'The year's almost over...' Santy's eyes were glazed over.
'If I had to name a few achievements I made throughout... it would be none. I did nothing but bunk classes, mess around with my bros, and getting singled out by the teacher and various professors.'
'The next year... will it be the same?' An unwillingness gnawed at his heart.
His life was decent because of his friends. But unlike them. He didn't have... ambitions.
They were satisfied with their lives... but he wasn't. He didn't dislike spending time with them... rather, he had nothing to do when he wasn't with them.
His goal, his life, it was simply... empty.
He was a captive inside his body.
Santy hummed. A moment passed before he hummed again. His sight crawled all over the ground. His face slanted a bit to the side.
Then he hummed.
"Santy... can I spread your cheeks?"
Santy paused just before he repeated his robotic motion. His mouth drooped slightly, the other side of his face that was away from the eyes of Loki twitched.
"Fuck off!"
The plaza was bustling. The jumbotrons played jovial songs. LED lights and neon signs hung on all shops and buildings. A corner that Santy had just passed was a free-to-join dancing stage. Broad banners crossed through the air that read, "Welcome, New Year!"
There was a large clock tower at the side, which would draw swaths of eyes every time the speakers roared the countdown of the ticking minutes.
"Man, I get it really ain't fun without all of the band." Loki's lips thinned in exasperation, "But what can we do?"
Santy sighed, "Should've just joined Allen on the game."
"Oh come on, you know he would be too busy with Merry to really play." Loki grinned mischievously as he saw the notification that just popped up, "Dude's really persistent. I wonder if Merry too is outside."
Santy glanced at his phone, seeing the multiple messages from Allen, his lips curled in mockery.
But just barely in that instant, without actually diverting his eyes from the messages, his focus shifted toward the time.
22:52.
'It's coming.' The thought roared in his head.
He didn't have any control over his body, but his heart still began to throb loudly. Its pleas engulfed the surrounding chaos, fed on the conversation that he and Loki were having unperturbed from his turmoil, before ringing in his head and ears with a sharp noise like a microphone's sudden malfunction.
As this was going on, Santy's body was still having a conversation with Loki with a healthy expression.
But when it reached the instantance where the nerves of his his head jammed with a sudden deluge of silence, Santy collapsed.
His face was still healthy, his mouth still continued to move as if answering to Loki, even his legs continued to twitch as though he was still walking upright.
Santy's eyes moved subtly, scanning the figures that moved past his frigid zone of sight, making pep talk as though he hadn't just collapsed in front of them right now. In such an odd manner to boot.
Even Loki continued to move forward while looking sideways, his mouth moving with a gentle flow, talking to who knows what in his vision.
Then it happened.
The roar blasted the eardrums making the crowd keel over while clamping down at their ears. Some directedly feinted.
Then a massive beam of light, composed of small streaks of glowing white, collapsed on one of the buildings. It dragged on and on, chipping away at its structure layer by layer, strong pulses of heat shot out from it, some nearby people hit by it caught on fire, before the building was completely razed to gooey ground.
Screams erupted. Panic kicked at people's feet as they broke out for the exit. All hell swallowed the festivities.
From the molten ground. A being curtained in pitch black darkness slowly surfaced, a dome surrounded him that slowly withdrew, burning lavaish ground slipped from its vanishing surface.
The presence of that Devil pumped such horror into Santy that he forcefully wrested hold of his body and crawled to his feet.
Instantly, as though a major err had been committed. The ground glitched. It separated in two in one instance, before re-joining as if nothing happened.
Santy's heart leapt, 'What the heck just happened?' His vision seethed, which he drove back with a sharp pinch to the temples of his nose.
His eyes shot open again, the people were still running blindly. 'Did they witness it too? That large, endless gap?'
His thoughts shifted rapidly as he analysed the situation, 'No, they already are panicked, I can't tell of if they witnessed it or not.'
The air glitched this time, suddenly, he found the scene being forwarded to when the Devil had blended into the panicking crowd, causing a group of Heretics to start an all out massacre on the people to fish it out.
Strange phenomenon with no scientific reasoning or logical cause, like massive fires, poisonous fog, corrosive tar, cleaved away at the people's life.
Santy had long separated from Loki, rushing toward the exit with all his might.
Then suddenly his vision lagged again. A layer of different scenes peeled from his eyes. It left him no time to think, much less analysis and reason.
It abruptly stranded him into one.
He saw a gaping maw of darkness chomp down on a group of Heretics, the large scale attack wipied out many buildings and hundreds of civilians at once.
Then the screen glitched just as his body automatically made a break for the place that had just been cleared, like he had done before.
He ignored all the pleas and cries that sprang louder with each step he took, in the air behind him, a blob of black and white butted heads.
One instant the black figure would be thrown onto the ground, and the next the white figure.
Their battles left deep fissures in the ground. Numerous buildings collapsed from the violent shaking and deforming of the earth. Yet Santy kept bolting forward, gasping, prespiring, terrified and shivering.
The scene glitched.
"Heretic, hand over the egg. Maybe I will spare you."
Santy's brows trembled.
This time, he didn't focus on the Guard's appearance. But instead on the voice. It sounded... familiar.
His heart raced, as if that voice brought him a sense of comfort, he gained control over his body. With a gulp, he didn't understand why, but he opened the steel door voluntarily and stepped out.
The air twisted and deep black fissures pulled across the atmosphere.
But just before the layer of the scene of when he was sucked into the Rupture forming over his eyes completely solidified and changed the environment. His eyes fell down, onto the rock tightly clutched in the palm of the Heretic. A realisation hit him.
It didn't before because when he glanced at it, a strange voice would assaulted his mind and befuddld him. But this time it hadn't, so he analysed the rock more keenly.
It seemed to be pulsating under his gaze, as if calling out to him. Moreover, it didn't seem to glue to the hands of this Heretic like it did with him... Why?
A weird crack, like that of shattering glass, came from inside him. Then all the fissures exploded at once. The scene forming over his eyes shattered and he fell into the stretching darkness.
Then the same screeching voice roared in his head. Whose meaning he 'sensed' with a deep frown.
[Abreaction sequence broken. Target's tenacity cannot be affected.]
[Nightmare complete.]
[Devourving all beings in the vicinity of the Guard City into the Nightmare.]
[Commencing Nightmare.]
The darkness withdrew its hold from his flesh. But it didn't vanish, instead, all of it seeped into his mind. It leeched to whatever shadows he had and began to nibble on them. Persisting in a desperate corner to survive.
With the darkness slipping its hold over his body, he laid right there, where he was before. But the Heretic's corpse from beneath him had vanished.
Moreover, not a trace of blood remained. Not on the ground, not on him, yet all his wounds still pulsated with pain as before.
The ruins around him had been swapped by solid structures with... strange alien beings.
The houses were brimming, the streets bustling with armoured warriors directing varying glares onto his unconscious back.
Then two guards strode over.
These creatures had scaly, purplish skin. Reddish hair fell over two of their three pairs of eyes, out of which only one had a lens inside— The eye in which their lens formed in seemed to be random.
Over their long, oval faces, two falling doggish ears popped out from the sides, the earlobs of which hardened into sharp horns that curled upward. They also had a long, versatile tail and thin, featherless wings.
If Santy was awake, he would've cringed at whatever language these creatures spoke to drive away the crowd.
The two guards met eyes with each other before scrutinising the odd creature. Then unanimously, they hooked the unconscious Santy's arms over their broad shoulders and dragged him away.
"To the prison?" One of them spoke.
"We should get him to the infirmary before that, otherwise he will die before we begin the baptism." The other responded with a savage grin.