You stand before a pleasant, friendly looking wizard in a navy cloak trimmed with gold. He could very well be a father or uncle figure – why, there’s even a chance he could pass for Santa Claus at the mall. “I see you have quite the situation on your hands,” he says. You glance over your shoulder to see a hero, brandishing a weapon that you’ve become well acquainted with tonight, still hot on your trail.
Before you can answer, the man responds with a cheerful laugh. He rubs his hands together, as though to warm them up. “Let me see if I can do something about that,” he says. “This old man still has a few tricks up his sleeve, mind you.”
All it takes is a flick of his wrists and a cheerful incantation akin to a nursery rhyme, and it seems as though time itself stops. Leaves that had been blown by the wind are stuck in mid-air, the hero on your trail is frozen in place, and even a stray kitten holds still as a statue. However, it only seems to affect this particular block. The intersection down the street is unaffected and traffic continues as usual, cars speeding along unaware of what’s happening up the road.
“This should give you about ten minutes to get somewhere safe,” says the man. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a wooden coin, and flicks it towards you with his thumb. You catch it and examine it. You weren’t sure what to expect, but there doesn’t appear to be anything magical about it. The only detail found on the coin is a white lotus flower painted on its face.
“Nobody deserves to be hunted like an animal and punished simply for existing. I’m part of a community that wants to protect people like you,” he says, speaking gently. “If you’re interested in joining us, you just drop that coin into some water. You see where the flower is now? There’ll be an address on it for you to visit. It’s a fancy place – a big, expensive mansion with plenty of food and a place to rest your head. We’d like for you to come visit and potentially, join our little community. You see, there’s something looming on the horizon and we’re worried we’ll be too late if we wait any longer. It might be a little sudden, but time is of the urgency. Speaking of time! Oh, would you look at me! Blathering on while you’re in quite the rush! I’ll be going so you have time to get away from that pesky hero. The beauty or rebirth is its relationship with death!”
In a plume of smoke, the man vanishes.
All you’re left with is his strange words, a wooden coin, and a street frozen in time until you can make your escape.
hyeri has had some annoying heroes after her before, but this one takes the cake. her human body wasn’t fit enough to keep up all this running, since her dimension was currently opened somewhere else. she couldn’t risk leading this bastard to the entrance — there was someone important in there.
she wipes the trail of red off her face, a small scratch from earlier. it was pitiful how much it stung, a wound so shallow causing her this much pain. human bodies were so weak. even the sight of the liquid was a irritating reminder of how human she was — urgh. she feels so disgraced, the stabbing sensation in her side only amplifying the thought. she tries to regulate her breathing, stop the feeling of her insides wanting to get out, but the rush simply wouldn’t let her. her legs burned with the desperate desire to stay free, something that seemed like so much to ask for nowadays. oh, how she hated heroes — every single one of them from the bottom of her heart.
the girl clings onto the wall beside her, her veins pumping lava throughout her body — her lungs scalded with the ash of her looming funeral. she’d sooner take her own life than have to fall into the hands of a hero. she looks back, seeing an empty street behind her. had she finally lost the bastard?
hyeri’s attention snaps back to what was in front of her, her eyes wide and murderous. she barely has time to ask the stranger who he was before he cuts her off. he proceeds to then freeze the world where it was, giving her a smile, but instead of relief, hyeri only felt her blood run cold. he was a wizard, part of the kind that created heroes to begin with — she hadn’t met one in years. how she wished she could end him right here and now, but she knew her limits. she could not defeat him at this point. with fist clenched around the wooden coin, she curses him over and over in her mind as he spouts some bullshit about how his organization was out to ‘protect’ people like her. she almost laughs at how ridiculous he sounded. there was no way in hell she was going to resort to letting a human...wizard, even, ‘protect’ her. just his condescending tone was killing her — it was like he was speaking to a child. who did he think she was?
her bottom lip tasted of iron, her anger barely contained until the man disappeared. she lets out a cry of frustration, dropping to her knees, the tension in the body finally giving out. she hated being so powerless, so weak — it was suffocating. she stays on her knees for awhile longer, forcing back tears, until she remembers the hero that had been pursuing her. she had to leave soon, before this accursed magic wore off. being helped by the enemy was tormenting her psyche, but what’s most important right now was her survival — she had to be alive to find her, after all.
after that? she could die happy.
