Bright redness clouded by fuming blackness, quaking the fields, stones scattering out in frantic motions—walls battered from the occurred explosion. Chaos lorded the area, and in the distance, a figure smashed through a wall, sliding to a halt. Wrapped in a red cloth, mostly singed, Enavro crawled up, stray fire burning over her arms. The clothes were the fuel, her precious garments. She maintained a moment of silence and looked to the side. Another explosion rocked the earth—a roar tearing through the space.
Another trap discovered by the Bastard!
Now it knows where it stands!
"The dog burns!" She muttered, noting a dense darkness pulsing in the distance, a corridor enveloped in endless blackness, with a certain awareness of unknown immensity present in it. "Unseen depths, I think you called it."
No response from the tenebrosity.
"No matter." She said, "You take over now."
Considering the similarity between the Velira prophecies and the Kael'thureon—the sun that was promised—one can inevitably conclude, outside the influences of the Faith, that some measure of truth, or at least originating occurrences, had influenced its existence—Letter to the comes.
In a vast cave, flames burning through its entirety, a figure trembled in its center, a beast with powerful claws, dragging lines across the earth. It roared, vocalizing its pain through the cavity. Rocks quivered, dust drifting down from overhead.
Furiosity shaped into a creature.
With dark red eyes prying for the enemy, its fangs bared, snarling. "I see you, Rock, hiding amongst your kind…Is this your trap? Your great defiance against me. What a mockery of an act it is. Come, the shadow will not hide you. Nothing will. Death calls you…" It fell on all fours, howled. "ANSWER ME!"
Response.
A voice blasted into the cave, stirring the winds in marshaled accordance. "The Darkness hides what I want!" A shadow stretched across the walls, bearing the form of a man—a tenebrous shape of seemingly endless darkness. Its voice blared through the wind—mighty.
"Who are you?" The bastard hunched, crimson eyes locked on the looming shadow painted over the walls. "Speak!"
A counter. "I am what I am!"
The beast sneered. "And I am your hunter." It surged, piercing towards the shadow.
"If only!"
The beast crashed into the wall, an explosion ringing through the cave. A fiery eruption. Another one. It screamed in the chaos, red dancing across its furred skin. Many patches of red skin now—seared—yet it stands. Powerful legs and arms ready to cull the life of the unknown attacker.
"WHERE ARE YOU!" It vanished. An action of absolute abruptness. A moment, and the beast is but a painted darkness across the sea of flames.
Shadow movement!
Again, with that suddenness, the bastard surged out from a pool of blackness—eyes screened with that intense, furious intelligence. Vengeance—a thing only present within the advanced mind—now current inside the creature. Inside the beast of darkness and might.
This was not just the act of chosen stimuli or predetermined responses…This was true intelligence.
A symbol born of the mindForce!
Yet, it remains a simple beast. Another detonation, and the monster cried now. The stones had done their work, the sole reason for Enavro's linchpin actions. The creature must have wondered—what does she do? Why does she run? What are those stones she dropped?
But it lacked the awesome power to see the unseen—if it did. If it knew where it stood, it would run! Ah, the danger that awaits it. Shadows coiled around the walls, like a curtain of umbrage, blanketing the surface. Now in the center of the fields of flame stood the animal, flames dancing on and around him. Eerie to behold.
The darkness swarmed 'round, circling like a vortex of black waters—ready to consume what lay in its center.
"COME OUT!" The beast roared—an observable guise to mask the fear. The oldest fear is the unknown. Strange that even creatures with no measure of innate intelligence could recognize this fear. They would whine, bark, wail, scream, but alas, they realized it.
This one had it, and thus it feared greatly.
The darkened delineation screened across the walls, expanding, growing into a godly representation of something—a man in black. And suddenly, two orbs of light burned in it. Eyes in the grand silhouette. Any creature of visual prowess would recognize the presentation.
What stood before the bastard was a giant painted on the walls with great intensity. Shaped tenebrosity, with eyes like burning lamps. The beast knows it is watched now, and it cowers for a moment.
"WHO ARE YOU?" Dread masked as power. The creature said, "Has the whiteMother, no, Auwale, finally sought me out?"
"What creature pays attention to things that aren't here?" The shadow spoke through the wind, howling out. "Pay attention, do not miss even a single detail. You will need to remember if you are to tell souls of your death."
A sneer chimed from the Monster. "Come for it, then!"
Ah, the hidden language of combatants. A collision rocked the terrain, rocks scattering out in fear of what would happen now, of the chaos that had grown within the dark. There is entropy, dust fuming, flames flowing like rivers through the earth. Booms upon booms. An endless series of eruptions.
Who would win? The nameless bastard or the El'shadie of the Current Era?
Merrin gasped, perspiration evident across his face, steaming against the earth. Now, he stood in a dome of swirling shadows—courtesy of the data gained from Ivory. Unseen depths—that and the countless other symbols united for the birth of the now phenomenon: a sea of tiding darkness.
This was his barrier—the illusion that cowered the great Bastard, observable. Merrin witnessed the frantic search of the creature, from wall to wall, rock to stone, seeking. Futile. Well hidden, he existed, enveloped in waving tenebrosity. From here, he marshaled the illusion—the vast form of darkness and burning eyes.
Pictorial!
Yet enough for the beast.
Did they not say it was elusive? Merrin called Caster logic from some measure of a definition. Nothing, except one.
I am just smarter than it?
He sighed, knowing the danger such thoughts posed. One did not consider oneself ultimate, regardless—in such realities, stupidity often becomes the inevitable outcome. Not him. Never him. But alas, the simplicity and functionality of the created plan was…awesome.
Rocks infused with fire—specifically the erupting symbol. Auwale had more than one such event. Beyond that was the familiar method. Contain. Trigger. Unlike the coin, the stones deserved but a trigger, no need for a recursive loop.
The outcome was frightening. A rock that clapped like the heaven's judgement.
Such might.
Such power.
The horror of the Caster!
Another quake trembled the earth beneath his feet, stone scuffling to the side. The Bastard, on the other hand, bled. Spills of dark crimson sipped out from scars, singed patches across the black furred skin. A scar had torn half its face—yet it lingered, eyes still aglow with that mad intensity.
Just die!
Merrin sensed the depletion of the created stone—that and the lowness of the self-force. One without the other, and the plan unravels.
Mist it, this is taking too long.
Time Time Time.
The Beast froze—Merrin, watching from a cliff above, noted this with heart-pounding awareness. What happened? Mentation spun into chaos. What did it notice? Surely that was it. A combatant did not break the flow of motions for nothing but to learn, to analyze the acquired data.
What did it learn?
The beast hunched, its tongue brushing the scars over the nose. It stalled for something. What? Merrin took in the explosive patterns—unsure why. Enavro had dropped them in a predetermined format, designed to trap the creature. The more it sought to learn of his presence, the higher the triggered explosion.
That was the soul of the approach.
But now…A chill ran down. Something is wrong!
The patterns—awareness screamed the words. The pattern was disrupted. The beast no longer ran into them. Somehow, it sensed it, knew what to avoid, where to stand, where to move.
It's been doing that for a while—but it chooses to trigger certain ones. Why? A distractive tool, no doubt, to keep me away from the realization. So it would study. So it would learn.
A voice struck into his mind—close. "Do you understand it now?"
Ah, the speed he turned now, saw then the face of an animal sprouting from the tide of swarming shadows. Like a head out of water, it sneered, a look of power present in those menacing scarlet eyes.
"I told you the shadows cannot hide you from death!"
There was no time for cogitation. Merrin had been smashed out of the shadow dome, falling off the cliff, tumbling down. The wind whistling those familiar tones. It helped. A moment and the falling velocity had slowed, tempest curling about his form, landing feet first against the earth.
I need to run!
Too late, and the beast is upon him, maw wide open, inches from his head.
Death has come for him.