New place, New beginnings

"He is not your son!!" Rufus screamed back at him, violently refusing to equate an adoptive relationship to a biological one. "He is the son of traitors who stole from their employer!"

"How dare you!" Cried Aden, enraged at the insinuations being made against not just himself but his friends as well. "They exercised their right of conquest to keep one item they won from the tower. These powers exist for the defense of humanity, not the empowerment of one deluded tyrant!!"

"Your a fool!" Shouted Rufus as he flung Josephs body a small distance behind him. He feared what the king would do should he present the boy to him in a less than ideal fashion. "You have no idea what those towers really are, not a single clue of the things the king has done to defend us all from them!"

"HA!" Aden laughed derisively, "I'm the fool? Your the one who's blinded by your dependency on the devil to save your child's life, and as sympathetic as I am to your plight that man has never done ANYTHING but for his own benefit. And I refuse to allow him to benefit off of my son!"

"HE IS NOT YOUR SON!!" Bellowed Rufus as he charged at Aden. His anger and desperation finally overshadowing his reason.

"Fool!" Was the echoing cry as Aden pumped his ability to the max nearly instantly crushing the skeletal structure of Rufus's body, causing the man to go instantly limp as he fell to the ground incapable of movement.

The pain was blinding, but not so intense as the anxiety Rufus felt for his daughter. The king had never once failed to follow through on one of his threats, and as the realization of his failure became more and more prominent the despair became all the more overwhelming.

Aden had no time to waste, as soon as he had crushed Rufus he sprinted towards Joseph to get him out of there. But just before he could pick him up and run, a smooth base voice echoed in the surroundings sending chills down Aden's spine freezing him in place.

"Impossible." This word alone occupied the forefront of Aden's mind, that and a billion mile an hour train that was trying to discover any kind of exit it could find.

"Why do you insist on getting in my way Aden?" The king descended towards them as his voice droned on in its sinister and violent undertones. "Don't you know that I am the only one who can set us free? Don't you know what the towers truly are?" The king took slow confident steps towards Aden and Joseph as he spoke, as though he was disciplining naughty children. 

"Enlighten me...Nosferatu."

Silence...nothing moved, or spoke. It was as though a dark taboo had been broken. The atmosphere became oppressive and a sense of impending violence and death permeated the space.

"None but the members of the 7 are supposed to know that name." Came the growling reply from the king. "How did you learn of me?" 

The kings eyes had become like that of a demon. Black Scalera with slit pupils that glowed a crimson red. His hair began to float about him as his nails blackened and grew along with his teeth, each one turning pointed and sharp.

Aden could feel the predatory gaze of the king boring into him. The only reason he was still alive is due to the kings paranoia, needing to understand exactly how much information was circulating about him, and how Aden came to know it.

However his first focus was on securing Joseph's safety, he had abandoned all notions of running away after the king had arrived, but he did have one last trick up his sleave he had been saving for an emergency.

He slowly straightened himself to a fully erect position. Staring the king in the eye he boldly declared. "You will get nothing from me you monster, neither will you get it from my son!"

He then activated a skill that he had, to this point, never used. It was called dimension warp, it was basically a skill that allowed him to put so much gravitational pressure on a point in space that it collapsed, creating in essence a passage way into another dimension or region of space. The secondary function of the skill was that he was able to designate those things or people who could pass through it without being harmed.

Targeting Joseph he was able to make him disappear in an instant while preventing the king from moving to to the insane gravitational distortions that were a result of the skills usage. Even he was affected but due to his ability he was able to briefly withstand the effects.

"Be free my son...grow well." And with these final thoughts he quit resisting the pressure and was immediately crushed, imploding on himself in less than a tenth of a second. With his death the gravity waves were dispersed and all that remained of the area was a crater 50 feet deep and nearly 300 wide.

Standing in this crater was the king, the look upon his face was a mix of disbelief and fury. Not only had the boy disappeared, but the only man who might be able to lead to him was now dead!

"FOOLS!! Do they not understand what is coming!? Why are these idiots continually getting in my way!!!" 

He ranted and raged for hours, laying waste to miles of his surroundings. In place of the semi desert wilderness there now was a lake of blood, with meandering rivers of red flowing into the distance.

"First Michael and now this!?" His rage was still boiling but he was smart enough to know that there was no more to do at the moment. Everything was gone, and he needed to put some more plans into motion in the hopes that he could track the boy down before it was too late. He flew away immediately, leaving a crimson streak across the sky as he sped back towards his castle.

Joseph found himself waking several hours later within a dense pine forest. The dark night illuminated by a pale waning moon that hung like a silver crescent in the twinkling sky.

The night was not overly cold but still he shivered as he had no idea where he was, he also couldn't shake the fear that someone else was going to pop up out of no where and take him away again. 

"Is this where that man brought me?" Joseph nervously began trying to piece together the fragments of his memory. Being unconscious for the duration of Rufus's flight away from his home, he had no idea if this was where he was being brought or not. He was also unaware at this moment, of Aden's death and defiance of the blood king, or who was really after him in the first place. In short there were a lot of questions and a stark brevity of available answers.

At this moment his training kicked in, forcing his mind to calm down and take stock of his situation. The forest was lush and rich with undergrowth, a sign that there was a large water supply somewhere nearby. It was unlikely for the condition of the flora to be so good without one.

He also knew that in this kind of forest there would be a lot of edible berries and plants, as well as a lot of small game available as he tried to find his way to civilization. Looking up towards the sky he was able to find his relative position via the stars, Aden having spent countless hours teaching him how to navigate by the night sky.

"Remember Joseph." He would say, "The starts will be your unchanging friends when the world gets dark."

"Dark." Joseph chuckled wryly. "Lost and alone, no supplies, no idea how far I am from home, no clue if anyone is coming to help...yea I'd say things are pretty dark right about now." The despairing statement was met with eerie silence causing Josephs nerves to tighten once again.

Shaking his body to reassert control he once more looked up at the sky. Determining which direction was north he began to move slowly but determinedly through the dense foliage. He knew that it didn't matter where he was in the world, as long as he traveled north he could come to the great ridge. The boarder between the settled and wild lands. From there he could find his way back home...but should he? He had just been attacked in a place that he always assumed was safe, right under Aden's nose. Would it really be the best idea for him to go back so soon? Who's to say the people who got him this time wouldn't do something even worse next time? 

These questions cause Joseph to pause and really think about what he was going to do. "I'm 17 now so normally I would have joined the guild as part of a delving team, or I could enlist in the kingdom's military..." It was several minutes of introspection before he ultimately came to a decision that would save his life.

"I will join the northern border forces...no better place to begin."