SLAYER

Chapter 6

A mirror was all Dante could think about at the moment; it felt as he was seeing himself before him, giving his conscience in to the unidentifiable entity within him. The situation did give him inevitable nostalgia, after all Colby was, like Dante on his first, in his late teens and transformed at an empty, yet enclosed space after being almost killed by a hideous beast.

His fists were blazing hot, and kept on firing at Dante, recklessly. Although Dante was agile enough to dodge them all, but still he was hesitating to make any rough move, because he didn't want to hurt Colby. That was when he thought that he shouldn't have killed the beast before him, and let Colby kill him and calm his lust for blood. Nevertheless, he had to do something real quick before the complete transformation. After having encountered so many relic-bearers for years, Dante knew that the worst from Colby was still to come, unless he was stopped at the initial phase.

Having no plan in his mind, Dante decided to take action to figure out a way to subdue the beast. He rushed from his place and started running in a direction away from Colby. As expected, Colby followed him at his full speed. Dante wasn't worried about his own safety at all; he had been in such exasperating situation before, and he never lost it once. But all of the times before this, he wasn't worried about the safety of the bearer at all. Running at his full wasn't enough, apparently. Colby had got faster than his ordinary human form. He was running behind Dante effortlessly at such a speed that Dante couldn't keep up for long.

At long last, Dante decided to stop and take the measure to the level he didn't want to. He stopped at his place, which made Colby stop too, and turned to face the beast going relentless. All of a sudden the air around them started to warm up by the heat being radiated from Dante. Starting from his wrist, first the entire right arm and then his entire body started to become a beast like the all relic-bearers, but then Dante rose his hand and drew it toward Colby with his palm facing him. Out of nowhere, the warmed up air started to darken in the vicinity of his hand and ultimately became a staff with a curved blade at its one end while a metallic chain on the other. His body emitted heat, other than that he showed no physical anomaly that all of the other relic-bearers did. That was different and deadly at the same time, because the person who stood before him, posing as his enemy, never survived the next few minutes.

Colby saw Dante change at first, but barged at him before he knew it. He was done for. No attack of Colby could touch him now. His staff kept him at distance from the blazing hits from his fists. The consistent hit-and-dodge game annoyed and made Colby angrier, and made him prone to transform up to his final form. It took longer than a moment. The blue fire that resided in his fists took over his entire body and made him glow like moon, except the color. Seemingly, the fire wasn't harming Colby at all, instead the anger was. He could die if he had kept exerting power like that, and that was when Dante pulled out a hat trick.

He stood firm at his place and threw his scythe toward Colby at ferocious speed. Colby, before he could react, was surrounded by the chain following Dante's staff. He couldn't move his hands or legs, and his consistent efforts made him fall on the ground beneath him, rendering him helpless. A relic-beast could easily break the shackles if only it were the ordinary ones. Dante's staff was different. It was a manifestation of his physical appearance that wasn't just confined to his human form. The scythe in fact gave his body dynamics and reach that he required in battle against another possessed beings.

Colby pushed as hard as he could against the chain, but he just couldn't shake it, let alone break it. Yet it wasn't easy to hold the power of a relic-beast even with another relic's power, but Dante somehow knew what he was dealing with. After a long while, almost equal to six hours, Colby stopped showing the symptoms of the beast and came out of his unconsciousness.

"Is... that you, Mr. Dante?" asked he, in a mere moan, to the person sitting at a distance from him with his face facing away.

Dante turned his head around a bit to see what he was expecting to see for a while now. "You're awake, eh?" Seeing that, he called off the chain surrounding Colby by a mere gesture, and within an instant, the scythe and chain were nowhere to be seen.

"What had happened?" Colby asked, clearly in fatigue.

"Nothing much." Dante said, "Come on up and see the breaking dawn."

Colby got up and went up to Dante and sat beside him.

"So...," said Colby, while seeing the dawn, "What are we going to do in this town?"

"Well, it looks to me that we are going to have quite a change in the plans. We shall do the opposite of what I had thought for this town." Dante spoke.

"What do you mean?" Curiosity taking over his mind.

"You'll train here first, and then we'll leave this town."

"What!" Colby shouted in amazement. "Are you serious?"

Dante didn't speak a word more and just stared blankly at the faint sunlight rising above the darkness. While the kid on the other hand went lunatic on hearing a news as such. He went on asking questions on an average of about a dozen per minute. Dante wouldn't answer to any of them, instead he just sat there and flashed a tiny smile, indicating the arrival of a time different than the time he had ever been a part of.

Hello there. Here's another. Don't forget to hit that star if you like the chapter. Nothing much just to boost us writers' confidence. :)