The loud noise came with a sharp pain that was barely a tickle when compared to what Skullius felt aching within, but the force it carried was so profound that it knocked Skullius on his side!
For a few moments, Skullius felt a ringing in his left ear, and he could barely see anything with his vision whirling about so furiously that he thought he had finally lost. The heat boiling from within subsided significantly, but he was still in pain, a cacophony of voices that sounded much too loud making it hard for him to focus.
His mind was his own again for now, but his body felt terrible.
Skullius wasn't used to this.
Was this what pain felt like? Bodily pain, that was.
He wagered that when it was focused in the right places, it compared to soul damage.
As his mind started to process things correctly, the foreign grip snatched away his sense again, and he found himself wondering.
Right!
Camilla.
Did he shoot?
Was she dead?
Skullius begrudgingly turned to where Camilla had been standing, and... she was still there.
Her face was scrunched up in fury as she stood, unharmed.
Yet, her fierce emotion was not directed at Skullius, it seemed.
It seemed there was someone else here.
Skullius turned his head, and saw that to his left, an elderly man with a thick woollen hat, a swollen blue fur jacket, and baggy, khaki pants that seemed to have been stolen from a giant, was standing next to him, interchanging his gaze between him, and Camilla.
He turned strictly to the naked girl after a while, removed his jacket, and threw it at her before she could say a word.
"I don't know what games you young'uns are playing these days, but if this has to become a common sight, this world will be lost faster than you can say 'millennial'," he said with a grave face.
"This is none of your fucking bus—"
"It better be my business from now on, because you know what, around these parts we won't care if you're a wee little girl or not. If you've lost it, you can't roam free around innocent folks," the older man cut off Camilla. "Better wear the jacket... and perhaps a better set of lips. Cussing anyone, but me out won't do you much good here either."
The man gave a terrible stare into Camilla's eyes, and she found herself reluctantly pulling on the jacket to cover herself.
He then turned to Skullius, and pulled him up in a not-so-gentle fashion before giving him crisp punch across the face. When Skullius yelped, and fell back down while feeling like his head was about to shatter into fragments.
"The first one was so that you didn't have to spend the rest of your life behind bars. Must have lost your darn mind bringing a gun here. The second was to bring out the sense."
As these words rang in Skullius' ear, the burning rage returned, but he didn't do anything drastic. He merely glared at the man from below.
The man harrumphed.
"And there's the sense."
He took the gun which had fallen on the snow, put the safety on, and hid it in his pants. He then crouched down, and lifted Skullius before turning to Camilla.
"Best follow me."
With that, he began pushing Skullius towards the large building ahead.
The blind rage that burned within Skullius didn't fade. He was so blinded by it in fact, that he missed the older man's face twitching weirdly before it turned to him with multiple blinks.
With a jerk, the man forced Skullius to stop.
"What?" Skullius said through his teeth.
"Tomato flinger..." the man said.
...!
Skullius froze.
His body was still unwilling to let go of this ridiculous grudge, but he found it in himself to look at the older man, and whimper...
"Sila...?"
"Yes, it's me. You wouldn't believe the lengths I went to... Nevermind that. We have to get out of here. Right now!"
Skullius was at a loss.
How was Sila here?
What...?
Wait, rather than wondering about that, he should be glad!
He barely had enough mental reason to distinguish reality, and not-reality as it is.
He wanted to say a lot, but couldn't. Sila recognised this instantly.
"We can deal with this later. For now, you just have to follow my lead. Alright? Just—"
"Stop."
From behind the two, Camilla, who hadn't moved even an inch from where she was standing glared at the two darkly.
Skullius' heart sank, and Sila, somehow manifested in the older man's body, turned back, and swallowed a lump of saliva.
Around Camilla, the snow flakes that had been falling from the sky had all stopped, seized by an unknown force that compelled them to remain suspended in mid-air.
"Tomato flinger...?" Sila flavoured the words questioningly, hints of fright added in.
"You think you can tell me what to do? I went through all this trouble to confront him, and you just ruined it!" Camilla screamed in a way that made the hill hum.
"Dammit!" Skullius cried.
Sila immediately realised that he did not have a proper handle on the situation, and from the looks of it, neither did Skullius.
What was coming for them also didn't seem like something they could control.
Camilla, with bloodlust burning in her eyes suddenly thrusted her hands forward!
Sila and Skullius, as they sensed the invisible atrocity rushing their way, turned pale, but the former gripped Skullius' right hand, which was suddenly overcome by a terrible sting of pain, and hammered it on the ground!
Just in time...
Maybe a little bit too late...
A loud bang ruined the two's ears, just before everything around them seemed to disappear, the wrathful shriek of a young girl being the last thing they heard.
"ARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHH!"
Skullius found himself screaming, his vision now dark, but his other senses unimaginably keen.
Something was oozing from around his right hand, but he barely gave it as much focus as he gave the torrent of pain that was burning from his soul.
It was too much.
It was unbearable.
Even now, as he felt his body many folds stronger than it had been seconds ago, he didn't feel the agony turn to become less of an excruciating experience.
Worse yet, his mind was a complete mess.
He didn't even remember where he was.
He wasn't even sure why he couldn't see.
He wasn't certain why his skin felt of a sensation akin to countless hands spreading from it to molest everything around him, and why he perceived eleven creatures scurrying away from where he was confusedly.
What was his name?
Why was he here?
Where was here?
Why did he hear a voice in his head?
'Tomato flinger! Clear your mind. You don't need to think. You can feel the things around you, right? Don't think. Just feel. Questions won't make you feel any better. Trust me!' the voice encouraged.
Skullius wasn't sure what to do.
He couldn't think of a better way to stop his mind from inevitably approaching the state where it collapsed in on itself like a dying star.
So he stopped trying to think, and began to feel.
It was easy.
His ability to feel things with his skin was better than sight, but just without the colour.
The cold, humid wind.
The swirling, ambient mana.
The crisp sound of tree leaves.
All of it...
Somehow, all of it was pleasant.
Skullius had never truly taken the time to enjoy the mundane abundance of it before, but now, as he did, he found it to be soothing.
He almost felt as if the trees were taking in deep breaths along with him, and as the inconsistent currents of wind beat against him, he welcomed them.
His muscles, which had been unimaginably tense relaxed, and his mind poured out the messy contains to rearrange them neatly on its own as soon as he wasn't consciously influencing it.
The stabbing sensation in his soul persisted, but it didn't seem like his ethereal body was going to implode as Skullius had feared.
Soon, he was in the right mind, his sense having returned.
Unfortunately, he wasn't in a good position mentally still.
Skullius hunched over himself, and buried his head within the enclosure of his arms, his feet unknowingly kicking away a jade orb that had been resting close to him on the ground.
'Tomato flinger...?' Sila voiced.
"Please. Leave me alone for a moment."
"...Of course."
And then there was silence.
The source of this c𝐨ntent is fre𝒆w(e)bn(o)vel