EMERGENCE II

THE BARTENDER

As Logan runs for long his body starts to slow down and weaken, his legs starts to feel heavy and drags him until it hurts. Despite this he continued to run as the giantess is slowly catching up to him, and his instincts of running away just controlled him. He can feel the gusts of wind created by her trying to grab him, he ran every corner trying to get the giantess hit on one of the buildings but she dodges it. No one seems to be wake up in the middle of the night from this giant stomping, he tries to scream but his body won't allow it. He comes by the familiar crossing from earlier and without looking front of him he hits someone on bikes. It gashed some of his body but not too much, but the stinging pain starts to seep in. They all get up and it was Ava and Harry who looked equally as terrified as him.

"There you are, come on!" Harry grabbed Logan immediately and the giantess looms over but failed to catch the kids, Ava and Harry paddled fast as they can, and they can see the massive creature that is following Logan as the life of the moon bathes it in its light.

"OH MY.....What is that!?"

"I DON'T KNOW!"

"Some things were following us as well"

"Like?"

They got near to the pub earlier and they are in the middle of the intersection; they were just here earlier.

"Okay, this is weird..."

"This might be a dream, just a dream, not real"

"Harry it is as real as it gets"

"Well it was nice meeting you 2"

In front of them is the giantess that has stopped her pursuit and stands before the crosswalk and the kids, the 3 of them stand in fear just seeing the giantess. Fog starts to come and the temperature dropped rapidly, the kids immediately froze and they start shivering; they grabbed onto each other as they await their doom. On the adjacent of the giantess they can see fog accumulating and rising, its taking shape of something; another being. They looked over to it and none of them cannot speak because of the fear and sheer cold that was befalling them even more. The fog turns into a woman as well, white hair, skin but black nails and eyes.

"Banshee?"

"What... Lo... what?"

The banshee raises its hands and shrieks, the kids scream in pain as the sound pierces their ears; the sound that pierces through them feel like forks and spoons being rubbed on each other repeatedly. They covered their ears as they fall to the ground hiding their face, the giantess is unaffected of the banshee's scream but the kids are obviously affected. The sound continues to pierce through their heads and starts to hurt them. Because of the pitch of the sound the she is producing and glass around them broke into several pieces, from street lights, windows, even fragile tableware were broken. The banshee's screams call upon more creatures like theirs.

The banshee stopped its piercing scream and turns around, the giantess also looks at the direction on which the banshee lays its dark, empty, cold eyes on. The sky seems to swirl around as if a storm is coming, lightning strikes above the clouds and they can see silhouettes of a creature flying around. The banshee and giantess looked at them and rushed them.

"DUCK!" They hear a shout from behind them; instinctively they followed. They get down and hear something make contact with the banshee and the giantess, blood dripped down to their heads and they look up to see the two creatures wounded and they start to flee away. And on the top of the clouds a serpentine creature continues to fly towards them with lightning and thunder in its wake. They looked behind them and sees the bartender carrying a claymore with a Scottish design and Nordic ruins imbedded on the blade.

"Inside of the pub now"

"....."

"Quickly!"

The 3 kids followed the bartender as the lightning strikes come closer with every clap, and as it get closer to them they can hear and feel the thunder's rumbling. They got around in a mess of a bar and behind the counter, the bartender stands in front waiting for the other creature to possibly attack. The bartender waits there firmly holding his claymore and hearing the growls of the creature in the sky. Not knowing how close the beast is he gets out and it is already above him, it seemed small as it was far away but now its gargantuan. The bartender prepares to swing his claymore as the beast comes down.

"Hey there"

He jumped and a shock wave pushed the kids back down to the ground, he swung his sword and it landed and gave the beast a massive gash on its left mouth. Lightning struck and he sees the beast clearly, 'Beither' he whispered. The beast attacks from behind the bartender but its stinger misses him by an inch. The beast does not look like a dragon but more a Wyrm. It flies around and the bartender swung his blade around trying to hit the beast but it has full control over its body, some of its part would instantly twist or dodge in a certain direction. The beast used its tail to slam him down on the ground he swung his claymore, it contacted the tail but he can feel it crack so he retracted it. The beast gave him a direct hit to the abdomen pushing him down to the ground. He slowly got up.

"shit"

The beast circled around reaching high and breaking through the clouds, it screamed and attracted the lightning around him. Its eyes shined 3 array of colors from blue, yellow, and violet. The light spread throughout its' entire body and marks its skin, it screamed once more and dives.

The 3 kids can only listen in fear as they hear the sounds behind the bar, they look up to see someone taking a sip of tea by the window, unbothered. He keeps looking up as if he is waiting for something to happen, he grabs something out of his pocket and dialed it counter-clockwise.

"Hello there" He greeted the 3 kids, but they only looked more terrified by the way he is acting during this time. Suddenly Logan feels a wave of something hit him, his ears ringed and his vision blurred. After a second everything went back to normal, he looks up and the man is standing in the entrance, he looks around sees Ava and Harry slowly getting up.

"You children felt that?"

"uhm.... is he talking to us?"

"I think s-"

"Yes we did, there's something out there that the bartender fought"

"Lachlan"

"I'm... Logan"

"No Lachlan, the tender's name. It seems you children have Imperium as well"

"We're students not... gov... I'm sorry?"

"Yeah, you interacted with a Socius"

"Socius?"

"An altered's ally and creation, born from the belief of humans"

"Aren't you human?"

"No, I am a Grim Reaper, Albert. Created to aid humans who has Imperium, I am an ally of balance, the darkness is slowly devouring our worlds"

He continued to explain as Lachlan fights the Beither in the air. He manages to hang on the beast by hanging on its skin, he gets flung around but he keeps his bearing. The only hit that managed to make contact to the Beither is the attack earlier, any lashes or attempts to stab the beast is useless as his blade will crack, or shatter into pieces.

"Will you help?"

"What if light overpowers darkness?"

"That will be impossible, darkness will always exist, so long as light does"

Ava and Logan easily agreed to what Albert said, Harry thought of how crazy they are but he later on agrees with them.

"Good, then this no place for you, wait here and do not do anything"

Lachlan finally notices the effect of the 'pocketed time', the clouds has frozen in place and they have entered the aether realm or the domain. Albert purposely summoned the realm on Lachlan and the beast and they fight. The 4 of them walked out and they see the the silhouettes in the sky fighting. Albert starts to explain the difference between him and Lachlan when it comes to being a Reaper. He then mentioned a school for people like them and the 3 showed much more interest especially Harry.

"Didn't you think we were CR-"

Ava is taken by the girl that they met in right by the pub yesterday, the little girl has turned into a monstrous fairy. Lachlan sees her and landed on the Beither's head, suddenly the beast starts to fire a ray of lightning from its mouth. The ray almost hit Ava. 'Ava!' The 2 boys said, Albert can only do force the other boys to fight the changeling. Albert grabbed the boys and jumped towards the changeling, Lachlan notices it and stabs the beast out of anger. His claymore worn down into half of the blade.

"This is not good"

He stabbed the beasts eye and jumped off from the beasts hand with his new superhuman body he easily kills the changeling by stomping on its head, he manages to snatch Ava. The 2 caught up and notices Ava unresponsive. They can see black veins just going over her face, they checked her and they see the Beither's has stung her on the arm.

"We need to find water before the Beither does"

"Why?"

"Or else she dies"

"Okay, we need-"

A loud thunder rumbled through the air, the sound roared down to England. For them who is the closest their ears are ringing painfully, The 2 Reapers got up and grabbed the kids and they a massive wolf appears down on the road and howled at the at them.

"Big wolf"

"Awesome"

The Wulver, a giant wolf that seems to understand them, it howled and 3 more of its kind appeared, they got onto the wolf really quick and followed the massive beast. The wulvers accelerated quickly and when they got a grip of what is happening they are literally behind the beast. They got through the city of Glasgow and people are awake, Harry and Logan is scared as someone might see them, but they seem to just ignore a massive wolf running through their streets.

"Don't worry, the realm covers us, this is the 4th dimension that you know, only people with the 6th sense, or Imperium"

"All right, we are making for River Clyde, that's where that bastard is going, he ignored-"

The Beither attacks them as it noticed where they are, they look back and everything seems to be reverting back, in the aether, it is another dimension where what happens in there does not affect the outside. They also passed by people who can see them but only went back into their house.

The river is in their sight and its only a matter of time as the Beast is slowly descending down. Suddenly the water in the river increases in height, the wulvers seems to be afraid as they start to whimper. They all fall off the wulvers and they seems to bow down on the river.

"What are they doing?"

"The mother is here"

The temperature starts to feel cold and the area grew quiet, as low howls came directly at them.

"YOU SHALL DIE BEAST!"

As the Beither descends a arrow came flying and struck its knock, powerful enough to knock it down to the other side of the river. They look back to see man charging up another arrow and firing it to the beast at the other side, the arrow struck the beast as it cries out.

"Who are you?"

"Finn McCool"

"Cool"

"Exactly, now allow me to slay this beast"

He drew his spear and shield and jumps across the river, as he makes a land the beast gets up and almost hitting him down to the water, ha manages to dodge it's tail by jumping. The beast flew high and sees Lachlan carrying Ava to the water which it won't allow, and Finn also does not allow the beast to interfere. He threw his spear and it struck the beast's eye and now it is blind. He jumps towards the beast and hits it using his shield, swing is powerful enough to completely change the creature's direction of falling.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes sire, thank you"

"Allow the girl to heal, I shall fight this damned creature of lightning, and darkness. FIGHT ME FOUL BEAST!"

The Beither screamed once more and its size doubled, the stingers on its tail increased and fires at them. He threw his shield at the right moment with the right speed and all needle that came from it was caught by his seemingly indestructible shield. He run towards his shield and manages to grab it just in time as the beast attacks him once more. Logan and Harry hold for their dear life behind Albert who is using his power to protect them.

Using his shield alone, Finn fights off all of the attacks the the Beither has to offer and he finally grabs his spear on the beast's eye. 'DIE!' He screamed ferociously at the beast, he held his spear firmly and it starts to sink in.

"One of you, help me!"

As Finn demanded help from the other 5 Lachlan is already there reaching for his broken claymore on the other eye socket of the beast. He holds the grip firmly as the beast rolls around trying to get them off, but the 2 men did not allow it to do as it pleases. Lachlan starts to infuse his broken claymore with some of his Imperium, blue flames come running down from his shoulder down to his claymore. Finn also did the same gathering energy, both weapons glowed in blue and gold. The beast screams in pain, outside of the realm all the humans can hear are echoes.

The 2 men scream with all their might as they drag the blade down the beat's face, they gave it their all swung their hardest to break the beast's skin, hitting its heart in the process. Finn smiled with confidence that they have taken the beast down.