Asta knew she was screwed when she sensed that thing blocking the entrance to her little cave.
Chills clattered up her spine, and a looming and horrifying sense of dread climbed onto her shoulders, breathing down her neck, as if prepared to laugh at her eventual demise; she'd been feeling that lately, imagining her emotions as real, physical objects that seemed to contend in messing with her.
Joy hugged her tight, warm and kind; Hatred scratched at her, as if to draw blood; Fear, and Dread... they curled up her body, their icy arms settling around her throat, and paralyzed all functions, just like now.
The only reason she didn't immediately shut down was because of Leviathan.
The serpent in question gently curled around her, rubbing its small head against her cheek as a way to stabilize her chaotic mental state. The tremors eventually faded, and her anxiety finally dimmed to the point where she could rationally observe her surroundings.
Funnily enough, she'd never really gotten a good look at the monster that lurked outside her little abode—if she had, she'd have been long dead by now. She just ran, ran as fast as possible and hid in her little home, only registering a blur of white and that horrible skeletal limb.
Now, she saw the whole picture, and it was not pretty at all.
Huge, sinewy shoulders that carried long arms and extended to three, clawed fingers; legs that were like a cheetah's, but thinner, stronger, ending with similar fingers as its forelegs, and naked without an ounce of fur; a short, muscled neck that gave way to a small, but angular head, full of teeth and pale, beady eyes that seemed more adapted to darkness than light; the skin on the entire things body seemed to be stretched too far, too tight, as if someone had taken it and pulled, revealing its boney ridges of spine, and its compacted muscles.
It looked almost humanoid, and that was the most disturbing part.
She knew the creature had poor patience, as it always left after a little while, so she was confused over why it waited for her. Had it somehow been observing her schedule the entire time, as a way to bring her a false sense of security before pouncing?
Was it waiting for another corpse to feast on; if that was the case, unfortunately no one had come by in recent days, so she was unable to provide the usual offering she did—in other words, the "Dash Now and Dine Later" delivery service was out of business due to a sudden drop in supplies, and it seemed that she was basically out of the catering business for good.
Did it really have intelligence?
If so, then Asta knew that her end would likely come about soon; she wasn't given a skill that could analyze objects, and only through interaction with the creatures and killing them would she learn the name.
'That or contracts, like with this little guy.'
But the only monsters and animals that seemed to be less hostile and even docile around her were serpents and the occasional lizard, but her luck was obviously rotten, since this monstrous thing was like a freaky humanoid hairless cat, whose ancestors probably ate snakes for breakfast.
The thought that her serpentine and ever elusive Patron could most likely destroy the monster easily given the legends surrounding him came Asta's mind, and she cursed that he wasn't here and ready to destroy the thing.
'But,' she hid behind the hill, attempting to maybe wait the monster out, 'would the man I met be able to do so?'
She looked down at her clasped, dirty hands, and she remembered the quiet innocence yet unbelievable sorrow that surrounded the lonely and exhausted man; the boy as lovely as the dawn over seafoam and waves had seemed as broken as she was.
'I don't think he'd understand why I'd want that in the first place...'
———
It had been a dream, and she'd been surrounded by golden flowers. The sky had been an evocative sight, the type of blue that brought a lump to your throat and made your heart tighten at its depth; the type that made you happy to be alive, if only for a moment.
In the midst of all this otherworldly and vividly overwhelming color, a white figure dressed in a jarring, fluttering black had slept, nestled amongst the hoards of glowing flowers, a face both and neither feminine and masculine quietly sleeping; they had seemed blissfully unaware of the beauty that complimented their own surrounding them on all sides, boxing them in and rooting them to a place they'd never wished to be in in the first place.
Even if she hadn't been able to tell which gender they were from just looking at their face, an odd sense that they were very much so a he filled her up to the brim, and as if dazed by the ignorant lonesomeness of his appearance, Asta had approached, instinctively touching his cheek with tears in her pale eyes as she whispered a name she still couldn't remember, even after she'd woken up.
Golden irises that matched the glowing flowers around them had been revealed, the white lashes fluttering as if the act of opening them was foreign, and then the attention of the figure had turned to her; slit pupils the same dullness of his void black clothing had sharpened, becoming filled with her image as her emotional figure reflected back at her.
She'd woken up in tears, both frightened and in love.
———
Tourmaline red eyes like evenings dewdrops gazed into her pale blue, as if to act as a replacement of that man's, nudging her as if to tell her something.
Asta peeked over the hill to see the creature stalking away, an odd frustration gnawing at their distorted and boney limbs before they finally disappeared.
She sighed—she'd live another day it seemed.
Asta turned her eyes to the setting sun, the dying gold making her wonder where that man, now known to be Jörmungandr, was, and why she couldn't find him, even in her dreams.
She hoped he'd come there soon... she feared she was losing her mind, and that she'd have already lost had it not been Leviathan.
"...C'mon Levi."
She got up, her pale blond hair turning gold in the sun's dying rays, her pale and tired, yet relieved face enveloped by the gold as she turned away from the sun.
"Let's go home."
She'd never seen the leap of the monster coming, and the golden haze was broken, as if it was but another delusional daydream she'd helplessly fallen into.