"I... Refuse..." Damien said.
He stared somberly at the flooded land in front of him, his face reflecting into the surface of the water. Damien then used his hand to trace over his face and watched it get replicated in his reflection. Damien gave a small smile.
"Huh?"
Damien glanced to the side to see Howrah completely in disbelief. He then watched as he shook his head before staring at him.
"For what reason do you refuse, Khoran?"
Damien just sighed in response, which ticked Howrah off. "You want power, don't you!? Do you like the feeling of being pummeled with no way to escape?!" Howrah yelled, his saliva flying from his mouth.
"..."
An awkward silence permeated between them. Howrah huffed and panted, finally calming himself down and asking with a more appropriate tone.
"Don't you hate it? Feeling powerless...?" He asked, with a hint of confusion in his voice.
"Tsk..." Damien gripped onto the cracks in one of the bricks belonging to the stairs and tore off a small part of it. "Of course not. Who the hell likes to feel powerless?" He asked while inspecting the stone's dimensions.
And with that, he chucked it into the water and watched how waves resembling translucent rings formed from it, with it being at the centre.
SPLASH!
The waves then spread outwards and distorted his reflection, which held a subtle red glow inside his two empty eye sockets, which made him look as if he was possessed by the very devil himself.
However, this sight of him would be accidentally ignored.
"So why do you deny—"
"It's because I would feel even more worthless when I admit someone is better than me!" Damien interrupted Howrah with a shout. His skeletal fingers shot up towards his face and began to scratch at it.
SCRAPE! SCRAPE! SCRAPE!
His fingers clawed at his face, and the sounds of his clawing resounded in the once-serene atmosphere. Damien's constant scratching made him appear as if he was trying to scrape away some kind of filth stuck on his face.
"Since waking up, I have barely done anything noteworthy! A brown bird knocked me away and kidnapped me before being shot down! A wolf attacked me before being killed by the very same one that shot down the bird!
"I then had to be constantly saved by that archer countless times before meeting up with three others..." His persistent scratching then began to slow down. "Then, after that, we went out to hunt. We hunted and hunted. I felt like I was being left behind as those four killed those monsters..."
His mind then slowly began to flashback to just a few hours ago...
***
The sight of a rusty blade flashing through the air before coming into contact with the furry neck of an airborne wolf. The sword, though dull, sliced through its neck with ease, like using a razor-sharp knife to slice into a juicy, ripe tomato that sprayed its juices like a water fountain.
The wolf's blood sprayed into the air before falling back down, creating the scene of small crimson rain as it fell over the undead that beheaded it. It was the zombie.
After the blood rain had cleared, the zombie unhurriedly swung its sword to the side and indirectly cleaned off the blood staining his blade.
SPLATTER...!
The wide arc of blood landed just before Damien's feet. He stared at it with his sword loosely hanging to his side by his hand. He sighed, 'Not this time either, huh?'
He hadn't been able to kill a single thing yet. He looked to the side and saw that the others had already finished off their opponents and checked their pulse.
Damien then looked towards his surroundings. The flooded street, the decaying materials of the roof, the constant screeching in the air from the far-off brown bird, and the subtle splashes in the water due to the sea life residing in it.
He then gazed up towards the sky and noted how, despite a few hours passing, the moon seemed to never have moved from its position or that the sky hadn't even had a tinge of orange belonging to sunrise.
'How peculiar...' He thought before looking down at the deceased wolves.
Damien watched how the wolves' blood drained out and pooled under the wound that had finished them off. Their blood expanded outwards, just large enough to where...
'Is that me...?'
His reflection could be seen appearing on the dark red surface of the liquid. But that wasn't what caused him to feel surprised, oh no... Instead, it was the two glowing lights in his empty eye sockets that shined like the brightest of stars.
They glowed so intensely that not even the blood could compare to it in terms of redness.
He slowly knelt down and pushed his face closer to it, using the blood as a temporary mirror. He lifted his hand towards the right side of his face—covering that side of his face as well as his sight.
Damien watched as how the light escaped through the small gaps between his fingers. "This... Is very ominous..." He then raised his head at the sounds of quickened footsteps and noticed that the four had left him.
SPLASH!
He quickly scrambled to his feet, intending to follow after them. That was until he heard the sound of something leaping out of the water.
He quickly snapped his head to the sound and found the inside of some kind of creature's mouth. The world seemed to slow down for him as he watched the sharp, jagged teeth that resembled shattered glass approach his skeletal body—full intent on crushing his bones and devouring him...