The Man kept his staff lowered at the back of The Husk's head, prepared to unleash his most destructive spell the instant the creature moved. He could tell someone was some distance behind him, and he was ready to let his attack loose if they moved to intervene, but they remained an observer for one reason or another.

"Now, Boy-"

"Don't act familiar with me." The Man interrupted The Husk's rasping words with an angered snarl.

"Very well." The Husk rasped out. "I can tell what spell you have pointed at me—The Irrevocable Eradication Behind a Desperate God, an interesting spell. I may finally die if you used that on me, but doing so would certainly kill you. Now I know I didn't write that spell down anywhere, so I want to know," The Husk stopped speaking for a moment before continuing, its voice no longer restrained to the physical location of its body. "How you know it?"

The Man didn't waver at the sudden shift in the position of The Husk's voice, nor did he let his eyes wander away from the creature in front of him. "It was in the margin of a book." The Man said coldly.

"Ohh? That explains everything." With this comment, The Husk's voice returned to its body. "You clever fool." The Husk rasped so quietly The Man wasn't sure he'd even heard anything.

"You still haven't answered me." The Man hissed. "How many people have you brought here to die?"

The Husk took some time to respond, its unmoving body still faced toward the tower. When it did speak, it was not what The Man expected to hear.

"I'll give you a choice, Boy," The Husk rasped out.

"A CHOI-" The Man attempted to yell.

"You can choose between two scenarios," THe Husk stood utterly still while speaking. Still, it's voice once again shifted to encompass the entire area around The Man. "You can lower your weapon, and we go inside and talk about what you found, or," The mountain air stoped with the pause in THe Husk's sentence, and a feeling of immense pressure swept out from The Husk's body. "You can attempt to unleash that spell of yours." The Man's blood felt as if it had begun to freeze in his veins, a fear worse than he'd ever felt having seeded itself deep in his mind. "I guarantee that if you do," a feeling of helplessness joined the fear. A pure feeling of being unable to act when one needed to, a bitter feeling filled with regret and hatred at something The Man couldn't recognize. "you will wake up inside, and we'll have a much less pleasant talk than anyone would like."

The mountain air felt like a wall of stone against The Man's skin. His raised arm so heavy that it'd snap if he moved. The previous times The Man had dealt with the aura of fear produced by The Husk; his body and mind had screamed for him to run; now, everything remained silent. His own heart stilled to avoid becoming a direct target of the anger laced fear. His lungs felt like they'd been filled with solid chunks of ice, His skin on the verge of breaking into goosebumps, but unable to because of the pressure exerted by The Husk. The Man couldn't think; he couldn't comprehend the drastic difference between his strongest memory of The Husk and this moment; the discrepancy was reacting with his anger and the aura of fear to twist his memories of THe Husk into something much darker.

The time The Husk first appeared, twisting from a conversation across the fire to The Husk bearing down over The Boys prone body. The Second meeting no longer beside the well, but deep inside of it, THe Husk having dragged The Boy inside. And the worst of them was the third meeting. The memory warped and twisted to create an image far worse than anything The Man could imagine on his own. The black ichor from The Husk's wounds no longer gathering on the ground but reaching out into the air like a living thing. The bent limb now wholly separated from the body, grasping at THe Boy's neck, attempting to drag him towards the open face of The Husk. That face, once an empty maul of darkness eating at the space around it, was now an abyss filled with images of war, desolation, and destruction the likes The Man had never seen. The souls of those lost to those unseen wars, attempting to consume all that came close to them.

In response to this overwhelming feeling of terror and it's memory twisting effect, The Man slowly released his control on the tightly woven spell formation, letting it dissipate into the world's natural flow.

Faster than it had arrived, the pressure on The Man's mind vanished without a trace. The only indication anything had occurred being The Man's memory of the mind-warping effects of it. But, now, The Man was no longer able to recall how his mind or memories warped, only that they had. The Man looked down at his hand, and despite a part of his brain telling him he should be shaking uncontrollably in response to what had just occurred, they sat completely still. As if his body was unaware of what his mind had experienced.

When The Man looked up again, The Husk was gone, replaced instead by a young woman he did not recognize. Her appearance wasn't anything extraordinary, brown hair, brown eyes, and a face that was average enough to be forgettable.

Her attire was a completely different story.

She had strapped a weapon of some kind to any relevant part of her body, each accessible without hindering her movement. The Man could see a weapon from every category he could think of, and many he couldn't imagine, and something told The Man she was capable of using each one of them at a level above anything he'd ever seen before.

"Hello, I was told to introduce myself before going inside." The Woman said curtly. "My names Sarah, I've introduced myself." With the very abrupt introduction, The Woman quickly turned toward the tower, clearly intending to head inside.

"Wait!" The Man called out to The Woman, stopping her. "Why didn't you well, do anything? I could tell you were watching us, but you just stood there." The Man questioned.

The Woman did not turn to look at The Man, but she did appear to debate answering the question for a moment before saying anything. "I was told not to interfere. That whatever happened, I was only to concern myself with my own safety." With this short explanation, The Woman proceeded toward the tower door, leaving The Man standing barely within the grass's circle surrounding the tower.