Quies walked through the endless expanse of monotony.
His worn greaves sifted through the sand beneath him. He was practically dragging himself forward, now. His armor—once weightless—now pressed down on his shoulders with a weight that lingered within the memory of his muscles. Its black fabric was torn in several places.
His face was bruised from battle upon battle—the unmistakable marks of desperate survival. His index and thumb had developed a thick armor—a callous—on their fingertips. His middle finger had a wound that had just begun to heal.
He swiped his overgrown hair from in front of his face as he continued to walk forward. Cold blood coursed through veins and arteries of his legs.
He had died.
He died much too long ago. A great deal of time had passed since the blade of shadow pierced his heart; that time when he took his last breath.
He didn't know hong long, though. Keeping time in the depths was impossible. It was an entirely different realm, after all.
By now, he had accepted his fate—roaming through the rolling, desolate plains of death until his consciousness succumbed to insanity.
He grasped his father's gale stone.
Quies assumed his father shared the same fate as him. After he had died, he came down here, to the depths. Perhaps, perhaps… Perhaps he was still alive.
'Unlikely.'
An unpleasant sound resonated from his stomach. He was hungry.
Fortunately for Quies, he wasn't a stranger to living in a constant state of survival. He had survived alone on the drifting island of Erisia for over four years, after all. He was able to use most of the skills and tactics he learned to his current situation.
For example, he had been living off of an omnivore-like diet, though mostly consisting of meat. He was definitely strong enough, skilled enough, to take down a thresher or two if he needed to hunt, but that required a lot of effort on his part—effort which, in a state like this, he had scant of.
He never missed the chance to scavenge urchins and edible plants resembling seaweed. This was how he satiated his hunger during periods, often long, between thresher hunts.
His nose caught a familiar scent.
Blood. Fresh blood.
It wasn't too far either. The scent of hard iron sharpened his breath, turning it frigid as he breathed in deep. His sullen eyes raised their gaze from the sand beneath upwards and forwards. A moment later, however, he closed them.
He listened.
He didn't know how long he kept his eyes closed for, but eventually, he heard it. The familiar, faint hum of divinity not too far away.
'Food…'
He oriented himself, eyes still closed, in its direction. Eventually, he opened his eyes.
The sound seemingly came from behind a raised cliff edge not too far away from him. With the reserves of strength he had left, he would be able to close the distance briskly. Plus, despite the withering state of his mind and consciousness, his ether reserves were filled to the brim.
And so, he focused on the flow of his blood—a familiar sixth sense at this point. He could feel it surge through the veins and arteries in his legs, branching off into smaller capillaries, and then branching off into even smaller offshoots. His focus subdivided even more—visualizing the smallest clumps of blood on the cellular level. How they wrapped around his aching leg muscles.
He took a deep, hoarse breath in, and began to move. With each step, a greater distance was closed. Eventually, the once faint hymn of divinity was utterly deafening in his ears.
Because it didn't only come from one source.
It came from several. However, four of them were most prominent. However, one of them stood out. Its timbre was unfamiliar, yet it rang the loudest.
'...people? That's not uncommon, but I might run into trouble.'
One might think an encounter with another person in the depths would be beneficial, and, in some ways, it is. However, conflicts arise more often than not. In regions where basic survival is a person's primary mindset, other people tend to be a burden in terms of food, shelter, and resources.
Just like when he lived in Erisia, Quies had learned to be wary of encountering others.
Quies slid his middle into his mouth, swiftly slicing it open with one of his teeth. His hemophilia caused blood to pour rapidly out of the small wound. Eventually, he caught sight of one of the song-bearers.
It was a young man, maybe a little older than him. His green hair danced as he evaded an attack from one of two threshers. Quies could hear his song wavering ever so slightly.
'Hold on… Do I know him?'
Focusing on his target—the thresher which had just erupted from the ground—he clasped his two hands in front of him. The blood pouring out of his finger formed into a singular point—a singularity positioned in between his two inward facing palms.
His focus drifted to his hands as he pressed his palms together—collapsing the point of blood.
A moment later, a beam of piercing crimson shot forward at a breakneck speed. It closed the distance between him and his target in no time—piercing the tough hide of the thresher and through its skull, killing it.
The thresher dropped dead right in front of the green-haired man. A look of shock tensed his face as he glanced towards the origin of the crimson beam—towards Quies. However, that gaze only lasted a moment before his focus shifted towards the second, still living, thresher.
His fight wasn't over yet.
So, Quies released the tension in between his palms. The invisible force holding the blood in a single point disappeared as the ball of crimson began to move.
His right hand gripped the formless mass of blood as it elongated itself, forming a hilt.
Then, the crossguard.
And then, the blade.
With his crimson blade at his side, Quies approached the green haired man and the remaining thresher.