Escape

Across the barren, ruined and dilapidated alleyways of the slums, a boy ran.

His appearance, a sickly, frail, and weakened likeness, all but skin and bones in his body as his sunken cheeks, bagged eyes and unkept hair and ragged clothing, indicated this state.

He ran across the muddied dirt, his thin legs splattering droplets of mud as he bolted, looking around in his surroundings in a frightened manner, terrified from the one that was chasing him. 

It had rained recently, the moistened earth on the ground causing him to slip onto his body occasionally on the tight turns he would take. He was holding something, causing his body to shift about awkwardly as he strode mud covered.

In his bony hands, clutched tight in his chest, a grimoire.

Its appearance, a highly ornately designed cover, gilded with gold and filled with pure white pages so clean as if it were never touched, held together by silky sparkling thread. It was out of place in the boys hands, an indication that it was clearly stolen.

The child continued to run, his breath straining as he attempted to draw breath, his lungs desperate for air as he sprinted through muddied ground in barefoot. His vision blurred, images rolling about as the extreme fatigue took hold of the boy, his feet were searing in pain from the cuts and bruises it accumulated.

But still he ran, turning on occasion and continuing to slip, still clutching the grimoire unyielding, desperate not to let it go.

He reached a large dark passageway, it grew darker as he reached deeper in, and was only illuminated weakly with light from decrepit lamps hanging overhead above on the ceilings.

He moved to make another turn, in the spur of the moment, his shirt suddenly got stopped, a pulling force halting his sprint as he was drawn back.

He looked to his back, and he saw at a space in the side of the corridor, making up another passage, the figure he was running away from. In there was a hand clutching the back end of his ragged shirt tight.

He looked at the sudden oppressor, his face, covered in half as a face mask, a black rag, obscured his lower half. A bandit.

The upper regions of his face were seen clearly, a wicked looking man faced at the child with a savage and sinister glare, a killing intent seen through his eyes. He wore simple leather armor that covered all of his body except for his sleeves.

His features were sharp and sleek, even visible through the disguise hanging in his face, venomous in his composition with a likeness of the serpentine, and his head, balding with only a little tuff of braided hair in the middle, with his eyes, slitted and colored with yellow and green and within them snake-like pupils.

His gloved arm came clutching at him, trembling as he held it tight as his arms were covered in deep and visible scars, marking his body, bristly green scales made up some parts of his skin, a definite sign of a beast-person.

The Bandit spoke.

"Now were d'ya think yer goin runt?" he said, his voice sounding dry and spiky in his throat. "The boss is real mad at ya, stealing sometin of is." He said so with a mischievous tone, his improper grammar taunting the boy, a gleam of amusement in his eyes.

He looked at the shoulder of the man, a simple iron pauldron covered his right shoulder, and engraved in the steel, colored deep red, a symbol. The boy knew what that symbol meant. He was part of the group that was chasing him, and it scared him.

"I'm taking ya back with me."

And as he said those words, the child trembled. He shook his entire body crazily back and forth, desperate to break free from the clutches, rapidly moving his body, shuffling and ripping his already damaged shirt, and continued his full sprint.

"Whoa!?" the bandit yelled in surprise. "Slippery bastard, aren't ya?"

And soon after the disguised man gave chase.

The child soon ran again, now with fear propelling his every move, running as far as his fragile legs could go, he had to run to live. 

The boy had a plan, a clear goal in mind. He knew exactly where he needed to go and was determined to reach his destination, no matter the obstacles that lay ahead.

He saw another potential route, at a nearby roadway and decided to take it. And as he took another turn through alleyways, and at the nearest wall of a corridor, a knife was thrown and driven through.

He looked up at the roofs of these buildings in a panic, looking for the one who had thrown it, and there up at the forefront of a house behind him, prowling in a predatorial pose as one of his arms holding another dagger, the bandit, hidden in shadow as if his entire body was painted in black. 

"Fetch em BOYS!!"

He ran rapidly, taking any turns available in his path, the words the bandit said scared him like a threat, and he rotated to take another turn.

His head on the swivel he looked all over the slums and, choosing to take another lane closest to him, and as he went, he was suddenly being blocked by a large object in front, and what met him was gigantic.

A towering, monstrous amalgamation of a man-monster stood before him. He was large, 10 feet tall in height as his behemoth of a body covered the entire alleyway.

His body was a collection of rotted parts, a variety of flesh combined by staples with sharp, jagged, rods jutted out behind his back.

His body was disproportionate, his upper half, thick with mass, contrasting sharply by his short, stump like feet. One arm was long and slender, dried to leather, the other more larger with all sorts of parts combined, thick like a trunk of a tree.

His face was wholly covered wholly by a leather cowl, his eyes brightened by the color of red peeking through the eyeholes.

And he stood before the child, raising his thick stalk of an arm high, intending to rain down a killing blow.