[Herald candidate, welcome...]
'Wait. A Herald candidate?' Mathew thought as he listened to the foreign voice in his head.
Heralds these were humans who possessed almost supernatural abilities. The stories of their exploits, wielding unrealistic and fantastical powers against monsters akin to nightmares, would always reach his ears as a child. But before being able to put his thoughts in order, the voice spoke once more.
[...Prepare to face your trial.]
***
An eerie silence suddenly fell upon Mathew. Pressing against his ears and swallowing his every thought. It was all just too much. He felt ready to give up, he wanted to rest. Slowly, a strange feeling began enveloping him, and his body nestling in its embrace. Or was it radiating from within him? Suddenly, Mathew felt a shift, and could no longer feel the hollow emptiness that had drowned him. Instead, a new, alien sensation crept over him. His eyes fluttered open, and in the reality of his surroundings, he found himself lying on his belly with a cold, cobblestone floor pressed against his cheek.
He pushed himself off the cobblestone floor, and his surroundings slowly began coming into focus. Looking up, dim light filtered through the slowly dissipating haze. Confusion washed over him as the walls of the passageway he found himself in stretched out before him were adorned with large, white gems the size of a head that emitted a dim illuminating glow. He was taking in the scene when the wave of a heavy metallic scent stung his nostrils. Turning his head slowly, he scanned the eerily quiet passageway. The lack of proper lighting made it hard to see, but his instincts told him exactly what he was looking at. Falling upon something sprawled on the floor beneath him, his eyes opened wide. At his feet was a pile of mangled corpses, surrounded by a stagnant pool of blood.
He keeled over and held his hand against his mouth as the sight of entrails and organs strewn everywhere stirred his insides. A fresh wave of nausea crashed into him as his eyes took in the gruesome scene at his feet. The metallic scent that had initially stung his nostrils now intensified, mingling with the visceral state of reality. Mathew stood in silence. It felt as if the universe had conspired with fate to deepen his despair, forcing him to confront death once more. The world around him blurred, and he fought to suppress the rising tide of panic, jerking his face away.
He slowly rose to his feet and took a shaky step back. Doing his all to avoid the mounds of flesh. With breaths coming in shallow gasps, he could feel a cold sweat trickle down his neck. Then, despite his care, his foot caught something. Tumbling over, he felt a viscous and slick texture on his palm. He raised his hand, and from it, a stream of crimson oozed. Looking around and wiping his bloodied hand against one of the corpse's clothes, he searched the passage for any sign of an exit or a way forward. But there were none. Suddenly, he noticed a hint of vibration-unsettling and sporadic. Then came the muffled sound of metal clanging. The vibrations and tremors that reverberated through the walls of the cobblestone passage sent an ominous chill down his spine.
Shaking off the eerie sense of unease and discomfort creeping up on him, Mathew resolved himself and started down the passage and toward the origins. As he moved, the reverberations became stronger. This was beginning to feel like a mistake. Yet he couldn't just turn around. He had to figure out what exactly was going on.
Step. Step. Another step. Faint traces of human voices now accompanied the metallic clanging. And soon, a knot of anxiety tightened in his stomach. The survival instincts he had learned and honed daily while living in the higher districts were screaming at him. Telling him to turn back. Caution, reason, and curiosity struggled desperately for superiority within his mind as he pressed on.
Suddenly, he heard a low rumble, and rapidly the sound grew louder, accompanied by a slight tremble at his feet. Before he could process what was happening, the wall in front of him shuddered violently. And with a deafening crash, the wall burst apart, sending a cloud of debris flying. A figure shot through the opening, slamming into the opposite wall with a bone-jarring thud. In that same instant, the silhouette of a man followed. The man stepped into the light and revealed his body clad in silver and black accented armor.
Mathew followed the man's gaze, and what stood before him was a creature, no, a monster beyond his wildest nightmares. It was a quadrupedal, approximately three-foot-tall reptilian abomination. Its black scales shimmered in the dull light and protruding from its back, two tentacle-like appendages slithered about, each tipped with powerful mandibles.
Mathew chuckled silently as this was no ordinary monster; this was a Voidspawn. A race of corrupted creatures or grotesque amalgamations gifted with abnormal strength, speed, or in some very rare cases, supernatural abilities.
The man clad in the silver and black accented armor suddenly put forth all his strength and dashed across the ground with almost inhuman speed. Moving like a blur, he delivered precise strikes against the beast. The beast, though, did not remain still. It raged and retaliated with a bestial ferocity. Moving faster than what should have been possible for a creature of its size.
The man dodged expertly. Avoiding every one of its strikes. Each clash between his blade and the beast's scales sent sparks flying. No matter how pointless it seemed, that didn't stop the swordsman. He continued to rain down strikes upon its scale-covered body.
Block, parry, dodge, counter, and repeat. Even Mathew, who lacked experience, could tell with a glance, the state of this battle was on a knife-edge, and from this point on, anything could happen.
The beast raised the slithering tentacles protruding from its back. Opened the mandibles at their ends, and from them, a flurry of jagged bone shards shot forward. The man dashed to the side. Moving faster than Mathew's eyes could perceive. Parrying and blocking every shard of bone that came flying at him.
The man, though, could not read the mind of the beast, and soon his luck would run out.
In the ensuing bombardment, more and more slipped past his defences and pierced through his armor. The thin shafts embedded themselves first in his shoulder, then one of his legs, and his abdomen, but they just kept coming. Soon, the shards that struck the ground kicked up another dust cloud.
As he peered through the cloud, the dust began to settle, and when it did, a beautiful woman wearing tattered clothing stormed through the gaping hole left by the man and beast. With an air of pride, she brushed a lock of her jet-black hair from her face. Her expression was a mix of annoyance and disdain.
"Ugh, what are you doing, you useless guard!" she groaned.
In her haste, she didn't notice Mathew standing only a few feet away and just walked by. Desperate not to draw any attention to himself, Mathew looked to seize the opportunity and began edging away. Retracing his steps one after another. But unfortunately, fate wasn't going to let it be that easy.
His trailing foot struck a rock, sending it skittering noisily across the floor. The sound of the debris echoed in the hallway, drawing the woman's attention. Mathew's eyes widened. His expression became a strange mix of frustration and embarrassment.
Turning to face him, the beautiful woman's eyes opened wide, and she raised a curious brow, then asked.
"How are you still alive?"
Mathew stared back at the woman, bewildered.
'How am I alive she asks. Is this woman crazy? Do I not have the right to live or something?'
Feeling no obligation to muster a proper response in this absurd situation, and barely resisting the urge to roll his eyes, he offered a crooked smile and just stood there.
The woman frowned. But before she could utter a word, the cloud of dust fully settled. At first, they could only make out the faint outline of the armoured man standing tall and imposing above the still beast. But something felt off. The way the man held his sword, the tension in his posture Mathew had seen before—it wasn't right. Hinting at a deeper unease that sent a chill down Mathew's spine.
The last traces of dust finally drifted away, revealing the true, grim state of the man. He stood atop the beast, his pristine silver and black-accented armour stained red with blood. But it was not that of the beast. It was his.
His chest had been pierced clean through by the voidspawn's mandibles. The ground rumbled as the beast stirred. Its massive frame shifted with an earth-shaking groan.
Pushing itself upright, its blood-stained black scales glinted in the dim light. With an almost casual motion, it lifted the man into the air. With the man held tight by one mandible, in the next moment, the second shot forward, opened wide, and snapped shut, severing the man's head.
But it didn't stop there.
Driven by a bestial hunger, it began gnawing at his remains. Its mandibles, claws, and teeth tore through flesh and shattered bone with grotesque ease. Blood sprayed in a dark arc, splattering the ground and Mathew's feet. Watching in horror, the woman staggered back, then as if sensing something, Its movements stilled, then its tentacles quivered and its head tilted slightly as it savoured the taste of its kill. Mathew held his breath as the beast's gaze swept the passage. Looking to the side, it seemed to sense something and following the path of its gaze, Mathew came to understand what it was it sensed.
It was fear. The fear radiated from the woman who trembled by his side.
The beast turned sharply toward the woman, It took a step toward her, its claws scraping against the stone floor. Somehow, as he had hoped, the creature hadn't seemed to notice him. Not yet, at least. But that advantage would be useless to him unless he could figure out what to do in the brief few moments he now had.