LogFAQs > #904632660

"You must have been away for some time," Torin told him, as Enoch came to sit by the graying older gentleman, and by the fire. "There was an... event... sometime last year. They say monsters came from beneath the earth and attacked the villagers. You knew Cain? And those who lived here?"

"Some of them," Enoch said, sadly. "I go from here to there. But 'here' is a place I'd stopped before. I'm a bit sad to see things have turned out this way. Do we know exactly what happened?"

Torin shook his head. "That's what I'm here to find out. Why don't you join us? We could use the help. Our caravan has already fallen on hard times." Near the wagon were several bodies that had been wrapped up. The corpses of giant insects still hadn't been cleaned up from the surrounding area. "If you want to learn the mystery of Cain's downfall, or avenge the people here, you'll find help with our company."

Enoch nodded. Torin was probably only ten, maybe twenty years older than him. But the wizened way he spoke and how he carried himself seemed to speak to the younger man in some way. "Never considered myself an avenger, or someone obsessed with solving mysteries," Enoch admitted. "But I go from place to place, and when I find something worth investigating I'll stay for a while."

After that last event Torin had started to question his own lack of confidence. He was beginning to realize that the more he doubted himself, the more he allowed himself to be paralyzed by that inaction, the worse things were going to go. The only way to become a strong leader was to get over those fears and doubts and to force himself to act with confidence in order to inspire the others.

Having someone like Enoch here was helping with that, and so he was somewhat grateful that the wanderer had found them. Even if it had been a chance encounter, it had definitely been a stroke of good luck.

//#######//

"Nice to meet you, Bright Eyes," A voice spoke from the dark.

Goetic's mouth opened but he was almost too scared to say anything.

His fingers were twitching and his mind was racing. Was this thing one of those Devils that Avel had been trying to make contact with? Did it know what was going on here? Did it even care at all...?

As those questions raced through his mind, he found himself asking another one.

Did it want to hurt him? Did it want to consume his soul?

"I-... I'm not even fully human, you know," Goetic said. "I might not even have a soul. So-.. so..."

"Heh. Heh heh..." The darkness around him and before him chuckled. The Devil chose to reveal some of its form, but it was only a brief flash in space. That image imprinted itself on the brain of the Abnormal and then the space around them distorted.

Goetic found himself on a snowy cliffside. They were overlooking a mountain range beneath them. He didn't know this place. It hadn't accessed his memories or something to make him more comfortable. Instead, it brought him to a mountain that he hadn't heard of, and that he had never been to before.

Did that mean it knew that he loved to see new things and learn about them...?

"I see the sun," Goetic remarked. He fell over in exhaustion and looked up at the sky as his butt felt wet in the snow. "I feel the cold around me, and even the snow is wet. Did you create all of this?" Maybe the Devil was trying to make him relax. Maybe it was working.

They were in a dry place now. It was a hill of sand. And behind that was another hill of sand. The air was hot. It was so much that it almost shocked him, the difference between here and where he had been. The wind was moving and it stung as it beat him across the face.

"You haven't seen anything like this before, either, have you?" The Devil asked him.
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~* Now I only see your dull imposter ~*
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