Snippet #2618463

Once the threat of being hit out of nowhere had passed, and Kir had finished peering at the shouting elf who had deigned to stop talking, he returned to his resting position. His arms returned to his sides, his body returned to its hunched posture, and his eyes descended to the back to the ground to observe everyone’s boots, a pair of which joined the elf’s and began speaking. Humor he called it and maybe it was for someone who didn’t flinch at every sound as if it were about to hurt him. And, after he had finished, a woman amongst the crowd added in her own opinion on what to do, leaving. Leaving felt like a good idea. In fact, it was a great idea; there were too many people in the city and they made too much noise. Not to mention that, once outside the city, Kir would have a chance to look upon the great spires and towers and walls once again. But then the gates of the underworld had to fly open and send forth a great atrocity upon the world, or, at the very least, Kir’s world.

Two boots came into Kir’s view from the side, smaller than most and lighter than most. When he understood that they weren’t simply passing by and were actually approaching him, he turned his head up slightly to see more about this person, as well as bringing his arms in front of his lower stomach as his reflexes commanded. Though he was still tense and anxious about who was approaching him and what they might want, he didn’t expect it to be too bad, even through the filter of his unending fear. As the boots grew legs, and the legs grew hips, and more and more grew atop the last bit, though, fate took his expectations of an event that would simply be racked by great unease and dashed them against ground. The moment he saw her hips move and her legs walk the specific way they walked, he might as well have had all horrors of the pestilence dropped on him from the sky. And it only grew worse the further up he saw.

Messy, dirty, yellow hair shaped as if it belonged to someone who had suffered a bully’s knife or simple childlike ineptitude. Skin that has been touched by the sun more than it probably should have. A bony jaw with pronounced cheekbones, as someone who has lived the desert life might have. And blue eyes, those blue eyes, that stared into his. His eyes widened and shifted and stuttered and shook down to the very bones they didn’t have–they were of an animal that knew death and danger came but could not flee.

"You look familiar, I know you."

And she did know him. She probably knew Kir better than anyone else alive at this point. She knew where it would hurt, how it would hurt. How to crush his mind with a look, and how to break his body with more. She knew to get in close and spray the red of others and cover him with it. As a hellbound spirit that should be gone from this world, she probably knew him even more, more than even he did and ever would. Gretchen was the sort of woman, the sort of thing, that would live in his torturous prison in the hells of death. Apparently, she had grown tired of waiting for him and sprung free to hunt him down as he still drew breathe.

When they had last seen each other, he and the other bandits of that particular group were leaving her behind, assumedly buried under some amount of sand and dead to the world. The weapons she wielded and the armor she wore deemed to not be worth sticking around and looking, and Kir appreciated not having to try. She was finally dead then, and he was free from her.

But here she was, looking at him through the necessary and unwanted gap in his headdress, talking to him, recognizing him. Kir had no idea what to do at this point. Should he run? His legs couldn’t hear him over their own attempts at screaming in terror and trying to convince their nonexistent legs to run. Should he attack? His arms weren’t fairing much better than his legs and that was more terrifying than standing still and pretending she couldn't see him. Should he scream and condense himself into a little ball and hope it all goes away? That’s what a smart man would do, but he had problems with his mouth without paralyzing fear staring him in the eyes, not to mention such a thing would require his arms and legs to actually work. So his body, amongst all the anxiety and fear flowing through its veins, managed to come to a compromise: Kir collapsed. His knees buckled, his eyes rolled upwards as the lids came down, and his arms didn’t move to brace his fall. The breathe he had been holding since he understood who it was in front of him (he wasn’t really sure how long it had been) escaped his mangled lips in a sigh as his body crashed to the ground with a thud. Hopefully, Gretchen couldn’t follow him to where he was going.