Chapter 66: The City in Ashes
An intense smell of burnt ash hit his face.
It was a deep, heavy and unmistakable aroma. Even submerged in unconsciousness he managed to recognize it.
Gabriel slowly opened his eyes.
For a fraction of a second he remained motionless. Then he jumped to his feet.
His daggers rested immediately in his hands. Feeling their familiar touch, like the only security in the world.
His breathing was stable, but his eyes scanned the surroundings with alertness. He instantly noticed the inconsistencies.
His mind did not recognize what place this was, nor how he had arrived there.
Ash fell from the sky like gray rain, slowly covering the destroyed streets. A veil of fog with a smell of sulfur.
Stone buildings remained collapsed.
Wooden constructions continued burning with deep orange tones. The heat was unbearable.
In the streets there were different tools, like hoes and fallen knives, but there was no corpse or charred body.
There was a tension in the air typical of heat.
For an instant, he thought about what kind of punishment the city had suffered. It seemed like the judgment of an unjust god, who arbitrarily burned a city.
He quickly distinguished a few meters away a silhouette that remained completely motionless and unconscious.
His body reacted before his mind. His steps were silent, walking carefully through the rubble.
The figure remained unconscious.
With her characteristic dark hair and feminine silhouette, it was Bella.
Even so, after his previous experience, he did not allow himself to fall into the same error.
The false woman in his illusion smiled and acted like her.
He placed himself behind her and slowly pressed the cold edge of his dagger against her throat.
At the touch, a shiver ran down her back. She opened her eyes slowly, still unconscious of what was happening.
Her breathing quickened.
Before she could speak, Gabriel asked a single question.
"What is my name?"
Bella opened her mouth more than once, not knowing how to formulate her question while maintaining elegance.
"What the hell are you doing with your damn dagger on my neck, you pale bastard?"
After remaining motionless for a few seconds, he finally slowly withdrew the edge.
That response was exactly what he expected.
He extended a hand.
"Up."
Bella accepted the help while observing him with evident confusion.
"Can you tell me what the hell that was?"
He did not bother to answer and simply pointed to the destroyed city.
Bella, despite her evident confusion, her vision was guided until she understood the destruction that surrounded them.
Her face regained some of its paleness.
Before them stretched an ocean of ruins. There was no construction that remained intact before the chaos.
The ash traveled pushed by a hot wind.
The silence was unbearably heavy.
"We are together in a city in flames. Don’t ask stupid questions."
Bella opened her mouth to protest, but ended up closing it. She recognized that it was not the right moment.
Looking around more carefully again, she asked:
"What are we doing here?"
Gabriel adopted a thoughtful expression.
"I suspect this is part of the final scenario."
He looked at the eternally gray sky.
"We fell into an illusion."
Bella smiled sadly.
"Then... we failed the test..."
"Was there a test?" he asked immediately.
At his inquisitive question, she tried to avoid looking at him directly.
"I didn’t mention it because the less you know... the greater the probabilities of overcoming it."
Her voice sounded guilty.
"Sorry."
He massaged his temples. Her voice carried the finest guilt and regret. He managed to understand it.
Probably in her innocence she really believed in it as an absolute truth.
He finally ended up shaking his head.
"That no longer matters. Right now... this does matter." He said contemplating the destroyed city.
But while he spoke he noticed something really strange, incongruent with his previous experiences. Bella’s wounds had disappeared.
On her body there were no cuts or recent scars. Her right arm had fully recovered its mobility. She looked as strong as ever.
He quickly examined himself.
His clothes were still torn, but without the wounds that had caused him so much pain. The bites on his back and limbs had disappeared, with the ugly scratches being part of the past.
Magically he had fully recovered. It was divine and unnatural.
His observation lasted barely a few seconds, when a bestial and unintelligible roar crossed the city like a tempestuous lightning.
The wooden frames trembled subtly, announcing the entry of something dangerous.
The flames seemed to agitate, maddened and fed by the purest chaos.
He felt it vibrate through his chest.
"This... is the perfect scenario for the final fight," commented Bella in a whisper.
Gabriel did not make the effort to respond, beginning to run immediately.
He did not look back, nor shout his intentions. He simply ran.
In his mind he tried to memorize every street, collapsed building, elevated points and every narrowing that he could take advantage of.
Against an incomprehensible enemy, any advantage was absolutely necessary. Understanding the terrain before fighting was the minimum knowledge he could have.
Bella quickly understood his intention. She began to observe her surroundings.
But her capacity for analysis was far from Gabriel’s.
He seemed to build a complete map inside his head.
The city resembled an ancient medieval kingdom. With large walls, cobblestone streets, destroyed towers and fallen stone bridges.
It was the setting of a prosperous medieval city that had grown anchored to tradition and ancient legends.
His investigation quickly concluded at a vital and terrifying point.
There were no corpses, soldiers or civilians.
There was not even the presence of animals in the huge city.
As if all forms of life had disappeared at the same time. Only they remained, anchored to that time.
Finally he asked, breaking the silence that had extended after the roar:
"What are Tyrants really like? If I encounter one, I hope not to confuse it..."
"I have never seen one," said Bella, doubting which words to choose.
"You must know something!"
She nodded.
"They are supposed to be tall, very muscular and have an extremely vicious behavior."
Gabriel sighed, with anxiety practically consuming him. That description was too poor.
It was not enough to imagine a creature capable of terrifying. But then something happened that would break his expectations.
A stone wall exploded, with thousands of fragments flying in all directions.
From the huge hole emerged a gigantic figure.
Its height was approximately three meters, with a metallic body covered by a dark purple skin.
The muscles seemed sculpted on millennial stones.
It had no clothes, but it also had no distinguishable sexual features. It only had an anatomy designed for destruction.
Its back arched, roaring primitively.
And without any warning...
It began to run toward them. It adopted the posture of an animal, running with its four limbs.
Each support partially destroyed the pavement.
For the first time, a shiver ran down his back. It was going to hurt.
Then he shouted.
"More human? This bastard came out of a zoo!" he said, gripping both daggers tightly.
Bella reacted immediately.
"The light! They are weak against light!"
Gabriel was already running.
He could not allow Bella to receive the initial impact. He deviated several meters, immediately drawing the monster’s attention.
The beast changed direction, achieving exactly what he wanted.
"Here, damn beast."
The Tyrant responded by accelerating even more. With the distance disappearing almost instantly.
Gabriel managed to see the palm approaching.
He tried to dodge it, but the superiority was too marked.
The blow hit him squarely on the chest.
He felt as if a war chariot had collided with him. He was sent flying, crossing an abandoned cart.
Then he bounced several times on the pavement.
His lungs emptied violently, coughing hard. He rolled until he stopped against a partially collapsed wall.
Everything was spinning. The pain impregnated his senses.
"Shit..."
He stood up immediately. He had survived worse things before.
The Tyrant was already walking toward him. It was arrogant and without any hurry.
As if it instinctively knew that its prey could not escape. The daggers had never left his hands.
He tried to recover the rhythm of his breathing. Stabilizing himself.
The different values in his mind immediately began to change. That monster was not a mutant or a pseudo-tyrant.
It was a creature that belonged to an independent category.
His body was fragile against repeated blows. So he could not suffer a battle of endurance.
A single blow and the rhythm of the fight would tilt in favor of the monster.
He flexed his legs slightly.
"Speed and intelligence."
He ran again.
The Tyrant roared at the audacity of its food.
Its huge arm descended like a guillotine, but he managed to perform a feint. He disappeared to the left.
The monster immediately corrected the movement, demonstrating a dexterity far more agile for a creature of its dimensions.
Gabriel used the inertia, spinning completely on himself. His body passed brushing the huge torso.
A dagger drew a silver arc. The blade managed to cut the monster’s cheek.
A small thread of blood escaped from the wound. It was a dark navy blue— Much thicker than human blood.
Gabriel landed several meters behind, observing that blood adhered to his dagger.
He felt something strange.
As if within that substance there existed a wild force. And extremely heretical.
But what he saw surprised him.
The tyrant slowly raised its huge hand. It touched the small wound on its face, contemplating its blood.
Then it fixed its eyes on Gabriel again.
Its expression changed.
The muscles of its jaw began to contract.
Its face slowly deformed, with anger replacing any trace of inflexibility.
The roar it released this time was much stronger. The beast struck the ground, with the pavement cracking imposingly before its enormous strength.
Bella, observing everything, understood the danger.
"Don’t let it corner you!"
Gabriel had already started moving again.
A tyrant maddened by a feverish fury would probably become his greatest challenge.