I can't remember what that goddamn Church looked like. The Church they held something in. I have no clue. All I can remember is the light falling in from the decorative windows, the emptying pews, and the broken man who sat near the front of the chapel. He was dressed for the occasion; a funeral. The funeral of his daughter, actually. Luca's father sat before me, broken and confused.
His face was devoid of emotion. He just stared into space. Without emotion, without the smile I had seen worn on him in the pictures throughout Luca's house, he looked pitiful. His eyes kept staring on and on, unaware that the service had finished.
He knew about Grey. He knew what had killed his daughter.
I sat down beside him, silent. Time skips on, skips back. I don't remember what I said at first. It didn't matter what I said though. We shared the same pain. We wanted payback, didn't we? We wanted to destroy the Dragon who had destroyed our Princess. And the Demon too. That's what we were dealing with now, huh? Two things, trying to take over this city.
I don't recall what was said either. I do wish I could. One second, I was sitting next to him in the church pews. The next, we were exiting the church and heading to his house. He drove. As he drove through Portsmouth, we noticed something strange; the trees seemed...more foreboding. They seemed to be growing, in a way. And everything was in shadow, despite it being a sunny day. It almost seemed like we were in a forest.
In Suffolk. The family were out and about, at some afterparty thing we should have gone to. But we weren't going to show up. No, we had different plans. In his house. He showed me to his closet in his room. In the closet, there was a locker. In this locker, there were guns.
I don't know any details, I don't remember what he told me, I just remember being handed a shotgun and being told how to use it. I remember the feel of that gun; nothing else. Nothing else mattered then, did it? He grabbed a gun as well, ammo, and some other shit that we probably needed.
We departed and drove somewhere. I don't...I can't remember where. Somewhere in Portsmouth, of course. I do know that it was somewhere that should not have had a fucking massive forest. The car stopped, and we were facing a gigantic, misty forest. The same type of forest in my dreams...
Walking towards it, on the gravel, shoes floating in the memory's haze. I can remember thinking "This is it." I had come to the conclusion that someone was going to die that night. Hell, I was going to make sure of that. Either Grey or me. I wasn't leaving without giving it my all. Funny how things never work out the way they were planned, but still. If I hadn't of resigned to that thinking, I probably wouldn't of given it my all.
Cloudy sky. No birds in sight. Completely gray, dull, lifeless. The only color was the flannel jacket Luca had decided to wear. Funny, he reminded me of a Hunter almost. He almost had a full beard, had a trucker hat on. And the shotgun, of course. Couldn't forget that.
We were in perfect unison. Somehow, I think perhaps Degausser opened itself in between us, and only us. We did not need to think. We were both pretty much the same person. You and I in unison.
Or perhaps it was just the pain working through us.
And then the counting started.
With each number, we quickened our pace.
One.
Katelyn's lively face burned into our minds.
Two.
The unified screaming that night from Grey and whatever that other thing was.
Three.
The father, the son, and the holy spirit.
Four.
Luca and his parents, plus the Old Man.
One.
One.
One.
One.
We charged into the forest, ready to die. Our feet plunged through a mist that clung to the forest floor like carpet. No animals were in this forest...no, not in this type of one. We were in a dead forest.
We screamed along with each other while stomping into the forest.
"So, pray, little Kay;-"
I shouted, while spotting the mysterious sets of glaring red eyes among the trees ahead.
"-love's just God on a good day!!"
He yelled, while pointing his gun and firing into that area.
We ran into the dark, to see if we had hit what was certainly Grey.
"And you can't blame your mother!!!"
We found nothing there but wires emerging from the ground, ready to stab into us.
"She's trying not to see you as her WORST MISTAKE."
With the tiny bit of Degaussing ability I had without the entirety of The 757 there, I created a tiny shield against the stabbing tentacles. The force from the blow still transferred through the shield and blew us back a little, but at least we weren't dead. We ignored the wires and continued into the forest.
"And I wish that I could tell you right now-"
This time, blue eyes appeared in the underbrush. These eyes seemed more...wild, in a way. Hard to explain. We got close enough to see a dark shape, with grayish blur I am going to assume was a mask, moving to the side of us, ready to pounce.
"-I LOVE YOU!!"
Luca's father fired off a round into the shape. The shape made some sort of noise that shook the trees around us. Almost like a primal howling. It jumped low to the forest floor, and looked like it was about to just do some sort of other type of pounce.
"But it looks like I won't be around!!"
I jumped up over the creature, almost like an acrobat, and slammed down onto it with a Degaussed cube. The cube ripped into the creature, and almost seemed to stab into it. This...thing was moving so fast I could not really tell, and it fled back into the forest before I could finish killing it.
"So you won't know!!"
We recovered our original pace, and continued on into the jungle. We tried following the trail the creature that we had just met had left through the immediate area, but lost it quickly, so we continued on opposite the direction we had entered in.
"You won't know..."
The area between the trees seemed to get smaller, and yet the trees seemed to be growing closer together at the same time. It was like we were in another world at that moment. I wouldn't be surprised if we were...actually, I just thought about this, but we had probably entered the "William Tell" pocket universe. We had officially entered the challenge when we stepped into the forest.
"You won't know!!"
Until that point we had been running side by side most of the time. At that point, we were forced to split up. At that point, a barrage of the wires that accompany Grey fired towards us, ripping through trees and threatening to completely cut into our bodies.
"You won't know...!!"
He ran to the left, I ran to the right. In hindsight, Grey had probably been wanting to split us up.
I know everything from his perspective here on out because he knew it.
"So believe in me, believe-!!" I cried.
The wires appeared again to my left. They were attempting to catch up along my body at the right angle to either entangle me in the wires or stab directly into my chest and through my heart.
"-, if you think I'll let you down-" Luca's old man said.
Luca's father ran into a forest clearing, never stopping despite his heart threatening to burst in his chest. Despite the pain exploding inside of his lungs. Despite it all, he pushed through. And the wires that had cut him off? I felt the pain transfer through the bond we had forged as he let the wires stab through him.
"-well, I won't." I finished for him.
I couldn't summon any Degausser objects or waves at that point in time, so I had to out maneuver the wires by myself. It wasn't that hard...I dodged by running in a wavy motion and running around trees as I passed them. The wires missed me; they either stabbed into the ground or got tangled up in the trees. With the wires taken care of, I tried running to help Luca's father.
"They can fire everything they've got-"
He grabbed onto the wires sticking into his body, and pulled on them, pulling the monster at the end of them into range. He readied his shotgun...
"and when you think I'm sunk-"
I swear I saw his flannel jacket before some wires surprised me and tripped me to the floor. The wires almost speared me in the gut, but I was able to deflect them with a bit of Degaussing energy. Not much; I was still spent, but enough to stop and divert their paths. I got back up and tried running again...
"-I will float on, ...and on!!!"
He shot directly into Grey's face. It blasted Grey back, toppling him almost like a tower. Grey fell to the ground, with a grin. He laughed, which angered Luca's dad. Pieces of the porcelain mask sprayed out all over the grass; there was no blood though. No face under that mask.
"I have burned the bush that covered my light!!"
I sensed the bond between us breaking. It felt almost as if he was being dragged away from the connection. He felt so far away. Grey wanted us separated.
"Even though I'm scared I won't burn that bright...."
He threw his gun down. The idiot didn't want to bother reloading, so he just threw his gun down. He took out a knife he had packed along with the gun, and tackled into Grey. Grey giggled as if tickled when he was stabbed. He even moved around like it just tickled him.
If there was no human body, how was he stabbing into anything solid?
"But you won't know!!"
Grey pushed Luca's father off.
"You won't know..."
I began to realize what was starting to happen. And I also realized that I had ran past the same damn tree at least ten times by that point.
"You won't know!!!"
Grey laughed and laughed and laughed. Luca's father ignored the taunts, and tried stabbing again. Grey slapped Luca's father, with a force that sent him flying. And then...he brandished some type of weapon that us humans could not recognize with our sight. It was like a knife...but not...
"You won't know...!!"
I screamed out in pain...I could feel Grey. He was about to do something; the most painful thing anyone could ever experience. A pain that hurt worse than losing your own daughter in a crash, even.
Or at least, a pain that rivaled that.
He ran at Grey, attempting to slice him with the knife again; he was absorbed in his rage. The bond we had shared was almost completely gone by that point; I could only watch from within him. Grey side stepped out of the way and kicked him across the clearing, and into the side of a tree.
And then Grey began to speak.
And then he slashed the thing across Luca's father, and a scream almost inhuman echoed out of the clearing.We're never gonna feel as full as we felt,so let's go outside, and we'll play "William Tell".
Take your time drawing your bead; I'll stand as still as you need.'Cause you're so good at talking smack, you heart attack;
But you're the apple of my eye anyway...!!
My smiling face..
That's on my head...
That's on your silver plate.
Grey closed in and...did something. I don't know what. Something...something I don't think I could ever comprehend. I know it was something so painful, that it completely forced out and demolished every single little trace of the bond from Degausser.
I ran as fast as I could. Whatever spell that was forcing me to restart from that tree had quit, and now I was making actual headway towards the clearing. I was almost there when I was stopped again, by the other monster I had seen; the separate entity. "The Devil."
He tried slamming into me, but I jumped to the side. I saw the mask that The Devil had on, and just...couldn't recognize it. It was just a complete blur to my mind. And a power pulsated from that creature...indescribable. It completely broke Sowing Season....and I was scared. Fuck, I was scared.
But not defenseless. I turned all of my anger into one final wave, and shot it at the monster. Then, I used the gun to shoot into the monster's chest. I began running again, to help Luca's father.
I probably should have stayed and attempted to finish the job. Oh well.
The forest shrunk back. The trees retreated, and the clearing became a field. A recognizable field. Three trees were near us. We were in the field where the old I.C. Norcom High School had been. Which was really fucking strange, because the three trees next to us were the only trees in the entire field.
We were in a busy fucking section too. No one had noticed us fighting these mons-
Grey and his partner in crime were nowhere to be seen.
Luca's father laid there. Blood trickled out of the side of his mouth. He saw me, but also didn't see me. He could hardly comprehend anything, I think. I grabbed his hand, and then the sight of me finally clicked in his head. He looked at me again, with certainty. The blood leaked into his beard.
And then, his famous last words. I speak along with him, trying to comfort him.
"So they say, they say in heaven there's no husbands and wives..."
"On the day that I show up, they'll be completely out, of their forgiveness supplies."
Tears well up in his eyes, and in mine as well.
"And I can't use the telephone ...to tell you that I'm dead and gone...."
Our voices choke up while speaking, and the tears accelerate.
"So you won't know..."
He repeats this as I am sitting here, typing away into the computer. I am not in the field anymore. I had to leave his body there. I could not carry it.
You won't know.
I don't know what I
Yeah, you won't know.
I don't know what we're going to do. Grey's too strong.
Yeah, you won't know.
Fuck, there's a noise at the front door. Seems like someone's here.
Yeah, you won't know.
By the sound of their shoes, and how many...police...
Yeah, you won't know.
Coming up the stairs.
Yeah, you won't know.
I might as well go. I need to atone for this sin I've created.
I'm sorry, Katelyn.
Yeah, you wo
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