Ragnar had many moments of regret through his very short life. He was brought up in an open family, too open, so his way of life wasn't complicated. He did what he could and ignored what he couldn't. He was a good definition of sloth.
But now he was a walking regret. If he knew that this was how it was going to be, he sure would have lived every moment as scummily and as treacherously as possible.
Now his breath was forced to be stuck in his lungs by a mad elder, who was supposed to be doing the biddings of a primordial horror and was in the process of defying it.
'Great! Superb! Fabulous! What other words can I use?'
He was in such a dire situation that even his supposed immortality couldn't save him.
His lungs burned from lack of air, although the air after the tribulations wasn't the best. In fact, it could be described as the worst type of air humans could ever come in contact with, and if it were in the world before the fall, then the entire zone occupied with this type of air would be closed off as a death zone.
Now though, humans had adapted to the impure air and now lived with or without it.
Although he didn't need air to survive, he wasn't into the idea of living without air yet.
"What am I doing, you ask?"... The husky cold voice of the elder broke him from his thoughts.
"There's no harm in telling you since we'll all be gone soon." The elder paused. He looked at Ragnar, whose face was already red from bulging veins and lack of breath. He made a contemplative face before throwing him to the ground.
Ragnar gasped for air desperately while crawling as far away from the elder as possible, but still mindful of the fog behind him.
"There's no point running, so why don't you entertain me for a few moments, hmm?"
Ragnar squinted his eyes and raised his guard whilst keeping his distance.
Although he was wary, he still wanted to know what the elder had to say.
Seeing that Ragnar was paying attention again, the elder continued.
"The world was never fair from the beginning of time, even before all this..."
His voice was now one of sadness and reminiscence.
"The first trumpet that signaled the ascension and the arrival of the first tribulation caught me in the midst of suicide."
'Oh, now I see why he's here... but wait, that doesn't make sense either, or fate was indeed playing a sick joke on him,' Ragnar wondered silently while the elder continued.
"You see, I was descending from the rooftop of a skyscraper but ended up landing in the midst of a crowd who weren't even aware of my presence until I landed and broke a few bones of mine and those of the people I collided with."
He chuckled slightly and continued, "Although I failed, I was able to tell that something was wrong, so I walked in the direction the others were running from, but ended up being blasted by whatever it was that exploded at that moment. The downpour of flames bathed my back and left me scorched and unconscious on the floor. Long story short, I survived the hells, and here I am after everything became calm.
I thought I was the only one that survived, and I didn't want to be alive, so I ended my life once again with a stab to the neck."
He pointed at the side of his throat, which was as smooth as always, with no signs of a scar.
Ragnar was still staring at him with a blank face.
"So you decided on a massacre because you failed at committing suicide on many occasions?" he scoffed. "Aren't you too pathetic?" With a chuckle he added, "You failed when your task was to take just one life, what makes you think you can take multiple?"
The elder looked at him quietly, then turned to the fog.
"I think you've watched enough, haven't you? So why don't we get this over with?"
Ragnar was alarmed because at that moment the fog started rolling forward.
"Oh Ragnar, if I were you, I'd just sit still and get erased now, because if you think the last tribulation was a terror, then you are foolish."
"And what do you mean by that? Tribulations are over." Ragnar didn't believe it, but his face turned ugly when he heard what the elder said next.
"Boy, this whole thing is a punishment, what do you think? That the Almighty will 'place mercy on your path'... ha ha ha." He laughed in amusement, mockery written all over his face as he saw Ragnar's expression.
Ragnar couldn't help but think about the chants they were forced to memorise after a certain amount of rotations, his eyes widened in realisation before the rage fell in.
"YOU TAUGHT US THOSE CHANTS!!!"
"YES I DID!!! YES, I AND MANY OTHERS!! WE ARE HERALDS OF THE NEXT TRIBULATION!!!" The elder's reply came almost instantly as loud and powerful as he could. He paused to take in a deep breath, then added with a soft , helpless voice"You people haven't seen the worst of it."
The elder gazed briefly at the North before turning and, as if he had finally made up his mind, he walked straight into the fog and disappeared from sight.
Ragnar clearly saw it. He saw how the elder shuddered with the brief glance to the North, his face pale in terror.
He stiffly turned to look in that direction with clenched fists and gritted teeth.
'Another hell?? No, no no nO NO NO!!
Damn it all!! We were never given a way out?? We're all just lambs waiting to be slaughtered...'
"I REFUSE!!"
He yelled and turned around swiftly, narrowly missing a thin veil of fog that was just about wrapping around his legs.
He looked around frantically.
'Anything! Anything, anything, anything, damn it!'
At that moment he saw a piece of wood. It was sharpened at the top and placed in a slanted direction, facing the opposite side.
'Don't tell me...'
With that he made a swift dash towards the wood. The fog also rolled faster, crawling towards him from all directions.
Ragnar ran with all his might while looking for anything that would increase his advantage. Although the wood was ahead of him, it would still take at least 300 paces to reach it.
As he was running, from the corner of his eyes, he caught sight of a figure frozen in mid-motion. The figure seemed to have been in the midst of a stumble. But that wasn't what caught his attention.
"Why is he there?"
He frowned and started looking around. Then he could see more figures appearing in all directions except from ahead of him and behind him.
"So that's how it is."
He was relieved now because it seemed the sentry of the winter wasn't of high intelligence.
He immediately pushed off his front leg and propelled himself to the left, dashing toward one of the frozen figures. It took him but a moment to reach the first one.
It was the figure of a middle-aged woman. Her looks were average at best, but what do looks matter in a world such as theirs?
The light in her eyes was gone, and her gaze was now replaced with a chilling grey.
It was an uncomfortable sight.
The fear written on her face, the desperation shown from her posture, yet her eyes were totally empty, devoid of any life.
She was now nothing but an empty shell.
A chill ran down Ragnar's spine, but he didn't pause for a moment. He caught the arm of the woman and, bringing all his strength into his upper body, he went for a quick spin.
He spun around swiftly, allowing the weight of the woman to propel him in all directions. The air created from the spin formed a small barrier around him. He slowly but steadily staggered mid-spin towards the direction of the wood he saw before.
The fog, seeing its attempts to get closer being negated, coiled back. Then a spiral appeared.
It wasn't spinning like Ragnar. No, the spiral was absorbing the fog completely, and slowly the surroundings were becoming clearer.
Ragnar noticed this, and his spin became more reckless. He wasn't willing to stop because he wasn't sure what surprise the apparition was preparing for him. So he spun while slowly launching himself towards the wood, which turned out to be one of the stakes that served as a fence for the settlement.
"Hu..hu..man... St..top... bet..ter... de..vo..ur... hu..ma..n... de..li..ci..ous... sluuurp..."
Ragnar's face paled more as he heard the creepy sound coming from behind him.
Without stopping to think, he launched the spinning body towards the sound and took his first step to run, but his vision spun and he fell face-flat into the dirt.
Step
Step
Step
Ragnar's heart pounded in horror as he struggled to stand but failed miserably.
He turned to look towards the direction of the apparition, only to find the face of the elder just inches away from his.
The elder's eyes were now foreign, grey pupils like those of the erased. His smile was so wide it seemed his lips had torn to match the width.
His tongue stretched out longer than normal and took a lick of Ragnar's nose tip.
Thud!
That simple action was all it took for little Ragnar to say goodbye to reality.