Knowing that she had become a minor criminal now, Leah called it a fortunate outcome. She had basically sprinted from one neighbourhood to the other until she was basically out of the town. Even in the body of the Hero of Hope, Leah was exhausted out of her mind.
She was simply laying down on the grass in another patch of woods. A blank stare over the fading orange sky as the moon's presence grew stronger with each minute passing. She smelt of rainwater and sweat, no different from the average homeless man.
The city was not far away now. Just a mile or so away from reaching it. Seattle, if the signboard was right. She remembered the name faintly in memory but in reality she's never been there. She doesn't think she's ever set foot in Washington twenty-four years ago. Was it Washington? Ah, she doesn't know. Other names have been shoved into her mouth ever since her disappearance.
Faudwick, Valdel, Einsrooth, Leunima, she remembers all of those garbled names that only exist in a fantasy novel. Except, they were actually real. Huh, would the people over in that world think the same of the countries in this world? How they would think America is some kingdom from a far away land written in child storybooks?
The breeze that marks the end of dusk dances through the woods.
"What a silly thought…"
And from the darkness, answered a voice.
"A silly thought, what?"
Leah jumped from the dirt, her hand uprooting the grass she was grasping with trails of dirt escaping like innards of a man.
"Who--"
An iron thread pierced her left ear, extending so far to the trees behind her and making a crack in the slated barks of wood. Familiarity, the brief microsecond of heat that triggered an instinctive response to immediately grab the string and yank it as hard as she could.
A weight shifted, whipped out from the darkness, a face with a wolf's snout and jaw. In that moment, a twisted toothy smile was what the moonlight painted.
"Found you." A natural human voice before the wild snarls of a starving wolf lunged at her with its jaw wide open. It was as if it propelled its hind legs from the air itself, launching at a higher velocity before crashing into Leah like a freight train.
Its maw aimed for the first weak point, the neck. Leah quickly wrapped her hands around its rows of teeth, the putrid breath of rotting meat still hanging from the saliva dripping all over her face. Although she was on the floor, perhaps fighting for her life, Leah wasn't quite impressed by the werewolf creature that's trying to eat her.
"Really..?" She grunted. "This..?"
The man-wolf continued trying to slam its jaw shut but to no avail as it was struggling to do so. Several seconds of acting before it ceased, staring motionlessly like a clay doll. The saliva dripping through its teeth slowly evaporated into smoke, putrid ash that felt like it was from a cremated body.
The wolf's head fell off once the smoke traveled down to its neck, spreading whatever dead dust that attached it to the body onto Leah's face. Before the human body could drop, Leah kicked the corpse off of her.
A human torso with its limbs fused together with that of a wolf, sewed together by smoke. The tanned collared shirt with the dark pants, all riddled with dried brown scratch marks. The meat and bones in the neck were dry and shriveled, as if all bodily fluid were absorbed. No blood pouring, neither from the animal head attached to it nor from the deep incision marks that were meant to look like a bear had bit it.
Just streams of dust leaking, and leaking, and leaking like a sandbag.
Leah chucked the wolf's head across the forest. "You had your fun yet?"
From where the head landed, a pair of red glowing eyes shined.
"Are you not pleased, oh hero?" If there was something that can be described for it, it would be glee, disgusting glee. "I shouldn't have expected you to flinch at such a small gesture of greeting."
"And you're the only one who would call that as saying 'hello'."
A smile unseen, better not be seen, reverbs a chuckle. "Then allow me to properly try again."
The iron string that had loosen suddenly tightened, becoming apparent that it had quietly wrapped around her neck and pierced her other ear as well before suspending itself to another tree. Leah felt the air choking out of her throat but she knew that if her intent was to kill, she would've already tried to snap her neck as well.
As her ears rang, a child was clapping at a man slowly asphyxiating. Leah could feel more of them tying themselves upon her ankles, pulling her downwards as the threads around her neck slid up to the bottom of her jaw. But both sides didn't pull at her like she was a rope, no, the thread around her neck suddenly became elastic.
The damned thing wasn't trying to rip her legs and head off, it was trying to slingshot her!
"First impressions are important." The child-like giggle echoes the dark. "You have to blow people away!"
And the strings detached as Leah felt her body leaving the ground. She could feel the iron threads sliding through both of her ears, an annoying sting alongside the light-headedness. The trees she was gonna crash into approached fast, the noose around her neck would result in bone dislocation or worse her head comes tumbling off like the wolf did.
But if the Hero of Hope was so easily killed by this cheap trick, then was he really a Hero of Hope?
In the middle of the air, her body stops. Leah quickly grabbed the elastic strings around her neck, strings that permeated yellow in the night. A golden light, ever lingering and ever staying in the present. Only for seconds, after Leah tore the strings apart with her hands, did they regain in motion again.
Stasis, the chains that chain the chained. Ever so blissful, people will live in the present, fools that believe them to be a blessing. And the power to see your enemies be helpless as you cut them down in motion.
Leah rubbed her neck as she walked away from the make-shift slingshot, as the iron threads slid out of her ears and whipped around the forest like angered snakes and sliced through the branches like steel. They left thin line marks, thin cuts, before finally dissipating into smoke.
A fair distance before a growl left Leah's frustrated lips. "Euglith..!"
The charred air giggled all around her. "You and your time-stopping powers. Don't you know how cheap that is?'
She took a deep breath. Stasis, the chains that chain the chained. A power only unique to the Hero of Hope. Memories of how he acquired it was… fuzzy in Leah's mind. The only thing she knows is that it's limited to what it's targeting and that the target would be doused in a petrifying light. If it was human, they would still be aware of the sword cutting off their head.
But her thoughts lie upon another question. How the hell did she trigger Stasis all of a sudden? The innate sense of self-preservation? Subconscious body memory of the actual hero performing it? Weird hand-gestures mid flight? God knows…
Leah looked ahead of her, ignoring the charred scent of fire permeating around the atmosphere as she could see the body of the wolf-man rising up again. The clouds of dust suddenly poured back into it like shoving cotton fluff back into a torn doll. The body that had shriveled gray, was now back to normal again. Headless, and dead.
Had Leah not know it was just foul necromancy, she would've thought it was the spirit of the park ranger coming back to haunt her. She was more horrified at how she didn't even feel a thing seeing the park ranger's body again.
The mindless body walked over to the shrubs, searching for the wolf head that Leah had effectively tossed far away from here. It was like watching a zombie stumbling around, aimlessly walking into the tree and stray branches.
At that moment, something dense was gathering behind her. A tangible body, a demon with horns and piercing red eyes, a child trying to hold back her laughter as she was going to spear the great Hero of Hope from behind.
And the chains that chain the chained, seized the smoke.
Unimpressed, Leah turned her head.
"Euglith."
"My, my! You don't always shoot that look at anyone!" With joy, with flickering red eyes of excitement. Like a child not understanding what a threat is. "Did you miss me?"
"You think I do?" Another sarcastic bark blew out of her mouth. "How did you even come here?"
The golden light starts to fade as the little demon grinned.
"Oh, you kno-- AACKKH!"
Returning the lovely favour of being strangled alive, Leah grabbed Euglith by the throat and slammed her physical body upon the earth.
Euglith, a child of the beasts, a Dyr. Skin as black as her soul, eyes as red as her intent, Euglith was the very demon she posed herself to be when she uprooted her origins and erased her compassion of humanity. Most Dyrs who uprooted themselves for whatever reason, may it be to ascend to a higher level of existence or in the name of curiosity, they all became nothing but Farblights.
Most Farblights lose all common sense, driven by their deepest desires before their turning and more often than not, they never looked human.
"Aachhkkhkkhk…." Euglith was tapping on Leah's arm profusely, several more seconds before Leah came to realize what she was doing. She retracts her hand, gleaming away from the smoke demon that was ironically wheezing for air.
Of course, one cannot naturally strangle smoke but because they needed to, warlocks and magicians figured out how. Euglith was a spectre Farblight. One just needed to connect the particles together and a solid body to choke would appear. Magic was the common answer, the energy to connect the millions of dots dispersed in the atmosphere.
"I'll ask you again, Euglith." Leah hissed. "Why did you follow me?"
"Uh…"
The lion was hunting the gazelle.
Ever so it chased it, only barely scratching its behind each time.
"I'll get you next time! I'll get you next time!" Were always the words of the little demon that tried to kill the hero for self-worth and for some reason, the hero didn't really care for each attempt of assassination she made.
But this time.
Euglith gulped the smoke down her smoky throat.
The gazelle wasn't so forgiving this time.