Dust and Deity - Dear Darkness

Prologue - Predatory

Between the haunted lands, the icy fields, and the desert strands, stood a little town, with a little chance. Though not as flourished as the cities, nor as protect as the guild homes, the age of the town settled comfortably into a time of peace. As the light of the setting sun crept into every corner, lights turned on and minds turned off.

A man worn-out too early by life took shelter among the shadier outskirts of the town. As if waiting for some rain to end. Another town, another place. Another night, another stand. His clothing, dirty, broken and torn here and there, recorded not a single scar of his many battles, but painted the withering of time. His hair, scruffy and loosely tied back by a piece of fading black cloth. Yet, no matter how strained his garments were, a sense of honor and dignity trailed behind his footsteps. Unconquerable was his presence alone.

It's here. He thought to himself. Looking around, he recalled what the man hiding behind a large cloak and unforgiving glasses, had said:

"Kill first, information after. Ensure the death of your target, or else you can forget about the rest".

"She is still alive..."

The hidden man only answered with brighter shining of his glasses, and the words: "trust us for our informants sought far and wide, or refuse us... if you can bring yourself to..." Those were the last of the man's words, voluminously resounding in his memories, as the man's pointy black leather shoes tapped off into the distance.

He felt the handle of his sword, still resting in its sheath. Then, pulling his strange pink scarf up to provide his face with a little extra coverage, he sat down against a tree; one that hasn't been over-infested with ants; away from plain sight; and eased off to rest for the night.

... In another shadow plagued alley somewhere in this same little town, two shapes stalked in the darkness.

Empt empt da... empt empt da...

It wasn't raining. Yet the ground was wet. The sky choked full of clouds; the air heaved down on the town. Wanted posters tattooed the walls, each depicting a hardened criminal. Everyone of them born evil. Each snarl they wore exists solely to scare the innocent civilians. Their soulful felony leaked only through single drops of rain, which by chance fell below their eyes.

It wasn't raining.

...

...Barely hidden in different shadows; sheltering from the same drizzle, which grew down the many creeps and ends that hanged down from the ceiling; in some storehouse, is another young looking man. His florescent blue eyes leaked a touch of tiredness. Yet the blanket he caped himself with, cannot help but flutter in the windless expanse. No, it's not just that, it radiated a mystic blue light that rippled through the shadows, the blanket, and the rest of his fair clothing too. Their light bounced off the hanging things that dangled down from an assumed ceiling, and painted them bright, like dying stars in the evanescent sky.

Yet a ghastly ghoul beside him spoiled the atmosphere. Though bowing low, it occasionally twitched from side to side, unsettled. Its bloody eyes bulges out with visible cracks of red as it hollowly looked down.

"...Other than that, for the time of my visit to this para-verse, mind the southern regions for any further signs of rebellion. Also look over the Gates in the Dreamer para-verse." He halted here, as if more pre-occupied by what he wants to do on this one particular trip. After a long silence, which brought boredom to neither party in the conversation...

"That is all."

The ghoul did its thing. Some sound wormed its way out of its visibly shuddering Adam's Apple. Then with a sudden jerk, its eyes shrunk into a cloud of smoke and its arms plucked outwards as if nailed onto a Crucifixion pole. The wretched thing spiraled into the ground, like how a dead ballerina decays over time, into a land of dark unknown.