"The light… the light… the light… the light… the light… the light… I must… I must follow…"
Watching the Lower Demon who pulled them all along the narrow path leading down to the Quarry, Castrelle felt a gnawing fear circulating through his weakened form.
'Gremory seems particularly agitated today… why? What has changed? This light that he speaks of, what does he mean? The sun? Why does he need to follow the sun? Is he talking about the way the sunlight glistens on that marble palace? Does he wish to return to Tenebris? F-ck, we should be extra careful not to agitate him further today… it's fine if I die, but if anyone else slips up… I'll have to try and draw his attention to me, so I can die in their place.'
Another day brought about another work shift.
Of course, no prisoner of the quarry considered it work. It was more like torture. Slow torture that brought about their weakening. With every passing day, with every scar obtained from the job and Gremory's cruel taskmastering, and the fatigue that accumulated, and the sickness that spread, they were in no condition to revolt.
Escape seemed impossible.
But one name continued to echo through their ranks.
'Looking Glass.'.
'He will save us, surely,' they would say.
Castrelle had to grit his teeth and bear their pain. He knew it was inevitable. Only he and Fare were equipped with the knowledge that their rescue would come soon.
But as much as he wanted to reinforce his comrade's hope, he had to keep silent. Gremory was always listening. He shouldn't have even reacted outwardly when Looking Glass's owl, Gaelis, had arrived.
Gremory could hear everything, even from the quarry floor far below their resting spot in the caverns. It was one of the most peculiar things about him. It was only when he was asleep that they were free to talk of escape, but that was always just an assumption. They could never tell when he was asleep from so far away.
They had been careful to only talk in a despairing, hopeful fashion. They knew Gremory was aware that the Reaper called 'Looking Glass' would soon appear in order to save his comrades. They also knew he was aware that they were growing weary, unable to plot their escape.
Castrelle had taken care to elucidate this point. As long as he could portray to Gremory of their weakened state, he would slowly begin to think of them as less of a threat. This would be crucial in Looking Glass's operation. Even without commands from his Meister, Castrelle was desperately trying to play his part.
That was the role of a Fisher. To distract, and to set up their Duelist for a certain victory.
"Fare, today, let's take care to be very silent." Castrelle spoke in a hushed tone, putting a finger to his lips.
As he glanced towards the misshapen massive Demon ahead, he saw him stop in his tracks. The Demon tightened his fist, causing the chains in his grasp to creak and crack under his strength, deforming their already-gnarled and rusted shape. His head slowly began to turn, his neck twisting in an aggravated fashion until it finally snapped out of place, a massive crack sounding throughout the quarry.
But the Demon wasn't staring at Castrelle. Instead, the man realised that another person had fallen to the ground, likely out of exhaustion, holding up the line behind him. Seeing this, Gremory had fury in his six slitted eyes. It was an odd look, like the Demon hadn't quite yet processed the event, yet anger that had already welled up inside him had surfaced.
It wasn't a sort of anger that would culminate in yelling. It looked like pure bloodlust, the feeling that each Reaper felt for the Demon ahead of them. It was certain that Gremory was looking to kill the fallen man.
"Hey, f-cker!" Castrelle called out desperately, his eyes widening as he rushed forward, trying to separate himself from Fare and the others ahead of him. "Your city will never be rebuilt, bastard! All your friends are dead! Your whole family is dead!"
The Demon's eyes quickly flitted towards Castrelle in unison, making a wet, sloppy sound as they did so, as if they were loose in his skull. Slowly, his body turned, each step rumbling the ground below, his neck cracking back into place.
Then, in an instant, Gremory lurched towards Castrelle, his size covering the distance between them before Castrelle could even process it. The edge of the cliff-face shattered, causing rocks to tumble down far below, and the rest of the Reaper prisoners to fall against the cliff wall to avoid falling.
Castrelle raised his hand up in the air to block his head, but of his blindside, a fist came hurtling towards him. He felt extreme pain in his wrists, and past the agonising blur that blotted out his vision, he saw the horrific form of the Lower Demon standing over him, with a maddening expression on his cracked-obsidian face.
"No talking… on company time."
Castrelle felt the earth underneath him crumble, slipping on the edge of the narrow cliffside path, tumbling down the steep mountainside. He tried to grasp at the chains that held him, but felt numbness in his hands. Through the haze, he could see spurting streams of crimson erupting from his wrists, free of his hands.
They had been torn off, along with the chains, and the rust around the chains attached to his iron harness had snapped, leaving him to tumble down the cliffside in agony. He hit a rock-face below, head-first, and past his blur, without hands, he was unable to grab onto it, continuing his free fall.
His vision was imbibed by splashes of crimson, and soon, he felt an agonising pain pierce through his back, digging through the mass of internal organs and piercing through his ribcage, forcing the bones to the side in the process. His ribs pierced his lungs, and his heart began to pulsate rapidly, causing blood to spurt out of the wound.
Castrelle had fallen onto a fractured stone pillar that they had been working on the day prior. He had no assumption that leaving it pointed would lead to a painful demise.
But his brain had already shut down. He felt no pain at all.
All that was left was the corpse of a man, limp and letting off waterfalls of blood from his sides and wrists, pooling onto the stone floor below.
The remaining Reapers looked down at Castrelle's corpse in horror. He was the one that always tried to ease their pain, and it had been the third time since they had been captured that they had seen him die. No one wished for him to die in their place any longer.
'F-ck, I died again…'
Castrelle could feel his eyes rolling forward in his head.
'If I survive this, I won't have a scar from the stone pillar. That's a lucky break. Thank goodness that I died so quickly, and that all the majour injuries happened in quick succession…'
Wind chimes echoed in the distance, and he felt a cold breeze on his skin. The feeling of thin, silky grass underneath his body felt like heaven in comparison to the stone floor of the caverns the Reapers had been sleeping in.
His thoughts instantly resurfaced, along with his consciousness.
'Ah, another Revenant Trial… really, I'm cursed to live forever.'
He opened his eyes, feeling pain etched deep into his skin and bones. His bloody wrists, free of hands, felt like hot coals on his flesh, set alight with a flaming agony. But it was something he was used to. Something he had experienced so many times before.
'Really… since adopting the Beast's system, I haven't felt a moment of peace… hah. Should a Reaper only feel peace once he's killed all of his enemies? When Hell has been conquered, will I be allowed to die for real?'
He reached his handless wrists towards the bright-blue sky, longing for that escape, to disappear into the distant mountains that he knew were just an illusion.
His forte was [Revenant Trial], the inability to die, as long as he found success in his short-lived afterlife, a trial meant to be conquered. His reward was continued life.
Castrelle sat up, glancing forward. He had appeared on a hillside blanketed in beautiful white flowers, all dancing in the cold, gentle wind.
A man stood on the other end of the white-flowering hillside, his hand hovering over a katana on his hip. He wore a red mask resembled a horned demon, with intricate emerald lines around the edges. His hair was pitch-black, tied up in a knot behind his head, and his stance exuded a malevolent aura, permeating over the peaceful hillside.
He was a festering darkness in such a beautiful place.
It was a common theme of the trials, to put Castrelle a situation where he would be considered a hero. Now, facing the man who let darkness fester amidst the flowers, it was his task to eliminate him.
As he stood up, three translucent black windows with glistening white edges appeared before him, suspended in the air. When he turned his head, they would move to always be at the forefront of his vision.
'Ah, it's time to pick a Gift…'
He eyed the man suspiciously through the three windows. 'They always attack soon after I choose one of the options. It's unlucky I drew a duel this time though. Because I've been taken prisoner by that Demon, Gremory, I don't have a weapon with me… I'll just have to beat the sh-t out of this strange man conjured by the trial…'
There were always three options he could choose from in order to help him in clearing the Revenant Trial. While two would rotate between several helpful options, there was always a constant choice among those three, one he had anticipated the moment he had lost his hands and been speared by the fragmented stone pillar.
[Equal Ground: Restore your body. Any injuries received in the past hour will vanish. Any lost limbs will be renewed. Mental and physical fatigue will disappear. Full mental clarity and rationality will be restored.]
He was never worried about the injuries he received during his life. It was the ones during death that he would keep, the scars evident on his visage.
Eyeing the window, he pressed it.
And immediately after, he saw a flash of silver swing towards his head at an incomprehensible speed.
Castrelle threw his head backwards, the tip of the demon-masked man's blade cutting into his cheek, sending a splash of blood flying through the air. Blue particles also flew away in the wind, strands of sinew and muscle writhing on the surface of his bloody wrists, gradually reforming into the shapes of hands around newly-sprouting joints and bones.
'He didn't even let me pick a Gift? The Dueler-types always wait! What an impatient man! I don't even have a weapon with me this time around!' Castrelle's face paled, a bit terrified by the masked man's aggressive state. He grinned nervously, trying to abate his fear.
There were three types of trials that Castrelle usually faced. The first was a duel, usually against a monster or humanoid-type creature he had never before encountered, raising the difficulty due to a lack of knowledge. The second was usually a diverse series of chambers filled with intricate puzzles and riddles. The third, only having been encountered once before, was a vision. A vision of a close future. A horrible future.
No matter which one he received, the outcome of victory was always the same.
He would be revived once more.
But only as long as he achieved victory.
Castrelle twisted his body as he fell backwards, kicking at the man's head. His boot collided with the man's head, kicking his mask off of his face. It revealed a withered, patchwork man. He had stark-black hair and wispy grey-blue eyes, a thick burn scar on the left of his face, and a serrated scar that curled up from the right corner of his lips to his right earlobe.
Castrelle's eyes widened as he hit the ground, seeing a mummified version of himself standing before him. However, when he glanced back up, that more-deformed version of himself had disappeared.
The once-blue sky had clouded over, a storm rumbling in the distance. The flowers had wilted, and the mountains in the distance had grown cracked, filled with bright molten magma that sputtered and bubbled.
In the distance, on the hillside where the masked version of himself had first appeared, now was filled with hundreds of pillars.
'No, not pillars, they're crosses…'
On those crosses that littered the hillside, the bodies of Reapers had been hung up, blood dripping down their sides and off of their feet onto the ground, staining the wilted flowers crimson. The people had withered and their skin had greyed, their faces sullen and horrified. And at the head of them, Castrelle could see that mummified version of himself, the cracked red demon mask lying at his feet.
His eyes widened, and he let out an anguished scream, overtaken by his horror.
It had been no duel at all.
It was definitely a warning.