From the skies, a man floated down.
He looked rather simple.
His build was average, his hair brown and his eyes a light green, his frame adorned by a pristine two-piece black suit that enhanced the buffeting waves of charisma he emitted.
The only oddity was, well, his presence.
He didn't look human. Not in the slightest.
His eyes were just the slightest bit too big, his smile just a bit too wide, his teeth too sharp, and his features too… round.
The uncanniness of his looks, atop the suffocating aura he emitted, instantly instilled deep fear into every human present.
Noticing this, he nodded and sighed in relief.
"Great." His voice was soothing to the ear. "I'd like to welcome you to Settlement 0001 of the Forest."
"My dear children of Ithurial, feel at ease."
They, in fact, did not feel at ease. If anything, the strange man's words only seemed to tense the crowd further.
Instinctively, the crowd began to retreat, mud stirring from their slow stampede and children's cries echoing in a chaotic choir of anxiety.
The falling rain only seemed to irk everyone all the more, the pressure the strange man emitted rising by the second.
It rose, and it rose, until at some point most couldn't move, frozen in fear, feeling as if a blade was tightly pressed to their necks.
From the core of the lot, a group of tall, hulking men pushed through, reaching the front and directly facing the man.
One of them stepped up, acting as a leader, towering over the young man.
He was older, most likely in his forties, yet his body rippled with muscle and power, the tattoos lining his arms hinting at his military past and the scars over his face confirming it.
He was bald, only sporting a thick white moustache, his dark brown eyes gleaming as he met the young man's light green eyes.
"Identify yourself and state your demands. I stand as a representative of Ithurial." The old man's voice was cold and stern, his eyes fierce and presence imposing.
"Any harm done to the citizens of our planet will be taken as direct offence to the Federation and Association, and immediate action will be taken."
"Identify yourself, then surrender yourself. Now."
He didn't seem to care in the slightest that he was facing an entity that had just stepped out of the skies, or that this entity seemed capable of heightening the very effect gravity had on them all.
The young man smiled, but didn't answer, staring upward as if waiting to see whether anyone would dare do anything.
The older man's face twisted into a frown, but just as he was about to speak again, a young man stepped out from the crowd.
A series of gasps echoed as they laid eyes on him.
Like all of them, he wore a set of grey pants with a heavy shirt made of tough cotton.
But he was so thin and malnourished that, upon his tall and lanky frame, they might as well have been robes.
His hair, long and silvery white, was even more atypical, let alone his eyes, a deep gold, complemented by rings of dark orange.
The older man laid eyes on Uriel.
'Genetic enhancement.'
Only nobles could afford such things, nobles who had once been in the army. Rapidly, everyone else in the crowd came to the same conclusion.
Ignoring the heavy gazes falling onto him, Uriel stumbled forward, still not used to his legs working and the light of day disorienting him.
He stumbled and fell quite a few times as he made his way forward, none daring to help him.
He didn't look very… normal.
"Hey, hello there, sir," he greeted the strange young man.
Patting his shirt, Uriel tried to remove the mud from his clothes, but that only smeared it further across him.
Bitter, he gave up, refocusing, still wheezing and coughing.
The latter smiled. "Hello. You are?"
"I am… U-… Uriel."
Uriel couldn't believe the sheer tiredness he felt from just walking a few meters, his chest heaving and cheeks flushed.
'By the Gods. Hopefully they have a tonic for me.'
But he didn't complain.
"Well then, Uriel, I am Tholyr, your settlement guide. What can I do for you? I was just about to have a pleasant chat with this kind sir."
Uriel nodded and swallowed hard. "Great."
He turned to look at the tall moustached man. "I don't suppose your chat with this veteran would involve any form of death, yes?"
Tholyr seemed taken aback, just as the crowd tensed up.
"Perhaps. It depends on their intentions. It always does, doesn't it?" he asked, a toothy smile appearing on his uncanny face.
Uriel felt a shiver run down his spine as Tholyr's aura pressed closer, as if he were standing before a slumbering dragon ready to awaken and explode at any moment, but he pressed on nonetheless.
"Well, that'd be catastrophic. I don't suppose mister—" he looked at the moustached man and his group.
"General Lorys," the man answered.
"—Lorys and his men had any bad intentions." Uriel stepped forward, placing himself between the two parties.
"You see, the military men of my world are very driven and dedicated to the people." He gave a nervous chuckle. "For the people and the world, they'd even go against heaven."
"Which is why Sir Lorys' words right now may have seemed a bit harsh—rude, even—but please don't take any offence to it."
His words faltered as a violent coughing fit overtook him, one he couldn't suppress.
Moments passed, everyone staring at him in confused silence, before he eventually recovered.
"Apologies. But as I was saying, let's assume all the general said before I arrived is null, and restart on a good foundation."
"We all want to agree with one another, yes?"
He turned to look at Lorys, his eyes pleading. Uriel himself couldn't believe he was doing this.
'Did this old idiot not see this man just walking on air?!' he roared internally. 'Please…'
One of Lorys' men stepped forward and violently pulled Uriel away.
"Learn your place, boy."
His hand blurred, slapping Uriel before shoving him away with as much power as he could muster.
Dizzy, Uriel fell into the mud, his ears ringing and his jaw most likely broken.
Any normal man could probably kill him with the slightest effort, let alone a genetically enhanced retired veteran.
Tholyr looked down at Uriel.
Then he looked back toward Lorys and his people.
"It's unfortunate," he said calmly. "The boy saw your foolishness and tried to save your lives."
BANG!
Lorys fell back, his head exploding into a rain of flesh and bone. His men died as well.
Their heavy bodies toppled, and silence ensued.
Then came a heavy silence, full of horror, the echoes of falling rain filling the blank.