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Audra

Audra welcomed the dreamless rest she had gotten and was looking for more until she felt her body begin to shake. She found herself underneath the ceiling of the tent she looked over at the terror on Vasuki’s face. His finger was up to his lips, warning her to stay quiet she gave him a confused look before she heard it. Three taps, they were quick and sounded as if something sharp was hitting wood, the smell of decay was strong. Audra quickly got up to a crouched position, pain crawling it’s way up her right side, the sound of the creature shuffling from outside was irregular; every other step took a bit longer to land. She grabbed the sword that had been laying next to her and slowly unhooked the safety on the scabbard, doing her best to ignore the ache in her ribs.

Audra and Vasuki slowly made their way out of the tent to behold the creature, it wasn’t too close but even from a distance she could feel bile building up from her stomach. The, seemingly malnourished, demon was humanoid in shape, but was far from human-like. It’s hairless skin was burnt and busted, showing gray muscle underneath. It’s face was shorter than a humans excluding it’s, unhinged, jaw which was filled with countless teeth and swayed back and forth as it looked around with glassy eyes. Where hands should have been was long and chipped steel scythes, scraping against the ground as it moved on two different sized legs, the right of which was nearly twice the length of the left.

The creature reached forward and tapped three times on a nearby tree, chipping the bark, and making the sharp thuds they had heard earlier. Once it stopped tapping it looked their way and let out an unholy ear piercing scream. It ran at them faster than Audra could believe such a thin weak looking creature could. Vasuki and Audra both jumped out of the way as the beast ran past them and rammed head first into a tree behind them. Audra grunted in pain as pain shot through her. She quickly stood up and readied her weapon, despite the pain.

“Is this thing blind?” Vasuki asked, quickly standing and readying himself for the monsters attacks. The demon let out another scream before running at Vasuki, it’s scythes swinging wildly. A spire of ice shot from the ground in front of Vasuki as he jumped to the ground, it cut the ice in half but it seemed to confuse it at least. Audra’s weapon rattled in her hand, she couldn’t move a single muscle, her vision was fading fast, tunnel vision encircling what little she could see until there was nothing.

Strands of orange hair, matted with sweat and dirt, slightly obscured her vision. She leaned against a tree, she was holding her breath. Three sharp taps against wood, she threw the rock in her hand and waited for the shuffling, ran into the open and shoved the point of her longsword up into the roof of it’s mouth. It went limp before she tossed the creature off to the side. “Got the Shallow.” She said, allowing a group of men and women to drop from the trees above, she breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

Audra’s vision came back to her in full clarity as the Shallow tapped three times against the ice. She ignored her ribs and grabbed a branch before slapping the side of a tree with it, then tossed it a few meters away from her. She watched as the Shallow ran at the branch it’s jaw creating a thunderous snap as it bit down on the branch. She ran forward and forced her sword through the back of the creatures skull, it immediately went limp and slid down the blade before falling lifeless on the ground, strands of smoke began to come off of it’s body.

Audra pulled her sword out of the creature and began to back away from it. She looked over at Vasuki and saw that he was just as scared as she was.

“What the fuck was that?” Vasuki asked.

“A demon, I had a vision of it, it’s called a Shallow.” Audra answered, she tried to relax her breathing, she felt like none of this was real.

“Why is there a demon so close to Nevenal...Is this normal?” Vasuki asked himself, standing up.

“Did Cabana pack a demonology book in that bag?” Audra asked.

“No...but there might be something in the journal she gave me.” He said walking to the tent, he was trying his best to hide it but Audra could see that he was shaking uncontrollably.

Audra quickly joined Vasuki as he flipped through the pages in her journal. The writing was neat through almost every page, the ones with monsters always held an illustration of the creature she was writing about. They flipped through a lot of pages until they came to a drawing that held the image of the creature they had just killed.

“This is what it was.” Vasuki said looking up to Audra who responded simply by looking back at him. He then began to read aloud.

“The Shallow. This eerie emancipated execrable emetic-inducing eye-sore is easily the worst thing I’ve ever had the honor laying down to die. I see she still had a sense of humor back then.” Vasuki commented before reading on. “The bitch was blind, so it had to rely on it’s ears to hunt. It would tap something with it’s scythes and it seemed to spot us quickly enough like that. Cut three men in half before it began to eat, the sounds of bones cracking and poop popping between it’s maw was enough to make me sick to my stomach. Moving was the worst thing to do, it only attracted it to us. Almost got myself killed by acting like it was a normal demon. Best course of action is to throw something away from you and kill it when it’s distracted with whatever you threw, don’t throw weapons you’ll just lose them, but it will piss the creature off. Researchers at Trinity have said that if it stays alive long enough, and gets plenty of nutrients, it’s body will become covered in a sack of flesh but it’s arms and legs will stay out allowing for movement, they call it an Apogee Shallow, they told me that it’s going under some kind of metemorphisis, I feel like I spelled that word wrong. Zate said I did but he can go fuck himself. I feel bad for whoever fucks up hard enough to find out what happens when they break through the flesh. Like most demons it begins to fade away as soon as it’s killed. Environment is unknown, and all research on the insides of one has been met with failure as the body begins to decay and vanish at a quickened rate, though killing it seems to be like killing a human, I’d rate it a threat of 4/10 dangerous to all humans but if you know how to kill the damn thing it’s not that much of a problem. But something’s off about them, I’ve been a Royal Knight for 15 years now, yet I’ve never heard of these until just a few months ago, I wonder if they’re new, or if they’re not that great in number? Must look into it further.”

Vasuki closed the journal and looked up at Audra. “So what we just killed almost killed Cabana.” Audra pointed out.

“I don’t know what kind of vision you had but it saved our ass. We weren’t ready for that.” Vasuki claimed.

“It’s my Ascender, I know it is, she keeps sending me these visions that have to do with my situation. They’re quick, like something I just remembered.”

“So she’s giving you her memories?”

She snapped her fingers and pointed. “You might be right.” Audra said as she went over to her bag, again ignoring the ache in her side, and began to ruffle through her belongings. She pulled out the pocket mirror and popped it open. She watched her reflection, there was nothing weird, just her reflection.

“Hey...you awake in there?” She asked. There was no response, she waited a moment before sighing and closing it with a thud. “Guess not.” She sat back down on her side of the tent.

“What’s she like?” Vasuki asked.

“My Ascender?” Audra responded, Vasuki nodded.

“She seems...cold, untrusting and brutally honest. I guess we all need that kind of person in our life though.”

“I agree, mine isn’t so nice either. I’ve...been having these weird dreams lately.” Vasuki pointed out.

“What’s so weird about them?” She asked. He shook his head, as if contemplating how to tell her.

“Tonight, when I was sleeping, I saw my mother. She spoke to me, then her jaw opened up and told me to trust Vistrata, that he will guide me. It was just him trying to get to me.” Audra nodded her head and felt a slight chill.

“You need to calm down, I really don’t want to freeze tonight.” Audra pointed out. “I know it’s hard to lose someone you love, but if you don’t calm down I will freeze and I really don’t want to get sick, especially out here.” Vasuki breathed in and out calmly.

“You’re right, you’re right. This isn’t the time to get all pent up about things. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize for it, you just need to...relax…” Audra trailed off, her vision blurring.

“Hey...are you okay?” Vasuki asked, but his voice was distant and faded mixing together into a single sound.

When Audra’s eyes opened she found herself standing in the lake once again. Shallow water tickling her feet. She found her Ascender still using her reflection to hide. She held a large ball of water in the air, boiling it, inside was a mixture of leaves that she wasn’t sure the origin of.

“Tea?” Her reflection asked.

“Can I have your name first?” Audra asked.

“You seem content to call me ‘My Ascender’ so I think we’ll leave it at that for now.”

“It’s the best way to describe you, since I don’t have a name for you.”

“Make one up then, I don’t really care what you call me but calling me something as if I belong to you is a bit inconsiderate.” Her reflection claimed as water came up from the lake and froze in the shape of a mug for Audra. It was smooth ice, not a single knot or crack, Audra was impressed as she grabbed the cold handle. Tea then flowed from the ball and into her icy mug.

“It cools quick so drink it while it’s still hot.” The woman said.

“You saved me out there.”

“Of course I did, that journal isn’t right, as you saw for yourself. Cabana’s smart and talented and has a lot of world experience but she isn’t all knowing. Shallows are old creatures, they were just nearly extinct during the war of dominion and Runahera hasn’t been able to create more demons as quickly as he used to, the Ancients definitely limited his ability back then.”

“How...old are you?” Audra asked. The War of Dominion was over 300 years ago.

“Old enough to know that Shallows aren’t to be messed with. You’re lucky I have a lot of experience in war.”

“You fought in the war?” Audra raised her eyebrow at her.

“Something like that, you’ll figure it out eventually...I hope.” She said taking a sip of her tea from her icy mug. She copied her action and took a sip of her own tea, it was warm and minty tasting but there was a tinge of sweetness.

“Consider this your forced nap, you may have woke me up but I’ll let you get your beauty rest. Maker knows I’m not the one who needs that here.”

“You’re using my reflection to hide so who are you to say that?!” Audra yelled, offended.

“I’m using your reflection but I don’t look like you, dumbass!”