Arthur's head was turning toward the sound on a swivel, muscles tensing with each degree of rotation. The air felt heavy around him, pressing against his skin like an invisible weight as he struggled to locate the source of the disturbance. But before his gaze could reach whatever made the noise, his eyes widened dramatically, pupils dilating in shock at what unfolded before him.
As he was turning his head, barely one foot from his face, a silver spear surrounded by dancing tendrils of lightning flew past his eyes. The weapon cut through the air with terrifying precision, creating a subtle distortion in the atmosphere around it. The crackling energy that encased the spear cast fleeting shadows across Arthur's face, illuminating his expression of pure astonishment for just a fraction of a second.
Momentarily distracted from whoever had thrown it, Arthur let his eyes trace the spear's trajectory as it sailed through the air. The lightning arcing around the weapon seemed almost alive, pulsing and shifting with each microsecond of its flight. The air visibly warped around the projectile, creating ripples like those on a disturbed pond surface as it tore through space at a remarkable pace.
The silver weapon found its mark, striking the monk squarely in the chest. The impact created a sound that was somewhere between a thunderclap and the snapping of ancient bones. The monk's skeletal body was launched backward with tremendous force, traveling almost thirty feet before crashing unceremoniously to the ground in a heap of bones and fabric.
Arthur stared at the fallen figure, his mind racing with disbelief. 'What the hell!? Is it dead?' The question barely had time to form in his consciousness before receiving its answer.
No, it wasn't. The skeletal monk lying on the ground stirred, its movements jerky yet deliberate. Bony fingers wrapped around the spear that was sticking through its torso, the smooth metal shaft looking alien against the yellowed bone. With a single, fluid motion it pulled the weapon free from its ribcage. Almost immediately after extraction, the spear destabilized, dissolving into a cloud of crackling electricity that dissipated into nothingness.
The monk, seemingly unhindered by what should have been a fatal wound, dragged itself back to its feet with mechanical precision. The empty eye sockets in its skull somehow managed to convey malevolence despite the absence of eyes, and its posture suggested renewed determination.
"Hey, quit standing around, we gotta go before that thing kills us." The voice came from behind, cutting through Arthur's stunned observation.
Arthur snapped his head around so quickly he nearly gave himself whiplash. There, somehow only feet away from him now, stood a boy—one he recognized instantly. The newcomer was the same age as Arthur, actually a year older. He had no shirt on; it was tied behind his back, functioning as some sort of makeshift pack or carrying solution. His chiseled, muscular body spoke of years of physical training, while his confident, eccentric face was framed perfectly by his distinctive spiked blue hair.
Arthur momentarily forgot about his pain as pure shock took over his system. His jaw slackened, and he could barely form the word that escaped his lips: "A-AZIEL!?"
Aziel's eyebrows raised in a sarcastically exaggerated expression as he stepped closer, his bare feet making almost no sound on the ground beneath them. "Yep, that's me, long time no see bud... or I guess not that long but whatever come on we gotta go." The nonchalance in his voice belied the danger of their current situation, as if encountering reanimated skeletal monks was just another Tuesday for him.
Arthur went to say something else, his mouth opening to form words that never came, as he was interrupted when Aziel spontaneously bent down, grabbed him, and hoisted him off the ground in one fluid motion. Arthur found himself draped over Aziel's shoulder like a sack of potatoes, the muscular boy seemingly unbothered by the additional weight.
"H-Hey what the hell are you doing?" Arthur protested, his voice bouncing with each small adjustment Aziel made to his stance.
Aziel grimaced as he stepped in the opposite direction from the encroaching monk, his muscles tensing beneath Arthur's body. "Just chill out... and hold on." There was a warning in those words, a hint of what was to come that Arthur didn't fully comprehend.
Arthur was officially confused. 'What?' The single-word question barely had time to form in his mind before understanding crashed into him with the force of a tidal wave.
That confusion was dispelled almost immediately when Aziel broke out into a sprint that defied all natural laws. Electricity suddenly covered their bodies like a second skin, crackling and dancing across their forms in a display that would have been beautiful if it weren't so terrifying. They were running so fast that Arthur thought his skin was going to peel off from the sheer force of the air rushing past them.
'He's so fast,' Arthur thought, the simple observation all his overwhelmed mind could produce in that moment.
Arthur didn't even have time to think beyond that; he was too busy hanging on for dear life as Aziel blew through the air at top speed. The world around them became nothing but streaks of color and blurred shapes. They left the skeleton monk far behind, quickly exiting the radius of the living roses that had surrounded them and entering back into the field of dead grey ones instead.
The dead flowers rushed past below them in a sea of ashen gray, their withered forms creating a morbid carpet that stretched as far as Arthur could see in his limited field of vision. The wind whipped past his face with such force that he could barely keep his eyes open, and his hair flattened back against his skull from the sheer velocity of their movement.
Arthur didn't have even a second to question anything as they were going too fast, but after nearly five minutes of running—five minutes that felt simultaneously like an eternity and an instant—they finally came to a crashing stop...
Literally.
Arthur flew off Aziel's shoulder as momentum continued to carry him forward while Aziel halted. He tumbled through the air in an ungraceful arc before striking the ground with considerable force. His body rolled thunderously many feet away, kicking up dust and debris as he went, before finally coming to a stop in an undignified heap.