Azimuth: The Elden Throne

345 The embrace of Fate

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"..."

With one last glance to his sleeping family, Dale stepped forward as he walked alongside Roger, making his way to his enemy's last known location.

Some of them had fled and it was time to track them down.

They had entered foreign territory and they wouldn't be coming back.

It wasn't just Dale or Roger in this mess, the SCU was also present and they were holding nothing back.

Just a minute before, Dale heard the sounds of fighter jets flying in the sky as they moved to the horizon.

As Roger had said, this issue wasn't likely to end today.

...

On the way, Roger gave him a simple debrief of the situation, filling in the blanks in his knowledge.

Around six hours ago, a group of twenty unidentified individuals somehow bypassed the security measures centered around the street block where Dale's home was located, entering a rented apartment a few streets away from his home, one with a direct view of the complex, likely for scouting purposes.

Two hours ago, they began their operation, eliminating anyone, old or young, that stood in their way as they silently approached his apartment complex, gathering information in the process, either through questioning or coercion.

Half an hour later, the death toll had already reached over thirty individuals…

Somewhere along that time, they separated into three groups.

One group used a series of underground tunnels that connected to the underground parking lot to try and sneak inside past the defenses erected by Roger's crew.

Another group further separated into individual agents, each trying to sneak inside the complex as if they were ordinary residents or guests of other tenants.

The last group, on the other hand, turned around and began going around the nearby buildings, eliminating and disrupting any secluded agents who could hinder or become an obstacle once their actions were noticed, which they were fully prepared for.

Because of this, the death toll increased even further, but it was also the reason why they managed to save more lives, as once their agents began to stop responding on time, a warning call was issued to all still alive, giving them a chance to mount resistance and regroup.

Soon enough, they began clashing, that was how most of the damage in the surrounding area came to be, a catastrophic wave of destruction.

Meanwhile, the underground group was eliminated by one of Roger's top agents.

However, before this Ace could return to the surface to help stabilize the situation, their leader stopped him from doing so, and they began to fight underground as well.

Due to the severe structural damage they caused to the underground passageways, several buildings lost their support, including the street, causing them to tilt, collapse, and cave in.

As for the last group, the one that separated and infiltrated the building, they remained elusive as they evaded the agents, investigating the apartments as they tried to find their targets amidst the ensuing chaos.

Eventually, they were found and dealt with, but as a last resort, they used a strange power that caused all civilians in a seven-meter radius of them to collapse unresponsive.

The agents failed to stop them all, and unfortunately, Dale's family was within range of this never-seen-before ability.

Amidst the chaos that followed, some of them managed to flee, and for the sake of their investigations and to quench his wrath, Dale was going to get his hands on them.

For that, he needed to move with Roger as he had no idea where they could be while his agents, on the other hand, were hot in pursuit.

He wished to get his hands on them so he could learn more about his family's condition and how to reverse it, and for the sake of simplicity, he had to reach them first before the SCU, otherwise, it was unknow where the American task force would drag them to.

For all he knew, they may outright refuse to include him in the investigations at all.

He could not accept such an outcome.

...

/Shuaaa!/

After moving to a nearby building, they climbed to its very top where a helicopter soon landed, and as quickly as they arrived, they left through the skies in pursuit of their targets.

"...?"

Around that time, not long after they departed, as he looked at the city from the high view of the helicopter, Dale's eyesight began to darken as his body grew numb.

His first instinct was to warn Roger, but he failed as his body became unresponsive.

Before he even had the time to process the situation and go into a panic, everything had already turned dark.

The last thing he heard was the sound of the Helicopter blades spinning above his head.

"... ?!"

Immediately after, his vision returned, but he wasn't in the air anymore, in fact, it was oddly silent.

Instead, in front of him, with his left hand holding something, and his right hand high in the air, Dale found himself in the process of beating a man to death with his fist, blood splattered everywhere, even within his mouth.

The taste of iron was heavy on his lips, causing him to throw the half-dead body to the ground heavily as he wiped his face, causing it to stop moving as he took a step back in both shock and dismay.

'What happened? Where am I?' He thought in confusion as he saw the pool of blood around him

He looked around in search of answers, and he immediately noticed he seemed to be in a large modern warehouse of some sort, one that had been considerably beaten up from the looks of it.

In his immediate vicinity, he could see bits and pieces of metal, distorted and broken beyond recognition, together with three bodies, unmoving.

Their current appearance wasn't pretty to look at, it was as if a car had smashed through them, breaking all their bones and turning them into this meat pile.

Everything that could be broken seemed to have been distorted and moved outside of its ordinary place, it would be a wonder if any of them were still alive.

'How… How did I get here?!' He exclaimed in his mind as sweat began to fall from his forehead

His heart was beating fast, too fast, it wanted to jump out of his chest and continue what he was doing before...

How much adrenaline did his brain shove into his bloodstream?

As confusion crept into his mind, a sense of satisfaction and grief overwhelmed his mind.

Revenge, the word crept onto his mind.

They say revenge doesn't pay off, and maybe they were right, but right now, Dale felt incredible.

But just as quickly as that came, he understood there was nothing to be happy about, because this sense of happiness came from a disaster he would never have wished for in the first place.

It was empty, Revenge was an empty feeling, that was what Dale understood as he watched the man bleed in front of his eyes.

Maybe that was why Revenge was best served cold, because after all grief and loss were removed, only anger remained, and once those were purged too, one's sense of satisfaction would be even greater…

Or even more empty.

As he reached that conclusion, his vision began to darken again, and like last time, before he could cry for help, he was embraced by darkness.

…

/Shuaaa!!!/

"?!"

'Urg... Where… Wait.'

Dale woke up in a silent dark world… An unusually familiar one.

There was no sky, nor ground, but there seemed to be faint light emanating around him.

Raspy winds flew around his body, coming from seemingly nowhere and going nowhere…

This place, somewhere at the edges of both time and space, a place without it, isolated from everything, the end and the beginning of everything?

Dale could not tell.

"I… How…?"

'How did I return here? This place…'

/Humming…/

"!"

Amidst his distraction, Dale began to hear a distorted melody, one so exoteric and weird that he questioned if it was even a sound nature could create on its own.

It provoked a unique feeling in him, a sense of 'fullness', he felt as if he was hearing a sound a Human should not have been able to hear, giving him inner peace beyond anything he had ever felt.

Under the strange melody, his troubles felt… So insignificant…

From one pinnacle to the other, Dale felt he was in a rollercoaster of sensations and emotions...

/Move…/

Then, his eyes darted open in both fear and anger as he stepped back in shock.

Maybe waiting for this reaction, the darkness moved with him, and from its depths, a pale arm reached out from beyond his vision.

The arm looked old, frail, weak, and bony… It was non-human. Just as he remembered.

It had a certain feeling of familiarity to it, beyond just his memories, of peace, tranquility… Eternity to it, the same way the dark skies had stars shining on it, the arm belonged to this darkness.

Like the sun, it is always there… And so it would be, for entire lifecycles and on.

Dale did not move, not because he felt any danger, nor because his mind told him to be wary of this strange mystical creature…

But because he knew that in front of it, he was insignificant.

Then he realized, to his utmost dismay, that his thoughts were seemingly repeating themselves, one at a time...

/Move…/

The creature stepped closer, revealing more of its ancient body.

Like before, most of its body, that which he could see was covered by a long torn cloak, likely as ancient as the creature itself.

It covered everything aside from a small spot where the arm reached out from within, standing tall above him.

And like before, atop the cloak, over three meters above the ground was a very confusing mask, hiding its owner's face, and it's actual height.

For the arm to be anatomically correct, then the creature should be a few times taller than it actually showed.

/Move…/

The arm began to move, and faint letters formed underneath its gargantuan hand.

Strange runes with shapes and sizes that seemed disorderly but had a certain order to them.

A form of otherworldly orthography, a language beyond those he was used to.

They held no meaning to him as he could not understand them… But having seen them twice, Dale now had a different interpretation of them.

He felt them familiar… They gave him a similar impression as those he felt from the Jade Tablet.

When he first saw those, he did not draw a connection, but now that he was back, he could see it…

They were closer in nature than it seemed, despite their forms being wildly different.

/Stop…/

The arm stopped moving and a series of runes now presented themselves to him.

A message, 'the' message, the one meant to resolve all his queries…

For what reason had he been dragged here after all that transpired?

…

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