9th Generation; The Celestial Knight Part 1

Thats Why I Keep Getting Black Rings Around My Eyes

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I looked around frantically.

Angie!

She wasn't near me. Had she gotten up and left me here? Or was she disintegrated by the lava. The volcano was silent. Too silent. Not even the sound of lava bubbling echoed in the hollow chamber. I got up but my vision was still blurry but I knew I was still inside of Mount Etna. It was still impossibly hot, like standing out at noon in the Sahara. 

 I could just make out a shape in the distance.

A loud booming roar.

The Hydroxylotl was awake! And it was fighting Angie. She was ducking and dodging, hopping over the coils of the creature's long body. Her bow rained lightning upon the Hydroxylotl but it dodge with speed much faster than one could imagine.

The sequence was oddly familiar though...

I tried for Dark Star and Star Stone but they weren't in their holsters. Without a warning the Hydroxylotl turned around and looked in my direction. Angie fired again but even with it's back turned it still dodged effortlessly. It charged but went right past me as if I weren't there. Instead it chased a shadowy figure. It was chasing me, or rather a past version of myself. I was watching over everything that had just happened.

'Is that what happens when you die?', I asked myself. ' If I'm dead then that means Angie is also dead...No It can't be... there's a simple explanation to all this'

I watched myself running away from the Hydroxylotl. I remembered the fight so clearly now. I saw myself looking brave, but back then but I was scared. Very scared. Not for myself but for Angie. All I could think about was that we were inside a volcano. A normal person's skin would have turned to jerky 2 metres near lava.The only reason I had even agree to do this was because I had survived a point blank flame thrower before. If I lost attention for even half a second, Angie would have been quite literally toast. 

The past me wanted to turn around and fight it. I could have if I were alone. even if it was more dangerous than anything I had faced so far, I could have done it. But Angie was there, and she was intent on not harming the creature. Of course I wasn't any more willing to kill creatures either. I try not to harm as much as I can but it's inevitable with some of the things I face. The Haxboar Unum were such cases.  The Death-rhino creatures. They were apparently abundant on Earth and they were not one of those creature that tried to kill me because I'm human. They hunted me because of their eternal hunger and sought for the energy I radiated. The larger adults could actually speak in a primitive Alien language. They call themselves Haxbor-Unum, which translates to 'One-who-devours-all'. Apparently one of the 'perks' of being a Guardian is the ability to understand any language. I discovered this fact when the creature called me a hairless ape. It didn't end well for the Haxbor-Unum. Like I said, even to this day I'm still reserved about killing creatures they couldn't be helped. They stopped at nothing to try to kill me and it was me or them. Not all creatures are like that though. Some are just lost in a place they don't belong like a tiger that wondered into a village. They were dangerous to their surroundings but they certainly didn't deserve to be killed for it. It's 'Venator's' job to take care of those. 

Soon enough the Hydroxylotl broke off again just like it had happened before. But why? It could have easily gained on me even with my head start. I had certainly gotten faster over the past month or so but I couldn't outrun Angie's bolts like it could. It simply chased me off. It went after Angie but it wasn't aiming to catch her either. It was driving her away from the centre of the pit. From that hole it had it's head down at the start. 

Only now had I noticed the cuts on the side of the volcano. The smooth lava-rock walls of the chamber were violently blasted apart. The cuts were so deep at one section that a small hole  went all the way through to the outside. The cuts were smooth though, like they had been done with one of those high pressure water-jet cutters. The Hydroxylotl must have been using it's tail gun to cut itself free of its prison. That would explain the tremors. If we hadn't arrived when we did the Hydroxylotl would have escaped followed by a large lava-flow that would have destroyed the nearby village.