The face of a hero. Something fairy tales across the land spread with a one-sided sheen relative to the true world view. The face of a hero, the face most desirable when facing adversities that far surpass your own in blinding hope that by the end of it, you'll come out alive. Who's to blame them. A lot of heroes have come and lived through the years and have faced their adversities with the same look on their faces. From Saints to heavenly beings such as the Valkyrie the face of a hero is valiantly portrayed and is the most obvious thing to be seen.
But there is one thing that the stories fail to tell… fairytales are usually biased to happy endings.
This is a thought that he had kept true in his heart mind and soul ever since the day he decided to wield his blade. To deliver the true ending to people's stories.
So, as he stood watching the boy rise with his sister in his hands, he couldn't help but feel some sought of relief. It was faint but it was still there. Lots of time his opponents lost hope due to deep and dire devastation of his power and in the end wouldn't receive their true ending. But the look in the boy staggering up a few steps away from him almost made him smile.
His blade hummed. He tossed a glance to it.
Before he knew it, he sensed a presence in the mud circling below his shoes. His reaction came in too late as strands of mud shot up, all spiraling around him and as they settled on his clothes solidified within the instant of contact. The strands came together tightly swirling and forming knots into an earth layered mud tree. The outside of the mud tree looked like a self-replenishing landslide with waves of mud slowly making their way down to the ground then circling back up. Inside was rock had restricting any movement to it victim. In this case the saint.
'A binding, huh?' He thought.
His eyes swayed to the boy who was now actively running away from him. His steps were light even though he was carrying a load in his arms.
"So, he's decided to run away." He said as Lozo picked up his pace into a corner. As Lozo took the corner, the saint noticed something drop from his eyes. It was crystalline and fluid. He couldn't tell what it was—a glint of water, clear and fluid, escaping the corner of the boy's eye. A single, useless tear, he realized, quickly dismissing the pathetic sight.
"Joyeuse." He called onto his blade, which flew from his restricted arms before striking the mud tree creation.
The blade rattled and shook as it came into contact with the hard mud surface. It shifted back from the force, barely making a dent into the mud tree.
"Jumbo!" He called.
"I know you're there, get up and come and break this binding." He said, scornful and annoyed.
A little farther to the back, Jumbo showed up panting. He was sweating profusely with the cloth under his arm pit drenched to a point of dripping. His clothes were covered in red with some punctures into his skin, marks from the earlier attack by Lozo. His eyes screamed red rage as he looked around. He was searching for someone. Someone small but had managed to restrict his movements the entire time.
"Where is he?" he beckoned for an answer. His nose steamed like a bull ready to charge on its fighter.
"Where is he!" he asked. His narrowed eyes gazed around and finally rested onto the mud tree, restricting his fellow saint.
"There!" he screamed as he shot towards the mud tree at full throttle. The impact, vast in raw power, shattered the tree and sent the man bound in it crushing into one of the buildings that were still smoldering.
As he got up from the debris of the building, only one thing rang in his mind.
"What a boor!"
***
His condition wasn't favorable for his current predicament. The wound on his gut had now painted a waterfall of red on his skin and white attire. It slit through his abs, stinging with every twist. His eyes had grown pale, looking like a dark pupil floating in nothing but white matter. His vision had blurred evident enough by all the collisions with house debris as he dashed onwards. His body ached brain to toes as he ran towards a possible safer reality.
'I need to get to the east well. 'He thought as he dodged a falling pile of wood.
'Please be there… old man Ji.'
The Orphanage was shattered beyond recognition. Formerly it was carefully structured such that all the streets would wind up leading to one of the four main paths to the central building, the place he was currently running from. This was for easy navigation, especially since more half of the population that inhabited the orphanage was children. The children each lived in one of the two-story buildings that circled the central building or by its assigned name the Common House.
Currently all that remained of this was just dark pieces of smoking wood and thatch in one half of the orphanage and a muddy pool of water with floating debris in the other side. The streets themselves had been merged into one big path of rising smoke.
Lozo coughed as he trekked across the obscured path. His belly stung with every flex of his diaphragm. He was merely navigating through the paths with his internal compass; vision slowly being removed as an option of navigation.
'Faster… Faster…' he thought. The east well was a few more paces away. It was one of the five wells that existed in the orphanage, the central one he had crashed into included. The five wells had existed in the orphanage for as long as he could remember. Some even of the care takers even said that they existed even before the building of the Orphanage itself. But history to children is boring and they never went into details about it.
The east well was the nearest one to the stream that flowed by the sycamore tree. It was always filled with water no matter how much was drawn for it. It was that and the fact that it was close to the sycamore that the children always wanted to fetch water there.
Back then the well, the sycamore and the stream were a sign of play and recreation. Now, to Lozo, it was currently the only path to escaping their harsh reality and fated death by the maniacs who saw themselves as saints… and unluckily one of them waited for them just ahead.
In a dark setting, dimly lit by the moon, smoke isn't the best thing to have floating around. The night is already dark as it is and having another factor dim down the lights doesn't really help one's case. Especially if a demon lies on the other side of that smoke.