Chapter 8, A Unique Situation

She got closer to me, leaned over, and said something. I couldn't hear what she said because my ears were ringing, but I knew that she was talking. "*there is the look I love. Ah, how beautiful the look of death is on your face. Hey, can you even hear me?*" there was only silence. "*Hmph. Such a buzzkill, your way too weak for me to even enjoy. Well, I guess I can watch your last moments*"

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I was slowly bleeding out, and after what felt like an eternity, I saw the woman walk away and over to two others that had similar features to her. there were a few differences though, the one on the left of her had horns that went straight up, dark green eyes, very long black hair, and a tall-skinny figure. The one on the right had horns similar to the curled into a circle, blue eyes, short blond hair, and had a compact muscular figure.

Right as my eyes were going dark, I felt a sudden pull into a familiar viscous liquid. Suddenly nothing hurt, then I noticed that my conciseness was pulled into my mana core. I was staring at the same three shadows that I saw five years ago, however, this time I had better control over my mana flow.

When I opened my eyes I looked around and noticed that I was in a room. The room is spherical in shape, the wall is dark blue, and the floor is purple. In the center of the room, there were four shadowy figures, the only visible things on them are their colored glowing eyes and armor.

The shadows looked to be talking with each other while sitting on the floor. The one with red eyes notices me first and stands up, he had what looked to be wings made of swords, daggers, and knives. 'That doesn't look very practical.' he looked down at the other three shadows and pointed at me.

And with a joist tone to my own voice, the standing shadow yells. "He's finally here!" and throws his hands up, he looks very excited to see me. The other two turned around and also noticed me, watch one seemed to have a different emotion. With their eyes and mouth glowing it makes their faces look more like black clown masks.

Going clockwise starting from the one standing red happy smile, green crying, blue annoyed frown, and yellow afraid. Each one had a different reaction to my arrival.

The smiling one grabbed my arm, pulled me out of the thick liquid that suspended me mid-air, and sat me down next to him in the circle.

After seeing me the one that was crying smiled a bit while glowing blue tears fell faster from his closed eyes.

The annoyed one laid back into his galaxy robes, looked up, and sighed when I looked at him, he only got more annoyed as time passed.

The afraid one hid his face behind his large white shield and peeked out from the side of it, he hid behind his shield after peaking at me again.

After the shock of seeing the shadows of… "me," I whispered under my breath "w-what?" I lifted my hand so I could support my head only to notice that I am also a shadow with a soft white glow appearing on my hands the closer it got to my face, I looked down and saw the rest of my body was also a shadow, but I had no armor/weapon but clothes instead.

I stared at my hands for a long time before the smiling shadow snapped me out of my confused trance by speaking. "Hello! It's nice finally seeing you here! To be honest I thought that you would never come back." he quickly made a fake smile before going back to talking. "Anyways you are here now. I'll introduce myself first!" he adjusted his body more towards me and continued to talk. "We decided to name ourselves after the color on our face. So, my name is Ryan and I wield all things blade!" when he was done talking you could see a gleam in his eyes.

The green one adjusted the bowstring on his chest so he could face me to speak, as he moved he sobbed out. "My name is Gabriel and I'm an archer." he never once opened his eyes.

the blue one sat up and his robe parted from the shift of his wooden staff, to reveal what seemed to be an infinite amount of wands and staffs, he angrily said. "My name's Brandon, and I'm a mage." and then leaned back again.

The last one to speak was the yellow one and he was entirely hidden by his shield, after a while of silence he peeked out from his shield and practically whispered. "My name is Yash and I can use shields." When he was done talking he hid behind his shield again.

After they were done introducing themselves Ryan spoke first. "We already know about you since we are you. But that doesn't matter, does it now!" he stood up and grabbed my arm to stand me up.

"You don't really need introductions right now but I thought it would help calm or distract you from what's happening outside!" he grabbed an empty sword hilt from his side and the wings of blades disappeared, well all except one short blade flew over and attached to the hilt.

He sheathed the sword and said. "What you need right now is someone who can fight!" Behind Ryan I noticed that Yash also stood up and prepared his shield and armor, Yash walked over and stood behind Ryan when he was done. Ryan grabbed my shoulders and turned me around, He pointed at the white door and said. "Now, you should get back out there and summon me and Yash, our symbols will be on your right arm. Just put mana through it and we will help you."

The door opened and Ryan pushed me through it. Everything went so fast that the only thing i could think is, 'What'. After I was back in my body my body decided to remind me of how much pain I was in. The first thing I did was dampen the pain I was in with dark magic, then pulled my right arm from underneath me and looked for the symbols Ryan was talking about.

I was able to quickly find it as it was just below my wrist. There were four symbols on my wrist that had a tattoo like an appearance: a sword, a staff, a shield, and a bow. After identifying the sword and shield symbols I used my left hand and ran mana through the two. After over a minute of pain and running the little mana I had through the symbols I nearly gave up before a large white door appeared next to me.

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