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Veritas Vastitas

[Work in Progress]

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    The street was cold, it always was since the disaster. Grains of sand flutter shortly above the roads, it always was, but there has been more recently, too much to even drive, but there were still plenty of people who would walk through it, but not here, not this close to the edge of the town.

Chorus was walking along the side of the road, the sand rubbing against his pant legs as he walked, but they barely did much to help shield from the rough grit surging around. And as Chorus walked along the desolate path, he reached down, touching the sand at his ankle level. As his hand came close, all the surrounding sand dispersed, almost creating a pool of air around his legs, preventing any sand from rushing in and around him again. But the whole time, he never stops talking, to whom it is not known as the street is still empty, all except for him.

Eventually, Chorus came up on the edge of town, a giant wall of rushing sand, blocking all passage through, both in and out. The official reason for the wall is a natural disaster, but even with all the civilians agreeing and not knowing more, all see it that way. But he doesn’t, he thinks it is something more. No, he knows there is something else behind it. After all, he already knows that something is wrong with the weather, how could it be cold like this in a desert? Why are there clear sensory and auditory illusions?

He reaches out and touches the rampart of sand with his right hand. The sand wraps around his arm, not solid, but still there, still pushing against him and the hole he pushed open, tearing at his skin and ripping some away, leaving a small gash, already bleeding. Just as he pulls his hand out, he hears a familiar sound. Metal clanging against the pavement, sand whirling around it.

   Before he even looked and before he even heard it, his left hand was already pointing straight at where the noise came from, holding… something… something covered in pure lightning. Aimed straight at the source of the sound, which he already knows what, and he finds a glaive right to his neck. As he knew, this was what would happen if he tried to cross the sandstorm.

The glaive drew back, but instantly slashed right back in, right where Chorus’ head was. Where it was.

The blade slicing through the air, missing Chorus as he was now to the side of the thing attacked him, moving unperceived by the assailant. Now with his sword, now being revealed from its sheath of lightning, cutting at the hilt of the glaive, and without breaking it, knocked it perfectly from the hand of the attacker.

The attacker, now weaponless, stared at Chorus through a full metal body, or maybe just very thick armor, unperturbed by the loss of its weaponry. It was just staring, the stare that it is most famous or even infamous for, staring straight into Chorus. Around them, Chorus noticed, the environment was starting to warp, the air itself cracking, visibly, audibly, and figuratively.

Chorus lifted his right arm, somehow now being fully reformed with no sign of injury, and grabbed it, the sword disappearing from his hands. He knew what it was, The Arbiter, the government’s greatest asset. He grabbed it by the arm, which it still held outstretched as if its weapon was still in its hands, but it didn’t move. Chorus grabbed it, and grabbed tight, digging the metal shell in on itself as it started to wither under his hand. Chorus let go and shoved it to the ground, leaving a visible mark on the body of the metal, a hand print dissolving into the shell, a mark of the encounter, the air returning to its previous state.

Chorus walked away, the sand returned to rushing around him, now also running around the metal shell on the ground, now completely empty. He held out his left hand, touching the wall of sand, but not letting it envelope him. He changed the angle that his hand was and sliced, the sword back in his hand slashing through the air and sand making a loud swishing noise. The sand barricade now deforming, a large, growing cut forming, created a large area the starts to fall apart before starting to reform, reforming completely to how it was before.

He cut again.

The sand came in, instead of falling and creating another hole, it rushed straight towards him, knocking him down, pouring all over his body before reforming back into the wall. Now with a young man appearing where the lump of metal had been, which had now vanished.

The new man was flipping a coin betwixt his fingers. As Chorus rose, he saw the man, Mono, another government agent. The man threw the coin against the ground, causing the sand the shoot out in a myriad of directions, most hitting Chorus, some other going into the air, hitting a drone causing it to fall, but it only just missed hitting Chorus when the coin also came and rolled right to Chorus’ feet, which he picked up and threw toward Mono, missing, but causing it to hit the sand and making it fall down over Mono, and Chorus bolted past, straight threw the hole that form right before it reformed, leaving Mono behind on the other side.
Chorus walks past the wall of sand, the outside world now around him, nothing anywhere in sight but the sand all around and the city behind, the sandstorm only covering the city, nothing else. Even with leaving the confines of the city, there will be no escape across the desert’s expanse for ordinary people.

 

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