Rip Your Face Off

--Sky's Perspective--

Ullr, Carl, and Mandi ended up finishing off the wolves, and the sense of danger was beginning to lift off my body. Lia's dog ran up next to my leg and sat down… so this thing wouldn't betray us, would it?

"S-Sky? Is it night already? I-I can't see anything." I managed to smile through the pain of my arm still bleeding, but it was instantly crushed as I watched Domin stumble towards me.

Domin's face was ripped into by the wolves. He still had teeth lodged into his cheeks, which were ripped open from the outside in. Pieces of flesh slowly fell off of his face and dangled against his chin while blood pooled with the clumps of flesh on the sand.

Domin's eyeballs were hanging from their sockets, clumps of his brain slowly pushing out from his head out through his eye sockets, along with a torn-up chest. When I concentrated hard enough, I could see his lungs expand while he took his shortened breaths.

"D-Domin...?" I basically whispered out, dropping the stick by my side and running over to him. He reached for his ears that were torn off in the same fashion, hanging on by threads of weak, bloodied skin.

"W-What's happening to me? Where did my vision go?" I couldn't even fathom the pain he was in… I couldn't breathe, I couldn't stand to look at him. The smell coming off of him was so unbearably bad that I couldn't open my mouth without gagging.

"Why… Why are my hands so warm right now? My legs are freezing… are my pants wet or something? What is going on? Sky, what do you see? I can't see Sky." Tears began to pour from my eyes… I took these for granted, could he even cry anymore with his eyes that far out of his head? I could see his tongue through his ripped cheeks, and even that had a chunk out of it.

"Man… do we have any blankets yet… it's… really cold…" Domin fell forwards into my shoulder. The feeling of his broken skull and squishy organs pushing against my own body made me feel unnervingly sick, I couldn't talk at all, I couldn't open my mouth, the fear was keeping everything in my body from moving.

"This is going to sound crazy… but… I can see us as children, Sky. We're running around and playing with some sort of toy… and there's a girl… her hair… I've never seen anything like that… Sky, are you seeing this?... Are you here?" I gripped his hand, reaching out to me.

"Y-Yes. I'm here." I muttered through the tears.

"Thank God… hey, tell me, you want to go hunt for a deer again? That was pretty fun… wasn't it?" My eyes were stuck open, not listening to my brain when I told them to blink.

I couldn't breathe, this feeling was suffocating me. Domin slowly slid from my shoulder down to the sand and blood mixture right underneath his body.

I watched Domin's lungs dispel the air left in them for the last time. He took his last breath right against my body, with his face completely disheveled and his flesh torn to bits. I almost couldn't think straight, holding his blood up in my hands against my stomach.

Even though all of the grief struck my heart with a sharper point than the wooden stakes, I looked up to the forest with nothing but rage seeping out of my body.

"LLLIIIIIIAAAAAAA!!!!!! I'LL KILL YOU FOR THIS!!! DO YOU HEAR ME?! I'M GOING TO RIP YOUR DAMN FACE OFF OF YOUR BODY!!!"

[System Alert! Corruption at 85%]

That message again… Get out of my eye!!!

"I don't know anything about this Isle… but I will follow you to the edge of it, and I'll rip your face off! I'll kill you, and I'll kill everything you've ever loved!"

[System Alert! Corruption at 90%]

I took sharp breaths, letting the rest of Domin's blood splatter onto the floor. Some ended up falling onto his body… then I heard Dani's voice in front of me, screaming out in grief as well. And then, I heard another voice.

"Serves you right! That's what you two get for messing with Ullr!" Richard said.

I quickly turned my head at a sharp angle and my tear-ridden eyes fixated on nothing but Richard in front of me as he nervously fell backward.

Before I could get to him, Ullr picked him up and slammed him against the wall.

"Don't you dare say anything like that in your life ever again," Ullr told him

"R-Right, I'm sorry, Sky. I-I didn't mean it." Richard muttered.

Shut up.

I ignored his ignorant tone of voice and drew my fist back, slamming it in the middle of his chest and throwing him into the logs that acted as our walls. To everybody's shock shown through gasps, I snapped the huge logs that composed our walls by punching Richard into them. He gasped for air and reached for the middle of his chest.

"I-I think he just broke my ribs." He said, spitting up blood.

[System Alert! Corruption at 99%]

I stared out from the gate into the ocean. I could feel another gaze looking at me… no, I could feel four.

"Sky… hey… Sky…? Is Domin…?" Dani sniffled, rubbing her eyes with the base of her wrists, crouching down near his body.

"How could they… Domin… hey, wake up Domin." She whispered to him, but I wouldn't break my gaze with the four I felt a long distance away.

I felt malice, something like Lia gave me in our tent the first time I met her. That was it… it was malice I felt from Dante and her… Lia… I'm going to make her death so painful... Domin's will look like a joke.

"Sky!" I finally broke gazes and looked off to Carl to my left.

"Your eyes… or your irises… were totally red for a few seconds there, are you alright?" He asked. I felt the tension all across my body slowly release, up until the point I was able to take a breath once more.

"Ullr." I turned to him and that look he had earlier appeared once more.

"Thank you, for warning your pal. Next time you open your mouth and say something that stupid again... I'll rip your face off." I turned away from him once more and went back to Domin.

Dani had her hands in the bloody sand, looking down at him and sobbing. Red was standing but was sobbing over his body too.

"We need to dig a grave for him… and we need to tighten our defenses. We need weaponry… we need lookouts, some for Lia specifically… we need to be stronger." I said, staring at Domin.

That's when I heard a knock on our gate.

I turned my head towards the gate, looking at a girl with light-brown, long hair and green eyes. She leaned against the door.

"You need to get stronger you say? It looks like we have a common goal." She stopped leaning and I quickly grabbed the stake, throwing it as closely as I could at her face, but she walked forward, raising her hand to take the hit with her metal shield. To even her surprise, the metal shield couldn't take the impact from the wooden stake. Her shield cracked down the middle and the stake exploded as it hit her.

I stood in front of everybody with my arms extended.

"Leave!" I yelled, but she shook her head with her mouth still open in surprise. "I've never seen a White Stone do that before! You've got some power behind those scrawny arms of yours!" I lowered my body in case I needed to attack, but she only put her hands in her pockets before getting closer.

"Dante and Lia were going to burn you guys alive in this base if I didn't intervene. Sky, you and your housemates need to wash off in the ocean, there's oil all over you." My eyes widened.

"She put gasoline on us and that's why she shut the gate?" I asked her. The girl nodded.

"Well, oil, but yes, you were going to sit in here and cook. I led your people back towards your base, warning them of an attack, and decided to follow because I wanted to see the White Stone for myself." She smiled.

"There's a lot I need to explain to you, but I need to hear you tell me that we're friends. I feel that rage coming off of your stare, it's weak but still unsettling." She told me. Who was this girl?