TW: A poorly-written fight scene.
[b]EDIT: Drastic edit to the second section due to continuity mistake.[/b]
[center][h1][color=mediumseagreen]CHERYL LUSBY[/color][/h1][/center]

[color=mediumseagreen]Jack. One syllable. It was its simpleness that stood out to Cheryl, more than its unusual nature. Names like that weren't common in Nihilo - it was possible that he was using an alias.

[b][i]'You will bring the outworlder.'[/i][/b]

Or not. Either that kind of name was common from whatever shithole place he'd crawled out of or his actual name was weirder and he was attempting to use a version that people could actually pronounce. Come to think of it, if Jack really was from another world, didn't that make him an alien? It wasn't far-fetched, considering what she knew about the antarean dragons. Still... the concept was strange to think about it.

'[i]Forget it. I can worry about it in the morning.[/i]'

Naturally, the universe decided to spit in her face as soon as the thought came. A wave of magic-[i]no, not magic, magic didn't feel like this, what was this power[/i]-crashed through her and she stiffened, halting her steps. She barely managed to suppress her shudder, if only because of her muscles locking up, instinct telling her to [i]get the flame away from whatever the hell-behind her-[/i]

[i][b]Death.[/b][/i]

Without an inch of hesitation, she twisted around on her heel, unsheathed her knife, and stopped its tip a centimetre before it could pierce Jack's throat.

'[b]You listen carefully[/b],' she growled. Piper, shifting a little at the movement, only wrapped his tail around her neck, chuffing softly in his sleep. '[b]I don't give a flying flame what the deal is with your strange magic, but if you don't get it under control and you hurt one of us, I'm taking off your flaming head. So [i]get it under control.[/i][/b]' Then, because she felt like it, '[b]Dipmeat.[/b]'

Whether Jack responded or not, Cheryl paid him no more mind. She turned back towards the stable, shoving her knife back into its sheath. She didn't stomp - that wasted energy and she was far too tired for that. Her steps were brisk, considerably speedier than they had been before her outburst. Anger, frustration; these were better fuel for energy than any amount of jump juice could be.

As she approached a particular stall, however, her frustration melted away somewhat. Guinea hissed, a sound that sounded like a cross between a spit and something coming out of her throat - her means of a friendly greeting.

Guinea was a horse of... [url=https://i.pinimg.com/564x/5a/19/d3/5a19d36d635b3d076239baf5c9a64c76.jpg]remarkable build[/url]. Her skin - indeed, her body featured no coat - was a dusty grey in the moonlight's pale light and the only hair she had stuck up in haphazard, clumped tufts of mane that stretched halfway down her neck and drooped sadly along the tip of her tail. A horn curved up from her forehead, rings of tiny little spikes peeking out along the way, and met a pointy end. A set of two smaller horns jutted out on each of her cheeks, though they pointed to the front instead of the sides, a slight outward bend to them. Her cloven hooves featured a similar bend. Her eyes seemed sunken, almost pupils in their entirety. However, a closer look would show that she indeed had sclera; the sunken appearance was an affect of dim lighting. Her most prominent feature was her mouth. Her teeth reached forward, incisors serving as her lips whenever she closed her mouth.

Overall, the immediate image she might give a person at a passing glance was a drowned rat in the form of a horse.

Cheryl closed in, within perfect distance of having her head bitten off by those incisors.

'[b]How you doing, Guinea?[/b]' she said, patting Guinea idly along her neck. Guinea opened her mouth, strands of saliva stretching wide between her teeth with some drops dribbling over, and let out another hissing gargle. Cheryl looked up at the sound of a distant inhuman shriek, her gaze sparing the distance a second before settling on Jack's face. Upon spotting his expression, she smirked.

'[b]Welcome to Nihilo, stranger[/b],' she said. '[b]Just another Tosus night for us murderers.[/b]' She checked the saddle, her sparse belongings - never could be too sure, considering her reputation. '[b]You ridden a horse before, Jack?[/b]'[/color]

[hr]
[center][h2][color=indianred]🄴🄽🅃🄴🅁 🅃🄷🄴 🄾🅄🅃🅂🄸🄳🄴🅁[/color][/h2][/center]

[color=indianred]By the side of the grimy road leading to Sonarlis, a child appeared. There was no dramatic flash of magic or mystical sounds. She simply appeared, stumbling a couple steps forward as if touching down from a jump and having the inertia of it pushing her forward. Her legs folded and she sat on her knees with a thump, her stricken gaze pinned to the dirt.

'[b]Hhh, hhh.[/b]'

Judging from appearance alone, the girl seemed to be around 11 or 12 years of age. Dark, unruly locks spilled around her shoulders, their length reaching the middle of her back. She wore a loose orange t-shirt with sleeves ending in the middle of her upper arms. Beneath those sleeves, another set of grey sleeves creeped out, hugging her arms as they disappeared into the space beneath her blood red gloves. Brown shorts and a pair of scuffed sneakers completed the look.

Her name was Erised.

'[b][i]Hhh[/i].[/b]'

Her gloved hands were tight fists on her lap. Her teeth clenched so hard, they creaked.

'[i]You coward.[/i]'

She lifted her fist and slammed it down into the dirt - an impulsive action. Ignoring the pain, she growled, closed her eyes, then huffed a sigh. It was so easy, acting on anger, but so tiring. Still, most other negative, less aggressive, emotions were pests she could hardly be bothered to deal with. Anger was familiar, comfortable. Invulnerable, in a way.

Forget it. She was here now, wherever "here" was. All she knew was that she'd stepped into a dimension that [i]wasn't[/i] the one she'd just run away from.

'[i]Can I even call that running? I didn't step into the place.[/i]' She got up, dusting off her pants. '[i]Whatever. Far as I'm concerned, there's no reason I can't stay here a bit. Can't be that different from all the rest. So long as they got the good stuff, I'm down.[/i]'

The sun inched its way up the pale sky, a few puffy clouds idly drifting by. Morning. The temperature wasn't too bad: not too warm, not too chilly. She stretched, wriggling her toes and rolling her wrists. Her core vessel's forms were always similar, but it never really [i]felt[/i] the same in each different dimension she stepped into.

'[b]Let's see...[/b]' she said aloud, peering at the nearest sign - a huge board held up by two posts, letters scratched into it. '[b]Sonarlis, huh?[/b]'  She looked past the sign and towards the village that lay beyond the river's bridge. It seemed to be in the middle of waking up for the day. People were milling around, doing boring people things, and wearing... tunics. Erised wrinkled her nose. What, were they in the Dark Ages or something?

A glance around showed her that the road she was standing by lead off into the forest - this seemed to be the closest she'd get to civilisation. She squinted into the distance behind the village, shielding her eyes as she looked upwards at the mountain looming over it. If things got too boring, she could always climb it or something. Movement at the edge of her vision caught her attention and she shifted her gaze to the left of the mountain.

'[b]...Huh.[/b]' A pale pink circle slowly, but surely, making its way across the sky. A moon, most likely. At the rate it was going, the moon would drop right over the horizon and disappear before the day was out.

'[b]Godspeed, little guy[/b],' she said, shooting off a two-fingered salute to the pink blob. 

Grinning, she set off. As she crossed the bridge and wandered into the village, leaving the sound of burbling water behind her, she didn't miss the eyes of the villagers darting towards her as she waltzed in. Instead of meeting their gazes, she raised her arms, crossed them behind her head, and continued walking, flippancy in every step. The marketplace ahead of her was a clustered bundle of stalls crammed together, people sleepily setting up shop. Some were already waiting at their stalls, presumably for customers.

'[/color][b]Ey, sulchir. Sulchir![/b][color=indianred]'

Erised paused, turning her head to look over at what seemed to be the village stables, her arms still behind her head. Some guy, with a tunic like all the rest, standing by the closest stall was staring at her, frowning. Her gaze met his, then immediately skipped over to the beast whose bridle the man was holding. It was a [url=https://i.pinimg.com/564x/34/aa/b3/34aab386be816ce2332f38262ce2ea97.jpg]horse[/url] -  she could recognise its equine form easily enough - but the haggard, grey strands of its mane drooped down almost to its hooves. It seemed to be built more for power than for speed, its bulky form featuring a smooth black coat. Its eyes were pools of murky, empty bluish-white fog - no sclera in them.

They were pretty to look at, Erised thought.

'[/color][b]Sulchir! Su ta oudier?[/b][color=indianred]'

'[b]Huh, what?[/b]' said Erised, shifting her attention back to the tunic guy.

'[/color][b]Quia forisu partibus non circum ambulant mico... tilla?![/b][color=indianred]' he sputtered, waving his hands up and down like he was having a seizure.

'[b]Whoa, hey, slow down, buddy, I can't understand anything you just said[/b],' said Erised. She leaned back, still not fully facing him. '[b]I'm guessing you can't understand me either, can you?[/b]'

Tunic guy's face reddened to that of a ripe tomato and his flailing only increased further, much to her amusement. '[/color][b]Postul su vosa retam et vade in domumus, iu venis![/b][color=indianred]'

'[b]You know, the only word I caught was "in"[/b],' said Erised. At this point, she'd gathered what he'd wanted; his Desire was screaming much louder than he was. Her attire must be taboo in this place because wow, that was [i]way[/i] too much desperation for a change of clothes.

The guy looked as if he was about to explode in the next moment and Erised tilted her head, lips quirked in a cocky grin.

When the explosion came, however, it was not from him. A surge of power caught her off-guard and she stumbled a step sideways, arms stubbornly staying in place behind her head. The tunic man tumbled right onto his butt, only letting go of the horse's bridle when it had been pulled to its limit and snapped away from his grip. The creature jerked its head away from the man, a deep growl that did [i]not[/i] sound like a horse emanating from its throat.

Erised raised her eyebrows, glancing over to where the power surge had come from. It wasn't hard to spot the raging whirlwind towering over the squat buildings and the gazebos of the marketplace, though she couldn't see its base from where she stood. She whistled, eyeing the bits of produce and small barrels caught in the snags of the whirlwind. The gazebos themselves struggled to stay on the ground.

'[b]Bet you your horse we got a main protagonist here![/b]' she called to the tunic guy over the whistling wind. He didn't reply, shaking on the ground, his eyes glued to the direction of the whirlwind.

'[b]Got myself a free horse[/b],' muttered Erised, grinning away as she approached the edge of the marketplace. The pressure of the power surge pushed against her, but she pushed back just as hard. It was only raw power, after all. Uncontrolled, unrefined power - could be as deadly as an atomic bomb or a water balloon, depending on the user. 

Then, just as she turned the corner, the power surge stopped. This also meant the whirlwind fell apart, collapsing into itself and sending out one final blast of wind sweeping over the market. The nearest row of gazebos gave up, their supports snapping and the tarps fluttering to the ground, draping over people too shocked to move. The crates, barrels, and produce previously spinning in the sky finally bent to the whims of gravity, aggressively decorating the cobblestone street with smashed up wood and battered produce. Erised sidestepped a barrel, then reached out her hand to snatch what looked like a tomato from the air.

'[b]Watch your head[/b],' she called out to a woman, who seemed too shaken to think about looking up, and gave an empathetic wince as a rectangular fruit, the size of a watermelon, promptly crashed on her head. That was a concussion, for sure.

She turned her attention to the source of all the commotion. A little girl - kind of looked like her nonexistent age - a beefy dude, and some guard. '[i]I bet it's the kid who did all that. Why is it always the kids with all the crazy powers?[/i]' She bit into the tomato in her palm, then spat it back out on the cobblestone street. Strong, sour taste. Definitely not a tomato. 

'[/color][b]Su! Sulchir![/b][color=indianred]' 

She looked up, tossing the not-tomato aside. The guard was approaching her now. The kid and beefy dude stayed where they were, discussing among themselves.

'[b]'Sup, royal guard?[/b]' Rocking on her heels, hands folded behind her back, Erised eyed him, her usual smirk plastered on her face. Decked out in red armour and a tight grip on his sword hilt, he seemed like the type of self-righteous pieface Erised liked to punch.

'[/color][b]Visetr norno in propriis sutamic farsiea pesalir suae velit[/b][color=indianred],' he sniffed, looking down his nose at her. '[/color][b]Ite in domumus. Murtae.[/b][color=indianred]'

There was no room for argument in his tone. Erised maintained her gaze, still rocking back and forth on her heels. Still smirking away. 

At her lack of response, the guard's eyes flashed and his face contorted into an ugly mass of wrinkles - rage. In one swift movement, he drew out his sword and had its tip pointed at her throat.

'[/color][b]Norno harent tempus kad agat inposesler brats sirilis su[/b][color=indianred],' hissed the guard, '[/color][b]Indisgrus es te suyet et conspectu omnium, vos-[/b][color=indianred]'

'[b]Nope.[/b]' Erised grabbed hold of the sword's tip, ignoring the sharp pain when it bit through her glove and into her skin. She yanked the sword out of the guard's grip, loosened with surprise, and her other hand grabbed hold of its hilt. The guard glanced at his empty hand, then back at her, wide-eyed. He had only time to flinch when the tip of his own sword came to rest lightly against his throat.

Erised cocked her head, flexing her free hand. Despite the cut, no blood flowed from it. Already, the slit in the glove was knitting back together and, presumably, the cut beneath it as well.

'[b]Still can't understand you, pal.[/b]'[/color]