Embrace The Ether 8 An Ever-Present Concern

"Droh, what's going on? Are we safe here?" Deus whispered across the table to Droh, who was practically cowering beneath the bar window. "Deus, stay down!" He hushed.

'What the h.e.l.l happened… am I in danger here?'

The guardsman pa.s.sed by where Deus and Droh were hiding while occasionally glancing down the darker corridors of the cityscape, not bothering to look any further. From the group of soldiers, a single one wore a silver badge outline across his armor, he spoke down into his wristband, "Sir, all clear in Omerta Sector," several lights flashed and beeped in response to the report, "Order received, moving onwards to Alpo Sector."

"Squad, we're moving on."

"Roger." "Aye captain." "Pack it up, boys!" Several people replied in unison, all of whom were wearing similar rustic black armor. The silver badged soldier looked out toward a group of people and spoke, "This sector is clear, go about your business as usual everyone!"

With that, the soldiers vanished further down the street, leaving only chaos and confusion in their wake. The sound of alarms slowly cutting off in this sector as down the street you could hear the sound of more shouting, as the chaos carried further along.

Inside the so-called restaurant, Deus and Droh slowly lifted themselves back up from their seats, looking toward each other in an almost childlike shock and wonder.

"I don't even know what to say…" Deus mumbled as sweat dripped down his forehead as his heart slowly came back to a normal pace. "Droh… how often does something like that happen?"

Sitting across from him was Droh, his ears still draped down his head as his eyes concentrated on everything outside in an attempt to double check that everything was safe. "Wh-what?"

"Does this happen often?" Deus repeated.

"Oh. N-not really, ac-actually… it's quite rrare." Droh answered in spurts, he was still quite obviously shaken up. "I've been he-here for some years… only hhappened once. It w-was a big deal back then."

'He's actually quite frightened, isn't he? So this isn't normal after all… wasn't sure.'

"Droh! Come to your senses… it's over, right? You're fine, the soldiers have come and gone. We have to worry about that Mercer guy now, so I can't have you shaken up for your meeting tonight."

Droh sat there for some time as he slowly returned to normal. His ears started twitching back to life as his tail unwrapped from his leg. "Ri-right. Sorry, Deus…"

"It's fine, even I'm quite freaked out… but we can't lock ourselves away while trouble comes to find us, we have to face it directly. Or at least run away before it finds us, right?"

"Hmph. You're right, yeah." Droh lifted his face to meet Deus's, the two locked eyes for a moment as they tried to recover their nerves. "Alright… first things first, we need to find a place to calm down before my meeting with Mercer tonight. Think... Oh! I might know someone who can help us with that… well, that is if they haven't turned tail and run off after all this."

"What? Would they really be that jumpy as to abandon the city just like that?"

"Oh yeah, absolutely. Truth be told, they're actually worse than you think. We'll be lucky to find her still in one piece…"

"Her? Why would you say that, though? Is she that paranoid?"

"Ugh, you don't even know the half of it! If I remember correctly, there was this one time when I was with her, she seemed to be as calm as could be... well, until someone shouted and set her off. Because of that, she locked herself in her place for a week. Even going as far as to threaten to shoot anyone who got close, too."

"Hold on, someone shouted and her first instinct was to lock everything up and hide away? are you sure we can trust her? If she went crazy with only a bit of yelling… what could this have caused?"

"Heh. If - and it's a big if - she's still alive she'll be super useful to have as a friend. You could call her a master scavenger, having collected a great stash of weapons and equipment that the city lord didn't consider valuable enough to take away from her. Of course, the really good stuff still had to be handed over to the lord, it's how she managed to live this long here. She got paid a lot for everything she's found."

"So she's a living pack-rat, huh? Well if you think she could be useful, I say let's try it. I a.s.sume you'll lead the way?"

"Mhmm, leave it to me. Oh, and what you said was right, I can't just hide away at the first sign of danger!" Droh puffed out his chest in a heroic stance, only to deflate shortly after as he started rubbing his forehead, "Oh shoot… I forgot one thing. How am I even go to find her with everything going on... again, she locked herself away for a week back then! A week! Because of one little shout…"

"Heh. I say we go and check her place anyway, we might luck out and find her still home. If not, I'm sure we can improvise a bit."

With that, both Deus and Droh picked themselves up and headed out, quickly leaving the restaurant as the streets were still filled with a stampede of panicking people. Some of the residents were humanoid, while others were as large as seven meters tall, which made it quite difficult to stay together unless they moved slowly.

"Droh, keep close to me, alright? Don't want you getting swept away with the crowd." Deus shouted out toward Droh as he held an arm onto the smaller boys shoulder. "Are you sure it's this way?"

"Mhmm, we just need to move off the main street, but it's not safe to just duck down into the alleyway at a time like this."

Unfortunately, it had been quite difficult to hear one another, which caused Deus to only catch several bits of what Droh said. 'Did he say to go down the alleys? I hope he knows what he's doing.'

As soon as he possibly could, Deus ducked down into one of the alleys, immediately losing Droh in the crowd as the smaller boy was pushed down with the stampeding residents.

He stood there without moving for several minutes, waiting for Droh to show up, but unfortunately, that hadn't happened. 'Y-you're joking, right? Separated… just like that. I'm so screwed, oh my G.o.d… so screwed.'

"Droh!" Deus shouted out of the alleyway into the crowd of people to no avail. 'Great, now I'm stuck in this city without a guide… no clue where anything is or even what to do next. Hah.'

"You there, turn around slowly and keep your arms up! Don't, and I'll gut ya!" A hoa.r.s.e voice coughed out from behind him, the sound metal sc.r.a.ping out of a scabbard could be heard.

's.h.i.+t.'

"Alright, alright… don't do anything we'll both regret, I'll move." Slowly turning around, Deus faced an older man whose face seemed to be scarred from many years of abuse and physical labor. He wore a brown eye-patch to cover his right eye as a cloak shrouded his hair.

"Good lad, now hand over all ye' got!"

"Well, that's… unfortunate." Deus mumbled as his arms were raised toward the sky, he seemed to curse under his breath at his own misfortune. "You wouldn't happen to accept debts, would you?"

"Huh, what?" The rough looking older man coughed out as he started to figure out what Deus meant, "You… useless little man!"

The man charged toward Deus, knife in hand, he shouted out, "If you want to be funny, I'll just loot ye' corpse! The guards too busy, anyway!"

Deus's mind seemed to freeze for a moment as he watched the man charge head-first toward him, his blade in hand, with the intent of killing him. 'No… this isn't how I die. Is it? s.h.i.+t, I've got to do something!'

The man continued his approach steadily as Deus seemed too preoccupied thinking everything through. In truth, the man was clearly moving quickly, keeping his pace up as he only had to cross several meters to reach his prey. However, from Deus's perspective, the man seemed to be moving at the pace of a turtle, allowing him several monumental moments of thought before he arrived. 'All of my world's combined efforts and I can't even keep myself from getting stabbed in an alley. f.u.c.king brilliant, no really, truly amazing.'

Wooosh.

Suddenly, a feeling of immense pain struck through his body. 's.h.i.+t, did he get me?!' But no, the man was actually still quite some distance away from reaching him.

Wooosh. Vrooom.

"s.h.i.+t! Aaah!" He screamed out as an even more excruciating pain struck out at him, causing his vision to blur as his stomach prepared to spit up everything he'd eaten so far. 'What the fu-'

Wooosh. BANG!

Without reason or explanation, the man who charged toward Deus briefly vanished, only to reappear several meters away, smashed into the wall of the store that sat beside them. Blood splattered everywhere as the man's head had been cleaved right off by the force of the impact. Along the newly made corpse, his limbs were covered in these oddly carved scars that had holes pierced throughout, seemingly hollowing out parts of his flesh. The pain that had struck Deus a moment ago had vanished just as soon as it appeared as the entire alley returned to a state of silence.

'I- what just happened…'

"Deus, there you are!" A familiar voice called out to him from behind. Turning around to face the person, he was pleasantly surprised to see Droh stood at the edge of the alleyway, just barely out of view of the horrid scene of blood that bathed the walls behind him.

"Droh, I th-thought I lost you there for a while."

"Why did you turn down an alley right after I specifically told you not to?" Droh asked in an annoyed tone, his tail swatting against the ground several times as he impatiently waited for an answer. "You trying to bug me with that?"

"Hah, my mistake. Could've sworn I heard you say to take the alley. Again, my bad. Must've been too loud to hear you correctly."

"Eh? That's all? I thought for sure you were teasing me." Droh's tail stopped swinging around as his face regained its original smile of several minutes ago. "Enough of that, we have to get out of here. You coming?"

"Of course, lead the way… oh, and please don't send me down any more alleyways." He joked to the annoyance of Droh, who could only sigh in retaliation.

'Would probably be best… not telling him about that.' Deus thought to himself as he walked past the b.l.o.o.d.y mess that had suddenly materialized around him, right out of view from the main street where Droh was currently stood at. 'I should definitely be more careful though… what the h.e.l.l happened to me…'