Daimanos Act 1

Chapter 1: escape

"Ok kid we're getting out of here" I said that but looking back I'm surprised we made it at all.

My body fairly badly burned, I was scratched all over, one of my wings was broken, and the other was torn off. And at the time I only weighed about 110 pounds.

Honestly I have no clue how I managed to limp my way through the burning remains of the fortress never mind carry the little girl with me. Adrenaline is a hell of a drug I guess.

Where was I? Oh yes getting the hell out of there. To be perfectly honest most of the escape felt like a blur to me. I only remember the sounds of the fortress walls collapsing, explosions, the distant clashing of weapons, and the crackle of the fire as it began to consume everything. I ran and ran and ran not knowing how long. Likely only a few minutes but it felt like an eternity with death all around us.

But eventually we reached a dead end. I entered a room that sounded like it lead to the outside but it was a bust. Just more walls. To top it all off the entrance to the room collapsed behind us we were trapped.

I looked around desperately to see if there was anything and then it happened again.

[ANALYZING TARGET]

Scan Results: parts of the wall have been significantly weakened. Blunt force may cause them to give way. Be warned structural integrity is low so a chain reaction may occur if hit repeatedly.

So I knew I needed to hit it hard to make a big enough hole but had to be quick because once the walk started to go it would all start collapsing on me.

"Well here goes nothing" I picked up the shield and starting bashing into one of the weaker spots of the wall as hard as I could. Again and Again and Again until eventually

*crumble*

"Is that? Outside?" I saw... not much to be honest. It was quite dark but I didn't have time to think. Get out of collapsing burning room now question things later. I picked the child back up and ran. While trying to us as best I could when running in the hole I made in the wall.

We were out. The dark skies illuminated by the burning rubble behind us. "So we're finally out-" *BOOM* "GOOD LORD CAN THEY JUST KILL EACH OTHER ALREADY!?!?" I snapped.

It's been a long day.

The cold air blowing against my burned and raw skin stung badly. I winced at the pain and started to feel the true brunt of the damage I took. It was bad but I still had some adrenaline left. I knew I had to get us away from here before I passed out from the pain but I didn't have long so I stumbled towards the concentration of large trees. It may provide a bit of shelter and keep us out of sight of whatever things are fighting to the death in there.

"Mmm nnnnnnh" oh the kid is stirring. Guess they'll wake up soon. I kept stumbling through the woods for a few more minutes. I thought I put a good distance between us and the burning fortress but really we were maybe 1 to 2 thousand feet away but at least we had a bit of shelter thanks to the tree cover above and I heard the sound of running water so I'm guessing a river was somewhere kind of close.

"H-Hello" My thoughts on our location were cut short by a young voice.

"Huh" I said. Not fully realizing the kid had woken up yet. I took a moment to look at them and realize they were a young girl no older than 3 or 4 years old.

She had blonde hair though most of it was covered in dust and ash. I suppose we'll need to find that river soon as well as she definitely needs to be washed and I can only assume I look even worse being covered in ash, bruises, and blood. But for now I...

"Hi there I'm Auri... what's your name?" I was about to give my reply but then I remembered... or didn't I suppose would be more appropriate statement as I can't remember much of anything.

'Think think think... uhhh what was that weird voice saying? Analyzing? Hmmm how about Ana? No it's too close to her name she may be suspicious. Uhhhhh... oh I got it.'

"Call me Liz" I said in a tired voice. By this point my energy was completely gone. I couldn't keep going anymore so I closed my eyes and passed out.

And there we go chapter. Sorry it took so dang long but I've had a lot of bad things happen. That being said I don't wanna dwell on them too much.

I ended up losing all the chapters I had typed up on my computer (it was about 10 3500 word chapters) so that was a blow to the motivation. So instead imma just do shorter chapters for a while but there will be more of them. 

On the bright side this gives me a chance to fix the pacing a bit although it'll still be a bit of a slow burn opening.

Anyways I did some messing around in Picrew and made some designs for our main characters. I was gonna wait until a future chapter to show them but decided I may as well show them now.

So here's our main protagonist Liz.

(Her design is gonna change a lot throughout the series ultimately ending up around the design shown on the cover)

Here we have the design of Auri.

Her design is based heavily off of Luca from Labyrinth of refrain (not so much a fun game moreso an interesting one)

Anyways that's all for now hope you guys enjoyed and hopefully see you all soon.

Edit: this was actually supposed to go out last night but I fell asleep on it.