As he explored the underground passages, translucent prismatic rays swiveled over Aza'zel's body. His destination wasn't clear per se, but his unique range of perception allowed him to circumvent regions populated by rodents and other ruffians alike. He was this close to releasing his power as a first transformation state supernatural under the immense pressure from behind him.
These oscillating pulses of energy, however, served only to draw the attention of not only the river of crazed rodents but something much more significant as it lurked beneath the surface of these lands.
The ground beneath his feet shook and cracked the longer he ran, but such discrepancies were borderline negligible in the ocean of sounds all around. Waves crashed down on the world of echoes nonstop from all sides, and it took everything Aza'zel had within his limits of focus not to lose his path.
The hardly established hours of peace nearing the daybreak hours of Raksha Town were suddenly, and quite disturbingly at that, shaken to the core. People in the streets who had their backs slouched heavily, as the norm dictates, blinked their eyes at the sight of thin fissures extending from beneath their feet to the reaches of their visions.
Drunken hallucinations, in all honesty, were such a common anomaly in this godforsaken land, to the extent that whoever saw these cracks questioned their long hours of beer and longer nights tangling women, men, or even both… Eventually chuckling the matter off, swaying their way through the sparsely populated morning streets.
Not all were idiots, though. Subordinates to present Rakshas rushed to report to their esteemed bosses, while those who were subordinates to one of the eight Rakshas who had already left town in search of greater opportunities split between the remaining three, just in hopes of scrambling their way out of this sudden crisis.
Speaking of those with some brain to them, Butch had quite the stern expression on his round face, his irksome mustache quivering almost in sync with the ever-extending fissures that webbed across the ground.
"What on earth did you do down there, kid?" mumbled Butch. "I don't have the fuckin' time to move my stash of meat from this damnable shithole… If you want to bring this entire town underground, at least leave my little shop alone."
Butch then spat in anger, his saliva connecting to the ground, and by ill or fine chance, a fissure extended from the point of collision. Butch's heavy eyebrows were immediately drenched wet as he watched the fissure crawl ever closer to his shop, stopping directly by the tips of his feet.
The man paused there in confrontation with the cracked earth for quite some time before finally letting out an exhausted sigh. So close, this was. Just as his body shifted, so did the fissure, and a pair of small, gem-black curious eyes peeked through only to meet glances with Butch on the surface.
"Hey…" Butch said, prolonging the greeting while his mush of a brain tried to connect the dots of these unusual events. "Little guy…"
Man and mouse exchanged long eye contact that transmitted countless thoughts and emotions neither party proved capable of understanding. Eventually, the pair of small eyes turned around and scurried back underground, leaving Butch behind questioning life and its purpose.
"This world is itching closer and closer to damnation," Butch remarked to himself. "I ain't fuckin' tagging along with it!"
His sentence held firm conviction as he bolted into the butchery with speeds he never thought possible, grabbed his coat and a few sidearms that he strapped to the waist with great familiarity, and left the shop without even looking back.
The curious rodent had a touch of reluctance in his eyes as it burrowed deeper underground. From that place, it smelled fresh meat, but it also knew how appetizing the current piece of meat underground was. The rodent didn't wish for his brethren to eat all the good stuff and so, in no time at all, it rejoined the horde of crazed rodents as they swept the underground sewers with great fervor in the tracks of Aza'zel.
Not knowing that by chance or by instinct, he was backtracking the same path he traversed the past few days, Aza'zel huffed and puffed from the exertion of his stamina and physical prowess trying to accomplish the impossible and pull a distance between himself and certain death.
Aza'zel gritted his teeth the moment he felt his feet were about to give up on him.
With a hint of steel-like resolve, he clenched his left hand tightly as a pulse of sanguine crimson rushed out, taking shape after the elegant, ancient Exsanguinator in his palm.
His spirit was beyond exhausted, tasked with maintaining the world of echoes and other sensory capabilities, to the point where Aza'zel wasn't so confident in summoning Soulguider.
His face went pale as the gun drew on the source of his blood to manifest, and without much thought or deliberation, Aza'zel entrenched his feet in the ground and skidded to a drawn-out halt. His feet left deep marks on the ground that stretched for a few paces of distance before he whipped around, aimed his revolver at the impossible horde of rodents, and pulled the trigger.
A silent curtain of sanguine crimson not unlike the soft silk of a woman's palace dress unfolded in the wake of a particularly eye-catching red bullet. In no time at all, the bullet burrowed deep into the heart of the black river.
An infinite amount of barely visible thin strings extended from the bullet within quite a small diameter, but the compact cluster of rodents in the narrow passage helped much with the limited range, even as the bullet stood suspended near the edge of Aza'zel's world of echoes.
It introduced a small region of certain death as whichever rodent flitted through its domain of threads miraculously stepped out as a dry husk of its former, vitality-vibrant self.
That bullet, which was no different than an external drop of his source blood, conveyed a sense of deep, unquenchable thirst as it hovered in the air. Its color of blood grows deeper and deeper. However, even as over a dozen, perhaps over a hundred carcasses lay behind this unbelievably deadly chasm, the black river kept surging and reaching toward Aza'zel without an ounce of fear.
Just as the young boy thought these ill-intelligent creatures would foolishly march onwards to face death, a mind-numbing squeal sounded from the depths of a place unknown. This squeal seemed to echo through the entire underground sewers, and once heard, its chime lingered in the mind for durations unknown.
Aza'zel blanked out for a moment as his world of echoes flared completely white, a sign that not a spot within his perception was void from this sudden noise. When he next came back to his senses, the only voices—sounds in the ambiance were the light trickles of shallow water underneath his feet. The river of rodents had somehow disappeared, and the ground stopped trembling.
For all its worth, there was no more than a pulsing drop of intense blood hovering not that far from Aza'zel, the only substantial evidence of whatever morbid reality that transpired earlier.
That white noise momentarily blinded Aza'zel, and for a moment, the young boy didn't dare move forward or backward from his position, as the sense of having a blank piece of memory at such a critical juncture was more than frightening.