Coughing up sand and dust, the boy realized he was surrounded by a blistering desert. A couple of hundred yards away, he could see a fearsome forest blended with the sand. Staggering as he tried to get up, he recalled being pushed into a crevice, sliding down, and landing several layers down the side of The Cone. He knew because of how far he had fallen, the people who pushed him wouldn't hear him by now, but out of blind anger, he screamed anyway.
"Damn rats!"
Immediately after regret set in as the boy realized that he was no longer in his poor little slums or even human-claimed territory at that. He fell so far down that he was now in an area of The Cone where he was completely defenseless. The only thing he could do now was hope nothing showed up; he needed to find a staircase quickly or someone who could protect him.
Not even a moment after this thought, the boy thought he heard something in the distance, but he couldn't quite make it out. The boy thought for a second and decided not to yell out for reassurance, knowing it could mean his demise.
The sound got closer he thought he could hear a faint voice reaching out to him. The man had finally reached close enough and shouted.
"Duck kid, duck!"
The boy heard the words and hesitated just for a moment before ducking, almost costing him his life. As soon as he ducked, he could see two huge hands with fingers as long as his body and as sharp as a dull kitchen knife fly over his head and clap into each other, deafening the boy and making him bleed from his ears.
The boy was visibly stunned from shock, and the excruciating ringing pounding in his eardrums, but that did not matter to the boy because he knew if he didn't move, he would be killed, pain that would be far worse than bleeding from his ears.
Putting all of his strength into his legs, the boy dove to the left as fast and far as he could manage under the weight of his legs. The creature's hands flew downward where he had just ducked, creating a cloud of sand, making it hard for both the creature and the boy to see.
The boy scurried up to his feet and tracked through the sand, bearing his heavy legs. He mustered a light sprint and ran towards where he last heard the man's voice.
"Kid, are you still alive?"
Stumbling out of the cloud, the boy flops to the ground near the man's feet. Grabbing his breath and straining his voice to talk.
"I'm alive. Now hurry up and kill that thing!"
The man stares at him with a confused look.
"Kill? Kid, I can't kill that creature; it would tear me in half in seconds. We have to run, or we will die. So get off your ass, we have to go. Now!"
The boy was a little frustrated, but he knew if he didn't get up, he would die once that cloud of sand was gone. Getting up, both the man and the boy saw the cloud receding. At the same time, instinctively, they both ran as fast as possible before that creature could see again.
After getting a fair distance away from the creature the boy was able to look back for a moment, the cloud had receded and what he saw was a terrifying, thin, creature towering at maybe 7 to 8 feet tall with a shrewd head having no face except a mouth with a line of dull squared triangular shaped teeth its skin color was a mix of a leafy green and a sandy color its legs were smaller than its upper body making it kind of hunch over, its arms could drag behind it if the creature would extend them all the way. After that glance at the creature, the boy seemed confused.
'Why is the creature not chasing us? It should be able to catch up easily?
Instantly after he realized how stupid he was being, the creature had no eyes. Of course, it couldn't chase them; they were being dead silent while slowly running through the sand; therefore, without sight, there would be no way to follow them.
After a while, they slowed down to a walk and were now walking around the desert forest. The man gave the boy a puzzled look.
"What the hell is a scrawny boy like you doing on this level of The Cone?"
For a moment, the boy wanted to curse at the man, but he had a point. The boy truly was famished and scrawny.
"Does it look like I want to be here? I owed some money, I didn't pay the money, and got shoved down a chute."
The man looked at the boy with pity in his eyes and said.
"I'll try my best to get us to a staircase."
'Why wouldn't we be able to reach a staircase? Isn't he supposed to be some kind of superhuman?'
The boy was very confused why a Scribed would be scared; he didn't think he fell too many floors down.
'How far down could that chute have put me?'
The man stopped their walk and pulled out a strange black cube small enough to fit in his pockets. He then put his index finger into a small slot on the side of the cube. A second later, the lines on the side of the cube lit up. Shortly after the light dimmed, he took his finger out, wiped some blood that was on his finger onto his clothing, and said.
"We are nowhere near a staircase; we are going to be together for a while. What's your name?"
The boy was hesitant for a second to share his name because he knew what was going to happen if he did.
"My mom named me Bird."
The man looked at Bird, his cheeks started to puff up before abruptly bursting into laughter so hard that you could see his eyes glistening from newly forming tears.
"What the hell kind of name is that?"
Bird's face started to turn a little flush but mostly red because of anger. He despised it when his name would get made fun of, but he had learned to deal with it because he knew the name was kind of absurd.
"My mom thought I would fly like a bird, just going wherever and whenever with no worries, that I would soar."
'Safe to say that I never soared, not even close. Actually, I might be at rock bottom as far from the sky as I can get.'
"Anything else I can call you besides Bird? Do you have a nickname, anything?"
"Yeah, people called me Ares since I was young. Please do not call me that, I hate that nickname."
"Ares? Isn't that a so-called god of war from the old world? Why would you hate that name?"
"Because Ares was also a god of ruin, they thought I was unlucky, always bringing ruin with me, no matter where I would go."
"Ok, Bird, it is. We should start looking for a great tree, that's where we will camp for the night.
'What the hell is a great tree?'
"Before we start looking, I told you my name. What is yours?"
"I am Leonis, a normal name unlike a certain someone."
Bird was getting visibly annoyed, but he let the insult pass without a snarky remark. He knew night was closing in, and they needed to start searching as soon as possible for one of these supposed great trees."
'How hard could finding a giant tree be?