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The Horseman (13) : Fog is not uncommon in the latter half of the year, so it’s no surprise that Destiny City has been plagued by it. Historically, it has never brought anything good. Walls of white so dense that a deep breath feels like drowning, the rolls across the city in the late hours of the night like a herd of stampeding horses. You can hear them, too–the gallop of hooves. You can’t see it, but you hear a single horse, massive. Trotting behind you. If you speed up, it speeds up. No matter where you go, it follows. Sometimes, you can feel an icy breath on the back of your neck. It’s uncomfortable and unnerving, and there’s the distinct feeling of being followed by some sort of predator. It’s worse, if you run. It chases you. If you look behind you, you’ll see nothing but a dark, swirling mass, and sometimes the glint of a large blade. It’s terrifying. There’s no way to fight it, but if you’re lucky you can hide. If it catches you, you feel a painful sensation around your neck before the horse and its dark rider disappears into the night. Your heart feels like a bomb in your chest, and when you are somewhere safe you may find a deep, red mark on your neck, as if someone attempted to lop it off. The injury will fade after a few hours, but unfortunates may find a strange mist lingering outside of their window, accompanied by the sound of hooves and horse whinnies. The horseman cannot be interacted with; he does not speak, he does not have any form. He is simply hunting.
Camille had gotten quite a bit of information when he woke up in the hospital, after the strange incident with the well. First of all, he'd lost an entire day. (Not great.) Second of all, he was not the only person to turn up with bruises and bumps after a talked of a strange encounter in a Destiny City park. The nurse who checked him over once he woke up confessed to him that she was pretty sure he'd been drugged, somehow, and then mugged, but they couldn't find anything in his system and she didn't have any more answers for him. Camille had apologized, because he didn't have any for her either; just a vague hazy memory that made no sense at all.
Obviously what had happened couldn't have anything to do with some weird well in the park. That just didn't make any sense. Magic was real, of course, but it had rules. Clearly defined ones that were nice and neat and trustworthy, and they did not work like that. Obviously. So Camille had no choice but to simply set it aside, and accept that something very odd had happened to him that he would likely never understand.
At least he wasn't too badly injured, or anything. Just some bumps and bruises (and when he closed his eyes, he swore he saw strange golden ones staring at him from the darkness, but that was....that was....definitely nothing.)
They kept him at the hospital for perhaps longer than he would have liked, but he supposed that after having been unconscious for a day under mysterious circumstances with no clear cause and having no memory of the events that had led up to it, being under the observation of a medical team to make sure he wasn't having any complications was for the best.
It was quite late when he finally managed to get all his discharge papers signed and get out, and he really hoped that the campus health insurance he got from TAing in his last year covered emergency visits because he sure wasn't paying that on his own.
In any case, he was able to recover his clothes, get dressed, and head out on his own two feet because the actual damage was minimal and so there was no reason to keep him shut up in the hospital when they needed beds for people who actually needed treatment. A lovely little victory, because Camille did not want to stay there longer than he had to.
He walked for a few blocks before he found a private alley to duck into and become Cleeia; easier to navigate the city this way, and he trusted that he'd find his way home eventually, but it would be much faster if he could leap onto roofs and so on and so forth.
He turned a corner, and stepped into a wall of fog.
Cleeia sighed, unhappily. This was going to make his life harder---he couldn't see to aim for a roof, and even then, it might still be foggy up high, so he was just going to have to deal with it.
He'd been walking in the fog for what could only have been a few minutes when he heard it.
Footsteps.
No.
Hoofbeats.
"What the ********," Cleeia whispered. What the hell was a horse doing in Destiny City, late at night, in weirdly thick fog? That made no sense. It just....it didn't, so it couldn't be here, so he just....had to keep walking and he'd be fine. That was it. Just keep on walking, keep on walking, he'd...he'd....definitely get out of here alright. The hoofbeats were probably a trick of his mind and would go away before long because there was no other possibility because there had to be a rational explanation. Or, whatever it was would catch up to him, and it would be...a youma, or something, or...
The point was, there had to be an explanation. Everything had an explanation. Even magic. Magic made sense; Cleeia believed that down in his bones. There were rules. Things made sense. Existed in a certain order. Because that was how the world worked. Nothing was random, or out there, or....
Except the hoofbeats didn't stop. And there was no youma aura on his senses.
And if Cleeia started to panic a little, he was pretty sure that was a fully reasonable response. There was something, in the fog, following him, and when he started to run, the hoofbeats sped up, and--and---and it was definitely one hundred percent chasing him, whatever it was, whatever it wanted, and Cleeia wanted to scream, but there was no point. The thick, rolling, clinging fog would surely swallow any sound he attempted to make. And it might just make whatever was after him angrier.
He looked over his shoulder, once, as he ran deeper into the fog.
He wished he hadn't.
All that was there was a massive, dark shape, and the glint of a blade.
He was going to die here, Cleeia realized. This thing was going to catch him, and it was going to kill him, and that was going to be it. But he couldn't make himself stop and accept his fate. He had to keep running. Had to try to get away.
The figure sped up, hoofbeats coming ever faster, and Cleeia was sure, then, that this was some kind of awful magic. It had to be, to be able to keep up with a Super Senshi at full tilt in the fog.
He stumbled. Nearly fell. Caught himself, but it was too late--
The figure had caught up with him.
He was going to die.
There was an awful, cold sensation against his neck, like something slicing through it, and then--
And then the figure was gone, and Cleeia was alone in the fog, and he was still alive.
He stumbled forward somehow, half on autopilot, until he turned a corner and the fog seemed to clear up.
And when he was sure he was out of it, he collapsed, buried his face in his hands, and started to cry.
[wc: 1018 words]
