First Encounter With Avrill Eldor and First Taste of Death

This sounded exactly like the kind of shit he went out of his way to avoid.

The boy's arms folded behind his head for the umpteenth time, head tilting at Aules as the boy spoke with such conviction and flare and gusto and it was just so...so. He just wound up staring, really, unable to fully grasp it. On one hand, he was empathetic to a plight like that. Truly, he was. But at the same time, as a child, he couldn't quite grasp the significance of whatever in the world could be eaten that was worth pursuing a monster into a swamp.

It just didn't make any sense as a course of action to take.

Not even by just virtue of any sort of cowardice. Sure, he was scared of girls. But other things? Nothing else really bothered him too greatly. He wasn't particularly concerned for his own life, not to a degree your average eight year old probably wasn't, because he'd never really given thought to death's complete and total consequence, only acknowledged that it was bad. Nah.

It wasn't that he saw why not.

It was just that he didn't see -why- Aules cared. At all.

_______

There it is again. Girls...

Arsenic tilted his head to Cadence, the actual third crying girl he had seen in the last few hours, and, momentarily, he considered the possibility that perhaps crying women were not an omen of the incoming apocalypse, a sign of the prophecized end of all days. That perhaps his father had been utilizing hyperbole in his description of the threat that women possessed, and they were just as much people as you or I.

Nah.

An evil scheme...she's waiting for me to lower my guard...

Women truly were diabolical, to plea to the emotional instinct of boys, to distract them from more lively pursuits with their feminine wiles. It was just as his father had always told him. Her sniffles did get to him, honestly though, in a strange sort of way- he went quiet, as he often did in these situations, and let Levi handle the talking, just as Levi handled the fighting. It was how their duo worked.

He was sort of a shadow at this stage.


There wasn't really much in terms of context for the boy who'd just arrived.

What. The. Heck.

He arrived in time to see a talking, monstrous, enormous youkai, something he'd only encountered once before, being skewered with a spear, and a plethora of other assorted violence, talk of death, and other ominous tidings. To say he was being overloaded with information was an understatement.

He had absolutely no idea how to feel or what he should do in the current situation, so he just watched the proceedings, transfixed on the scene of the likely demise of the giant beast at the hands of the spear-chucker.

So he just watched.'

_______


Murderer..?

Arsenic's head snapped, sharply, to Avrill. He had absolutely no idea what was going on here, but the buzzword 'murderer' always turned heads. His attentions were scattered between that and what seemed the imminent demise of the Yokai over yonder.

His eyes scanned the battlefield as he stumbled backward, eyes bugging out. When he finally noticed Levi, he scurried across the battlefield, past everyone, briefly sidealong Leonard as the other boy stepped out.

And then he stopped, sliding to a dead halt as Levi swung at the older man who was trying to kill the yokai.

Holy crap, holy crap, what is going on?


It's a wonder to finally look your greatest fear in the face, with all of the anticipation you've mounted in your head, have it magnified in your mindscape as the most wretched, terrible of things, and have it be in equal parts not as bad as you'd thought and worse than you could ever imagine.

The violet-haired boy had a front-row seat to an execution.

Those eyes had always seemed so terrifying before today; The ones of a yokai, those effusive crimson orbs, were dimmed. He stopped moving. Arsenic swore he'd never seen something so still.

There wasn't a particularly dramatic reaction from the swordsman. To feign a personal attachment would be ludicrous- he'd never seen this ominous, towering, giant beast until today. But same as the meeting between him and Levi, or the other various defining moments that'd shaped the course of his demented childhood, he just knew this'd be something that stuck with him.

Forever.

He swallowed, trembling, and looked away. Cenric's words felt far away, as if his head were held underwater. Listlessly, the tiny swordsman's gaze shifted over and to the fight south- the ongoing battle between Alithea Silvertongue, his friend William, and this Avrill Eldor.

Anything to distract from the here and now.

____________________________________

Arsenic's only warning that soon a shower of meteors would descend from the heavens and crush them was the growing shadow on the ground, as he was simply not at all paying attention.

But why did-

The chaos that broke out in those scant few seconds was what alerted him, and in the breadth of instants, his eyes narrowed, and he darted. Magic'd already been imbued into his legs from when he'd been on his guard priror, and so is a simple task...

To pivot behind Veara, the almighty girl here, who surely must have some means of dealing with the incoming tide of heavenly destruction. He'd, infact, stand behind her totally blank-faced, as if there were nothing unusual about what he'd just done, and even stare dead back at anyone who'd look at him funny for it.

Unless she just bolted, of course.

And then Arsenic himself would instead continue his pivot into a dead sprint, far the hell away from the vicinity, body low to the ground as he took off at his maximum speed.