Elton

They were still trapped in the hole they made, trying to climb out, but they always fell back. Zeeth was stabbing them as well, shoving his sword into the crevices between their armor and slicing through their flesh, blood pouring out.

"You know, these guys kinda remind me of the monster of the east mountains."

"Oh, the monster of the east mount- is there a shorter name?"

"Well, a shorter nickname is Rah, the sound people make when fighting it right before dying. Almost no one has survived, anyone who does comes out seriously injured."

"Yeah but what about people like Afir or your grandpa? They should be strong enough, right?"

"Well, I don't know why, but my grandpa said that the wiser person wouldn't fight it. Seeing it's a track record, no one ever kills it and gets out alive. One hundred percent of people who kill it die and it just revives in about a hundred years again, to repeat the massacre. Some kind of system is in place for it to reap the life of its killer and no one can figure it out. People started in my life, but no one has solved it. My grandpa, and probably Afir, don't dare fight it for the mystery of its death."

"Did we fight it before?"

"We tried. But escaped by the skin of our asses and almost died. It sweats pure iron and heals itself using it. The skin, like the hell babies, has a shell-like structure but made from the carbon in one of its hardest yet most flexible forms and an inner skin that can stretch like magic rubber. We could hardly pierce it."

Not too far from them, a skeleton bolted out of a pair of old wooden doors, dashing so fast the doors almost flew off. A gang of robed people ran out of the same old building, chasing after him.

"Shit! Grab the skeleton!"

But they were all way too slow. One of the robed people stopped, held out staff, and blasted the rest forward with a massive blue ball. Wind burst forward and in all directions, blowing off his hood. He was a normal man, except his forehead had an eye painted onto it. A red pupil that didn't move.

"Put your hood on." someone said, "What's the situation?"

The person who talked wore a light blue robe with a left eye painted on its back. He sped from the doorway to the man who had just boosted his teammates forward who quickly put his hood back on, knelt down, and told him, "I'm sorry sir Sinistram, the immortal skeleton ran away. We sent our fastest team to catch him, he will come back in no time."

"Idiot!" Sinistra yelled, "there's no way you can catch him! How did you even lose him, we had him bound by everything we had!"

"Now, now." someone else said. He hovered down calmly from the sky wearing a red robe and a right eye painted on his back. "Tell me, minion. How will we revive our savior now?"

"I-I'm sorry, sir Iustus!"

"Will your apologies bring him back? Will you find out how to keep our lord from dying again? If you value your life, figure something out. NOW!"

"Yes, sir!" and the man ran after the skeleton. Sinistra swung his hand up and a sharp stream of wind hit him in his back, sending him forward like a dart.

"How are we to bring back Medulla now?" Sinistra asked.

"We just have to catch the skeleton again. We did it once, we can do it again."

"That was a fluke, Iustus. He was off guard, we will likely never have such a chance again."

"What do you propose we do? The skeleton was the only immortal thing we had ever found in a thousand years!"

"I don't know, that's why I asked you!"

"Just head back to your station, we will do something later! Perhaps he will let his guard down in another thousand years, our descendants will take care of him."

Back at the skeleton, he was still trying to rip off a metal handcuff attached to his arm and several metal platings that they had used to trap him. He could hear people behind him yelling and casting magic to stop him but he was far too swift for them to hit. In the distance, he saw a massive bird pecking at the ground and an idea was formed.

Back at Zeeth, from the rip to hell in the air, a large eyeball, bigger than his chest, hovered out. It moved slowly, hovering a foot off the ground and getting pushed around by a few hell babies. Its pupil moved surprisingly fast, surveying all around it.

Zeeth pointed at it, "What's that?"

"Runic eyes. What are they doing here?"

"What do you mean?"

"We should isolate it first, don't kill it yet. This eye was first known to appear three years later, using the runes around its pupil, it can shoot intense beams of magic at a target. It moves slowly so it's easy to attack, but the attack that it has is pretty crazy. When killed, it withers away into the air as mana but one way to save it is to freeze it and slice off the back. We can then use the frozen eye to cast the same magic they had. But what is it doing here?"

"Do you think I caused it?"

"No, I don't think differences we made now would affect the rate that the gates open. I think it did first come here, but when it was killed, no one got a body so it wasn't recorded. The first attack team was obliterated and no one survived so this eye's information likely died with them. Just stay out of its view and we should be fine."

Zeeth peeked over to look at the eye from the side where it couldn't see him and see what runes Page was talking about but the eye swiveled around. When it saw him, its pupil shrunk as blue veins swarmed the outsides like a bloodshot eye. The blue sucked into the center, turning into a purple where it highlighted some unintelligible words, the runes Page talked about. But it moved past that and concentrated into its pupil, turning bright pink. A bright pink beam pierced through the skies, right by Zeeth's ducked head.

"Oh great, you used its attack now we can take it." He dragged the eyeball up with a current of air and froze it before it could prepare for another attack and sliced it in half while keeping all its runes intact.

But from the skies, they heard a large shriek. They saw a black dot descending on them from the bright sky as the shriek continued getting louder. He quickly realized it was a massive brown bird, bigger than the map eagles, flying down to them. Blood flew out from its wing and a few drops of blood landed next to them before the bird even came near.

Zeeth bulged up a few slimes to cushion its fall while Page kept blasting wind up to slow it down. The bird eventually hit the slime, bouncing around on it like gelatin, and finally slid off.

"Oh crap, we almost just killed it!"

A noise game from the bird's feathers, "Gaah!"

"Oh god, the bird just talked!"

A skeletal hand flew out from the feathers. It grabbed onto a feather and pulled itself up.

"Zeeth, there is some intense mana there, watch out! It is incredibly dense with mana."

The hand managed to pull its entire body up, it flew into the air almost faster than they could see. Landing next to them, it grabbed Zeeth's neck. It was grabbing on hard and it came at him so fast he couldn't react, but its fingers weren't too strong and he was able to blast them off with his slimes and he nearly flew back to the bird in a single leap.

"Don't move! You will die for hurting the bird!" it clacked, each word making his mouth click. Its entire body was a skeleton with a small black dot in each of its eyes and one in its mouth.

He stood in front of his bird, its grey bone legs firmly planted into the ground. He swiped up a few rocks and threw them like bullets.

"We didn't hurt your bird, it was this eye," said Page, holding the frozen half of the eye like a shield.

The skeleton calmed down, looking between the eye, Page, and the other half of it on the ground. "It was? And you killed it? Wait, can you heal my bird?"

Zeeth ran forward with a few bottles of the healing potion he made with Rolas, dug through the bloody feathers until he found a wound, and began pouring them on the bird. It was a cut in the wings, one of the thinner areas so it wasn't fatal, but it was a long rip that clearly prevented it from flying. The bird was healing as it healed him before. Blood stopped pouring out, scabs were formed, skin soon replaced the wound but the rip was still there. With it, the bird couldn't possibly pick up the wind and fly again.

Being so up close, he saw that the bird-eye was pitch-black, a glossy eye that reflected the sunlight. It looked at him curiously, seeing him as the bringer of relief and a healer, and cuddled up to him by putting the wing around him and rubbing its large face against him like a protective mother. Zeeth stroked its face, sad that it couldn't fly again.

'I like this bird.' Black told him. 'Its eyes look like me.'

"So, skeleton. Do you have a name? I'm Page, the one healing the bird is Zeeth. Does the bird have a name too?"

"I don't know my name. People back at the cult just called me the immortal skeleton. I just met the bird, I don't know if it has a name."

"Cult?" page asked, "how did you get here?"

"Well," he told them the entire story, how he escaped the building and found the bird and continued on the point when he saw the bird.

"A bird? A bird!" he clacked. He had an idea. He ran back to the people, pulling their attention from the bird that he wanted to use for his escape, fearing that they were going to hit it. He picked up a few rocks and threw them at them, a few hit their faces and tore off the skin like bullets. He rushed at them in their confusion and used his bony fingers to cut the belly of a person. He held him like a ragdoll to block all the other attacks and held his throat.

"Don't move or I will kill him," he said.

He bolted backward with the body, patted the bird, and looked into its eyes. The eye of the bird had surprised him enough to pause and drop the body. The pitch-black eye reminded him viscerally of something, something just like it. He just couldn't remember what it was. But he was already at the bird, no time to worry about that. He hopped on its back, and as if the bird knew exactly what he wanted, it flew off. None of their spells could reach him and the man who was just blasted forward by Sinistram was panting while yelling, "damn...haaaa, hooo, haaaa. Get… back… here!"

"And then I was struck down by the eye and fell," he concluded.

'The skeleton,' Black said, 'it's strange.'

'Is it not trustworthy?' Zeeth asked.

'No. we can trust it, Page hasn't said anything about his story so he probably isn't lying either. But… I feel as if. I should know it. Perhaps we met before I was an eye. If that time even existed. The magic we have is frighteningly similar. It has just recognized me as well.'

"Boy." the skeleton said, suddenly serious, "you feel familiar. Do I know you?"

"No, I've never met you before."

But Black materialized himself using magic and said, "I believe you are feeling my mana. It is similar, but I do not know you either."

"An eye. You look like the bird's eye."

"Yes, I noticed as well."

"I like it."

"Me too."

Two incredibly stiff people, an eye and a skeleton, were talking to each other.

"You reside in the boy?"

"Yes. It has become quite comfortable."

"Can I name the bird?" Zeeth asked.

"Feel free."

"Then your name should be… Cuddles?"

"For a bird?"

"It is cuddly."

"I don't think the bird minds," Black said, and the bird was rubbing its head on Zeeth's face.

Page was walking around the bird and asked, "what race is it? It has a map on its back but it's not a map eagle. It's got a beak-like the rock digger bird but it's almost fifty times its size."

"Even you don't know?"

"No, I don't. One bird comes to mind, but there's no way. It's a legend. The bird that can adapt to anything, that can change its features in weeks, a bird that can live in a volcano one week and then suddenly live under the sea the next. But it's a legend, a bird that people made up. Fairy tales for entertainment."

"Does it have insane regenerative powers? 'Cause if it doesn't, we will need to walk back to Fahlhala."

In the underground red cave, the five faces came back up and the single head in the center was walking, "Five Kings, we have confirmed that the Chaos Dragon we sent out has in fact died, not scared away like the humans say."

"Who killed it? This is a declaration of war on Devils."

"We are unsure. But Karkov is still alive and trapped, he likely already gave a ton of information."

"Fine. Find him yourself and kill him."

Karkov still lied, trapped in Rolas' house Trying to keep his mind straight and unclouded by the potion Rolas kept using on him.

"Karkov. I think it's time I finally rid the world of you."

Karkov stared back at her with his dead eyes, glaring.

Turns out, the bird didn't have amazing regenerative powers and they would have to walk back. With the skeleton, which they now called Elton, (Skeleton, Eleton, Elton) they killed the rest of the hell babies. The hole closed itself back up once they killed everything like shattered glass reversing back in time. The wavy, illusion-like gap melted together and fixed itself as nothing happened. The hole was the only sign anything was there.

It took them three days but they eventually arrived at Fahlhala while Zeeth carried Cuddles with a slime. Immediately upon arrival, they saw a massive change in the walls. Dual gauge cannons were mounted all across the metal walls. The magnetic doors were closed shut but they could hear peoples chattering.