A Journey That Changed The World. - Chapter 1498 - 1498: It's... Watching Us
Archer stood amidst the carnage, chest heaving, his claws covered in dark blood that he destroyed using his mana. Moments later, he turned to the Elemental woman, who had joined the fight at his side, her magic still sparking in the air, causing him to smile.
He returned to the wall, where Agrippina followed behind while scanning the surroundings as she warned. ”Arch, most of Avalon is undead. They are heading in this direction as we speak.”
”It doesn’t matter, we have to help the people get to the islands before the undead get them,” he revealed. ”More citizens will come in handy as Pluoria looks like it will become a lost continent.”
Following that, Archer was forced to stick around the fortress for weeks thanks to undead Demi-Gods that appeared. He had to fight with them as his soldiers spread out across the land, looking for Avalonian survivors.
***
Hours later, under a sky covered with black clouds, Ashoka led a band of twenty men and women, grim expressions lined their faces as they passed by rotted corpses of people, horses, and other monsters.
They traveled into the Avalonian lands surrounding the fortress. She moved carefully as the air was off, her eyes scanning the twisted landscape. Archer, wary but trusting her instincts, had permitted the expedition.
Only on the condition that two Oathkeepers shadowed her every step. Their heavy footfalls echoed on the cracked, overgrown road they traveled. The air hung thick with an unnatural stillness
Broken only by the faint rustle of brittle leaves skittering across the path and the wind blowing nearby branches, as if fleeing some unseen predator. A metallic tang lingered, like blood long spilled and left to fester.
The group moved cautiously, their hands never straying far from the hilts of their weapons, their breaths shallow in the quiet. The road, swallowed by gnarled roots and creeping vines, seemed to pulse with a life of its own, as if the earth itself resented their intrusion.
Aurora, Ashoka’s second-in-command, a wiry woman with eyes that flickered, suddenly froze mid-step. Her head tilted, her gaze darting to the shadowed undergrowth. ”What is this… wrongness in the air?” she whispered uneasily.
The words seemed to hang, swallowed by the fog, as if the forest itself were listening. A chill slithered down the spines of the group, and several hands tightened on sword grips. The Oathkeepers’ visors turned slowly, scanning the mist, their silence more unnerving than any spoken warning.
Ashoka halted, her hand raised, signaling the group to still. The air grew heavier, pressing against their skin like damp, cold fingers. From the dense thicket to their left, a faint sound emerged, a low, guttural rasp, like breath rattling through a decayed throat.
The fog seemed to thicken, curling around their ankles like spectral hands, and the temperature plummeted, their breath now visible in ghostly plumes. Aurora’s eyes widened, her hand hovering over the dagger at her hip.
”It’s not just the air,” she murmured, her voice trembling. ”It’s… watching us.”
The trees loomed closer, their skeletal branches clawing at the sky, as if conspiring to trap the intruders. A faint, unnatural glow pulsed deep within the fog, not light but something sickly, like the phosphorescence of rotting flesh.
Moments later, the group tightened their formation, their eyes straining to pierce the haze. From somewhere beyond the road, a soft scraping began, claws on stone, or perhaps bone on bone, growing louder, closer, deliberate.
Ashoka’s lips curled into a snarl when the smell of death reached her nose, her hand gripping the curved blade at her side, but even her fierce resolve wavered as the sound circled them, predatory and patient.
The Oathkeepers stepped forward, their massive blades drawn, which seemed to provoke the darkness. The scraping stopped, replaced by a low, keening wail that rose and fell, threading through the trees like a dirge.
It wasn’t human, nor animal, but something that had no right to exist in the waking world. Everyone’s courage faltered, their faces pale as they exchanged glances, each silently questioning whether they had ventured too far into a place.
Ashoka watched as the fog clung to the cursed road like a shroud, its tendrils writhing as if alive, swallowing the faint torchlight carried by her band. The group’s footsteps faltered, their nerves frayed by the unnatural wail that still echoed in their ears.
The two Oathkeepers stood like statues, their rune-etched blades glinting faintly, while the twenty men and women behind gripped their weapons, eyes darting into the impenetrable dark.
The air pulsed with a sickening dread, as though the world itself held its breath, waiting for something unspeakable to emerge. Without warning, the darkness erupted. From the shadowed thickets on both sides of the road, grotesque figures lunged, mutated humans.
Their skin was pallid and stretched tight over malformed bones, riddled with oozing sores that glistened with an unnatural sheen. Eyes, too many or too few, glowed with a feral, sickly yellow, and their mouths gaped unnaturally wide, revealing jagged, needle-like teeth.
Ashoka noticed their limbs were unnervingly elongated, ending in claw-like hands that scraped the ground as they moved with jerky, predatory speed. Before anyone could react, three of the soldiers at the rear screamed as the creatures descended upon them.
One soldier, a grizzled man with a scarred face, was dragged to the ground, his spear clattering uselessly as a mutant’s claws tore into his chest, spraying dark blood across the road.
Another, a young woman, flailed with her sword, only for two creatures to seize her arms, their teeth sinking into her flesh. The third soldier managed a single cry before a mutant’s talons raked across his face, silencing him forever.
The air filled with the stench of blood and decay, mingling with the guttural snarls of the feeding creatures. The group froze, horror rooting them in place, but Ashoka snapped into motion.
Her amber eyes blazed with feral fury, her curved blade flashing as she surged forward, a whirlwind of lethal grace. ”To me!” she roared, her voice cutting through the chaos, galvanizing her stunned companions.
She reached the first mutant, it’s buried in the fallen soldier’s flesh, and with a single, fluid strike, severed its head. The creature’s body convulsed, blood spurting from the stump, but she was already moving.
Another mutant leaped at her, its claws aimed for her heart. She sidestepped, her blade arcing upward, slicing through its torso from groin to shoulder. The creature’s innards spilled in a steaming, writhing mass, yet it still twitched, its many eyes glaring with hateful defiance.
Ashoka drove her sword through its skull, pinning it to the ground, where it finally stilled. A third mutant scrambled toward her, its spider-like limbs skittering across the blood-slick road.
She spun, her blade singing through the air, and cleaved it in two, the halves collapsing in a heap of quivering flesh. The Oathkeepers charged into the fray, their massive blades hewing through the mutants.
The remaining soldiers rallied, their shouts mingling with the creatures’ unearthly shrieks as steel met corrupted flesh. But the darkness seemed to birth more horrors, their glowing eyes multiplying in the fog, their claws scraping closer.
Ashoka stood amidst the carnage, her blade dripping with ichor, her chest heaving as she scanned the shadows. The road was now a charnel house, strewn with the mangled remains of soldiers and mutants alike.
A bone-chilling dread coiled tighter around her heart, as if the true nightmare, something ancient and unspeakable, lurked just beyond the suffocating veil of mist. The air grew thick, heavy with an unnatural weight that pressed against her skin, whispering of unseen horrors.
She braced herself, muscles taut, expecting another attack to erupt from the fog, but the land fell into a deathly, unnatural silence. The quiet was not peaceful; it was a predator holding its breath, waiting to strike.
A strange, oppressive atmosphere descended, as though the world itself had turned evil, watching her every move with unseen eyes. The Oathkeepers closed ranks around her, their armor clinking faintly in the stillness, a sound that felt too loud, too exposed.
One of them leaned close, his voice low with unease. ”My Lady, we must return to the fortress. Something… something unnatural stalks these woods. I can feel it in my bones.”
Before she could respond, a blood-curdling scream tore through the silence, raw and desperate, from the rear of their formation. Another followed, then a chorus of anguished cries as soldiers were yanked violently into the fog.
The mist swallowed their screams, muffling them into eerie, distorted echoes that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Shadows writhed within the haze, vague, twisted shapes that darted just out of sight.
Ashoka felt the air grow colder, the scent of decay rising as if the earth itself were rotting beneath their feet. Her heart pounded, each beat a drum of terror, as the fog seemed to pulse with a life of its own, hungry and waiting.
”Form into a circle!” she shouted when getting over the panic.
The soldiers fell into rank and circled her just as something flew out of the fog, smashing against their shields.
