Elizabeth reached into the pouch Rum handed her and grabbed a ball of black wood. Clasping the ball in her hand, it begins to accumulate heat, and smoke erupts from the gaps in her fist. She firmly plants her right foot into the ground, twisting her hip, and with one final stomp, throws the ball toward the Brehlam. Rum does the same, colliding into a large ball of ash, covering the monster in a layer of black.
Both of them ran from the enclosure of light into the open path, but paused as a wave of air came rushing at them. It dropped from the ceiling, landing on the ground, and screamed. No noise erupted from the now partially invisible monster; those with higher ranges of hearing could only hear the Brehlam's screech. To her, however, it only looked like a cry for help.
With the creature partially exposed, its large hands splayed across its face, attempting to wipe off the ash but only continuing to spread it. In frustration, it slammed its fist into the ground and screamed.
We can't fight this thing, we need to run, we need to run, Elizabeth continued repeating it in her head, any attempt at calming her nerves was failing. Embracing the terror in their situation, she used all her strength to run as the Brehlam began to charge.
Side by side, they ran further down the path, only looking back to see the monster beginning to rush towards them. Taking one large leap away, they avoided the Brehlam as it charged into the tree line, crashing into the tree, snapping it in two.
"How is it able to see us!?" Elizabeth shouted.
"It can't, it's only guessing. It knows where we're trying to go. Just continue with the plan!".
From the rubble, the Brehlam appeared, slamming its fist into the shattered tree, sending a burst of scraps across the open ground. At the last moment, Elizabeth dropped down on the floor, covering her head with her hand, quickly standing up as it settled. A sharp pain erupts from Elizabeth's side, but she ignores it as the Brehlam goes into another frenzy. Shooting across the middle of the path again, this time closer to Rum than her, erupting in a wave of smoke as it crashed into another tree. For a moment, Elizabeth's heart sank. Is she okay? Did it get her? Those few seconds of silence felt the longest, but as a figure appeared from the smoke, she followed suit in her stride and continued to run.
Their destination was a fork in the road; once they reached it, they would immediately go left and hide. The instructions were clear; it was the easiest part, but in action, it was difficult to maintain the same stride for so long on uneven terrain. Rum made it look easy, leaping from one point to the other without losing any speed. She was lagging; she had no choice but to push herself. But she'd made a mistake.
In her exhausted mind, for a brief moment, the monster's location was unknown, and in that time, it had managed to scrape off a small chunk of ash from its eye, and as its large iris erupted from its socket and looked directly at her, she froze. At that moment, Elizabeth's thoughts were consumed by a single, bold message: her next destination and her new main priority.
PROTECT YOUR SHADOW
With only a small amount of time to think, Elizabeth reached into the pouch and threw a bright red wooden ball to the ground, erupting in a burst of flame, sending her backward, skidding across the ground. As the fire erupted, a sudden gust of wind, strong enough to tear down buildings, blew it away, sending the Brehalm back a few feet with it.
Driving her fist into the ground, Elizabeth struggled to her feet, her eyes burned, and parts of her skin bubbled from the short exposure to the fire. She'd forced a distance away from it, but for how long? The heat had affected the Brehlam as well; it was cautious around her now, but that wouldn't last.
Rum was ahead, securing their escape into the darkness, but Elizabeth remained at a standstill, waiting for adrenaline to kick in and use everything to escape. As her heart beat faster, her breathing was rapid, focused, and aware of everything around her and the imminent danger she was in. She was ready, but so was the beast.
With still only one eye open, it charged at her as she began to run, wind rushing past her, cutting through air resistance like a knife, but the beast was faster, much faster than her. Her shadow trailed behind her; that's all it needed to end the game the two had conducted. The sheer size of the beast behind her, heat emanating from its hairy body and the musk that flowed with it reached for her shadow put one full fist into the dark pool before another burst of heat exploded behind Elizabeth, once against making her skid further ahead this time only a few inches away from the dark path. The ringing in Elizabeth's ears, like church bells directly assaulting her eardrums, prevented her from moving or hearing clearly. She couldn't move, she could hardly breathe, but even in her dazed state, you could hear the voice. A voice that wouldn't leave her, bound by a choice that was never given to her, and now giving her the ability to live. Before the beast had even charged, she saw his movement and any movements it would have made before or after that moment. Everything had slowed down, and the choice she had to make was clear.
The beast leaped into the air and entered her shadow, squirming into the abyss like a worm, turning her world into a cold, unforgiving place that lasted only a second.
In one moment, she was still watching the monster leap into the air, its body blocking the intertwined ceiling, heat emanating from its breath like a fire against her skin, only in the next second disappearing into a vast ocean, standing on the edge of a cliff, above, the hole in the sky spun. It was the same image she saw when the hole first appeared, when the voice of Ichemound called to her. What once would be great waves crashing against the shores now remained stationary, and the splashes against the jagged rocks remained still in the air, but the ever-present feeling of a heat against the back of the head ignited. Her attention remained on the hole—the only moving thing in this world—and the growing mass descending on the fake world it had constructed. Without confirmation, Elizabeth knew what was coming, the otherworldly being that she'd so long suppressed, acknowledging the existence of something that shouldn't be. From underneath the curtain of dark clouds and lightning emerged something circular and white with tinges of red erupting like vines from beneath it, shaking the sky instead of the ground, its presence disrupted even its realm. Elizabeth had imagined how the great giants of the Gray forest looked, their heads soaring past the limits of what any humanoid had perceived before. Their stride reshaping the ground, creating and destroying what they all see now as the truth of how Toblitche looks, mountains gathering great bodies of water running off into the main, creating life with unrelenting speed, fueling the bodies of the people below. This wasn't that. This wasn't a being created to birth a new life, how could it be? How could anyone perceive something so unnatural when only its eye descended? Staring down at her, it blinked, its eyebrows creating gusts of wind. The Eye of Rendition is what she deemed it.
She covered her face as the eye shifted from its place, blowing wind, hovering towards the middle of the skyline, resting above the stationary waves. A voice erupted from somewhere in the stationary image, and Elizabeth presumed this was the voice of it. It was neither masculine nor feminine, or perhaps, after closer inspection, it was the accumulation of voices, thousands, no, maybe millions, mashed together to make this. A horrid amalgamation of people who were fooled into believing in such a thing, placing their trust in such a despicable God. The burn on her shoulder had never burned hotter; a memory burned into her flesh.
"Why does this—" Its voice bounced in different directions from one ear to the other, and she didn't know where to focus.
"World hate me so".
"They all prevent—"
"A new reality—"
"What is wrong—"
"With wanting a—"
Elizabeth's voice erupted from below, stopping the beings' rant, turning her throat red and scarred with her anger.
"Cut the bullshit!" Elizabeth said, driving her foot to the ground. "You know what your people do, they do exactly what you say, they go by your word".
After a moment of silence, it once again spoke, but in a constant state, no longer bouncing from one point to the other.
"My word is under no strict meaning; it is under no rendition. Those who use my words as a means to harm do so because they have the desire to do so. My words themselves do not affect their actions; I hold no guilt for what pains you. Nor will I ever. You've come here now as a guide for my vessel; you will act as one and you will live as one".
"I'm not doing anything for you!".
"And yet you chose me to save you."The eye shifted right. "There were options, you have the aptitude to see many, surely I wasn't your first option".Elizabeth bit her lip. "But I was," the eye said.
"I was, and you loathe that fact. I am what will save you. After this moment, you will be indebted to me, doesn't that harm you? Doesn't that unruly fact tear you apart? What would become of the empty shell that stands before me and continues to look at me with animosity?.The eye shifted again, now looking directly at her.
"And what happens if I consider this enough to be indebted to you?".
"You have no say in the matter".
"Have I ever?".
"No".
She takes in a load of air, staring at the ceiling of Cavern, the hazy image of the eye appearing as only an afterimage as it fades away into a memory. A sharp pain from her chest surged through her body, and she winced. She was injured but not horribly. It seemed like she had been out for a while since all her wounds were treated already. Her arm was bandaged in glowing veins, plants growing from underneath glowing mushrooms, having the same properties as an ordinary bandage when cleaned right. No surprise it was exactly how it was shown in the books she read about them. A strong connection but loose enough so damaged skin could breathe, Rum was an expert in this area, surely, there was no doubt about that.
Elizabeth stood up, taking a while to register that the Brehlam was nowhere to be seen; maybe it had run away. No— she knew that likely wasn't the case; she still heard the words of the eye, it'd done something to it, as much as she hoped this was the end of it, she knew it was far from it. In a surge of realization, however, her attention whipped around the empty plane, attempting to find Rum, only to see her a few feet away, sitting against a protruding rock, staring into the dark path ahead of them.
Standing was trouble at first, her legs were jelly against the overuse of her muscles. Years of sitting down and reading would do that to a person. She was lucky she was alive, though most of the success could be given to the part of her blood that felt most at home in Toblitche's wilderness.
"Hey," Elizabeth said, turning toward Rum. She was motionless, most likely asleep, or focused on something ahead, and didn't notice her. Though in this situation, either of those options felt odd to her. Rum was already worried about the appearance of the Brehlam. Elizabeth was confident that that wouldn't subside because of its disappearance; it was wrong, for what she knew at this point, and even before this was wrong.
Limping away from her elevated spot, trudged against the uneven road, her boots getting caught on intertwined vines on the ground as if stopping her from going any further. Declining any attempt at withdrawal, she pushed against it and stopped in front of Rum, and all she could do was stare. At first, focusing only on her complexion, grasping onto anything to hold hope, a foreign voice lulled her into a false sense of security that forbade her from looking further down. However, she wouldn't listen to it. Pushing it into the back of her mind, her eyes gravitated towards her lower torso, where a shadow no longer remained.
Upon immediate exposure to the sight, Elizabeth was once again brought to the Eye of Renditions world, where their true meeting would begin.