few more meters, stopping behind a tree in front of the building. She looked behind the tree. Of the three men, two of them were looking inside the building and one of them was looking around. Revy was able to see the long gun in the hands of the sentry, but she couldn't see what weapons the other two had, much less how armed the men inside were. Suddenly, several shots rang out from inside the building. Revy instinctively hid behind a tree and started looking at her trembling hands.
"Fucking hell..." Revy growled to herself, grabbing the hand in which she held the revolver with her free hand. Her breathing and heart rate increased unnaturally. She felt her field of vision shrink. "Fuck..." She growled to herself again. She had never been afraid of walking into a gunfight in her life, much less the sound of a gunshot. But now. Now she was paralyzed with fear. But why? She had no reason to be afraid before. She considered herself dead anyway. Whether it was when she first pulled the trigger at the age of 13, or in her last moments before she was fatally shot. Now? Is it because she got a second chance at life? Or maybe because she remembered her previous death. One thing was certain, she couldn't lean out and pull the trigger, not right now. Her brain thought of running away. She started looking around the trees where she could escape, suddenly she saw Rock's eyes looking at her. Their eyes met. Revy saw the worry in his eyes. At that same moment, she heard more shots coming from the building and Revy flinched. But Rock didn't. Revy saw it. She felt terrible. They didn't even shoot at her, and she wanted to run away. Even Rock, whom Revy always called a wimp, was less afraid than her. Something inside her snapped.
Revy felt many emotions at this moment. Including a rage, which clearly began to fight the desire to escape caused by fear. She took a deep breath to control herself. Which somewhat worked. Revy looked towards Rock. He looked around, looking as if he would be able to run up to her. When their eyes met again, Revy motioned him to hide again. Despite some uncertainty, he did what she told. He clearly still saw fear in her eyes and he hadn't imagined it. Revy was still afraid, but now she felt like she couldn't give in to it. She felt like Rock's faith in her had already been shaken enough, she couldn't let herself lose any more in his eyes. She took another deep breath and cocked the gun with her thumb. She had 6 bullets in the cylinder and had no experience with this weapon. She couldn't afford to waste any of the shots. Additionally, she wasn't sure how this weapon would behave in her hands, so she couldn't just jump into the fight like she usually did. She had to use cover. Revy leaned behind the tree, confirming that none of the men standing outside had changed their position, raised her right hand with the revolver and aimed the weapon at the nearest enemy.
Revy pulled the trigger. A ball of fire appeared in front of the barrel of her gun, and the sound of a gunshot echoed around her. The bandit standing watch fell on his face, and a pool of blood began to form under him. The bullet fired by Revy severed his neck. His companions turned around and, seeing what had happened, began to look around in panic. Fortunately, Revy managed to hide behind a tree in time. She looked at the revolver with thin smoke rising from the barrel after the shot. The recoil of this weapon is definitely different than hers 92FS, but not unmanageable. It was downright, strangely, satisfying. Revy felt a little more confident, the fear, despite still being present, had decreased to a degree she was able to control. Although the feeling of fear was still something strange to her, but for now she had to come to terms with it. She heard movement behind her. Two people. The dead man's friends had to start approaching her. Revy smiled slightly and cocked the revolver. Out of the corner of her eye she located another cover, another tree, three meters away. She moved quickly towards the tree, while pointing her hand at the bandit on the road. She pulled the trigger. The man was knocked down by a shot from Revy's revolver, and when he hit the dirt, she was already hidden behind a previously found cover, not allowing the enemy to notice her.
"Fuck you!" The only bandit still standing shouted and fired twice into the forest. Even though the shots weren't even fired near her, the sound of them alone made Revy flinch slightly and her hands began to shake again. She quickly took a deep breath and grabbed her hand. Immediately afterward, she gently peeked behind the cover. She spotted the last man standing. In his hands he had what looked like a double-barreld shotgun. He had it broken in half and tried to load more shells into it, but they fell out of his hand. He must have been clearly an amateur. Revy saw him throw the gun on the ground and then, turning his back on her, run towards the building. Without much thought, Revy, cocking the hammer, extended her hand with the gun towards him and squeezed the trigger, sending bullets into his hip. The man fell to the ground and after a while he started screaming in pain. Revy slowly went out of the covers, and noticing the man turning on his back and lifting his head, trying to pull the gun from the holster, she quickly placed the iron sight on the bandit's forehead. He did manage to pull the revolver from its holster, but before he could aim it, a bullet fired from Revy's revolver hit him between the eyes, splattering his brain on the sand.
Revy looked around. Shots could still be heard from inside the building, but the adrenaline rushing through her veins downed the fear. Revy couldn't see any threat, so she started running ahead. In a few seconds she was at the wooden building. She pulled her revolver in front of her and moved towards the building's entrance. As she walked closer to the open door, she heard someone shouting and footsteps coming towards her. She slowed her pace, as a masked man holding a matte black revolver emerged from the building. Revy wasted no time and quickly sent a bullet towards him, followed by another. The sheer force of the bullets threw the man against the wall on the opposite side of the door, and then he fell to the ground. Revy walked closer to the door frame and, standing next to it, leaned slightly and looked into the room. She saw two men inside. One of them was looking in her direction, but apparently didn't notice her, and the other one had his back turned to her, as if he was keeping an eye on someone and didn't want to let him off the hook. They were both obviously paniced after seeing their companion die. Revy quickly pulled the hammer back and, turning her body, went behind the covers and aimed the barrel at the first enemy, only to hear a lone click instead of the sound of a gunshot when she pressed the trigger. Six bullets. She forgot she only had six bullets. She quickly threw herself to the ground for cover before the bullets from inside the building hit her. Revy was now lying next to the man she had killed earlier, and with trembling hands she was trying to open the cylinder loading gate and load the bullets she had taken from her belt, when she suddenly heard a scream from inside the building.
"This bitch is out of ammo! Go finish her!" Revy heard someone slowly approaching her. She managed to load one bullet, but the drum wouldn't move at all so she could load more, then she saw the matte black revolver lying in front of her. The model looked identical to what she used, the only difference was the color. Revy grabbed it and aimed it at the passage. At the same moment, the bandit nonchalantly walked out the door, completely not expecting that she would be armed. Before he could raise the gun towards her, she had already fired at him twice. One bullet hit him in the stomach area and the other hit him in the right side of the chest. The man fell on the doorframe and then fell to the ground. Revy lay on the ground for a moment, but then she got up, holstered the steel-gleamed revolver, and moved on with the black revolver she had found. She stood carefully at the door and leaned out slightly. The other man still stood with his back to her. "Did you killed that bitch, Deri?" he asked without turning around to looking back.
"Sorry, but that bitch killed him instead." Revy replied as she cocked the revolver. The man began to turn, but as soon as Revy saw the whites of his eyes, she pressed the trigger, sending bullet into his head. The man's body fell to the floor with a thud, and Revy, walking up to him, kicked the rifle out of his hands, which looked like the Winchester ones she knew from her favorite Westerns. She looked around. She was now in a spacious room, there were shelves along the walls, and where there weren't any, there were various items hanging on the walls. Leather belts, some metal containers and much, much more. In front of her was a counter decorated with lots of bullet holes. "Is anyone here?" She asked, taking a cautious step forward.
"For the love of gods..." A thick male voice said from behind the counter. "I didn't think anyone would help me here..." An older, broad and muscular man with long gray hair and an equally long and gray beard leaned out behind the counter. In his hands he held something that Revy resembled a Winchester Model 97 with a shortened barrel. "I ran out of ammo for this little thing... And I didn't want to use the more destructive items in my inventory... You know what I'm talking about, right?" He added, laughing and hugging the shotgun. Revy looked at the man with slight surprise.
"I'm afraid, I don't..." She replied, tucking the black revolver into her belt and then headed towards the door. "Rock! It's clear now, you can come over!" She screamed, standing in the doorway and kicking the body of the bandit lying there. She stood there for a while and then, seeing Rock coming out of the forest, she turned back inside.
"I'm Dewar... Dewar Rodennblack... And you?" The man spoke in a friendly voice, seeing that she was going back inside.
"Call me Revy..." She replied, standing in front of the counter, her voice calm, although with a slight doubt in the man's sincerity.
"I see..." He replied with a slight smile. Then he stuck out his hand towards her. "So... Thank you, Revy, for saving my gray ass as well as the inventory in here..." Revy hesitated slightly when she saw him extending his hand to her, but a moment later she carefully offered him hers. Dewar smiled, shook her hand firmly. Revy's face contorted when she felt on her hand how strong Dewar was, and after a while she tried to pull her hand from his steel grip.
"Ouch! Fuck you! I use these hands to make a living!" She exclaimed, clutching her hurting hand after Dewar let go of her, laughing slightly. Immediately after, she looked at her hand. "Or rather... I used these hands to make a living..." She said to herself in a whisper, rubbing her painful hand.
"Sorry..." The man behind the counter said, still laughing slightly, but Revy sensed no malice from him. "I was so grateful to you that I forgot to control my strength... And as you probably know, we dwarves value it very much..." Revy looked at him with big eyes, not believing what she was hearing. Dwarf? After all, they are in a different world, so maybe it shouldn't surprise her. But. He was of a similar height to her. Or maybe dwarves are not as short as fiction imagines them to be. Dewar's voice brought her out of her thoughts. "By the way, what are you doing here? This trail is practically dead, nobody uses it..." Revy looked at her interlocutor for a moment. She opened her mouth and then closed it, not knowing what to say. She thought Rock would be useful here, with his golden talk. Suddenly she heard a muffled gunshot behind her. She turned to see the bandit, who was lying in the doorway, holding his revolver raised, but then he leaned over and fell face down on the floor, revealing a bullet hole in his head, and as he fell, his revolver discharged, making another hole in the wooden walls of the building. As soon as she got over her shock, Revy ran towards the exit and looked outside. She was terrified by what she saw. There she saw Rock standing over one of the bodies, a smoking revolver in his shaking hands.
"Rock!" Revy shouted as she moved towards him, passing the bodies lying at the entrance to the building. Being quite close, she began to cautiously approach Rock. In the meantime, he practically did not move, he only lowered the gun slightly, but his eyes were still glued to the place where he had shot a moment ago. However, Revy didn't care. She carefully approached him, avoiding getting under his gun, and standing next to him, she placed her hand on the revolver he was holding, forcing him down even more. "Rock, I'm here..." She said as tenderly as she could. Rock seemed to react to her because he flinched slightly when he heard her and didn't fight her hand. "Rock..." She continued. "Please... Give me the revolver..." Revy gently tightened her hand around the gun Rock was holding. He squeezed it for a moment, but then released him, allowing Revy to take the gun.
"Revy... I... I didn't want to kill him..." Rock began to speak slowly, his voice trembling. "I... I... I was calmly walking towards you... When suddenly I saw him raise the gun." He said, raising a trembling finger and pointing with it at the legs of the body that lay in the doorway. "I wanted to scream... But he might have gotten scared when he heard me and shot at you... And... And... Then I saw this bandit, there was a gun next to him..." Revy looked at the man they were standing next to. It was the same one she first shot in the hip and then shot him in the head. "I took the gun... I aimed it and... and..." Rock paused for a moment to swallow. "Revy... I really didn't want to kill him..." Rock stopped looking at the body in the doorway and looked at Revy. He saw the worried and sad expression on her face, and she, in turn, saw the fear eating him away in his eyes. "Really..."
"I believe you Rock..." Revy replied in a calm but slightly sad voice. Deep down she wanted to fuck him up with every curse word she could utter, but she knew this wasn't the time for that. "I believe you did it because you had to..." She added, placing her hand on his back. Hearing this, Rock calmed down slightly and stopped trembling. He took a deeper breath, as if forcing himself to calm down. Then his eyes suddenly widened and he covered his mouth with his hand.
"I think I'm going to puke..." He said behind his covered mouth with a hand. Before Revy could say anything, he turned around and fell to his knees. Then she heard the sounds that she knew all too well, sound of his stomach turning inside out. Revy looked at him worriedly. Then she looked at the gun she had taken from Rock's hands. This thing looked like the efect of incestuous love between a Colt Navy and a Colt SAA. A non-full frame with a hexagonal barrel, connected to a drum loaded with cartrige and a rod for extracting spent cases. This was the gun Rock used to kill someone. Revy now looked down the road they stood on, which was strewn with the bodies of the thugs she had killed.
"Shit..." She said quietly to herself. "It all was supposed to look better..."
A few minutes later, Revy helped the weakened Rock enter the building. In the meantime, Dewar covered the bodies lying inside with cloth so that they would not decorate the surroundings too much. "And who is this? And what's wrong with him?"
"This is Rock, my partner." She responded by placing Rock on the floor and leaning him against the wall. "Rock, this is Dewar..." She told Rock, the man behind the counter. Rock only raised his hand slightly, but it only showed how weakened he was. Revy straightened up and looked towards Dewar. "Do you have any alcohol or anything to help calm him down?" Dewar nodded, then pulled out a glass bottle with a clear liquid from under the counter.
"What's wrong with him? Is he sick or something?" He asked quietly as soon as Revy approached.
"He's in shock..." She replied, taking the bottle in her hand, then opening it and taking a sip. It tasted like whiskey that hadn't been barrel-aged, but it should do fine. "He's never fired a gun before, let alone killed..." She added, wiping her mouth with her hand and walking away towards Rock.
"For his first time shooting a gun, he didn't do too bad." Dewar replied, laughing.
"You're not helping..." Revy said in a flustered voice and then handed Rock the bottle. "Here... It should help you a little." Rock took the bottle and took a few sips from it, then set it down on the floor, taking a deep breath.
"By the way... Where are you guys from? And what are you doing here?" Dewar asked, looking at them closely. "You don't look like locals, and as I said, not many people use this trail..." Revy thought about the answer for a moment, but before she said anything, Rock beat her to it.
"If we told you that from another world... Would you believe it?" Dewar looked at him for a moment, then started laughing.
"Haha, from another world... Haha..." He said in between laughing. "That would mean... I would meet anothers... During the same century..." He added after a while, trying to catch his breath. And as soon as he managed to calm down, he looked at Revy and Rock's serious expressions. "Wait... You're not joking?"
"So... You mean to tell me... That you are, literally, from another world..." Dewar had just finished listening to a 15-minute of Rock's and Revy's story about what had happened to them in the last 24 hours.
"Exactly..." Rock replied.
"And you... You made a deal with some glowing las to resurrect you in this world?"
"In my fucking defense, she wanted to do it herself..." Revy replied.
"Okay... And then you both woke up in some underground place, and when you came out you found ruins made of black stone and a glowing blue tree?" They both nodded.
"Yes..."
"It looks like it..."
"So... You don't know anything about this world. How different it is from yours and so on and so forth..."
"Okay, could you fucking stop talking about how deep shit we steep in..." Dewar just laughed when he heard Reva's comment.
"It's not that bad... You can shoot a gun..." He said pointing at Revy. "And you..." He pointed a finger at Rock. "You have potential... Or luck..."
"Oh God..." Rock reacted by clutching his mouth with his hand. "Don't remind me of that..." Dewar laughed again at Rock's reaction, which obviously pissed off Revy.
"Give it a fucking break!" Revy shouted. "Instead of tormenting us, you'd better tell us something about this world... Like what was that in that forest that was screaming like that... Or why those tree were glowing blue..."
"Or what did you mean by 'anothers'..." Rock interjected as soon as he controlled his gag reflex. Dewar laughed lightly once more before sighing slightly.
"Well... It's hard to disagree with you two..." Dewar leaned under the counter and pulled out a large stoneware bottle, then opened it. "So... Where do you want to start?"
"From the beginning..." Rock and Revy replied simultaneously.
Long long time ago. There was a world called Alshard, which in one of the local languages meant earth and ash. Its continents were inhabited by four races, although initially there were only three. People, made of mud by the god of the plains. Dwarves, carved in stone by the god of the mountains. Elves, carved from tree trunks by the god of the forest. The gods of creation, pleased with their work, decided to go away and show off their work to the other gods. In the meantime, night came and with it came the eternally lonely and bored goddess of the night. From her place in the sky, she saw how the newly created races were as miserable as she was. So she went down first to the people, and seeing them hungry and cold, she taught them to build houses and cultivate the land. Noticing their gratitude, she gave them ambition. Then she went down to the dwarves. These, after climbing to the highest peak of their mountains, were without purpose. So the goddess gave them skillful hands and creative heads so that they could always find new goals. And seeing their gratitude, she gave them perseverance. Then she visited the elves. They envied the majesty of the trees around them, so the goddess gave the elves longevity and elegance. However, in their pride, which they inherited from the god of the forest, they did not thank her. The goddess of the night, however, was not offended by this. She returned to her place and watched the world unfold, knowing she would never be alone at night again. Meanwhile, humans, dwarves and elves were developing. The gods who created them were surprised when they revisited their creations. However, surprise quickly turned into pride and admiration, for themselves and their works. The god of wind watched all this carefully, jealous of the works of other gods of creation, he stole some of the people of the god of the plains and combined them with animals that inhabited the forests, creating half-beasts. However, not being satisfied with his work, he abandoned them without choosing a place for them to live, condemning them to eternal wandering.
And this is how the world began to develop. People began to build roads and settlements, and then unite into larger communities. The dwarves discovered new and new methods of craftsmanship, and when they met humans and humans, in their ambition, asked them to teach them, they taught them, and from humans they themselves learned to build cities, which they began to improve. Only the elves, forever staring at the treetops and the half-beasts forever chasing the wind, did not develop at a comparable pace. The god of the forest, offended by the lack of progress of his race and out of jealousy of the race of gods of the plains and mountains, started a dispute between the gods, which was only stopped by the goddess of life herself. She decided to give the races magic so that their achievements would be equalized and they would show what they could do with it in their wisdom. The elves got the most, the dwarves half as much, and she distributed what was left among the humans. The half-beasts did not receive magic because their creator did not intercede for them, but they managed to beg the god of chaos for knowledge about rituals and pacts, which was to be a hiccup in the turbulent history of this race.
Years passed, then decades, then centuries and millennia. The races began to mix with each other and were no longer limited to places chosen for them by the gods, although most elves still remained in their forest communes, and the half-beasts were forever chasing the wind, rarely staying in one place for long. States rose and fell, and new ones arose from their ruins. An alliances were formed, but after some time, they were broken. Wars began and ended. Noble families had risen, only be recorded in the books of history, so that no one would mention them again after their fall.
And the world continued like this, in its natural cycle, until one day. In the west of the continent of Melu'telor, something has broken. Something crashed. Something broke. And so began what will universally be recorded in the history books as the Fall...
And the continent known as Melu'telor, or the fertile land, will be renamed Camtelor. The Fallen Land...