Darkness greeted Hill's vision as he slammed into the marble floor. It was a suffocating wave of nothingness that felt like it was tearing at his consciousness violently.
However, just as quickly as it came... it left. The darkness seemed to part like curtains, revealing a strange sight.
He was surrounded by small trees nestled between massive trees, bushes, vines, and various weeds and grasses. Above him, a dense canopy could be seen, with strange yellowish light filtering down that reminded him of street lights.
He breathed in, tasting the air as he did so. It felt euphoric, but he didn't really understand why. Breathing in once more, he began to register the prickly feeling of grass pressing against his cheek.
Letting out a mumble of a groan, he slowly moved his arms and pressed his palms against the grass before pushing himself up. The fact that he was touching grass caused waves of disbelief to shoot through his mind.
He was born in Agshaka, and he died in Agshaka. Never in his life did he ever leave that concrete jungle.
So this is how... grass feels like. Man, how do those movie actors lie in the grass like that? This stuff does not feel good!
Standing to his feet on weak knees, he looked left to right with a blank expression on his face. That was when it hit him.
What am I doing here?
He remembered tumbling down towards the ground, wrestling with the angler fiend in midair. However, he didn't remember what happened after that.
I won the trial, right? Otherwise I wouldn't be alive. That trial voice thing said that my soul would fall to corruption or whatever if I didn't win. That means I would die right?
It was puzzling indeed, but there were some things that he was able to piece together.
The afterlife theory, the concept of bodies being snatched out of existence, finally began to make some sense. He had died to a plague beast, and because of that, he was thrown into a strange trial where he had to fight the beast again and win in order to be reborn.
So if a dead person's body disappears, does that mean that they won the trial?
This conclusion made the most sense. The plague beast was called a corrupted angler fiend, with the word 'corrupted' being the key detail there. If he had lost the trial, then that would possibly mean he would turn into a plague beast, a mindless creature whose soul was devoured by corruption. And because he was currently standing in some mysterious forest, feeling as alive as ever...
That means... I surely won! My plan worked!
He jumped for joy, pumping his fists in the air as he did so. But then, he froze.
Then that would mean... Meira's alive... father's alive as well...
His eyes widened.
And mother... she's fully dead.
A strange feeling overwhelmed him. He stood there frozen, his face a still picture of joy, but his mind anything but that.
He had mourned his family's death already, and he had technically come to grips with the reality of not living with them anymore. So the fact that his father and his sister were alive seemed to undo some of that pain. Well, not his father but his sister. However, the fact that his mom was completely dead... it was too painful.
He fell to his knees and pressed his face against his palms before crumpling further to the ground. He held his breath, gritting his teeth and pushing his air out through his nose. But despite his efforts, he failed to stop the tears from beginning to form.
The thud was so out of place that he didn't notice it at first. After a delay of around five seconds, he turned to his side, and his teary eyes narrowed in confusion.
There, to his right, an icicle had embedded itself into the dull purplish bark of the massive tree that stood next to him. His mind, still grappling with grief, could only muster one stupid thought.
Ice? In a forest?
That was when a loud boom echoed from his left.
"Wha—" he began, whipping to his left as he watched several more icicles cut through the forest, slamming into branches and cutting through vines with ease.
His heart began to pound as he lay there. He could hear voices, several of them, yelling at each other. More ice arrows shot through the understory, ripping through leaves and branches indiscriminately as they chased after a figure draped in shadow that was leaping from branch to branch.
A series of loud booms and cracks caused his flimsy body to flinch several times in rapid succession. Wiping the sweat accumulating on his forehead away, he crawled forward over the forest undergrowth and leaned against a tree. From there, he was able to bear witness to a frightful confrontation between two opposing groups.
On one side, on Hill's right-hand side, was a group of twenty. They were dressed in cadet gray cloaks, tunics, and berets that looked like some kind of military uniform. However, the material of the outfits looked like it was woven from a really bad version of denim. Not to mention, some of the outfits were clearly not the correct sizes for some of the individuals who were wearing them.
On the other side, to his left, was a group of around fifteen. They, on the other hand, were dressed strangely. Their clothing was well-fitted, but the design involved a tunic with a fully sleeved left arm and a bare right arm. This, combined with the strange eye tattoos on their right arms and the ribbon-like pants, looked very odd.
Their builds were also strange, for some of them stood at around seven to eight feet tall. Their facial features were also unlike any he had ever seen before. It was as if he had encountered an entirely new race. They had long eyelashes, and their pupils were rectangular instead of circular. They also had long black hair that reached their shoulders, which they all seemed to keep in a set of four braids.
"What the hell," he muttered to himself breathlessly as an exasperated laugh briefly escaped his lungs. "It's like I'm staring at an alien race!"
Indeed, when comparing the group on the left to the one on the right, it was clear to him that the ones on the right were humans, earthlings to be exact. The other side... he wasn't too sure about it.
He continued to watch the confrontation. Due to the ice arrows, the balls of acid, and all the other various methods of attack that were being used, Hill was nearly distracted from the fact that he was witnessing something truly bizarre.
They're using superpowers!
Hill's jaw hung loose, his eyes widened, and his mind went blank as he watched both sides trade blows. He couldn't believe what he was seeing at all.
This was stuff from comic books, from legend, from mythology! The fact that he was seeing all of this with his own two eyes caused him to question all of reality.
But there was something off about it.
After a minute of spectating, Hill realized that the two sides weren't really engaged in a full-on battle, but a skirmish of sorts. They were standing at range and firing at each other using their... abilities. However, they were clearly restraining themselves from going in for the kill.
The alien-looking group in particular were fighting as if they were a part of the forest itself. Ducking from tree to tree and from branch to branch, they were using the terrain to its fullest. Unfortunately, the firing power of the other side suppressed them to the point that they were unable to fight back effectively.
After a few more seconds, one of the alien-looking figures raised his right hand and shouted something that he couldn't understand.
He seems important, Hill noted, eying the three tattoos on his bare arm. The tattoos were all the same: three eyes with rectangular pupils, stacked on top of each other.
Are those eyes some kind of... ranking system?
His companions immediately stopped what they were doing, and they began to back up. Their withdrawal was so smooth and fluid that Hill didn't even realize that they were retreating until they were already gone.
The loud chaos of the battle faded with their exit, causing the forest to become suddenly silent.
As Hill watched, a man with a wild brown beard and luscious brown hair grunted and lowered an ornate axe that was sitting on his shoulder. Stepping forward, he peered into the dense brush that the alien-looking people had moved back into.
"They're gone," he called out, his voice strong and deep, matching his appearance perfectly. "We should fall back to the hold. Beto, take point. Ashen, you've got rearguard."
As soon as he uttered those words, the group began to move. One of them, a woman with raven black hair and equally black eyes, quickly wrapped a blue ribbon around a tree before filing into the rear of the column that had just been formed. Within seconds, they were already moving out, heading in the opposite direction that the alien-looking people had gone.
Hill remained pressed against the same tree from earlier. His heart was still hammering, but now he was faced with a choice. He could stay here, alone in this unknown forest, or he could follow the only humans he had seen in months.
While following the alien-looking people was certainly a choice as well, it didn't really make much sense for him to do so. Whatever they were, he knew too little about them. Everything about them seemed foreign, unlike the other group.
In reality, it wasn't really a choice at all.
Pushing aside the fear that had begun to set in to his heart, he slipped from behind the tree and began to follow. It was immediately clear that he was not a woodsman. He was a child of concrete and steel beams, and this forest floor was nothing but a dangerous obstacle course full of snapping twigs and thorny weeds. He found himself being more concentrated on not letting his legs be pricked instead of trying to follow the column.
The group continued their march, and occasionally, he could hear their conversation drifting back to him in muffled snippets.
"...shitty boots are giving me blisters again," one grumbled. "The third company really doesn't know how to do shit."
"They're better than the old ones Auggy made," another shot back. Silence followed, ending the conversation.
Hill hastened his footsteps, making sure to press his worn down shoes into the dirt as he did so. However, the darkness of the forest was too great, and the light that was filtering through the canopy above did barely anything to reveal what was truly lying on the forest floor.
He took another step forward, and that's when he felt something stab right through the sole of his shoe and into his heel. He let out a yelp before gasping as his hands flew to his mouth, clamping it shut.
The entire column stopped.
Hill felt a terrible chill move through his body. Wrenching his foot away from the unseen spike with a muted grunt, he ducked behind a large, purple-barked tree.
But it was much too late.
The woman at the rear of the column, the one with raven hair, hadn't even turned around. She simply stopped, her head tilting slightly. The rest of the group looked at her in confusion.
"Ashen?" The bearded man called from the front. "What is it?"
She didn't immediately answer. Instead, she turned her head slowly as her eyes scanned the forest. Hill held his breath as her gaze swept past his hiding spot. He let out a shaky breath.
Then her eyes snapped back, locking onto his.
"Rat," she hissed.
Before Hill could even try to run, she was already upon him.
He couldn't even scream. He saw her swing for his head, and something struck him in the temple. His vision went white before crumbling into darkness.