After Halcyon left Lucian house…
Halcyon slipped through alleyways like a shadow. From her coat pocket, she pulled out a torn cloth and wiped the blood from her lips and hands... It made her stomach turn.
Still, her eyes kept glancing over her shoulder?
The hair on the back of her neck stood up. She felt some creatures waves of energy as they stared…
She knew just a few drops of her blood could lure them like wolves to a wounded prey. Vampires, in particular, were sensitive to it, but even lesser beasts would kill for a taste.
Her grip tightened around the cloth. The silence around her wasn't comforting… it was anticipation.
I wish things were different... but I can't let you close. I know you wouldn't either.
She clenched her jaw, her head snapped up. She remembered, why she was here and turned down the next street, her footsteps echoing… loudly.
Why can't she tell Lucian the truth? What could be possibly be killing her after all the hurt and danger she went through?
Since the day she left… slipping away into the same night Lucian did… she had kept her own secrets… She even fought her own demons.
The moment the sickness began, when blood first trickled from her mouth and her limbs grew weak, she knew something inside her had broken.
She decided to search the world for answers. By that she sought out for a cure out of healers, mystics, relic-hunters... All of them failed her.
Now, only one hope remained.
"The Underworld is my last chance to find the Crown Relic. If Lazarus is after it too, he must already know what it can do… Enhance the body. Maybe… maybe heal what's been broken inside me," she muttered under her breath.
Hours Later…
Under a dark night, again everyone on the second layer stayed inside. Despite, this layer mainly being for creatures, there were still human there, who stayed for work or knew other creatures they called "friends."
Halcyon moved silently through the twisted streets at the end of the second layer. Growls echoed from alleys, footsteps around him. As she approached a rusted gray gate, its bars crooked from age.
To the untrained eye, it looked like nothing… but they didn't know what she knew.
Still, for her all those knew her and recognized her from her currently wild, restless presence… they knew her power, though it's know that a wild flowing presence is sign of weakness… still they saw her saved Lucian.
In return, they didn't attack her, she just walked on through moving forward at ease… she had been here. Before so she knew the are and the nature of this place… as she moved she glanced down at her palm, where a sigil shimmered faintly, its intricate markings pulsed every second.
The third layer of the Underworld isn't just an area… it's a labyrinth of forgotten pathways and abandoned cities, long hidden from those who don't know how to navigate it.
Halcyon having spent years wandering, has uncovered some of these hidden roads, but some are said to lead to places even the most powerful beings avoid.
I'm safe for now. But against stronger creatures, I'm still just human. Once they get a lock on me, it's over. A few hours… that's all the time this cover buys me.
Halcyon brows furrowed, as she moved through a forest that, weakly filltered moonlight, through the dense tress… casting a faint silver straks arocss the underbrush as she trudged through the woods.
"Schhh!"
Her boots made soft squelch against the wet earth, but she didn't notice. Her mind was far from the forest, lost in a haze of thoughts and doubts.
Lucian… his name echoed again in her thoughts. No matter how far she went, he haunted her. She didn't know what stung more his absence on like before going on missions, or the abandoned and gnawing feeling of her inside dying out.
Lucian had always been the steady presence in her life, and now that they weren't together. Her deep attachment to Lucian stemed from the years they spent together. Though she now walks a solitary path now, the memory of his steady presence haunts her thoughts.
As she hoped they pick up the pieces of a shattered world… it maybe even pain more that her sickness.
Still, Halcyon focused on herself. "Now that the member are gone, they won't be back for a few days. I have time to find that relic first… However, if Lucian really won't leave he will have to fight them on his own, maybe even try escape."
She remembered in the past, that the organization takes deaths and attack of any member seriously. That they will, come back stronger and even worst than everything if it happens again.
So while looking for the relic, she even ran into Malgriths already on the search for the Crown Relic, that it help her got closer to a propensity about where it is.
Even Halcyon believed she's after the Crown Relic for healing, part of her is driven by a much deeper, personal desire… retribution. The relic could grant her enough strength to face someone who wronged her in the past, someone she can't move on from.
Still, what is true power of the relic that the organization is looking for it? If Lucian knew about the Crown Relic, would he support Halcyon's search or try to stop her to protect her?
A Couple Minutes Later…
Halcyon stilled walked through another forest, that went east… When she finally stopped she approached it cautiously…
Before a towering spiked gate rose from the ground like a row of jagged teeth.
She looked around the gate scanning it, behind it was a… graveyard?
Every exhaled she did cold air appeared, she this place gave her the spooks. Something even flew overhead, but the fog obscured her view...
She ignored it. And focused on her task.
The graveyard archway was ancient, dark worn stone from time, yet pulsing faintly of residual magic… Even cracks and debris, still it seemed to stand still for over centuries cemetery's scared ground.
II didn't run into any creatures on the way here, or even the last time I was here. But after everything I learned... they have to be lurking around now, right?
Halcyon head dropped low, she opened her satchel and retrieved a crystal… purple, jagged, glowing faintly with inner light?
Raising it, she slammed it forward, not into the gate… but the air. At the same time, blue energy ripple and pulsed outward… Unaffected her… As a second passed a invisible barrier shimmered.
She began to move her hand, as she used the crystal to draw a blue west side, purple triangle line of energy wall… After finished she a took a couple steps, when in that moment the wall flashed, and shattered like glass disappeared into the air.
She a took a deep breath and walked through… However, as she stepped through her ears perked up, and a blast of air whipped past her as something struck the invisible wall. She turned just in time to… See a skinny creature attacked the invisible energy wall each attack, they were launched back.
"Huh… You stalked me all this time and still lost your chance. Without the Z'ak crystal, you're not getting in." She taunted.
The creature was short… It has a multiple skull green head for its body, and veins green veins that kept them together… As for its tree bark used for it's movement and strength.
What could that creature be? Also even the crystal that could unlock location.
Z'ak crystal is more like a pen, it's something that belong to the body of a ancient creature, he was known for the being the world, most knowledgeable… but also a very secretive stone dwarf.
…Thanks, to Lazarus this remained a useful tool for her to unlock and mark certain sealed areas of the world. Especially, those that are locked up, by the dwarf himself or other areas locked by similar magic.
Halcyon turned, expecting the thud of claws against barrier… but the creature had stopped. It no longer attacked the wall. Instead, it stood frozen.
Without a screech, it turned and bolted… scrambling away in a panic, limbs flailing, as if something far worse than the wall loomed behind it.
She decided to ignore it maybe it was angry, and that's the way it reacted.
"Surprisingly... no more creatures so far, other than that one," she muttered. As a wry smirk form. "Feels too quiet."
Her eyes scanned the crooked headstones, many cracked and half-swallowed by the earth. Then her gaze caught on something strange… just ahead, a tombstone glowing faintly with an eerie blue light.
She curiously, stepped forward.
But before her foot could fully land, suddenly she heard multiple creepy laughter rang out… high-pitched, overlapping, almost childlike. It crawled over her skin.
Halcyon's instincts activated. She hoped backward.
The ground where she'd stood erupted… a thick, curling smoke. The mist twisted and writhed around her, cold and suffocating.
Within the haze, she saw a tall silhouettes emerged… it was more than one. Dozens of green eyes blinked in the haze, each one locking onto her?
The corner of her mouth twitched. "Did I just jinx my myself?"