Tale of the Twilight Warriors

Chapter 7 ~Part three~ Into the bloodstorm...

    The entire party entered the desert with great caution, the winds whirling around forming a perfect tornado like pillar in the center, the air reeked of blood and death, thousands of bodies lay scattered throughout the sand. They walked as quickly as possible towards the eye of the sandstorm that was only visible due to it's deeper crimson coloring in comparison to the lighter blood stained sand that whirled around it.

The winds, weighted them down, it felt as if they were almost held down by a boulder, as they struggled through slowly but surely. They came across a stone pillar cast aside on the ground like a house plant, tattered and half destroyed. "What do you suppose this is!" X asked, "Huh?!" Shadow yelled back in responce, "We aren't going to understand eachother in this hellhole.." Gabriel yelled.

"It's no use, we can't talk.." X yelled, "We'll never understand.." the air cut the end of the sentance to shreds.

The pillar had inscribed on it, a ruinic symbol, one of time.

"Oh.." X touched it, the pillar glowed a brilliant silver, the air slowed to a halt as the sky darkened.

"It's a time rune, they all seem to be faded horribly, maybe this is how the silver sage navigated here.." X said, everything in the desert had come to a standstill but Shadow, Gabriel and X could still move and speak.

"When the magic runs out in that pillar, it will start up again so we have to be fast.." X chuckled and made a mad dash towards the collosal crimson doom that lay in the center of the storm.

"Heyy wait up!" Gabriel yelled, he followed quickly, Shadow though took a moment to examine the runic symbol, the silver powder slowly trickled down it like an hour glass.

"Guys, we'd better get going faster then what we were, it seems there's another pillar ahead, we have to hope to make it to that before the wind picks up again." Shadow had somehow managed to catch up to them, and pointed out the Pillar in the distance.

"Why..?" X asked with a great deal of concern.

"Well, Imagine running at full pelt, and being smashed randomly by a warhammer, except, we're running at full pelt, and we're going to be hit with a massive amount of wind, and sand that's heavy with blood, so we will take a considerable amount of damage from it.." Shadow chuckled. "Funny, I sort of want to get hit." Gabriel laughed.

They managed to reach the pillar in time, X touched it and they made a mad dash towards the crimson tornado again, the sky was gray but they haden't noticed. It came to a path, two Pillars at a distance that seemed to be a thousand yards away from their destination yet couldn't be much farther then two hundred. "Just touch them both, we haven't the time for tough decision making." Shadow stated and bolted on ahead, X noticed that both the symbols were different, both managed to offset her mood though. She touched them and ran towards Shadow with Gabriel by her side.

The winds remained still, they ran, and ran, they could see their destination not even a hundred yards away the pillars magic stopped entirely...

The winds instantly picked up as time caught up with itself, the air managed to revolve at twice the speed as it was before.. The second pillar, was a haste rune, X thought to herself, the wind did just as Shadow had anticipated. They were thrown to the ground, forced there to stay as the blood tattered sand beat at them, violently they were picked up by the swirling storm and flung around like ragdolls.

"AAAAAAAAGGGGHHHH" X cried out, she was thrown through a stone pillar, Gabriel noticed the travesty and straightened himself out to increase his areodynamic-ness in order to catch up to her. After thirty seconds in the storm Shadow was already motion sick, Gabriel managed to grasp ahold of X's armor, she could hardly keep her eyes open. Gabriel wrapped up around her almost like a person cuddling with another, and held on tightly, the last thing she saw before she lost conciousness were his eyes, then out of no were they slammed into a stone wall and both fell unconcious.