Aris' eyes slowly opened. The hall around him was silent. The two braziers that had warmed the room were now almost cold, basking his surroundings in a cool twilight. Afraid to move, he slowly looked down at his side. Where the now-slain king had struck him on his side looked malformed and crushed, black bruises underlying the wound. Wincing, Aris tried to stand, gasping as he leant against the golden throne. Quickly scanning the room, he was glad to see that there were no immediate threats. The two Grimm remained dead on the floor; from the looks of things, their blood had dried up long ago. The king's body, however, was gone, and without a trace of the golden-hued blood that had poured out from his wound. Where the corpse had lain were two tiny items; One was a perfect, golden orb that Aris now knew as a Catalyst, though he hadn't seen one with this colouring. The other looked like a shard of black glass, sharp around the edges as it thickened in the middle, a strange symbol embedded within the centre of the transparent trinket. After slowly making his way to the items, Aris picked them up. Pocketing the Catalyst among the three others in his possession, Aris dismissed the idea of consuming them now. He was in no condition to be adding more suffering into the mix, even if he would gain some kind of skills from the system. At worst he would pass out from the additional pain.
Picking up the crystalline shard, Aris flipped it over in his hands, admiring its beauty, but clueless as to its purpose.
"System, do you know what to make of this?" Aris asked.
"The crystal that you hold is known as a Node. It has the capacity to teleport the user to a pre-enscripted location, but it must be shattered to function, thus limiting its range of effectiveness. They are rarely seen." Informed the system dutifully. Aris suddenly noticed that he'd missed a slight hint of femininity in the system's voice.
"Teleportation?" Aris shook his head. First monsters try to kill him, then a talking voice in his head gives him special abilities, and now teleportation. As if this day hadn't already been enough.
Just then, a blood curdling howl rumbled throughout the chamber. Aris felt more contempt than fear. Maybe he was getting too used to this situation.
"I suggest that you make use of the Node now, Last Light." The system advised. "A being of great evil approaches."
"Great. I doubt that I could even handle a minor evil right now." He said sarcastically.
In truth, in his current condition, Aris didn't think that he was equipped to take on even a regular human. Taking the Node, he went to smash it against the ground before stopping just prior.
"Wait! The Catalysts from those two Grimm! I knew that I'd forgotten something." Stashing the crystal in his pocket, he hurried as quickly as his injuries would allow, cutting into the heart of the first Grimm to retrieve the tiny red orb.
A great rumbling began to shake the floor from under him.
"Last Light, you must leave now. The Beast approaches." Said the system, the urgency in her voice plain to hear.
"I need all the power I can get. Who knows if the next place that I end up will be worse than this." He spat back, making his way to the second slain creature. The system remained quiet.
Cutting out the second Catalyst, Aris hurried to bring out the Node as the approaching enemies' footsteps crescendoed. Raising the crystal above his head, Aris went to shatter the crystal, until he suddenly froze in place.
In the gateway stood a hideous creature. It stood on its hind legs, its body taking up almost the entire entrance to the hall. It possessed a vaguely human-like form, but its blackened limbs all seemed deformed, elongated into crudely shaped appendages. Razor sharp claws glinted in the dull light, matched with a pair of twisting black horns that had been gruesomely sharpened into lethal points. Something under its skin oozed and bloated, bubbled and boiled. A magnificent spine raggedly worked its way up its back, protruding prominently, its blotchy skin strung taut against it. The creature was straight out of a nightmare, if someone could even dream up something as vile as this. The creature's eyes were like a black void, fixated on the puny human before it.
Aris felt a primal and urgent sense that he needed to leave. Throwing the Node against the marble floor with all his might, cursing the pain in his side as the crystal shattered into countless tiny black shards. It seemed to release a thick vapour from the point of impact that rapidly spread all around, encompassing his whole body. The creature was blotted out of view as the shadowy substance whirled around him, circling into a vortex that hid all of his surroundings. He felt like his body was being pulled in all directions by some invisible force.
As suddenly as it had begun, the vapour rescinded, leaving Aris unchanged, but slightly muddled. Shaking his head, he looked around, ready to assess the danger of whatever new horror he had been sent to face. But instead, what he saw took his breath away in the most pleasant way possible.
Green, grassy fields rolled over each other as far as the eye could see. A vibrant blue sky opened up above, clouds dotting the magnificent spectacle. Enormous green trees speckled the fields, rising far into the sky, swaying in a gentle breeze that rose from within the valley Aris overlooked. A crystal clear river flowed through the lowest points, winding through the hills before disappearing between a pair of grassy ridges. But what really captured his gaze was a distant, monolithic black tower that stretched into the heavens, grounded in a great flat circle at the base of the valley. It was entirely smooth, and showed no signs of human craftsmanship. It seemed to command the attention of everything around it, as if some otherworldly authority had been bestowed to it. Aris knew at once where he was. This was the picture that the world had seen, where everyone was suspected to have disappeared to. This was where he would find his mother.
Aris sighed, his fatigue overcoming him, and allowed himself to sink into the soft grass beneath him. Closing his eyes, he felt like he was on a cloud, the sun beaming down, warming his muck-covered skin. He felt the strong pull of sleep once again smothering his mind. Suddenly, a distant yell echoed around the valley. With extreme effort, Aris perked his head up. A figure dressed in bronze armour sprinted towards him, yelling something over his shoulder to a group of other figures sitting around a small encampment a few hundred feet away.
Aris cautiously sat up, contemplating his actions. Without much time to decide, he left Lightning Dance unsummoned. It would be better to greet a fellow human as a friend, even if he remained wary. The approaching figure seemed unarmed. As they grew closer, Aris could see that it was a blonde haired boy, not much younger than him. The boy grinned at him, panting as he arrived. He was dressed in a light bronze armour, as he had seen earlier, with light cream cloth garments beneath. He had a friendly face that disarmed Aris as soon as he saw it, a pure-hearted smile that seemed to not know of any evil in the world.
"Man, are we glad to see you." The boy laughed, shaking his head in seeming disbelief. "I thought there was no one else coming. Everyone was starting to panic."
"What do you mean? What is this place?" Asked Aris, overwhelmed with gladness just to see someone that didn't try to immediately kill him.
"Oh, duh, you wouldn't know yet." The boy stood upright, facing Aris. "Welcome to the Split. This is where everyone that has disappeared from back home has been sent to. They'll brief you on everything once we take you to the main camp, don't worry." The boy offered his hand. "I'm Vinny."
Shaking it, Aris asked, "Main camp? Does that mean that everyone is still here that disappeared?" A seed of hope welled up inside as he asked.
Vinny's face darkened. "Not quite. Like I said, they'll explain soon. Normally there'd be hundreds of people coming through the portal every minute that we have to deal with, but since yesterday there's been zero. That's why we're glad to see you. We've had a bit of a manpower problem, so we kind of rely on new people showing up." He said, returning to his cheerful disposition.
"Oh." Aris looked behind him at the portal, which turned out to be a bunch of crudely cut rocks positioned at some weird angles together, creating an askew doorway of sorts. The same symbol that was embedded in the Node was scratched into the highest stone. "I might have bad news regarding that."
Vinny looked at him with a confused look as his small group of comrades caught up to him, most of them eyeing Aris with suspicion.
"It's okay, Kace, he's a friend." Said Vinny, directed at a pale, angry-looking woman with mousy brown hair.
"That's for the others to decide. Under the circumstances, we need to treat him as a prisoner." She looked Aris up and down, with obvious disdain in her eyes. "That said, he looks more like a washed up salaryman than a threat, you're right about that. Bring him with us for now. We'll need to reach camp with a report before dark." She motioned to one of the other soldiers. "You stay here in case anyone else comes through. If they do, keep them here until we get back." The soldier nodded.
"Is camp far?" Asked Aris mockingly. He didn't have much patience to spare at the moment, and his attitude only soured further from this woman's abrasiveness.
She glared at him, and without an answer turned away briskly, as the others fell in line behind her.
Vinny glanced at Aris, a worried look on his face. "You shouldn't make her angry, she's a Render, you know."
"A Render?" Queried Aris, who began half-heartedly walking alongside Vinny, spurred on by two warriors behind him. The kid seemed to be trustworthy, even if the others were cagey.
"Think of it like a rank, I guess. There's seven of them. And there's these little things called Catalysts that-" Vinny clammed up as Kace spun around, glaring daggers back at them both. Clearly she didn't trust Aris with any information yet. Little did she know, Aris was already quite familiar with what was being discussed.
"It's okay, I can wait." Said Aris, unwilling to make enemies immediately with the only people that he had met. "So how far is this camp?"
"Not far." Smiled Vinny. He reminded Aris of a little brother, even though he'd never had one of his own. "It's just under the Stairhouse, that black tower there. Kinda hard to miss."
Aris squinted at the base of the tower. The sun was beginning to set, he could see countless tiny lights starting to scatter about its base. He realised that he could see a vast array of giant fabric tents spreading like waves out from the tower, with miniscule people wandering around between them, many holding some source of light. He whistled in surprise.
"When you said camp, I thought you meant a couple of shacks. There has to be thousands of people down there."
"About fifty-thousand." Informed Vinny. "There's more people, but they're not here." He pointed up towards the climbing tower. "The strong ones are up there."
Aris tried to process what he was hearing. He figured that it would all make more sense soon, once these people decided that he was trustworthy and let him in on what they knew. He resigned himself to playing the part of helpless prisoner for now. Silence fell over the group as they marched under the setting sun, descending into the valley towards the sprawling encampment.