A green light suddenly enveloped Elias, mending his injuries. He expected the process to be painful but it was surprisingly soothing, like holding a wound under hot water.
Meanwhile, Dereshi was being Dereshi.
"I got you now, bastard!" Dereshi smirked as she pinned the rabid vampire down.
It snarled and flung its arms through the air, desperately trying to kill its captor. Unfortunately, Dereshi was far too insane.
Twirling her knife in her right hand, she gave the vampire a final smirk before slicing its head clean off. "See ya, wouldn't wanna be ya!"
"She enjoys killing far too much," Fisch murmured, clicking his teeth as if in disappointment. However, Elias could clearly see he was blushing.
"Keep your guard up," Markus warned.
Elias' hair stood on edge when he heard his voice. It could be a misunderstanding, but that kid more than likely used him as bait.
It was why he was so adamant on Elias joining the crew, despite his clear inexperience.
'Well, sucks to suck asshole,' Elias thought with a smile. 'I've lived through worse.'
"You did good," Markus said simply, casting a single glance at Elias before going off to search for hiding enemies.
'Of course he's gonna hide it,' Elias thought with a shake of his head. That's what he would do himself, anyway.
"Hey!" Fisch exclaimed. "Keep your head still! Your injuries are much more serious than Dereshi's, so please don't move twice as much as she did!! She's bad enough already!"
"Meh, it's fine," Dereshi retorted absentmindedly, using the garden's flowers to clean the blood off her knife. "Move to your heart's content."
The truth was, he didn't even have the energy to move anymore. Elias' best bet was to hope that Fisch finished healing him before more vampires arrived.
It was a strange feeling for him, to suddenly be relying on someone else. Especially when he had just been dealt the shortest end of the stick.
He knew that being in Fisch's debt would come back to bite him, but there wasn't much he could do. The injuries inflicted on him would've killed a normal person on the spot. Even for someone like him, who was enhanced by that coin's special power, his injuries would take a lot of healing to recover from.
All he could do now was accept Fisch's help and then deal with the consequences. Therefore, he forced his mind to ease and within seconds passed out.
...
Elias awoke to the sight of complete carnage.
Thousands of different races laid before his feet, each and every one of them completely slaughtered. At first he thought this was the aftermath of some war.
There wasn't a single survivor, and all that accompanied the dead were their weapons. Even the environment was entirely destroyed, as only scorched trees and parched ground remained.
As far as the eye could see, mountains of corpses adorned the land. The sight was so gruesome that it couldn't be the result of a war, but rather an extinction level massacre.
Off in the distance, the bodies were stacked so high that they blocked his view of the sunset.
'What happened here?' Elias wondered. 'What could cause this much destruction?'
"Sliež..." A woman's voice whispered behind him, almost like the call of a siren.
Clutching his coin in his right hand, Elias swiftly turned around to face her.
What he saw didn't look like somebody capable of this massacre.
She was small in every area except one. Her neatly kept, raven black hair swept over her left shoulder and draped over a nearly naked nipple. If it wasn't for a few perfectly placed gold chains, Elias would have had a front row seat to heaven.
As Elias looked at her, he couldn't help but be reminded about the heroines in ancient myths. The ones like Helen of Troy, who were worthy of starting wars over.
Even the earth itself seemed to agree, as flowers bloomed everywhere she moved. Within seconds, their little garden stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the dead.
"Sliež..." The woman called again, her lavender eyes gazing into his. Her stride was so graceful that she almost looked like she was floating.
Within seconds she was so close that he could feel her breath. Now that they were closer, Elias could see what looked like galaxies, no, universes in her eyes.
Yet he could also tell that she was hesitant to continue any further.
Lowering her head, the woman brushed her right hand over his chest, as if she needed it for support. Then, with a soft whisper, she asked, "Sliež... do you remember this battle?"
"No." Elias said simply.
He wasn't surprised that this was a vision, or that this massacre had actually occurred sometime in the past. For him, the situation was obvious from the beginning.
All he wanted to know was what it had to do with him.
Therefore, he added, "What is this place?"
For a second she was completely silent. Then, with a shaky breath, she said, "I see then."
Taking a deep breath, the woman offered a small smile and said, "it doesn't matter now." Then she waved her hand and the scenery suddenly completely changed.
'What's this?' Elias wondered as he analyzed his new surroundings.
He was in a dark yet expansive hall.
Looking at the walls, he saw innumerable pillars, each adorned with a sconce that hadn't held a torch for quite a while. Past the pillars were a wide array of useless windows.
With no light coming into or out of the hall, there was no way to see out of them. It was a miracle Elias could even see anything.
'Or it's fate,' Elias thought as he clutched his coin.
Then his gaze fell to the center of the room, where a massive throne towered over everything else. Somehow, it seemed to reach even higher than the ceilings.
"Do you remember this place, Sliež?"
The woman's voice called from his side. Yet this time it wasn't a whisper, it was more like a shout that reverberated throughout the entire room, making him feel the words all the way to his bones.
"Who's Sliež?" Elias asked, completely unbothered by the shift in her voice.
The woman glanced at him for a second, pain evident in her eyes.
Then, lowering her head to the ground, she said, "Everything happened as you said it would, then."
"What do you mean?" Elias asked, wondering what she was talking about.
As far as he was aware, he had never met or even heard of her. If he had, Elias knew it would've been impossible to forget her assets.
But thinking about it more, he realized that there was alot about his life that he didn't know. For the longest time his coin was nothing more than a trinket, a cherished final gift from his dad. Yet today it saved his life.
'So pops was a part of this world...' Elias thought as his fist began shaking.
'Was mom part of it too, then?' Images that he spent years trying to forget suddenly started pouring into his mind.
Memories of a long gone era, when his family laughed as they shared stories during dinner. When his sister would be congratulated for an A. When his father had to act like he scolded Elias after he beat up one of his sister's bullies.
Elias's fist nearly crushed his coin as he pushed the images away, before his memories of their death came back.
His face cold, Elias placed his right hand under the woman's chin and forced her to look at him.
Ignoring the abyss forming in her eyes reflecting his own, Elias demanded, "Answer me. Who's Sliež? What is this place, and why do you think you know me?"
"Just give me a moment," she whispered, offering an empty smile in return. "Sliež, I'll tell you all I can. It isn't safe for me to explain everything, not until I know your strength. But at the very least, I can explain your powers and role as the Darkest Constellation."