Bygone

5

Premunio

Their haul began not too long afterward.

A dozen or so minutes into their trek, the three of them remained separated from one another; distanced, as each of them still were. Their faces gradually slogged about, their minds struggling to find balance between their wake and their exhaustion. Rigid their distorted gallantry had shown to be, each of them meddled about their hearts.

Hearts that were ridden with fear, and even the presence of a false hope.

Marcus stepped along the grass path that Jaclyn had stomped on ahead of them, keeping to their middle with Chloe to his far rear. Each crack and tear of the green blades below the weight of his boot resonated in the fragments of his mind, inciting and inflicting a devastating blow of reality.

This was real. He was real. Their mission was real. The imminence of facing death itself was real. They were all here, real people in a real place.

The bracer of the elemental armor allowed for nanotechnology to be weaved within the metal, creating a screen for a variety of uses. For him, he had calibrated his phone as Moira had instructed them to do so before they made their leave. Unfortunately, after Jaclyn abruptly and dramatically made her exit, he followed behind with his mobile phone in possession.

Over the course of the time after they exited the region of the bunker, he learnt to use the bracer's functions and scrolled through memories of images found in the gallery of his life. One eye followed Jaclyn's steps in its peripheral, the other stared into the glass-like screen.

And then he just stopped scrolling. His fingers retreated back and clenched onto the hilt tightly, Marcus inhaling a deepened breath of the Between's atmosphere. His legs began to jitter about, not that the girls had realized it.

He kept his motion stable, though now his fears grew to envelope him. His arm stiffened up, his eyes now both staring directly onto the badly sketched stick figure. His existence was an abnormality, he had no reason to be in the narrative yet there he was; awaiting their arrival.. awaiting their battle.

Blurr was nothing more than a figment of his own childish imagination. A figure from a time where he'd been the same age as his youngest sibling. From a boy now changed. The circled head of the drawing had bolts of black lightning atop where his ears were to be, stripes and lines of black making up that of the speedster's helm. An almost recognizable match to the images of the demon shown to them by Moira.

Marcus reminded himself of how he as a mere child described him: Death followed him wherever he went. The sting of his lightning comparable to that of the might of a thousand armies. An undefeated opponent. Visage of the White Dread. He couldn't tell what he feared more, the fact that Blurr was real, or that a ten year old boy described him in that way.

He thought deeply of the name that Blurr had taken up (or had already been born with): Robin. A name that was associated closely to that of a miniature bird. A peaceful creature with no means to harm. And then there he was; the slayer of the elementals. He was once his greatest pride as a child and now was one of their adversaries.

Fear rid his very being, but it was extraordinary to witness his existence. Someone who he thought only lived in his mind now thrived instead in reality.

Terror and doubt reignited within him. Turning his head from the image, he stared into the approaching city that they were to behold soon enough. His grip sharpened to precision, holding the hilt of the elemental's legacy tight as his heart beat, and beat on. Nothing else pervaded his mind but the sense of consternation and horror. Was this truly going to go as he believed it would?.. would it?