Along the tracks yet still, Avery walked as if in a trance for hours. He'd done the first leg of his journey without trouble and with a bed to rest in after the first night, but he doubted the home stretch would be as easy.
He thought back to when he left the train station on foot before. Avery felt bad for wasting Ethel's paid ticket, but anything was better than going with a ballistic, hormonal child with knives for hands. He didn't mind the lack of company in that case.
His walk was mostly uneventful, though after the fifth hour of walking he became acutely aware of something following him. He wasn't sure what, but his patron outlined a strangely fat-looking figure with fruit flies and gnats for only a moment. The next words out of Avery's mouth were whispered to him by the same voice who'd been a guide in his most treacherous times.
"You have something better to be doing old man." He spat, an assisting venom to his words.
Whatever was following, or at least walking alongside him, stopped. The guidance of his patron brought with it a sort of half-digested sense of betterment than everything else, though it wasn't shown on his face.
"He wants this to happen. And so it will. Do you think killing me would stop me from getting there?"
The figure revealed itself to be in front of Avery, walking towards him. He'd never turned his head to suggest he thought they were elsewhere anyhow. It was an old, strangely-dressed black man, with a striped shirt, a straw hat, sandals, and shades which better fit a blind composer than the fat nose it found itself on. He seemed too wide to walk as straight as he did, Avery had seen thinner people waddle. His voice was rough and unkempt, uneducated and hardly worth Avery's attention.
"Yer bein' used, kid." He said through gritted teeth, perhaps angry that he was too busy to deal with Avery. Like all the others.
"…Oh my god. You're right. I'm being used!" Avery exclaimed, throwing a hand up to his face in feigned shame before pulling his revolver free from his other pocket. He'd come too far and been shepherded too long to be told it was all a lie. If the only hand ever offered to him in his times of need had been one of a similarly shunned power, what did that say about the others of the world who refused him?
When Avery freed his face of his hand, he took aim at the empty path forward. No old man, no target. He wondered if it'd been a test of some kind, then continued on to the lackluster park space and its plain flowers. There was a brief debate towards checking the station to see if DeMain had left his stuff there, but Avery knew the shithead had probably tossed it all overboard. It was perfect too, because when DeMain asked why he didn't have it, he could blame Avery for being too stupid to notice it was on the same path he walked by days ago.
The most troublesome part of the walk from then on was a road blocking Traffic Spirit preventing him entry. It seemed to love slowing him down with its red eye and being a verbal bother, so he did the Veil dwellers a favor and got rid of it for them. Besides delaying the inevitable, the spirit hadn't actually been able to put up much of a fight once he rendered it asleep. From there it was a simple matter of constricting it to death with his soul-shape. When he was done, his nearly-dead phone lit up with four unread texts and two calls from Ethel. Really? He was gone for about three days with nothing and that's all they mustered up? Real friends, those two.
Entry into the village was easy, and though Avery's legs screamed he'd learned to dismiss pain that wasn't debilitating outright. The people seemed to regard his new face with elation, but Avery couldn't imagine why they'd be happy to see another mouth to feed in a clearly desperate operation to remain alive. Even their houses looked septic, with rotten wood and rusted roofs.
One of them approached him, a rather flamboyant looking biker of a man with a bleached blond mullet. He approached with a serious, gruff expression, arms crossed and tongue poised to jab at the air meaninglessly.
"Sorry bud, but there's a limit of only a few dudes per town. You're gonna have to turn back, okay?"
"Oh. That's too bad. I guess I'll just have to kill you."
The guy chuckled, but the humor in the air melted away as soon as he saw Avery's dead eyes and raised eyebrow.
"…It was a joke, man."
"Sure." Was all Avery said before he walked off. The plan for when he arrived here had been laid out by Ethel, he just had to find the house with the witch rune on its outside log. That was a really bad description, considering maybe a good eighth of the houses had one somewhere, and she never specified what it looked like. After a few unexpected knocks and mention of Ethel's name, he was eventually pointed to a long wooden cabin that worked as temporary housing for anyone new. Indeed there was a rune on one of the logs which formed the wall, Avery was pretty sure it was something to do with the moon. Made sense for a place of rest.
The interior was damp, dimly lit, and dusty. Clearly Ethel had made an effort for it to feel homely to anyone, despite the lack of intrusion as of late. No new faces had shown themselves in a long, long time. There were four beds, two being smaller ones that each had cheap dollar-store plushies of cute animals and action figures of very much the same price range. A few of the figures had mismatched parts, and the plushies looked a little worse for wear with frays and unsewn tears in the cloth. The other, larger beds were mostly devoid of decoration besides some knitted pillow coverings and thick bed covers Ethel must have sewn herself.
Avery could barely help himself as his legs literally collapsed underneath him, forcing him to crawl into the cold bed. He didn't bother to remove any of his dirty, sweaty clothes, although no choice was really given to do so. Avery was out almost immediately, the exhaustion and toll of the past few days catching up to him in a place where he finally felt remotely safe. Alone.
"Wake."
The decrepit voice of his god stirred him from somewhere inside his mind. Out of habit, Avery pulled his phone out to check the time before he realized it meant little of how long he'd slept if there was no true day-night cycle. The phone displayed the time as 6:46 AM, which meant he'd slept… six hours, ish? Not too far from the time he usually slept, if not shorter—or at all. He was stirred to his feet regardless, emboldened with purpose. He could sense what the guiding voice wanted this time, drawing him outside into the densely-packed town. Few people were out and about, but he wouldn't have cared if they were or not in the first place.
The invisible hand goaded him past cramped, shoddy huts and scrap-shamble shacks with pieces taken from metal sheets and rusted car frames to hold it all together. What a dump. But he wasn't here to judge, just to follow orders.
The hand that metaphorically tugged him along eventually stopped him in front of a massive tree. Its limbs had been severed and replaced with unfitting branches to cultivate more plants and fruits than it would normally bear. Some herbs and rare flowers had been carefully attached to the smaller parts of the tree, with other variants packed over the roots. Avery's hand found itself being puppeted towards a ripe, black bulb, stopped short by a wrinkly old Native American woman's hand. She pulled him away from it, cussing him out and giving warnings he could only understand bits and pieces of.
"—Too strong. Bad headache. Go crazy."
Avery's fingers itched towards the gun concealed in his pocket, but he found his tongue being twisted and turned by his unseen patron. He said something in her language assuredly, though he had no idea what. She lurched away, her eyes widening in both terror and disgust. At least she let go of him.
Avery ate the bulb, crunching its surprisingly dry and bitter mass down his throat. He hadn't eaten much besides canned food and wind dressing, so he wasn't surprised when the effects took hold not even five minutes later. The woman and the environment melted away as he dove deeper into the spirit plane, defacing with it the invisible obscurities of human psyche and the minds of the plane's inhabitants. Ethel had told him there were depths to the experience of an Awakening and its Witchsight, and that some levels were impossible to glean while outside the spirit plane. While vision and a semi-logical reality abandoned him, Avery's mind remained tangled together, intact.
The world washed away into a writhing, rippling sea of filthy, briney yellow. Maggots and worms swam through the waist-deep water, the corpses of dozens of animals littered throughout its horizonless expanse. The sky was a corpse gray with black, veiny structures rising from the ground that impaled the pustulent clots of red clouds in the sky. Even the air was not freed from the taint, smelling of sulfur, salt, and staled urine.
Scattered about, half-submerged humanoids wriggled in agony, ecstasy, and sorrow. Avery recognized none of their sallow faces as he trudged forward, though he knew their type. Like him, they were those the world did not care if it forgot, the lowest of the low. He could see it in their strained bodies, the injection marks, the yellowed teeth, the shaky hands, the bruises and the broken bones. Those ungraced by hands of help in their lowest times. Were it not for his god's benevolence, Avery knew he would have joined them long ago.
He had been sent here to do something, but what? It was nothing but filth and debility no matter where he looked. There was nothing in his power he could do for these people either, save for putting them out of their misery…
The brackish effluent behind Avery rippled and disrupted, black tar rising from underneath to form a figure who rose until his form blotted out the sky. Yellowed, frayed robes, a body that could only belong to an unburied corpse, and the half-skull that formed his face. From between the god's inadequate legs, a constant flow of leachate added to his pit to further drown even the flies that clung to brittle skeletons. He seemed to be bothered by the black spires and the bloodied clouds, prying them away from the sky to get a clearer view of Avery from high above.
Avery's teacher did not speak. His elongated, blackened limbs dove deep under the surface of the realm, dredging a massive stone basin filled with striped caterpillars he swore he'd seen from a children's book before. One of the god's massive, cracked fingernails was dipped into the bowl, still congealed with the muck of his domain's underbelly. When it was pulled free, a single caterpillar was curled around the bend of the god's massive, cracked nail. With a slow cracking and twisting of his finger, it was offered to Avery.
Another Hell to journey through. Wonderful. He'd never been led astray though, so Avery had no reason not to trust the enigmatic titan of filth. Whatever his plan was, it had only given Avery good things in the long run. He'd been taught how to gain Heressa's favor by rituals of poisons and prayers, a mindset of self-harm had already been familiar to him and required no instruction. While Avery may very well have suffered some sort of permanent damage from the warding toxins to protect himself from her influence, the effects of the exchange were undeniable. His parents had been caught with film evidence of their 'business' and had decided to go the way of the noose, granting him a large sum of the money they had amassed as well as a favorable story in the news. Of course a rich man with a need for a buttered public opinion would adopt an innocently orphaned young boy, especially after a late night of debauchery that led him to discovering the appeal of single fathers. More so, rich single fathers with charitable hearts. Perhaps that was where DeMain was sewn into the enigmatic plot, but it wasn't Avery's place to question the steps that needed to be taken.
The caterpillar was given its last few moments alive as that of a gooey mess between teeth, swallowed with a grimace as Avery gagged from the new eccentric tone of bitterness. He waited in silence as time passed, the seconds slowing and dragging as his heart began to seize and skip beats. Avery's legs went weak, and he fell into the ocean of fetid contents. His body broke through the thin surface of the ground, now sinking deeper and deeper into a brown, murky void where bugs swam into the holes of his head and his skin itched as though it had been doused with poison oak. He could have struggled or gasped for air, but no word was given from his god to do so. And Avery did not.
The pests and worms in the water clung to his skin and bit relentlessly, his body unprotected by any coverings as they'd been stripped away layer by layer with his descent. A most vulnerable state, mentally and physically. Though he knew it to be a falsehood, the pain erupted across his body the same as it should have. Breathing brought only more filth to his insides, his lungs a nesting ground for parasites as he choked. Avery spasmed with unbearable suffering, every cell in his body and in his brain pleading for it all to end. But it never did end. Nothing had ever stopped when he asked, no matter how hard he fought or how pretty he looked for them.
Another wave of unending anguish overtook him as he screamed and gagged into the vile wastewater, his tears failing to dilute neither the pain nor the mired sea. Salt and shit mixed in his perforated skin, itching, burning, and tearing all at once. He could no longer see or feel the way up and out of the greasy depths, his vision obscured by smooth bodies and black spots. White-hot disruption coursed through Avery, and his body gradually began to conflate pain with pleasure in its last pleading moments of feeling.
Avery awoke from the nightmare with his face in the dirt of the menagerie tree's roots. Pulling himself free, clumps of earth fell from his blond, lengthy hair as if it were a flower's lifelines clinging to the ground. His back popped, having been rendered in the same awkward position for who knows how long. The old woman attending to the tree was gone too, presumably for good like he'd wanted. When he turned to face the wooded mass, he was met instead with the actualization of his first vision. Rather than bark and flowers, faces peered at him from the divots and the wrinkles of the sakura hybrid's exterior.
"You shouldn't be here!" An old woman cried, her face lurching out from the wood as if her neck were crowded somewhere behind the other heads.
"They just let anyone in nowadays hm? I remember way back when, in the olden days…" An elderly voice reminisced.
"Filthy, filthy bug! Can't you stay away from our nest…?" A childish mouth waned.
The insults and mockery continued, Avery's face cracking into a dull grimace as the usual sensation of emotional numbness took over. He chose not to acknowledge the sycophant faces. Instead, he paced around the tree, grabbing the attention of its denizen spirits more than before.
"What exactly are you for?" Avery's head cocked to the side calmly, his hands clasped behind his back as he bowed forward with his question.
"What are we for? What are we for?! We protect this sacred site, ensure a safe haven for our descendants and those we welcome—unlike you vermin. We may as well ask the same question of you, you who does nothing but wriggle in the dirt." The cacophony of voices argued, their faces twisting with malice. Avery seemed unbothered, his attention drawn more by a wandering field mouse by his feet than their hateful comments. Their voices swiveled, sometimes shifting to whoever was deemed the most prominent and other times to whoever was the most fitting for the statements to be told by.
"Hm. You know I think it's time for a change then. I mean, soon there will be nothing left to defend. There would be no reason to defend anything at all." Avery announced, spreading his hands as if to be cheered on for his words.
"We know your ilk, Filthborne. The likes of you come every few generations, puppeteered by a god who would sooner cast you down than save you."
"Must be a different god then this time. My faith could not be better placed in a guardian angel—much less a talkative bush."
"Yeh think youh're clevehr, do ya? He'll drown ya, rip ya apart. Teach ya nothin' but mad'ess." An especially rough voice scowled.
"Maybe. But now I'm convinced the others he chose were just unfit if that's the case. I'm still here, aren't I?"
The voices of the myriad tree went quiet, muttering amongst themselves. It already proved Avery's suspicion, he'd at least made it further than whatever other attempts his god had made previously. Only more reason to solidify his faith, no matter how strangely placed.
"You are a fool." They agreed.
"And you are only a spirit. Perhaps you are old, but certainly not more powerful than any other landmark spirit. I'd bet good money the Eiffel Tower has a stronger prominence than you. But surely you have the power to prevent my next move, so do so while you still have the breath."
He knew they couldn't, this spirit was held behind layers of concealment. If they needed to be hidden from the world, Avery doubted they could protect themselves from it. The spirits deliberated in a mixture of voices like a public school cafeteria, suddenly coming to one single agreed word.
"Wait."
"…For what?" Avery glowered.
The voices split again, disharmonized, but still close enough in timing to understand.
"You understand fully what you are about to do? About to set off? If you must kill us, tell us what it is for."
He'd come so far and his first obstacle demanded last requests? Avery felt no dismissal towards the plea from his god, so he answered with what he believed.
"…As I have been told many times, striking down a powerful, ancestral ward such as yourself will knock down the bulk of the protection this place bears."
"This is true. And then?"
"It will be thrown into chaos, at least more than usual. Spirits will no longer be turned away from it, and they will be freely allowed to do as they please."
"Also true. Then what?"
"Evidently you'll stop asking such dumb questions, but I'll humor you. With this site weakened, stronger spirits will be able to use this tear in the Veil as a crossover point into the mortal plane."
"And then what? Do you think you will be safe from their wrath?"
"No. I expect to die within the month at best."
The tree's multitude of faces all glowered and hardened in sour annoyance. "Truly then, you are a perfect vessel for Him." They said, fading back into featureless bark.
Avery felt as though he were being watched by more than the spirit, and he realized that two others were present. By a twist of his neck, he stared back at them with a side eye, almost bending his head completely backwards to do so. He could see them now, the colorful biker boy and some random girl with spider-shaped hair clips. Ugh. More roadblocks. They didn't seem happy either, already tense at the feet and ready to fight.
"We heard everything man. Why the hell do you guys always trying to ruin a good thing?" The biker boy said. Similarly to DeMain, he summoned semi-physical manifestations from his body. This time, it took the form of a motorcycle's exhaust pipes bent like knuckle dusters through his fingers. Definitely a bit more refined and probably more painful to deal with, though significantly lacking in range compared to what Avery had already fought against. His eyes darted over to the girl, who spread her hands and twisted her fingers between one another. Small silken threads of spiritual energy glistened in the light of the plane's starry sky, dancing between her digits as runes and symbols came to shape.
Avery needed only look between the two of them for a moment before realizing how stacked their odds were. That was until heavy, bass-boosted rave music came on from someone's radio not a block away, drowning out most of the noise in the town. Avery realized then that even this had been precariously planned out. He could feel his patron smiling as cards were laid out one by one. A small town with a weak center point, a convenient lack of any truly capable fighters who might be out and about, and now the perfect backdrop to drown out the next step of his plan.
With a flash of scar tissue and steel, Kurt was assailed by the misshapen mass which had emerged from the new arrival. Its featherless wings flailed wildly, doing little more than aggravating him and lightly scratching at his own soul. A quick, solid jab from his pipe-fists to the spirit's tangled guts sent it flying backwards. It was almost impressive that the Xanthist could allow his soul to travel so far from himself without needing to focus, but that was otherwise the only impressive part about him. The spirit was a textbook case of overconfidence manifesting itself in a seemingly profound way with no real power behind it.
Kurt closed the distance between himself and the new, unfriendly teenager in a few short paces. The guy wasn't fast in reaction, merely holding his jacket more tightly to himself while Kurt's own fists cut through the air one after the other. Another blur passed his vision as he sent his arms downwards for a strike, his hands suddenly slamming against hollow tissue. The spirit of the invading Xanthist had put itself between them, acting as a living shield. Worse so, Kurt's immense force had caused the skin to cave and for the spirit to yelp and caw in agony. From between the torn flesh, maggots and lengthy white worms began to squirm free, coating Kurt's hands in a disgusting display of sewer hazards. He shook his hands free and reared back for another pummeling despite the grossness. Kurt's eyes widened as he realized all too late that the spirit's host was not cowering, but preparing.
A cold barrel was pointed to his head, and the spirit between them flushed itself away just in time for the trigger to be pulled.
Avery gave no thought to what he'd just done, only silently keeping count of the remaining bullets and shaking off the pain in his wrist from firing so sloppily. It wasn't like he'd used guns very thoroughly…
Let's see… he had shot how many times? Avery thought to himself. He was pretty sure it was only once now, leaving four bullets.
He'd begun to enjoy the music playing, but now the girl was breaking it up with her screams and her sobbing. Just as Avery was about to empty the expended round, a hair-thin net of web tangled his hand tightly enough that the skin bulged and reddened like smoked ham. He pulled and let go of the gun to try and escape, the binding tightness threatening to remove his fingers if he didn't. He had intended to pull it closer to bring the girl closer, but she was a few steps ahead of him.
She had a knife with some symbols on it (he didn't really care to analyze) and she was charging him like a bull, the blade held forward to gore. Avery was more confused than threatened. She was a tiny girl, even compared to his own stature.
"Shouldn't you be like, having a breakdown?" He questioned as he took a step back from the nasty edge. Had she and the guy been an item before? Getting mad about it wouldn't change anything now, that was for sure. People were so eager to cling onto things. Couldn't they just learn to live and let go like he had?
She didn't respond for some reason, only slashing and stabbing wildly at both Avery and his soulform. Initially he attempted to block with his spirit as he had before, but unfortunately the knife was somehow able to pass through his guarding soul like air. Its blade found a swift incision against his eye, tearing his eyelid with it. Avery already couldn't see as well as he'd liked, but now blood covered any remaining sight he could have had with it as his vision slowly blackened. Some sick part of his brain refused to acknowledge the wound as debilitating, instead lighting the long-dead spark of Avery's soul with the heat of the moment. Adrenaline flowed through his veins like molten metal, his slow heartbeat now a steady, powerful rhythm.
Another slash came, this time reopening the wound DeMain had left. All at once, Avery was overwhelmed by the instinct to curl up and beg for forgiveness, but it vanished as soon as it came. Like a boa, Avery's soulform wrapped itself around the girl and pressed its lips to hers, forcing its somnific breath into her in an almost grotesque display. Almost. She struggled for a few moments, flailing wildly before dropping to the ground like a ragdoll. He could have done more to her, but she wasn't really important enough in his eyes. Well, eye. The voice in his mind conjured forth an image of the tree, and Avery's attention was drawn back to the task at hand.
Just as Avery turned to begin figuring out how to remove the tree, a handful of crushed herbs and spices was flung at his face from the old woman he'd thought had left the place. His wounds stung as peppers and salts trickled into them, and yet through the sensation of weakness he found he was still able to stand. Just barely.
The old woman wasn't defenseless, and she made sure to show it. Even though she was probably in her last year of life, she pounded her hands against his chest with a strength one could only find in a fraught last resort. She certainly didn't take kindly to Avery only staring down at her vacantly, her fists landing with no avail on his already pummeled and broken torso. She swore, then sent her entire weight at him.
Her meager thew was enough to knock Avery backwards away from the sacred tree, though among his other injuries he could hardly say it hurt more. As the old woman continued to curse him out and tear up, a large rat crept its way to the corner of his vision. In its mouth it snagged the gun he'd dropped earlier. Quite the gift from his patron.
Snatching it away, he saw the old woman huddled, tearing up and blowing a whistle between verses of a prayer. Again, her accent made it difficult to make out what exactly she was praying for, but his raised gun didn't stop her. Avery pulled the trigger only to find nothing fired, and in that instant he remembered guns didn't work like that. His fingers found the hammer and the proper action after a few seconds, but the old woman's prayer kept going.
"Rip this worm from the ground, Ma'Iingan!" She blew the whistle, its exit making no sound even as her withered cheeks blew up. Avery mused to himself how lucky it was that she had no breath left to blow it properly, and gave the back of her head a fancy new coat with the help of his short-barrel paintbrush.
The music had long stopped, and he hadn't noticed how hushed the area had become until the gunshot's ring left his ears. Some part of Avery knew that nobody could ignore the revolver's bangs forever, he doubted he could excuse it with holiday fireworks. Working hastily, he found a hanging lantern from the pathside and wrenched it free of its stand with some complaints from his fight-worn body. Avery could barely muster the throw afterwards, but it was enough. The light plastic casing shattered as the innards of the lantern remained red and hot, the tree's base beginning to smoke as roots and flowers began to wilt and curl from the oncoming heat. Eventually a small ember formed, rapidly growing but still not enough to satisfy Avery's faster-growing paranoia. He feared he'd be stopped before the task was done, he needed more to feed the infantile glow.
Kurt's body wasn't doused with kerosene, but his hair products and dry clothes were the best tinder Avery could think of. The body was thrown (more so carefully dragged due to the intense pain) head first onto the firespot, and Avery felt the agony of his wounds return as Kurt served the purpose of fuel. Flames licked across the tree's bark, which began to dry and split. Ashes separated themselves from the whole as the tree began to crack and pop from the immense heat. All around him, Avery could see and feel the effects immediately. The safe, comfy aura which had once surrounded this place began to melt away, and the figures which had been repressed to the edge of the town now closed in like starved predators. The wicker spirit wards held strong until the tree's branches snapped off, reduced to charcoal and nothing more. From there, the flames keeping the spirits who'd been subdued from this place could be snuffed out by hands from the dark.
Footsteps could be heard rapidly approaching as people closed in towards the burning tree, voices growing louder. Avery's mind desperately attempted to work out either a means of escape or expediting. He saw it then, the mouse which had brought him his gun. It was perched on the surface of a wooden table covered in dry pictures, books, and flowers which had become shriveled from their time left out. Despite the ache across his stomach, he was able to muster up a kick that pushed the table over onto the burning roots, reducing it and its contents to yet more ashes beneath the tree. The rat scurried off through the gaps between the houses immediately, and Avery saw no other option than to trust the little helper. He limped forward through the corners in the dark, led only by squeaking in his ever-whitening vision in a staggering gait. Sheds, shacks, cabins, and makeshift tents all passed him as he lumbered on. Dark hands seemed to reach for him with every turn of the corner. Another lantern was grabbed from one of the stands, Avery huddling it close to his remaining eye just to see the tail flicking about in front of him.
The rodent came to the edge of town, the spirits of the outside taking many an outlandish form as they encroached towards the flickering, strained protections of the wards. Most were tiny troublemakers, but Avery could distinctly see some more notable ones. A skin balloon with intestinal ropes, a man-shape covered entirely in bandaging and burns, and a crawling spirit hoisting an unnaturally large pair of scissors. There was a brief pause from inside of himself as Avery contemplated fending them off. He knew he couldn't for very long in his current state, but it hardly mattered.
His god Xanthe had only asked of him that he weaken the hamlet's barrier, what more could he possibly need after all that had been done? Avery took a step away from his pre-planned path, unsure what he could do against the rogue's gallery of spirits who seemed intent on making the newly-opened space their own by force.
Halting any heroics Avery might have made, a bounding figure clad in white and gray fur landed itself in front of him. It was a great and mighty spirit he'd never seen before, reminiscent of a timber wolf with two sets of front legs. Avery could distinctly see a makeshift collar with talisman papers hanging from it, and yet more of the written emblems wrapped around its gargantuan body. It peered at Avery with black eyes devoid of kindness for him, and the teenager knew it had already judged him for his transgressions. Was this his fate? To be eaten by a lowly mutt conjured by scared children? Children…
Despite the fear, Avery's heart became just for a moment. Images flashed in his head of how he'd felt so long ago when he couldn't defend himself—it still felt sometimes like he couldn't. Burning the tree had been inevitable for the next great steps of history, but the town's meekest didn't need to suffer for it.
The wolf spirit snarled at him, its split forelegs padding the ground as it haphazardly slashed at the other spirits desperate to escape the confines of the Reikai. Avery realized his idiocy too late, he'd already sealed his fate. The townsfolk creeping out of the woodwork would surely know what he'd done, even if in the long run these things would only help them. They'd never understand, and he had no choice but to run. Avery could see they were at least capable of defending themselves as a few took down lesser spirits, and that eased the small worries he had.
Just as he believed he was free, an indomitable weight slammed into him and forced him to the ground. Avery was trapped under two clawed paws, the nails digging into his ruptured skin to the bones. It lasted only a moment, with a familiar voice screaming Avery's name before the Wolf Spirit was forced off of him.
Avery found his footing with shaky movements and saw DeMain sparring with the Wolf Spirit, who seemed less inclined to fight him and more intent on getting around him. Back to Avery.
Avery took his chances, realizing Xanthe had likely been accounting for DeMain's naive misunderstanding. Why DeMain was defending him, Avery didn't know. It hardly mattered, he was just glad a way out had been opened to him. He could hear the townsfolk behind begin to slip away into the wind as he ran further and further, following the flies which dotted his vision and drew his eye. As Avery ran from everything, he could feel the ground below him become mucked and squishy, his feet sinking down more than they moved forward. In an instant, he fell through a patch of particularly weak earth, falling faster than he could react to. Entire worlds sailed past him, the spirit plane swallowing him to its furthest depths while he flailed inconsolably in the wind.