[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/inS0Xvb.png[/img][/center] [hider=Character] [u][b]Skills[/b][/u] [list] [*]Master of Seas ★★★★★★ [*]Element Resistance ★★★ [*]Combat Sense ★ [*]Iron Skin ★ [/list] [u][b]Inventory[/b][/u] [list] [*]Nicked One-Handed Sword [*]Rope [/list] [/hider] How much of it was luck? How much of it was instinct? How much of it was [i]guidance[/i]? Ever since he had broken out and escaped from the beach, Belo had felt a strange buzzing in his mind, a sharp prickling upon his skin. As if the gazes of those long-limbed killers contained knives, their intents crystallizing upon his flesh before their arrows could. And, by following that sensation alone, he had hurled his knife into the brush and slew someone without even seeing them. Even in his prime, even when he was amped up on amphetamines and boarding a ship thrice the size of his village, he had not felt this dialed in, this [i]focused[/i]. But there was no time to linger, and the barks of the ones in front pulled him away from his desire to loot the dead. No boot knife now, just a sword that one of the others had tossed at him, and that child still, weighing upon his form. Of the band he was cleaving through the forest in, there were few that shared the same complexions as the others. It was motley collection of muscled creatures, ones that had the same long ears as his own, the same stubby nose. Some were blue, others were red, still more were green and a few were brown. All of them bore skin that peeled though, skin that curled from sunburns and saltwear, roughened up by the ocean. A familiar look, one that was separate from his own memories only by the inclusion of steel weapons and spears, of a war-like temperament with the wounds to match. Chopping through the verdant abyss was a band that totalled perhaps 25, but only 8 of them looked more fit than Belo himself. The rest? Children, denoted by their relatively scrawnier size, the baby fat that clung to their stomach and their cheeks. Women, denoted by their wide hips and braided hair, the swaddle of blankets that they wrapped babes in. And of the men, the warriors that had managed to wrest a few beating hearts out from the slaughter that they had fled? The largest of them remained the rear-guard, arrows sticking out from his shoulders and back, a wooden doorframe held by its handle as a makeshift shield. The others formed a perimeter around more valuable lives, helping them as they stumbled over roots and pushed through brush, their brows furrowed with a desperate focus. He could understand it too, the cold calculation that any small village would form. Women birthed children. Children became adults. So long as those elements survived, the village could too. So it was the task of the old and the strong to lay down their own lives. Humans chose civilization. But if they couldn’t be treated as humans, then they had to chose survival. A pinprick, hot against Belo’s shoulder. He twisted out of the way, a bolt flying past and burying into the back of a female. Three heartbeats later and he was running past her, too encumbered by the child on his shoulder to offer her a helping hand. More arrows flitted through the shadows cast by the leaves, a whistling song in a foreign tongue causing them to twist and turn. The rearguard collapsed, a bulb-tipped arrow sinking into his makeshift shield before bursting into a tangle of thorned vines. He let out a gurgled roar, struggling against his bindings, before three more arrows opened up three more holes in his face. Meanwhile, trees creaked and groaned in the front, bending down with all the force of falling timber, yet not snapping at the trunk. Their pliability, another impossibility brought by the sorcery of the lithe hunters, cleft the animal trail in half and smashed three others underneath. Their spines and ribs popped like corn, lungs crushed so thoroughly that they couldn’t even rasp out their last breath. And the ones that tried to clamber over the bent-over trees met similarly cruel ends as the branches twisted into spears and skewered them like kebabs. It hadn’t even been a half hour since he had thrown his knife, had gotten a lucky hit that scored a second kill. And now, like that, ten had died. Died without Belo even seeing who killed them. Pinpricks of malice, a sense of intensifying danger. Echoing through the wilderness were the melodies of horns and flutes, a braying, haunting tune to accompany the warband that had descended upon the forest. Others tried to organize within the chaos, but the first to break were the warriors themselves, turning heel and rushing with swords and sticks towards their unseen foe. Belo couldn’t spare them a glance either, knew that while there was a place for courage, they were doomed from the get-go. He could manage firearms within tight corridors and the maze of shipping containers, but out here? Where nature itself was weaponized and where arrows could twist at the whims of archers? That fucking piece of shit spirit! Fury battered down the fear, as more lives fell to the machinations of the warband. He made his choice again and again. It would be easier, wouldn’t it, if he had just dropped the child? Lighten his load, pick up his pace? He hardly knew any of them, felt nothing more than a strange sense of injustice at seeing what was happening to them. And oh how quickly the optimism in their faces changed, how quickly they turned from living, breathing creatures into corpses that fed the forest. He had no attachment to them. But he knew where he stood still. Belo had chosen to involve himself with the life of [i]one[/i] child. If nothing else, he had to see that through. And so, when the ground opened up, exposing a natural cave within which only moss and stone grew, he didn’t hesitate either to jump in, dropping into the gloom. He was the only one who did. … Callused feet padded through tunnels illuminated only by bioluminescent fungi. There were no sounds of pursuit anymore. Perhaps the warband knew that their sorceries were ill-suited for the deep earth, that their arrows were less valuable in close-quarters. Perhaps they grew bored and left. Perhaps they drew blades and approached with stealth. No matter. Belo collapsed behind a cropping of stone, letting the child he carried slump off his shoulder. He hadn’t run so [i]pointlessly[/i] for years, his body sticky with sweat. The taste of iron still hovered in the air and he pressed his fingers against his forehead, rubbing at the dried flakes that had clung to his skin stubbornly. Something sticky rubbed against his shoulder, the fabrics of his shirt bunching up in a strange way. Had he gotten injured somehow? With his other hand, he poked and prodded his flesh, trying to feel for a pain that…wasn’t there. That made sense. The shoulder that had been sticky with blood was the shoulder that he had hefted the child upon. Only now, in the quiet, could he take a breath and take a look. A bud-tipped arrow stuck out of the child’s back, the wound oozing a black blood. It hadn’t been by some miracle that he had made it out unscathed. It wasn’t simply on the merit of his new instincts, in his strength and his experience. Belo stared at it, his mind scrambling for solutions even as his thoughts crystallized into a singular condemnation. He had survived their hunt because he had a [i]shield[/i].