Gilded Serpents

Chapter Twenty-Five: The Visitor

I watched as the scavenger's eyes grew wild, teeth bare in a wide, unsettling smile. Time seemed to slow, and I watched, stunned as the strange disheveled man started to almost vibrate, skin bubbling and splitting in a dry crackle, before twisting and separating in strange dark masses. The air was humming, like the sound of a thousand tiny wings, and I watched in silent horror as he turned into a mass of tiny buzzing insects, like a thick swarm of spring gnats, in boiling waves. It curved, left and right, swirling toward me far too quickly for me to properly react. It billowed like fabric, pulsing and sickly, slowly making its strange way towards me. It rolled forward, almost touching my outstretched hand, and the buzzing began to overwhelm my senses, muffling any other noise in the once calm of night. No, this was no ordinary magic.

Before I could properly react, a cool, tingling chill pierced the tips of the fingers of my outstretched hand. It was the bitter searing sting, akin to putting a frostbitten hand under scalding water, only this time, I could not move my fingers away. It was a pain, unique and bitter, scalding and more intense than any I had ever felt before. I was in a state of desperate shock, shaking and contorting my body to get away, but my fingers remained frozen in front of me, outstretched and paralyzed, and I watched as the tips of my fingers began to blacken.

Before I could scream, I felt a sudden pain on the side of my body followed by a shock of impact as I fell to the hard ground, thick dead grasses breaking around me with a crunch. I looked up to see Ciro whose hand was still outstretched, eyes wild. He had pushed me to the ground. Before I could read his face, he had already turned around, weapon at the ready. I scrambled backwards through the reeds, but when I tried to push myself off the ground, I found my left hand to be numb, limp and useless.

The black, swirling mass flew in front of Ciro before materializing once again into its human form. I watched as Ciro gave a mighty swing at the man's torso, grunting as the heavy halberd swept across. But the blade met with no resistance, as the scavenger's chest turned into the same black buzzing insects where the weapon would have made contact, only to re-form again immediately after. Ciro stumbled sideways, propelled by his own momentum, as the weapon made impact on the grassy ground.

I watched, doing my best to take cover in the tall grass, as the man evaporated again into black cloud, quickly swirling around Ciro and appearing once again, only this time behind his visibly hyperventilating back.

Ciro turned quickly, swinging again, only to have it pass through the scavenger's unfazed body once more.

"Come now, old man," the scavenger laughed between swings, "You know better than that. Now, where did she go?"

I tried to slow my breath, ducking further to hide my head, when the swinging halberd blade made impact just mere inches from my face, slamming into the ground and sending grass and loose earth to plume around me. I fell backwards further, feeling my back hit the ground, raising my armored knees in front of me as some sort of protection. I closed my eyes, hearing the unsettling buzzing of tiny wings coming closer, and put both of my hands in front of me as makeshift shield.

The buzzing grew louder, and I opened my eyes in horror to see the black cloud swirling around my hands once more. The blackened tips of my fingers on my left hand began to now spread downwards, quicker than I could react. A new fresh sting of pain shivered through my entire body, and I let out a scream unlike any I had ever had before. It felt as though my fingers were being stung by a thousand scorpions, and the black overtook one knuckle, then two. Although only mere seconds had passed, it felt like an eternity as I tried to swat the swarm away with my free hand, kicking at it in desperate frustration.

But just as I could take the pain no longer, something happened. Just as the black lowered, almost touching the top of my knuckles and the back of my hand, it stopped. Everything stopped. Even the beetle swarm seemed to freeze, suspended and the air in slow swirls. I dared to open my eyes to look at my hand. There, on the ring finger of my left hand, was Vasati's ring.