The Endless Solvent

He pushed his horse to the limit, riding as close to the feeling of dread as the horse would let him. At some point the mount refused to get any closer and if Rask pushed, the horse would throw him off its back. At that point, he would dismount and run the rest of the way.

The town of Westrock was three day’s ride from the outer edges of the Heart. The Gate here definitely wouldn’t be the closest one to the capital, but the town was populated enough for it to be a problem. He spotted a few people running through the sparse trees, who slowed when they saw him.

“Keep going!” he hollered at them. “Don’t stop until you reach the next town over!”

“But you’re helping us get rid of it, right?” the villager shouted back. “Like those Academy students! We’ll get our home back!”

Rask swore viciously. “No, you’re going to die if you stay!” he called out firmly. “Go!”

It wasn’t the whole technically correct truth: if they stayed, they would probably turn into Unseeing and then dissolve into nothingness after the Gate closes. However Rask has found the threat of death the more believable thing to convince people to get the fuck out. Rask swore underneath his breath again - those damn academics don’t believe pure blooded Gaians turn into Unseeing at with the presence of Gates. Of course, he knew this would happen, but he didn’t expect the Academy to keep throwing students at them with the hopes that it would do something.

Of course, the students would all be Gaian - the Academy apparently doesn’t trust Ralos or Aris enough for them to do their jobs. Rask was beginning to think returning to the Heart wasn’t exactly the best idea. He had tried to figure out if the Gates were here because of the twins, or would they be here regardless? The timing was a little too perfect for it to not be the former. But where else would they go? Camaz was convinced they would find support at the Academy - people well versed in runes and those who could fight in the manus department. Furthermore, the Academy at least tried to be neutral and would accept Caelisians - such a thing wouldn’t be the default.

But does this mean they had doomed the Heart to the Bringers? Rask cursed again and ran hard towards the feeling of doom. Besides saving the villagers, he now had to find the sun-cursed students and try to save them too. He unclipped the metal cylinder from his belt at the first sound of the Unseeing. A dissonant clash of voices came from a distance, along with screams of humans. The starkly white flesh of an Unseeing bounded out and Rask saw it attack a woman. A child ran away from the squabble, the woman crying out after him. Rask pushed himself to move faster, propelling himself while his staff materialized in his hand, metal tips already sharpened into points. He drove the spike into the Unseeing who moved at the last moment such that the weapon missed its body.

It screamed in its unholy voice and ripped the woman’s head from her shoulders. Her scream was stopped halfway through. The miss made Rask crash into the forest floor behind the monster, but he quickly turned to drive his weapon into the Unseeing’s back, right where its heart would be. It made a watery groan and Rask let it collapse on top of the dead woman. He then saw that the child hadn’t run further. The little boy stood not ten paces away from them, a look of horror painted on his young face.

“No…,” Rask gasped. The boy shook slightly, then a tremor wracked his body. Rask hoped that he was going to pass out. That was the best thing that could happen at this moment. But instead, the boy’s face bulged out suddenly and half his face turned stark white. “No!”

Rask pulled out the staff embedded in the dead Unseeing and flung it at the half turned child before he had second thoughts. The staff went through his face but the transformation didn’t stop. The Unseeing morphed out of the flesh and the changing figure remained standing.

He was going to vomit. But he had to finish the job. He reached forward to pull the staff out and swung again.

“What are you doing?”

Rask looked up, the feeling of doom sinking deeper than he thought possible as he saw two villagers stare at him with pale faces. Rask looked down to see the dead child, his unchanged Gaian half, was facing the villagers. It was suddenly too clear what it looked like.

Without asking another question, the two villagers pelted back towards the village.

“No, wait!” he shouted at them, but they just ran faster. One of them tripped and cried out in terror, then hunched over. No, it was happening again, Rask thought as he desperately ran to them. The back of the villager’s head turned color and within heartbeats the Unseeing emerged. The second villager screamed watching his friend turn, then collapsed watching Rask drive his staff through the half changed villager.

“You need to leave!” Rask shouted at the hysterical villager who was now crawling desperately away from him while he fought off the newly emerged Unseeing. Except the man kept running in the wrong direction. The edge of the village was in sight and the second villager ran around the house to escape Rask. He had to go after him if there was any hope of saving him.

No more… too many have changed. Too many are gone. Even a child…

To Rask’s dismay, he heard the familiar cry of an Unseeing right where the villager disappeared to. Another one gone. He hand gripped the staff with a white-knuckled grip and he kept going. Grief and anger had to come later. Right now he must only think of searching and destroying monsters.

It wasn’t what a Freerunner was supposed to be doing. It wasn’t what a Captain of the Guard was supposed to be doing. But after seeing his own people at Sansre fighting on even within the crumbling remains of a kingdom, he didn’t have a choice. He had to keep going.

He rounded the corner by the first house at the edge of the village and looked for the newly changed Unseeing, only to be knocked to the ground by a brutal force from behind. He managed to stop his face from driving into the rocks on the ground and twisted around, staff retracting and extending to the right spots in his hands to keep his attacker away from him.

The Unseeing made from the first villager had not fallen. Blood from a huge gaping wound dripped down as a mouth equally red opened and snapped shut above him. It made a deafening, unholy sound and pushed forward, bearing down. Rask tried to throw it off of him but he was pinned down in such a way that he had no leverage. Rask looked down at the Unseeing’s torso and realized thick plating had formed around its torso in certain areas - it must have deflected his staff in such a way that it wasn’t lethal.

The second villager bounded forward and suddenly he was faced with two Unseeing up close. Sun curse it, he couldn’t defend against two. The plan to gather manus fueled strength and shove his attacker off was now not possible. Red screaming mouths with wickedly long teeth snapped at him.

Suddenly the weight was lifted off of him. In a blur of movement, the second Unseeing was also mysteriously knocked to the side. Rask scrambled up to see another blur of movement of dark blue and then a figure appeared to grapple at the Unseeing.

Before he knew it, the two Unseeing lay dead at his feet, a lone figure standing before him. His savior was a tall, dark blue skinned man with eyes that were black instead of eye whites and glowing blue irises.

“Freerunner,” the Yscian man said in accented standard Gaian. “Greetings.”