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06-11-2017, 03:21 PM
Roaring water rings in his ears. It hums a dreadful tune that he wishes would stop, already trying to free himself from the agony of it by rubbing his ears against his lower front legs. Not that it brings him any relief. He'd have to be stupid to believe that, but the idea of it and the act of doing it makes him feel slightly better about making wrong decisions here.
As far as he can see though, the Gods must be laughing at him, chastising him for running from their light for so long and then abruptly deciding to make a return, choosing to pretend that nothing ever happened during the time that he was gone.
What a lie, because Zhu knows something is up, but is not exactly sure what is.
See, it begins with the fact that he knows there are four distinct herdlands in Helovia, each for the Gods: The Hidden Falls for the Earth God, the Aurora Basin for Time, the World's Edge for Moon, and then the Throat, the place he's the most familiar with. If his childhood in the Throat has paid off with the right knowledge, he should be standing in the Hidden Falls now, surrounded by members of the Earth God's herd and being put on the offensive, seeing as being this far into the borders is obviously trespassing.
But there's no one here.
The world is eerily quiet, excluding the ambience that's burning holes in his already weak eardrums. They clot together and make it hard to figure out if there's voices somewhere here, if they're watching him from afar with scared and hushed tones as he stands in a surprisingly cool pool. It makes the skin on his back not fit as it tries to crawl into a panicked sense of fear. Anxiety lingers overhead like a rainstorm, despite the fact that dusk today is awfully clear, the skies painted to match the correct late-day hues.
This place is starting to feel like a ghost town, and it's getting worse second by second.
Something makes a noise where he can't figure it out, gasping as the breath feels rigid in his windpipe and his heart hard and heavy in his chest. That feeling is getting worse. His instincts are yelling for him to LEAVE, but how is he supposed to do that?
With his back to the wall and the encroaching dark finding a quick pace, there's not much he can do other than stand there. His magic has failed him plenty of times in this place, as he's discovered from trial and error.
An itch rises in the back of his throat. He can't reach it. His brain struggles through the fog of paranoia despite it's best efforts. There are things left in him that only dare to make an attempt to come out at the worst of times, say for example, now.
"Where?!" is that thing tonight, bursting through his scared lips as the environment seems to roll in on him, empty and void of all existence. Life seems to have up and left without a second thought, and the idea of a God and his followers abandoning a land entirely terrifies him to the very core.
It catches him off-guard and maybe he's more scared of that than the fact that everyone is gone from here, that the Hidden Falls is empty without a soul to be seen, but his mind works feverishly to remind him that there are worse things in the dark other than himself, especially in places where people once thrived only to disappear in a short amount of time.
