Coughing up dust the boy realized he was surrounded by a blistering desert on foot but a fearsome forest towered around him, staggering as he tried to get up he recalls being pushed into a crevice sliding down and landing several layers down the side of The Cone. He knows because of how far he had fallen the people who pushed him wouldn't hear him by now but out of blind anger he screamed anyway.
"I'll kill you!"
Immediately after regret sets in as the boy realizes that he is no longer in his poor little slums or even human claimed territory at that. He fell so far down that he was now in an area of The Cone where he was completely defenseless. The only thing he could do now is hope nothing showed up, he needed to find a staircase quickly or a prospect who was down here hunting the creatures that roam this part of The Cone.
Not even a moment after this thought the boy thought he heard something in the distance, but he couldn't quite make it out, it sounded like a human voice. Reluctantly he decided not to yell out for reassurance knowing it could mean his demise.
He still thought he could hear a faint voice reaching out to him. The man had finally reached close enough and shouted.
"Duck kid, duck!"
The boy heard the words and hesitated just for a moment before ducking, almost costing him his life. As soon as he ducked he could see two huge hands with fingers as long as his body and as sharp as a dull kitchen knife fly over his head and clap into each other deafening the boy and making him bleed from his ears.
The boy was visibly stunned from shock and the excruciating ringing pounding on his eardrums but that did not matter to the boy because he knew if he didn't move he would be killed, pain that would be far worse than bleeding from his ears.
Diving to the left as fast and far as the scrawny boy could manage, the hands of the creature flew downward where he had just ducked, creating a cloud of dust making it hard for both the creature and the boy to see.
The boy scurried up to his feet and ran as fast as his muscles could muster running towards where he last heard the man's voice.
"Kid, are you still alive?"
Stumbling out of the cloud the boy flops to the ground near the man's feet. Grabbing his breath and straining his voice to talk.
"I'm alive. Now hurry up and kill that thing, isn't that your job?"
The man stares at him with a confused look.
"Kill? Kid I can't kill that creature, it would tear me in half in seconds, we have to run or we will die. So get off your ass, we have to go. Now!"
The boy was a little frustrated, but he knew if he didn't get up he would die once that dust cloud was gone. Getting up both the man and the boy saw the cloud reducing, at the same time instinctively they knew to run as fast as possible before that creature could see again.
After getting a little distance away from the creature the boy was able to look back for a moment what he saw was a terrifying thin creature towering at maybe 7 to 8 feet tall with a shrewd head having no face except a mouth with a line of dull squared triangular shaped teeth its skin color was a mix of a leafy green and a sandy color its legs were smaller than its upper body making it kind of hunch over it's arms could drag behind it if the creature would extend them all the way. After that glance at the creature the boy had a confused look on his face.
'Why is the creature not chasing us, it should be able to catch up easily? Why is this man so calm? He looks strong but he said he couldn't kill that creature.'
Instantly after he realized how stupid he was being, the creature had no eyes of course it couldn't chase them they were being dead silent while running through sand, therefore without sight there would be no way to follow them. They were finally at a safe distance away from the creature.
The man gave the boy a puzzled look.
"What the hell is a scrawny boy like you doing on this low of a level on the cone?"
For a moment the boy wanted to curse at the man but the man did have a point and the boy truly was famished and scrawny.
"Does it look like I want to be here? I owed some money, I didn't pay the money and got shoved down a hole."
"Damn kid that's some really bad luck, I'll try my best to get us back to the stairs but I'm also not here by choice."
'Why is a prospect saying that we might not make it out, isn't he supposed to be some hero?'
The boy was very confused why a prospect would be scared; he did not think he fell too many floors down.
"Hey kid, we are going to be together for a while. I can't keep calling you kid, what's your name?"
The boy was hesitant for a second to share his name because he knew what was to come if he did.
"My mom named me bird."
The man looked at Bird, the man's cheeks started to puff up before abruptly bursting into laughter so hard that you could see his eyes glistening from newly forming tears.
"What the hell kind of name is that?"
Bird's face started to turn a little flush but mostly red because of anger. He despised when his name would get made fun of, but he had learned to deal with it because he knew the name was kind of absurd.
"My mom thought I would be free like a bird just flying wherever and whenever with no worries, that I would somehow be the ticket to fly us all out of poverty."
'Safe to say that I was not the ticket not even close'
"Anything else I can call you besides Bird, do you have a nickname anything?"
"Yeah people have called me Ares since I was young because I was always unlucky and hopeless when it came to, well anything."
"Ares? Isn't that a god of war from the old world, why would they call you that?"
"Ares was also a god of ruin, I guess I ruined everything around me. You would have to ask the people in the slums why they named me that."
"I can't ask those people anything until we get back up. Start looking for a great tree Ares that's what we will camp in for the night. We are lucky this layer even has great trees."
'I heard some guy back in the slums mentioning some weird rich people who live in giant trees, I guess those were the great trees.'
"Before we start looking I told you my name, what is yours?"
"I am Leonis, I have a normal name unlike a certain someone."
Ares visibly getting annoyed let the insult pass without a snarky remark. He knew night was closing in and they needed to start searching as soon as possible for one of these supposed great trees."
'How hard could finding a giant tree be?