"I'm gonna wash up." Zakair headed for the water bubbler on the garden's north wall behind the crowd. The coolness of the water didn't register on his skin when he took a sip and washed his face. The charm on the eyeglass left a considerable weight on his gazes. Not only had it seared his already fragile sight but also struck a sort of dizziness.
The lens didn't fully convey the clearest image either. His eyes had hurt from squinting in the barest gap that allowed him little to no visual while he warily rubbed the linen fabric on the glasses.
"Apa! Fireworks!" A little girl yelled.
He craned his eyes overhead. Everyone was too immersed in the lights shattering into a shower of kaleidoscopic colors to notice the glint of red making its way out of Zakair's narrow eye slits. The display of sparks served to further illuminate the spectacular vision of the meteor showers. Zakair caught himself staring too long, thoroughly finishing wiping his eyeglasses and putting them back on. Returning to his spot.
"What is that?"
"Look!"
"Apa! Apa! There's a star coming at us!"
A tangle of voices aroused from the crowd. All eyes fixated on the direction where the little girl pointed from her father's hold. It was a star. A lightless one.
Until it wasn't…
The streaking solid material cut across the air in a magnificent inferno against the dark. Gasps of wonders twisted into cries of terror. The object careened towards the park with absolute velocity. Instead of condensed gas, its tail whipped its flickering tendrils. Shadowed by tracing black gas in its wake. Its head boasts the darkest obsidian as if it were a piece of the body of space itself.
The object plowed into the ground, bursting a windful of force over the crowd, tossing those near off their feet. Zakair and the rest were among the unfortunate to have been a little close, diving headfirst away from the explosion.
Over the blunt pain in his joints striking the rigid stone floor, the jolt sent his consciousness in a wave of frenzy knocked out of cognitive equilibrium.
"Is everyone okay?" He heard Cazzie ask amidst the screeching in his ears. Slowly, Zakair lifted himself on his hands. Head swirling like a thousand flies swarm inside. Against the blur, he made out the contorted flow of the fountain chipped off on its side, submerging the marble tiles.
Has he become so weak to feel this disoriented?
The hurled star plowed into the soil a considerable few feet from him. Forged in the clad of the darkest matter. Kayne tugged his arm over his shoulder, elevating him to stand. Just when they caught their breath to ease, terrified gasps skyrocketed into turbulent, hysterical cries. Replacing the once total awe of air in the park.
The sky was submerged in a splash of fierce red and orange. Boulders of flame crashed into the grass. Coming in sizes ranging from pebbles to barrels that tore through the greeneries and seared seas of fire to eat the leaves alive down to the roots.
Feet thudded against the ground as people frolicked. Surging for gateways. Not even the cast of mahika would suffice an escape due to the influence by the mandated technology of ERIN.
"Apa!" The little girl bawled. She crawled on the soil, smears of dirt caked her dress. A man splayed on the ground beside her, a puddle of blood pooled from his head. Amidst the stampede, a pair of bare arms swooped her up. Hiro carried the girl as he hurtled among the fleeing mass.
Zakair hadn't realized Kayne had been dragging them across toward the grasses where it cut from the surging bustle. Though the riot clustered in itself, he inquired as to why the brunette hauled them to the side, nowhere close to the exit. Until his friend unbinds his arm, falling on his knees. Teeth gritted, he clutched what Zakair could perceive was a cruelly twisted foot.
"Zak! Kayne!" Cazzie hollered from the crowd. Her small statue eluded the rushing bodies as she made her way for them with Ryeld in tow, yelling for her to stop, but the latter was insistent.
If anything, Zakair was more specialized in inflicting pain than soothing injuries. Screw it. He hauled Kayne's arm over his shoulder, forcing him on his legs despite the reflexive protest screaming from the Blademaster's figure. Prodding grunts and gasps of agony from him.
Their gradual movement stopped when a low, guttural cry surfaced over the panic. He didn't know why, but that disturbance appeared to have caught only his heed. Reasoning that his sharp senses had returned was too sheer of an unexpected phenomena for it to be true.
Again, intuition clouded the better of him. He scanned for where the sound was ringing from. The vastness of the park spiraled into thick smokes. The flames consumed a third of the place. He squeezed his eyes, tracing the grumble to the middle of the park.
To where they once had been perching.
The tumult was obscured by the grating babel from its initial growling din. In the clearing smoke, the crater was ever as present. Yet it was the object inside that piqued interest. Though distant, he could've sworn the fallen star tipped on its side. His assumption was proven true when the black thing stirred in a fluid motion, bursting in a misshapen cloud of ink.
What in the actual hell?
It stretched and twisted. Coursing to a shape of a skull, limbs, and an elongated jaw that boasted beastly teeth. Humanoid from the trunk to the head, though, the lower portion of their frame revealed the root of their monstrosity--strings of tentacles complemented their physique, dragging it against the disheveled ground.
Like a live rotting corpse. A reminder of existence antithetical to human. Its limbs were bony thin, yet impeccably stretched into long incisive claws half its body. It had a pair of eyes carved in rings of dazzling nuggets. Hungry and unhinged. Gurgling jaws dripping and crying with spine-chilling echoes. And it bolted.
Toward him.
His feet were petrified to the floor. It was as though the scene unfolding before him was no more than a theater in his mind.
This was no horror unfaced before.
Images flashed before his mind's eyes. There stood before him a creature of black. A beast of teeth and claws from the abyss. A manifestation of darkness conjured to flesh with the sole purpose to taunt and ravage life to dust until nothing else breathes once released from its prison.
It had no body but towered over him. No physical form nor shape yet seized him in its burrows. Just darkness. Utter absence of light. Apart from the soulless eyes of smog white. There was a painful tear on his skin. Bones snapping in and out place. Teeth skewered through his gums and vision drowned in a blur of colors.
"Move!" He had almost forgotten that Kayne was holding on to him, pulling him instead.
The creature careened past Cazzie. In the last second, Zakair propelled Kayne aside, who smacked against the grass. A force thrust against his body too fast it took seconds for him to feel the contact. The violent collision swept him off his legs. A crack erupted from his ribs. The snap of wood came next--he careened against the barring fences, letting its splinters fly in crinkling noises. Past the cliff.
"Zakair!"
Kayne's voice was a distant resonance, echoing away as he descended deeper and deeper far below into the forest's murky embrace.