Project ZEAL

Scene 36 - Where the Time Egg Grows (Claado Shou)

Year: 2313 A.D.
Place: The Zenan Mainland

He could feel the darkness swelling within him. A black pool of ash and oxygen that seemed to invade his every pore, a thick mask of smoke and liquid, gaseous and solid at the same time, a drenching rain before the thunder and a clap of lightning before the eye of the storm.

As he exhaled, slivers of light seemed to escape from his body, his breath the only light within this place, illuminating the air it touched, pointing his direction for him. And looking past this fleeting torch, he saw a point at the end of the tunnel that beckoned to him, flowed toward and from and through him, and he pushed with his will, with his body, trying to break his chains.

Please...let this be the end...

The next thing he knew, he opened his eyes and looked at the ground, his clothes in perfect form, undirtied, unruffled. Torrential sheets of rain poured upon him, but he could sense them passing through his ghostly body, not allowing him to get wet. Fiery metal was strewn everywhere, but the flames did not harm him, and he could not feel their intense heat.

Then, looking into the sky, towards the mountain just ahead of him, he saw something...a massive beetle-like creature whose flailing limbs, each set aflame, struck the ground repeatedly in search of a man, running nearby.

The man was not human - its body was mutated, and glowed with a slightly irridescent tint that made it impossible for the rain to truly touch him either, as it bounced off the glow around his form. He leaped along the mountain base, towards the beast, tossed a bladed weapon at the creature, and then was immediately tossed aside and grabbed by the thing's many limbs.

Gryph did not know the man-like creature...he knew nothing of its name, or its origins, or any of the things that might have made them acquaintances, or perhaps friends. Gryph knew only one thing...that this person was far more human than the thing that was now about to kill it, and that could not go unnoticed.

Stepping forward, just as the beast was about to shoot forward a powerful bolt of energy, Gryph put out his hand, and focused on the sound of the thunder, the lightning, and the storm, and then the creature...and let his powers work.

A bolt of energy from the sky came like a whip of electricity and struck the beast, using the knife protruding from its mouth as a conductor and electrocuting the monster. The man-like captive dropped to the ground, regained his footing, and wasted no time in taking advantage of the situation.

Running with a furious scream, the humanoid leaped above the beast and proceeded to hammer it with blades, punches, kicks, and even a form of magical energy, though Gryph was unable to pinpoint exactly what it was.

Whatever the man was using, however, the beast began to waver in its power, its limbs flailing to no avail, vision corrupted, pain attacking it from within, and an assault so ruthless bombarding it that many human structures would have fallen from its force.

As if in a final strike, the man-beast jumped a good thirty feet into the air, his last remaining blade held downwards in both hands, magical energy soaring from his body. Gryph summoned his own powers, and three bolts of lightning converged on the man's weapon, enhancing its power a hundred-fold.

As the sword entered the creature, incredible waves of electricity and magic flowed into the beast, its shell unable to withstand the shockwaves and exploding for hundreds of feet in all directions. Fire erupted in plumes so large that Gryph's hair was blown back, and the sand, though wet, shifted beneath his feet.

The man, in the midst of it all, contained his power tremendously well, pulling the weapon at just the right moment, leaping from the exploding beast as the point he had just been resting on went up in a flaming spire of debris.

With the carnage as a backdrop, the man landed safely on the wet sand, the slight glow from his body now used up, as he watched the creature's end come to fruition. Looking into the sky, undoubtedly wondering at the storm's choice to lend him its power, he smiled, and the rain finally hit his stilled armor.

Quickly washing away the ash that remained of the beast, the rain then proceeded to stop, its purpose seemingly jaded and finished. In reality, Gryph had decided that it should stop, and with a quick thought at such a notion, it did. That was his gift, and, soon to be realized, his curse.

Because as soon as Gryph and the man were seeming to get back on-course, an unintentional darkness enveloped them. Gryph knew that he had not done it, but he felt himself being drawn in anyway, the man-beast with him, as they floated into a chasm of light and shadow in the air and disappeared from that tattered universe.

[OOC - Just so nobody is wondering, Gryph and Serian are being pulled by Gaspar into the EoT, where they will meet up with the other characters.]

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