If Hope was wrong, he probably wouldn't even know it.
He'd be dead before he even knew it.
At that moment, blood was seeping from Hope's palm and trailed down the glass spire like frayed threads. Their tails dragged long, breaking in spots from the raindrops until it could barely be distinguishable.
Bzzzzh.
A buzz of magic resounded, and a light blue glow sparked on the side of Hope's head as the Pearls of the Moon curled on his ear. Its chains flicked around in the wind, and one tiny pearl's light began to dim like the flicker of a bulb.
Hope looked down, feeling a strange tingle on his hand, and he watched the cut on his wet palm stitch back together.
'How convenient...' Hope thought.
After it was done, he dismissed the Memory and flexed and unflexed his hand. It was unmarked and painless as if it had never happened. Hope wanted to spare every healing power the Memory had, especially since it needed to be charged. But he also didn't want to risk exposing his blood too much in the air.
Hqrrrrowwl!
Hope then frowned at the noise.
The monsters still howled, staying in that one spot as if to mock him from afar. Surely, they bore some intelligence to produce such wicked manners. But-
'Just stay over there dammit.' Hope thought.
One of the reasons he chose this route was to avoid that collective bunch.
Hope sighed and stood back on his feet as the rain started to pick up.
It whipped around like it had a new temper, flying in one direction then changing the next, guided by an unseen chaotic hand. It reminded him of the rough training days—trudging through the rain in single files with officers shouting in one ear that competed with the storm's noise.
Of course now, it was different.
It was only the weather that screamed at him.
Step...
"..."
Hope paused and looked down at the rained surface.
His boots had some grit, but he was still prone to slip and fall in this weather.
Bombs, fractured glass, and weather… A combination that sinisterly wrapped him around its fated finger. As if it were also taunting him into yielding to its wrath.
But why the hell should he?
Step...
Why should anyone or anything's wrath prevent him from journeying forward? One would say 'if there's a will, there's a way.' However, Hope did not like the statement of 'will' or any words along those lines. That demanded the individual to find some in-depth part of themself, and Hope was but a layered person.
He was an insignificant soldier afterall, with the smallest role in this world.
Step...
He was only doing what he saw fit-
Hqroowwl–!
Suddenly, the monsters' howling stopped.
Hope stopped in his tracks.
'Hm?'
He turned his head left where the crater's mouth and crowded buildings should be, beyond the rain's breath.
The monsters held back their ugly melody as if they were cut off. Or silenced. A warning perhaps of their own alerting them.
But alerting from what?
"Mm…"
Well, whatever it was, at least it scared the monsters to silence.
"..."
'That doesn't sound any less bad.'
Hope felt something twist in his gut and frowned.
He shook his head from the thought before walking forward with again new deliberate steps, his pace slow. Slower now with the rain's hard drops and rushed wind that beated him from all sides and tugged on his soaked clothes. But Hope pressed on.
Stepp…Crack– Stepp…
One foot slowly in front of the other.
Heel-to-toe.
A near slip here and there, a squeak resounding from the bottom of his shoe.
But his eyes kept calmly forward, bouncing between each spot as he followed his mental path.
Stepp…Crack– Stepp…
And as the wind whistled in his ears, Hope finally reached the farthest point of what his mind could remember, the last memorized bomb being ten paces away from him. Beyond that, the glass panels still stretched further ahead that seemed infinite, disappearing into the gray space. How far it stretched he did not know.
But anytime soon off this bloody thing would be helpful.
'Now what…' Hope thought as he looked around.
Well, the only thing to do was to repeat the process again.
Hope then carefully moved left and knelt by a nearby pockmarked hole.
He peered through its shattered remains of mirrored glass and underbelly of skeletal metal, the silence reaching him as if he were peering into a cave. Darkness hugged again, and the blinking red lights for bombs continued to pulse in rhythm.
'Right…left…left and right…'
Hope counted them, focused on each of their locations.
And as he traced the layout of traps in his mind to mark the new path forward, his past called out again.
Typically in his trainee days, his training officers would create settings full of booby traps in their fields or walls. Anything they could 'dream up' as one would say to drill their philosophies on the soldiers. And the method was to force soldiers with the mentality of moving slowly but methodically with eyes peeled open.
However, at the moment, Hope was tempted to do a full-on sprint.
It was a feeling that was not new of the sort. Hope supposed he was impatient in some ways, or many ways as one of his teammates would strangely describe him, but he also supposed those times in training did help tame that nature of his. There was that unusual comfort in the uncomfortable, and probably because that was all he had ever known to do throughout his life.
But if Hope could shorten the journey, then he would.
And this fallen building for a bridge was one.
Or what it was planned to be...
Hope pulled his head out of the pockmarked hole, his ears being filled with the rain's whistling again. But then, distinctively, tickling through the air came a slippery sound.
Sss…shiish…
"..."
That…didn't sound like it came from the rain.
But from behind him?
!!!
Hope flinched.
A strong pulse echoed in his body. An aura that was demanding…Almost like…from a Master?
'Master Leda?'
No. It didn't feel that familiar.
But that was the only way Hope could describe it to be of something similar.
Sssslk…sssslk…
Hope whipped his head around, hearing a weird lap or lick.
And there–
Hope finally saw something in the rain's blinding wall.
And a glint of burning eyes peeked through.
Ssssssk.
A forked tongue extended and dragged long on the mirrored surface as if it could drink up any trace of him that walked previously from there.
Then it licked the air, drawing in some imaginative sweet scent into its lungs–
But as it exhaled, it was swallowed up by the gray again.
Hidden out of sight.
'What the…'
Hope's hand twitched on the sword's hilt as he tensed in an attitude of listening, straining his ears to move past the beating rain and the pattering on glass.
Ssssslk…sslk…
And the noise came again.
But from the side.
Then ahead-
An unmistakable sound of scales slithering along a surface. And an unmistakable presence speaking of a foreboding nature. It was something that clouded through the suffocating rain and whispered power. More power than that twisted behemoth with mangled limbs and torsos back at the trapped labyrinth.
Ssssslk-
Beyond Hope's ring of vision, there appeared its awful form.
A face resembling a human peered through and at first seemed to be floating. Three thorns protruded from its face—one on each side replacing it for its ears that curved long for three feet, and another on the top of its head like a horn.
It began rearing upright, swaying slightly as if to hypnotize.
Its widened eyes were orange, and pupils like evil suns burned into him.
Slowly its huge hideous self crawled forward, two long limbs easily dodging between the planted bomb spots and feeble glass patches.
Ssss…ssshiish…
And from the rain's gray flowed more of its scaly coils. Each scale glistening coldly, a sickeningly ashen color like that of a rotted corpse.
Hope remained rigid.
Fighting against the impulse to spring again. But to where? Any hint of movement seemed clear that the monster itself would strike like lightning.
Thra-DOOM!
And at that moment, came the returning sound of thunder.
Crashing overhead as if to voice the terrible evil in front of him.
No. It wasn't a Master.
Hope's eyes narrowed slightly, fighting off the aura that threatened under his skin.
But what was of the same rank was a damn Fallen Nightmare Creature.