The man stood as if he'd just given a great proverb to the millions. But his audience was just a small three of confused onlookers. To them, the words had yet to mean anything except the obvious. This is the apocalypse. The world was coming to an end, and demons were infesting the land.
"Right," Chosa interjected. "You're talking about the book of Revelation. The end of the world cased in fire."
"In a manner of speaking, sure. But I was more speaking broadly. The fall of man. End of things. The earth doing away with its trash." The man was poignant, but whenever he spoke, he made clear by his eyes that he was only focused on T'balt. But T'balt did his best to avoid his stare.
Everything about the man was intimidating. The tattoos on his neck, the attacking way he spoke, and the lack of care for anything but T'balt. Not to mention the man's skin seemed to be breathing in the black aura. Like he had known it for all his life, it conformed to his skin, forming in the darkness of his eyes.
When he saw T'balt casting his gaze to the ground, he became despondent, finding another target. He ogled Chosa from head to toe. There was something strange in his gaze, but the man spat it away as if saving it for another time.
"So how does that answer anything?" Chosa responded. "Who cares what the earth is doing? That doesn't explain why I can summon a sword with my bare hands or why angels and hell spawns are on a murderous rampage through the streets."
"Listen, love, I'm not here for you this time out. For now, you can butt out with the questions. A lesson with you is a waste of my time."
"Listen here, jackass…"
"Chosa…" T'balt stopped her before she blew a gasket at the man, who shooed her away like a passing gnat. It made everyone uncomfortable, except for the kid who only seemed to be interested in climbing trees. But the man smiled under his beard at the ease with which Chosa backed away, as reluctant as it was.
The man turned his attention back to T'balt. "You gonna turn your head now?"
Not wanting to upset the man further, T'balt turned around.
The man forcefully bent T'balt's head forward, eyeing the back of his neck. "Well, hot damn…" He forced T'balt to face him. "Yeah. You're exactly who I was looking for."
"Why are you.. Wait first, who are you?"
"Monan Ryker. Don't forget it now," he teased.
"Okay, Monan. Why would you be looking for me?"
"You're gonna play that game with me? You sure know how to turn a man off. You know what this is and what you're doing. I just wanted to tell you to cut it out before you piss me off... Now that I've got the look at you, you're scrawny for a Redeemer. A little stupid-looking, too. Ah well. We'll save the proper introductions for another time."
Monan took off in some unexplained direction. The others exchanged glances.
"So what's this about a rapture?" the kid said, hanging upside down from a tree. "Is that from a comic book or something?"
Chosa shrugged. She was only concerned with the man leaving. But there was no way T'balt could just let him leave now. He chased after him.
"Listen, I really don't know anything about what's going on here? What am I supposed to be cutting out?"
Monan rolled his neck, annoyed. "You want me to think you're stupid, go right ahead… or what is it? Problems in the bedroom? She not know what you're packing?"
"What? No? I don't know what you're talking about." T'balt blushed, realizing he was being made fun of, when the man slapped him on the chest and walked on. "Hey, can you stop walking away? All this stuff is really crazy. What do you know that we don't?"
"Plenty of things, I'm sure. How to grow a beard and look like a man, for one. But you want to give me a specific or continue rubbing me raw?"
"Like, how did you save us from that angel? You have the power to fight it, don't you? How?"
"A man never reveals where he stashes his loot. Not unless he wants it stolen."
"But how does it work? Do they all fall off from those demons?"
"Of course. It's the only way to get proper loot. What'd your brain get fried?"
"Why do you keep talking like you know me?"
"I really don't like people wasting my limitless time, so if you're sleezing me for info, you save it for the next Redeemer."
"Please, sir. Can you pretend I'm a child and explain to me from the beginning? What's a Redeemer? And what's happening here?" He spoke it like a last desperate plea for a lifeline. He just wanted to understand.
"T'balt, can we just forget about the man. He obviously doesn't want to talk to you. And these woods don't feel like a safe place to hang around, especially with a kid around," Chosa said.
Monan raised an eyebrow. "You want to talk, then send the two away and let's chat man to man."
"You can't just send us away."
"Chosa, hold on a second," T'balt said.
"No. I'm tired of him talking to me—"
Suddenly, a flash of light smeared vertically into the air. Monan pointed a finger to the sky, popping their ears with a crushing bolt of sound. They all clutched their ears, deafened by the noise. Monan blew on his finger like it had just fired a bullet and watched the others squirm. Then he pulled T'balt far enough from the party that they were out of earshot.
"What was that?" T'balt raved, his head vibrating.
"So the love storm is gone. Talk sense now. How long you been a Redeemer?"
"What's a Redeemer?" The screeching in T'balt's ears didn't fade. He could only barely make out Monan's words in a disorientation all too similar to the one caused by the angel. Did he take its power? Did he kill it while I was unconscious?
Monan slapped him in the face. Not hard, but hard enough to get T'balt's eyes to focus on him. "This isn't your first go around. I don't care what you call it, but the thing where you die and come back to life. How long you been doing it?"
"I don't know." He truly didn't. Time was suddenly very hard to keep track of when it reset all the time.
"Fuckin newbies. How many iterations? How many times have you died?"
"A little over thirty, I think."
"Yeahh… It's you, alright."
The screeches of a horde crackled through the trees. They could feel the ground distorting beneath their feet and the trees trembling. It was like a stampede. Monan was still locked on T'balt.
"Something's coming," T'balt said.
"Not something you or I need to worry about, is it?"
T'balt still had no clue what was going through the man's head or why he had suddenly become so aggressive.
The marks of shadows were speeding through trees, slithering and hunting directly towards them. More beasts. They were likely driven here by the light and the cracking noise, and Chosa and the kid were still disoriented by the sound.
"Get away." Chosa anguished. The shadows showed themselves in the form of vicious apes three times the normal size. They were covered in mud with arms made of hard stone. Chosa was quickly surrounded.
The kid jumped in, eager to fight the things with his lightning powers, but when monsters came, they always came in heavy numbers. A bunch jumped him immediately, causing him to scramble away.
Chosa hardly had the time to unsheathe her sword. The apes screeched and ambushed her.
T'balt moved to intercept when Monan caught him by the collar and forced him back into a tree. The impact nearly knocked the breath out of him.
"We're not done talking," Monan said. Everything about him was stone still, as if the commotion behind him didn't exist whatsoever.
"What are you talking about? We're being attacked. They're going to get killed if we don't do something!" T'balt exclaimed.
Monan tilted his head up as if T'balt had just sparked him out of his boredom. "Oh, you want to help them. All you gotta do is get through me."
"What?" Behind him, the two were already starting to struggle as not even Chosa's sword could hold off the demons. They latched on to her arm, staunting her swings. The kid would spark them with lightning, where he could, but it wasn't long before he was caught from behind and knocked down.
T'balt tried to force his way through Monan, shoving him with all of his might. Monan stepped to the side as T'balt stumbled to the ground. "Hold on. I'm coming!" he yelled, but he thudded to the ground, the backs of his legs suddenly inflamed in agony. For some reason, he couldn't move them.
Monan tilted back in laughter. "I said through me, not past me. Please tell me you're going to put up a better fight than that."
"Please," T'balt begged. "They're going to die."
Monan looked perplexed by the emotion in his eyes. T'balt was near in tears seeing Chosa get dismantled by those beasts. The kid was lying on the ground, and he couldn't even tell if he was alive. Blood was coloring the grass, and he could tell whose was whose. "Why? Why is this happening?"
Monan sighed. Then the scream sounded. Chosa's. One of the demons had sunk its teeth straight into her neck. The sky was filled with an inky redness as the screams turned to gurgles, clinging to the last bits of life.
Death must've been sad. Because out of the blood and the fear in her eyes, it was her tears that rang the loudest. Tears in full, bright brown eyes, turned dark and empty. She fell over, unmoving, hand stretched out towards T'balt. Her only fleeting hope and he could do nothing but hear her final call for help.
"Why?"
But the apes didn't spare her a graceful end, for they were there to tear her apart with rage and disdain. T'balt watched, unable to take the despair. Despite the clear danger, he crawled towards them. Where her body was, where it was being ripped to shreds and eaten like road kill. He wanted it to stop. He wanted it all to be over. He wanted them to take him too.
"BEGONE!" A light flashed without warning, and all the apes vanished, not a sign or hair left of them. Monan was pleased with himself. Impressed with the loot he was able to capture. But then he noticed one corpse crawling to another. He couldn't help but roll his eyes.
"Chosa. Please. No Chosa." T'balt cradled the bloodied, beaten carcass in his arms. Trying to separate the blood from the woman underneath it. She was hardly there, but where he could see her, he could still see the agony on her face. It was something he would never unsee, no matter how many times he revived.
During his mourning, Monan crouched and pickpocketed T'balt's wallet, checking his ID. "T'balt Ferrier. Too bad I was never into Shakespeare. The melodrama just goes right over my head."
"This is all your fault!" T'balt yelled, darkness and smoke filling him. "You could've saved them. This is your fault. She didn't have to die. She didn't have to die like this. In so much pain…" But the anger quickly melted into sorrow as he looked down upon her still half-closed eyes.
"Shut up, won't you?" Monan said, bored. "You want to see her so badly, then die." Monan kicked T'balt to his back. And before he could even hope to fight back, the man's boot was coming down on his throat. It was only a few moments of pain. His windpipe was crushed. Blood filled his mouth and eyes. Not an ounce of oxygen reaching his brain. He couldn't think. He couldn't breathe. He could only close his eyes and…
"You died." T'balt grasped at his throat. Choking and coughing as if the wound was still fresh. But of course it wasn't. His body was clean of all wounds and free from pain. But the rest of him…
He fell to the floor, yelling, still unable to take the pain of what he had seen. "It's not a dream. It's not a dream." He kept muttering to himself. His hands were trembling, still feeling the thickness of the invisible blood upon them.