“Experiencing nihility is,” Cyn grasped a breath with her teeth, “like running. Why do you suppose, Oh the one who walks?” Her mind grasping at the quotes she had learned from the books of followers of The One who Walked, all so she could subdue the pain of being pierced. “Perceiving is a privilege that steadies us, when this is taken or hindered we are closer to nothingness than existence.” As she ran, she did not stumble on the rubble that her feet hit.

  Cyn used those momentary falls believing they were there by The One who Walked.

  Her mind kept rewinding and rolling the memories of the last two hours. Of how the world’s colours does not matter when the world is besieged by a war it had no idea it had become the part of. What really got her attention no matter the number of punctured holes in her body, was of the promise she gave to the girl she rescued. Or was it Cyn that was rescued when she chose to be the girl’s savior?

  She hit ground. “AHHH!”

  Clutching her right shoulder, she did not stay down to look at it. Cyn got up and ran again. No sword or weapon in her hand or anywhere on her body.

  She recollected the face of the girl when Cyn tossed the broken sword to her. How the girl’s hands trembled holding on a sword that was nearly all hilt and little remaining piece of a sword.

  And the promise she said, “I’ll meet you again at my home! Just get there…and..and don’t be forget to plunge the sword first then ask!” Cyn knew she had told where her home was, but whether the girl remembered it she was not sure on that. The girl nodded from afar.

  Cyn began the run of her life. She was now the prey to the very caestre that had loomed over them as the peak of doom counting down to the avalanche of devastation. Not just a prey but a lure. A lure to make way for the girl to escape.

  But why did Cyn choose this? Why risk her life? She did not know it yet, she only believed she will find the reason when she finds her parents for her siblings.

  So Cyn ran. The caestre, a looming worm of worms, dragged after her homing on the little human running in this newly black and white world born of war.

  She ran and it followed. Drag path replaced the streets she went through as the caestre trailed after her. Cyn’s legs weren’t aching, not yet at least, but it did after ten minutes of sprinting and huffing. “I-I can’t keep this on-!”

  A worm shell slashed by her left forearm. “AHHH!” She glanced back. The caestre was already charging many more shells. Cyn didn’t even have time to guess, she just fell down and prayed.

  Lying down she redid the same thing she originally did to get the caestre’s attention. Cyn chucked a rock at it.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  It hit a pore on the caestre’s mouth. The shell within rather than slithering out with precision hit inside the maw. There literally was no damage to itself.

  But the rock wasn’t thrown to hurt it, only to give Cyn the time to stand and run away again. She took a turn.

  The caestre followed after. Another worm shell scraped her right upper arm, this one deeper. She did not look back. ‘What could looking back give me?’ Thus, she sprinted.

  The worm of worms caestre slithered dragging a drag path anew in the street.

  Its coat itself reflected the world. And what constituted it? Many, many worms of colourless nature. Even they lost the colourlessness when they came together becoming a colour of their own not caught by the light but by the mind when someone stares at it for long.

  Cyn saved from it all not because she ran away. No, not because she had a promise to keep. She did not suffocate under the strangeness of colour because it was her.

  “A child under war, pebbled by it, molded by it, trampled under it. They are not immune, they are the war itself personified for it’s not the soldiers who see the war truly, nor do a victim sees it. A war is seen only through innocence shelled upon by corruption.” Lord of the World wondered as he witnesses the war of Sevenren and its participants. “Quite the quote you wrote The One who Walked.” A knowing smile spread over.

  Cyn huffed having just turned another corner. Her body had over a dozen punctures in it. Not fatal.

  But the ones she had avoided? She only turned to glimpse to see the distance between the caestre and herself, what she found was the devastation that preceded the caestre worm of worms.

  Craters stood for mere moments before all of them caved in as the caestre came closer. Cyn could not tell how the caestre was falling her, she needed it to. But she also needed that she knew the how just so she could plan how to get away from it.

  “Oi! Here’s another!” Cyn heard someone shout from behind her.

  She had not travelled the continent, yet she knew she had once heard the said accent. Being between deaths of different kinds, she chose to duck towards the ones she could substitute as a replacement of hers.

  The dilapidated building behind her warped into pieces then burned and rained down. Cyn crawled the best she could towards them under a rain she had no chance of surviving.

  Unless…

  A different barrage of shells smacked through the falling rain of fire and molten liquids splashing it away at the tens of terrorists she was found by. There was no physical distinction of where what was when the caestre came.

  Cyn ran in between the soldiers. Only catching a glimpse of a motif on their arms. Three soldiers extended their arms to grab on her with their rifles about to shoot her in the head and torso. The caestre did not care.

  It shelled them.

  Cyn became the lone survivor who was standing…barely. Others were down on the ground grabbing the stumps filled with shells of worms eating away, and dead before their first scream could even form. She too had a worm eating her tissue on the right shoulder.

  Cyn grabbed its tail end and ripped it off, she could not tell whether she screamed or not. The worm did not come off without ripping a chip off her shoulder bone. Her right arm felt loose but minimally. And she began running again.

  “How long have I been running?” Cyn’s pondering did not enact a thought it simply illustrated what she barely remembered from a biography, ‘How could a survivor know of time when the only thing it had the option to do was survive.’

  ‘Please be there, Mom, Dad, and you, the one I saved.’

  Stomping on a soldier’s face from the nation of Thrysco. She ran in the direction they came from.

  “If this thing can kill them, then let’s get it more.” Each word needed a breath from her. Cyn did not let the caestre leave her, so hit it back with its own worm.