"Rats…"
A scrawny kid spat out a chunk of red meat into the cracked, worm infested pavement.
Tysiff sighed wistfully and lifted his head to gaze upon his surroundings.
Concrete structures long abandoned, trash cans littering the streets like dead dogs, car parts strewn about, and rotting garbage filling the urban environment.
This was his home.
A country that was once called West Timelessland. Only inferior to their neighbor, East Timelessland.
After a nationwide rebellion occurred in the country of West Timelessland due to government corruption for a long time, it led to many people being neglected and left to suffer while the families who held their positions ate, slept and lived affluent.
Because of this, East Timelessland had to intervene and help ease the problem by absorbing the country in a not so friendly way.
The two countries were of the same origin, yet both have different cultures and ways of doing things.
And at that time, disputes over territory and discrimination was at an all time high.
In the end, millions died due to a war, West Timelessland was absorbed completely and both countries combined into New Timelessland.
That all happened ninety years ago, but the westernmost areas of what used to be West Timelessland was still left in ruin.
Tysiff lived in what was known as the Timeless Slums. A lawless dog eat dog world separated from the pristine and well fed society where the citizens of New Timelessland lived.
The reason why this forest of tightly packed buildings was left to rot is because it just isn't worth it to develop or recover anymore. Nothing here is profitable, and the diseases, pests and homeless people that lived in the Timeless Slums just makes any effort to salvage it even harder.
Since that was the case, why even bother?
Also, because no one cares about the slums, it serves as a perfect place to dump loads of garbage.
So what was a kid like Tysiff doing here in such a dangerous and filth ridden place?
Truth be told, he used to live in a province in New Timelessland.
Those were better times...
Tysiff stretched and stood up, threw the half cooked rat with a bite in its stomach away and left.
He grabbed a lighter from his pocket and checked the amount of fluid left from it. Fortunately, it was still half full. Then, he grabbed a rusted, yet still sharp knife from the same pocket and rubbed it on his black, dusty shirt.
A nylon rope was tied around his waist, carrying a metal pipe punctured by several metal nails about three inches in length. This makeshift weapon of his seemed to have seen some brutal encounters due to the dried blood on it.
"I need to find a dog." Tysiff looked down and kicked a piece of wrecked concrete using his rubber slippers.
He remembered very well how excited he was to find this pair of slippers from the dump. It made walking around the slums much easier without fear of getting stabbed by an infected glass shard or a used syringe.
His path was towards the same dumpsite that he found most of his stuff.
Stray dogs usually go there, so if he finds one rummaging through the trash, Tysiff can sneak up on it and bash its head open.
Then, he can bring it back to his nest, as he likes to call it… and cook it using firewood from the trees that grow around the border of New Timelessland and the Timeless Slums.
Water is surprisingly easy to come across in the slums. If you want to wash off, just find a river. West Timelessland is close to a lot of bodies of water, especially the Central Canal.
Drinking water though? You have to buy that from the city or learn how to purify water yourself.
After walking past several concrete houses with slanted aluminum roofing that had long corroded into ugly patches of brown over time, Tysiff soon found familiar landmarks after navigating the tightly packed streets.
Three street lights leaning against a crumbled building with a wooden sign saying something about a restaurant, but to whom the restaurant belonged to is impossible to know by now.
Walking a bit more further, he came across fallen bricks and shingles, dented shells of cars with removed batteries, engines and basically anything useful…
And after a few more steps, Tysiff's smile brightened.
"Ah! There's my baby.."
Held back by wire fences, mountains of garbage lay in front of Tysiff all in different dull colors, rough and ragged shapes, tainted by numerous stains with a mix of wet and dried waste.
The smell was damn awful to the point of smelling like…. no, it was exactly from dried feces, rotting eggs, the seeping scent of black water from sewers and many more all at once.
Not to mention insecticide and the smell of toxicity that goes straight to one's nostrils when inhaled.
Tysiff walked through the broken gate and looked for anything living inside. There were footprints of dogs in the ground, so that was good news.
"Oh? There's really somethin' here." Tysiff grinned.
His eyes followed the trail and decided to take the same path.
Along the way, he saw something that caught his attention among the mounds of unassuming garbage.
It was catching the glare of the sun, exposing its clean and silvery sheen.
It was another lighter.
Tysiff's smile grew even wider, feeling that his day just became even better.
The lighter was encased in silver and it was one of those vintage kinds as well. The engravings on the case were also quite beautiful and intricate.
The silver surface depicted a double edged sword with thorny vines coiling around it and a skull to which the blade was plunged into. The background has roses and there was small text engraved on top of the lighter.
It read, "Hunters of Hubris, lay rest to the restless."
Tysiff did not read the text, not because he didn't care, but because he really couldn't.
He opened the vintage lighter and looked at the wheel. For a lighter in the dump, it was quite well maintained for some reason.
Maybe it was thrown away recently?
Regardless, Tysiff flicked the wheel for testing.
A spark lit up, creating a steady stream of flame.
Lucky.
He pocketed it and continued following the dog footprints.
That was when the rustling of a plastic bag no longer became vague to hear.
Looking through a corner, he found a beige colored dog with scars on its back eating something from a plastic bag.
Tysiff held his breath.
He took the metal pipe with nails from his waist and slowly approached the dog from behind. Gripping his trusted weapon, the dog who was eating from the rustling plastic bag was unaware of the death coming from behind it.
The noise of the plastic bag was quite loud too, so the dog's hearing wouldn't help.
Tysiff took one more step, then another until he was only a few centimeters away from the dog.
He held the metal pipe up..
And cracked the dog's skull open.
***
In the top floor of an abandoned apartment complex, there was a somewhat clean room as far as clean goes in the slums.
Tysiff's abode was a humble one.
He has a mattress free from worms, ants and cockroaches. A high quality bed only reserved for the most patient scavengers of the dump. By high quality, it meant "the best you can possibly get in this godforsaken place" in the most literal sense.
Tysiff had to steal this mattress from the dump at night because of the fact that a gang or organization might be prowling around.
When it comes to gangs, Tysiff does not have a good reputation.
Actually, all the homeless people were considered as lower members of the slums compared to those who has guns.
Tysiff was currently cooking food in a pan carried by three large stones with charcoal and pieces of firewood in the middle. Lighters are crucial for starting fire, so Tysiff naturally treasures them.
Not only that, he got a sweet brand new lighter that looked absolutely cool as a bonus.
Tysiff couldn't cook anything with oil, so he was merely putting food over an open flame.
His drinking water was stored in bottles laid in a straight line. He had to sell a lot of stuff from the city's pawnshops and buy them from stores or rob people closest to the slum border.
He also had empty cans of food that used to contain sardines, soup, and… cheesy noodles?
Oh, and he has buckets of water for cleaning. It's from the Central Canal, but they have been boiled and covered with tarp.
And that was it. That was how Tysiff lived.
The dog's remains were being cut carefully by Tysiff, who sat cross legged on the floor. The food that he was currently cooking was from a plastic container that a man gave to him the other day who thought that he was begging for food.
The slum border is dangerous due to the high concentration of people. The further away you are from the border, the less people that you'd be able to see.
That isn't always the case though. Some criminals do hang out in the middle parts of the slums.
Tysiff finished cleaning up the dog meat and placed it on top of a plastic bag. He took the meat cooking on his pan using a suspiciously "clean" metal stick and took it out.
He blew on it for a bit before putting the metal stick into his mouth.
Tysiff chewed on it and nodded in satisfaction.
"Mhmm… that's the good stuff."
***
Tysiff was sitting on top of the roof.
He was full at the moment and was looking over the packed maze of dilapidated houses and used to be establishments filled with life.
The silence was suffocating yet strangely calming.
Tysiff was used to loneliness. In fact, it is known that humans can go crazy from too much boredom and lack of human interaction.
And yet he was able to live all this time alone. Except for the times that he had to buy stuff from traders.
He did not survive all this time alone, this loneliness is a choice. A temporary one.
He'll get back to his family soon... the people he can consider family.
He sat there like a bird surveying the lands.
It was getting dark. The clouds slowly turned gray and the sky shifted from blue to orange.
Tysiff looked at the sun sinking into the horizon and climbed down. He went back inside his house and grabbed a bottle of water, drank it and put it back.
As he was doing this, a gunshot ruined the silence of the place.
*BANG–!*
Tysiff flinched and looked outside, alarmed.
There, he could see flashes of gunfire from afar.
This would only mean that an encounter between two rival gangs are in play. And usually from times like this, there are rewards when looting the dead bodies.
Tysiff smiled excitedly.
"….. is this the day when I'll get a gun?"
He looked over to his waist and confirmed that he didn't lose his metal pipe. Tysiff leapt off the roof and landed in front of the door to his room.
Without any further preparation, he hid the vintage lighter under his mattress and left his nest.
He ran down the stairs of the apartment complex and sprinted towards the origin of the cacophony of gunshots with a manic smile.
***
– Timless Slums – Somewhere in the Center Region –
*BANG*
Bullets were flying everywhere like no tomorrow.
A group of fourteen men wearing sleeveless jackets and tattooed shoulders of scorpions were currently firing at a cornered ragtag group of five that were fighting back for their lives desperately.
These five were surrounded in a house with only a single entrance with no way to get out. They belonged to the feared gang called the centipedes.
And the one's cornering them are from the equally notorious scorpion gang.
All of the scorpions were at the ground, hiding using the broken down concrete walls or fallen pillars of rock. They concentrated their fire into the house's window.
Inside the house, a long haired man with a green bandana around his head fired back at the scorpions.
"Fool! Get back here you dumbass!" A large man with a hairy beard pulled the guy back.
A couple of shots arrived at where the man wearing the green bandana used to be a second later.
The man with a green bandana cursed. "Fuck…. What the hell are scorpions doing in this place? Did someone rat us out?"
"Impossible, no one knows where we were supposed to go except for the boss." A tall man with a slim face shook his head seriously.
The man with a green bandana stomped angrily in response. "Then why are we in this situation here?!"
A blonde haired man with sunglasses on his forehead shrugged. "Treat it as the work of bad luck."
More gunshots flew through the window, causing everyone to duck their heads lower.
"Fuck this!" The man with a green bandana held his SMG closer to him while staring outside the window with a resentful expression.
***
Meanwhile, outside the house, the scorpions were still shooting at them with seemingly no intention to stop.
A bald, burly man with muscular arms pointing his rifle at the house took a puff out of his cigarette.
He was wearing a sleeveless navy green jacket with torn denim pants paired by black leather boots.
He flicked his cigarette away and looked at the others behind him.
"Don't let the centipedes get out. The moment one of them pops their head to shoot, kill them."
Relative to the bald man's physique, a slightly skinnier man replied, "So, we're just going to keep them in there?"
The bald man nodded. "We sent Danef out to get a grenade or something from the nearby base that we recently set up… Hell, a molotov works too."
"Speaking of that.. Sting, I'll have to take a piss." The skinny man lifted his pants by the belt as he spoke.
The man called Sting looked back to where the five men were still trapped. "Go ahead, there's a lot of us keeping watch. Just get back here fast enough."
"Yeah, yeah…" The skinny man used his gun's sling to carry it using his left shoulder.
He then stood up and left through the back door of the abandoned kitchen that the other scorpions were currently hiding from.
"Oh, and don't forget to zip your fly back this time!" A scorpion with four nose piercings shouted.
The skinny man lifted his hand with a middle finger as he left.
Laughter from the kitchen could be heard.
The skinny man hurriedly jogged away and found a secluded spot a block away between a fallen power line and a three story house with metal railings for the balconies.
Right now, the skies aren't as cloudy as they usually are. The brilliance from sparse clusters of stars shone through the derelict and worn down slums, a stark contrast from one another.
The skinny man found a hole in the concrete. He wasn't sure why there was a hole there, but from the fire hydrant that seemed to be yanked away using a chain behind him, he had a pretty clear idea of what happened.
He was about to do his business when he saw something peculiar behind one of the trash bins in front of him.
Something, was off....
Squinting to get a better look, the man could see two human legs, indicating that someone was laying down. But the number of flies around the legs alone was concerning.
The skinny man walked towards whoever the person was. He clutched his gun tightly with his finger on the trigger, ready to fire if someone else was waiting for him.
When he finally got to see who was behind the trash bin, his eyes narrowed.
"D- Danef?"
The man was Danef, the person Sting sent to grab supplies to lure out the five ambushed enemy gang members.
Danef wore the same sleeveless jacket and had the scorpion tattoo on his shoulder. He looked below average thanks to his overly pronounced nose bridge.
His head however, was leaking blood uncontrollably. A nasty gash was on his neck, a gruesome wound deliberately inflicted to hasten his death.
The skinny man opened his mouth and called for his gang's attention.
… Only to find out that no sound came from his mouth.
He fell down to the ground after losing control over his body.
A numb sensation permeated through his muscles and veins.
Unable to move, he helplessly watched as a young boy walked in front of his eyes holding a metal pipe with several bloody nails puncturing through it.
Then, the boy put the metal pipe into the nylon rope around his waist and took out a rusty knife from his pocket that was still stained by blood.
The boy revealed rows of his yellowish sharp teeth, displaying a manic smile.
Tysiff unhesitatingly plunged the knife into his neck.
The skinny man's eyes jolted in shock as he tried to produce a sound, only for a barely audible gasp of air to escape his mouth.
Tysiff continued to cut the man's neck open to let the blood out.
As the life faded from the man's eyes, that was when Tysiff finally relaxed.
He sighed then looked at the SMG on the man's body.
Tysiff curled his fingers back in excitement before unreservedly grabbing the gun with his hands. The strap was still around the man, preventing Tysiff from tugging it away completely.
So, Tysiff cut it off with his knife and got to examine his newest weapon.
Using his right hand to grab the SMG, he turned it around to see minor scratches and a few small rusted parts. Anyway, it was good.
Tysiff pocketed his knife and checked the magazine. It only had twenty or so bullets, but checking the man's belt showed that there were more magazines for his use.
His smile grew wider.
Tysiff began to take everything from the man, including a Glock that seemed to be kept as a sidearm.
Pocketing them was quite a problem, causing Tysiff's pockets to bulge in an ugly manner. Fortunately, his pockets were quite deep.
'Props to the manufacturer of this clothing brand..' Tysiff said inwardly.
With nothing else to do, he left without a sound like the rat that he is.
***
Ten minutes later …
A man with curly hair impatiently tapped his finger against the sink of the abandoned kitchen and asked out loud, "Where is Lucian? Don't tell me he's still pissing until now.. That slacking son of a.."
The curly haired man didn't continue with his words and instead glared with an annoyed expression at the house where the five cornered rival gang members are still being cooped up in.
Another man with a braided ponytail didn't seem too caring of the matter. "He probably has a huge bladder. Don't be such a worrywart, he's armed. And if someone is stupid enough to attack him, we should've heard a gunshot at least."
"Alright, but it's been a few minutes now.. Don't we at least have to check up on em'?" A brown haired man swinging his legs while sitting on top of a broken car replied.
This brown haired man has a very annoying face that makes people who sees it have the urge to punch him for no inexplicable reason.
The man with a braided ponytail turned to the large bald man. "Tch… Hey Sting, should we?"
Sting kept his eyes locked at the abandoned house. "It's a better idea than not doing anything since Danef still hasn't returned."
"Maybe something happened after all?" The brown haired man grinned with a foreboding glint in his eyes.
The other scorpions couldn't help but feel that the brown haired man's words were on to something.
"Asdan, what are you suggesting?" The man with braided hair narrowed his eyes at him.
The one on top of the car named Asdan leaned back with his rifle sitting on his lap and said nonchalantly, "I'm not suggesting anything.. I'm just ready for the worst outcome."
Asdan then sent a probing look towards Sting.
This causes Sting to acknowledge what he meant.
"Namik, go and bring two people with you."
Namik, the one with braided hair, tapped the two nearest people next to him and said, "We'll go check."
A lanky man sitting on the floor had an expression of befuddlement. "Why me?"
"It's better than sitting here and waiting for those rats to show up. They're not even escaping… Just c'mon." Namik lifted his SMG into his shoulder and walked away.
"Agh– fine." The lanky man begrudgingly got up and followed.
The other guy was wearing a skull mask and stood up as well. "I'll be right with you two."
After the three left, the rest continued to guard their posts and watched the abandoned house for any movement.
***
On the way, Namik stepped over a rock with a piece of rebar still stuck to it.
"There's dog shit right in front of you." The man with a skull mask pointed to something on the ground.
The lanky man stopped for a short moment and went around it.
"Thanks for the heads up."
"It isn't really much. I know the pain of washing those off your shoes.. it stinks for a long time too." The one with a skull mask continued walking in a steady posture with both hands on his SMG.
"You seem to have shitty experiences before, huh?" The lanky man scratched his head, "Man, where the hell did Lucian go?"
Before skull mask could reply, the two of them bumped into Namik's back after he suddenly stopped in his tracks.
The lanky man rubbed his nose and scowled angrily at him, saying, "Namik, the hell's your problem?"
Namik didn't respond immediately.
He stood in his spot motionlessly before he slowly lifted his hand to point forward.
"Look over there…. Doesn't that look like Lucian's..?"
The two followed his finger's direction and saw a pair of legs wearing bloody shoes laying on the ground right along a corner of the street. The shoes weren't anything noteworthy, but the fact that a person was there is a detail that cannot be ignored.
The three of them went forward and turned to the corner. The one with a skull mask walked over the fire hydrant tied to a loop of rusted chains.
They saw what was expected.
Lucian was dead.
A nasty wound inflicted on his head, breaking a large part of his skull and a deep laceration, or at least that's what it looked like, was in his neck, making him appear like livestock that had been bled dry.
Not only that, laid across his corpse was the long lost Danef who seemed to be killed the same way as Lucian.
And to add to all that, there was a person standing in the empty street.
It was a well dressed man.
His face was smooth and bright with no blemishes, enough to make the three see their dirt smudged face as immediately inferior.
The man's hair was as dark as a crow's feathers. His face was youthful, yet his charming blue eyes told a different story… they were the eyes of a killer's cold indifference.
The strange individual wore a black hybrid of a surplice and a robe similar to a traditional kimono. The edges and seams of his surplice were made with beautiful blue thread embroidered with absolute precision and masterful purpose. Under his surplice was a white cloth tunic and an orange stole resting around his nape.
A notable detail was the two blue strings near his left breast pocket.
His polished shoes were buckled by two belts in a cross pattern. Speaking of belts, a black leather belt with bags filled with unknown items was sealed shut by a silver tuck lock.
The man was holding a peculiar sword in his right hand.
The sword's design was special. It had a small rectangular crossguard and a black lacquered handle. The double edged blade continues downwards but branches into two blades connected by a "V" section.
It was as if a tuning fork was the inspiration for the weapon.
While the sword was indeed unique, the strange man held another item in his left hand.
A thin, black metal stick with a silver ring that held two red strings to itself. The strings were attached with yellow paper talismans that seemed to have aged throughout several years.
The man was muttering a soft series of prayers while waving the cleansing rod around the dead bodies.
Even though he could definitely sense that there are people looking at him, the man did not pay them any heed.
In fact, he even turned his back on them.
Unsettled yet overcome with anger, Namik raised his gun at the man and yelled out loud, "What the fuck did you do!?"
The man continued to pray without ceasing his actions.
Namik snorted and aimed at an empty spot nearby the man's feet.
*BANG*
However, the man did not even flinch.
"Answer me damn it or I'll kill you for real this time!" Namik ground his teeth while pointing the gun at the man's head.
The strange man raised the cleansing rod before abruptly coming to a stop. His prayers paused to allow for new words to come out of his mouth.
"You will not."
Namik spat scornfully. "And why's that? Who are you?" He readjusted his stance and gazed at the two people next to him.
The lanky man and the one in the skull mask raised their guns after getting Namik's signal.
The strange man waved the rod once more as he answered.
"I know that your confusion and desire for answers would dictate otherwise.."
His sinister calmness was colder than the frigid winds of the night.
"And as for your second question…"
"I am an exorcist."