Artemis burst out of the shadow in a frenzy. He had a few moments before the strange fog fully invaded his Mind. If he could make it past the monsters in that short moment, it might give him a headstart in his plot!
Wisps of black curled up and dissipated in his wake as he drew the attention of each snarling, vile beast. They stared at him and let out dissatisfied grunts as he flew into the air, gliding past them at an immense speed. Ash flew up and created a harsh cloud in the air, veiling his visage from them further.
And yet, his movements slowed to a halt as soon as he had landed a distance away.
As he looked towards his Mind Core, he watched the pitch-black fog roll in. The clouds lapped at the interior of his mind, his bones chilling and his blood running like honey through his body.
But this time, it wasn't just a loss of focus that he became imbibed with. Among the inability to glance at certain things without forgetting about others, he became acutely aware of the things that surrounded him. It wasn't just the beasts that had arisen from the darkness. While some were headless, skeletal, others vastly giant and covered in tufts of fur, these things he thought he knew were watching him were different. Because their eyes were not eyes, eyeholes replaced by intricate and ancient markings, and yet he understood they were staring at him.
They had the forms of men but no mouths, just twisted flesh where their expression should have been. And yet he knew they were angry, furiously angry, as if they should turn red, but their face remained pallid and grey. The clothes they wore were a weave of tattered cloth strips, blanketed against each other until they formed a ragged robe. Their hands, which they extended towards him as if to grab him despite remaining a fair distance away, had only three, spindly fingers, with rounded bulbous fingertips marked with a single distinctive swirl.
And he was not sure at all why he was able to focus on these creatures specifically, but he knew he could discern amongst them, without the use of [Eyes of Discernment], a particular figure standing higher and loftier. He wore a crown of jagged peaks, prongs split off into distinctive branching sections that broke off into a pointed edge like pikes.
His face, unlike the others, had a very particular human appearance. It was not because he was special or because he had been blessed with anything unusual, but because he had made himself that way. The face on his head... it was human. But it wasn't whole. Artemis sensed the eye of a woman, the cheek of a man, and the nose and jaw of a beast. Chin and forehead of a girl, and twisted smile of a boy. These parts were contorted, stretched and broken until they fit a perfectly ordinary facial symmetry.
And they had all been stitched together into a crude, ugly mask of death.
This crowned monster was wearing humans like a costume.
Artemis felt the sudden urge to throw up assault him. He had been privy to horrors in the past, the Blackbaast was rife with them, and even despite human's cruelty, the monsters had been worse. But this... this was something else entirely...
It was accentuated with something far more horrifying.
He watched as the large pillar of solidified ash holding the commanding silhouette that had trapped them slowly fell away, collapsing under its feet in a hail of dust and debris. Fragments of this solidified ash rained down from the heavens, slowly lowering it to the surface of the Cradle as the silhouette came into view.
Just like the Faceless Men surrounding him, the silhouette had no visible expression except for the twisted flesh and strange markings replacing his eyes, wearing the same tattered robes. He gradually lowered himself to the ground, kneeling down before placing his forehead to the ash below. The Faceless Men mimicked his actions.
Soon, hundreds of figures in the distance were bowing to this Vile-Masked King. They spread out like a blanket of grey over the horizon.
Artemis shuddered upon witnessing this sight, somehow understanding it fully through the grace of the black fog. He, too, was starting to get the urge to bow down as far as he could. It was a feeling that urged him to do so.
Because if the figure that had trapped them was just a mere pawn of a greater King, then how much danger had they stumbled into? Had it ever been worth it to leave the wooden ruins behind? More than that, had it ever been worth it to even get out of his bed that morning?
More than being trapped in the Shadow, more than losing his arm due to negligence and brazenness, coming here was beginning to be his first regret.
F-ck! Who cares what's happening in the distance!?
He had to constantly urge himself to simultaneously not lose himself. Crafting a way out of the fog had already taken too much time!
He centered his focus around his Mind Core using [Eyes of Discernment], preparing to use the traits of the Daemon to influence the Cognitive Tethers, and simultaneously move his body by doing so.
The first reverberation struck one of the Tethers, focused so finely that it traveled up one of the crimson tendrils, causing a muscle in his upper leg to contract. Having trained for so long by himself, he had already become aware of how his muscles operated in order to execute certain movements. It had become a habit to study these feelings in his body so that he could try and optimise his swordsmanship.
Of course, considering that he had lost to the Daemon inhabiting a suit of armour, perhaps it had all been for naught...
...but now, it was going to come in handy.
He sent several more reverberations through the Cognitive Tethers, his muscles contracting or relaxing depending on the sequence they were operating through. And because his focus remained completely on his Mind Core, he didn't feel himself slipping or forgetting anything at all.
His feet were trudging through the ash, most definitely, but this was more progress than he had been able to make previously...
The problem was that the monsters from the fog were already beginning to catch up. The one at the head of the pack of dozens had no face where its skull was, mottled and rotting flesh at the edge of its neck, covered in festering maggots. They writhed with every movement it made.
It held a bundle on its shoulder, to his surprise, but through the haze of ash dust he had created when he had leapt out of the shadow, he could not discern exactly what it was.
Right step! Left step!
Right step! Left step!
These commands echoed frantically through his mind, but his attempts to escape the creatures was going to prove futile!
They surrounded him a couple of seconds later, claws and teeth baring violent intentions.
He knew then that he would die. It was a shame, considering he had set his sights on protecting Cia. Artemis didn't really have any other considerations, besides never having had the opportunity to rematch his older brother. He hadn't lived a particularly good life, it had been brutal in fact. So a death like this was a fitting end, he had always thought.
Mouths, gaping maws, fangs and gnarled, rotting teeth began to wrap around his limbs. He protested with a faint struggle, but the methods of the Cognitive Tether were too unknown to him. Whatever force he could have put into his movements normally were either staggered or too weak to mean anything at all.
Crimson soaked the ash below. Flesh was torn away, and gargling screams echoed through the silent sea of fog.
And Artemis was so very confused.
Because none of those were his.
Looking out towards the crowd of monsters before him, he realised that they had all become intensely focused on another figure, the rotting skeleton carrying a bundle on its shoulder!
It bit into one of the monsters with its mangled teeth, beginning to chew on the flesh that it tore away. Quickly, the rotting flesh near its neck became clearer, pale, but imbibed with life, and began to sprawl over the surface of its ivory white skull. A nose, speckled with freckles, and lips as pale as winter took shape. Eyes, dark and stormy, and hair as black as night fell towards its shoulders.
The skull-face creature took the shape of a man.
Artemis's eyebrow twitched, not controlled by the Cognitive Tether, and so he almost completely lost his focus to the fog.
How many monsters are going to wear human faces today!?
He watched as the false-man kicked downwards on the head of a wolf-like beast, crushing it completely under his foot, splattering greyish-red brain matter onto the ground.
But he's still fighting against the monsters in my place, why!?
However, now focusing on the figure, he now realised that it was wearing a bright-red cloak. Clasps at its edges held it together, his withered form barely peeking out from underneath. It caused him to recall what Cia had mentioned when they had met just minutes prior. How she had received help from a man in a red cloak, who had nothing above it but a skull filled with maggots.
Was this the figure that had helped her, now come to help him out of his predicament?
His eyes focused on the figure through the Mind Core, [Eyes of Discernment] activated in the meanwhile.
"[Name: Gardner Song]
[Status: Living(?)]
[Lineage: N/A]
[Aspect: Sacrificial Acolyte (Stage 8: Daydreamer)]
[Spirit Contract: Saeron, Daemon of the Briar]
===
[General Description:]
The Captain of Reds under the patronage and tutorship of the Red Prince, the God of the Bloodiest Battles, Gardner of the Song Family is a terrifying, undying warrior. Wielding the powers of the Sacrificial Acolyte Aspect, the same as his God, this figure soaked in the blood of a hundred ages has replaced every minute part of his body, seeking the absolute pinnacle of baser humanity.
It is recommended that the Bastard Prince not engage in conversation with this man, and under no circumstances, ever duel him."
===
Past the crimson words that instinctively sprawled themselves in the air, perhaps written by the mystical set of runes that Leon had described, Artemis caught sight of a set of flowing locks of gorgeous red hair. They belonged to the bundle that this monstrous figure had been carrying on his shoulder.
It was Cia!