Honestly, Seth didn't remember very much about his time in the cult. To be fair, he had been saved from it's clutches when he was only 10 years old by his sister, who had snuck them out on the very night of her 16th birthday.

She had told them that leaving that place with her family was the best birthday present she could ever have. Seth wasn't too sure about that, but she had always been like that. Fighting to protect him and the twins from the horrors of the world.

The cult itself wasn't situated in the city, in fact none of his siblings remembered exactly where it was otherwise they would have sent the police directly to their door. No, all he knew was that it was somewhere in the north, hidden in the depths of the highlands and all he could remember was the time spent wandering aimlessly through those vibrant fields of endless green, until they came upon Inverness, the city they were now riding towards.

It was there that his sister found a few odd jobs to make money, between which she was the one that took care of them. And on those days where her shifts made it so that she wasn't home for days, and usually slept on the bus, it became down to Seth to take care of the twins.

He might not have thought about them very much since everything fell, or really discussed them with anyone but Bob, but he loved his family deeply. Of course he did, who wouldn't?

The main reason he kept them off his mind, other than his mind being constantly overwhelmed by new issues rearing their ugly heads constantly, was that he knew himself. He knew that if he thought about them too much, he would eat himself alive with worry, filling his mind with all the worst possible scenarios and brutal ways he could lose them in this new world.

His mind was already full enough for those horrendous thoughts, and none of them were helpful in the slightest.

So although it made him seem cold and uncaring, he put them out of his mind and instead focused on the here and now.

Yet hearing about that familiar figure, even if they were going by a different name, he couldn't help but slip into the past.

He might not have remembered much about the cult, mainly the gruel they used to eat and the odd prayer rituals they burned into his memory before he could properly talk, but of all the things he did remember. He remembered that man most of all.

Lightbringer, although he knew him as Lucifer. The leader of that awful cult, the one responsible for their parents horrendous and oh so morbid naming habits, and who was now being hailed as a God. Well... He was being worshipped as one back then too, that was part of the cult's teachings, but now it was on a much grander scale.

Plus, now he had the actual powers to back it up and not simply relying on the gullibility of vulnerable people and cheap tricks to make them believe in him.

Although, now he was not the only one being worshipped that way. Seth was too, or his alter ego Corvus was, and there were undoubtedly more like them around the world being hailed and worshipped for their power by those who are scared and desperately needing something to cling to as comfort.

But, while Seth couldn't help but draw parallels between their situations, it was his experience of growing up in such a cult, having his sister tell him the tales of the true horrors he had the luck of never witnessing, such as sacrifices. Some being performed goats or other animals and others... not so much.

He just hoped that the eagerness of his own followers wouldn't come back to bite him in the a-

SNAP! WHAM!

Seth leaned forward in his saddle, barely avoiding the jaws of a monstrous wolf that snapped closed behind him, thankfully only taking a bite of thin air instead of his tender rump, like it had originally wanted to.

Not waiting for the beast to recover, Seth gave it a firm kick in the head, cracking its skull and sending it tumbling across the ground. However, that barely fazed the beast, it tumbled head over tea kettle, bouncing across the ground like a ragdoll before finally twisting in the air and landing in a sprint once more.

It didn't even lose its momentum, going from tumbling to chasing. But such a sight was not that surprising at this point, after all these beasts had been chasing them for the last few miles and didn't seem to take the hint that they were not on the menu.

They were most likely simple dogs at one point in their lives, but now they were simply a pack of hell hounds. Wolves that stood 2 metres tall, left trails of flames wherever they stepped and had the upper half of their skull on display, as if half of their head had simply melted away.

An eery light burned from within their chests, casting shadows with their rib-cage, while their flopping tongues glowed with a deep orange light, like incandescent metal pulled directly from the forge.

They were fast, relentless and irritatingly difficult to kill. Much like wraiths and spirits could only be reliably killed by those with soul based abilities, these mutts could only be killed by elemental attacks. The skull cracking kick that Seth had dealt moments before was most likely healed by now, the Hell hound fresh as a fiddle and ready to kill.

If that wasn't bad enough, it also had to be a particular type of elemental attack, specifically water.

It meant that only one member of their expedition party had an ability that was effective against them, while someone like Astra actively fed their abilities. Even Cynthia was not safe from their fangs, which tore the soul as easily as the flesh, and did not dare to try to drown the beasts in her acidic mass.

That fact alone made Seth extra wary of them, as he was leaving a constant trail of threads behind him as he moved. Once these threads got a few metres away from him, they would eventually fade away into a stream of soul energy that couldn't be caught. But when they were close to his body? They were still very bite-able.

He must have looked like Pinocchio to these beasts, or like an idiot that had fresh sausages hanging out of his pocket as he wandered through the forest.

They were truly vile beasts. They had been hoping to lead them on a chase and save themselves from an exhausting fight, but instead it had turned into an exhausting flight.

'Dammit.. I was really hoping we would have lost them by now. Come on buddy, if we just make it to the river, then we can probably shake them or at least drown them. Just a little further, you can do it.'

Seth could feel Omelette's laboured breathes beneath him as they flew, his wings desperately beating against the air as he struggled to keep himself aloft. The wolves were only able to nip at his gluteus maximus because Omelette had drifted so low in his exhaustion, as well as fell to the back of the pack.

Leaning forward in his saddle, Seth patted Omelette on the side of his long neck and gave it a reassuring rub, yet when he pulled his hand away a clump of Omelette's feathers fell out from the same spot.

Frowning deeply, Seth ran his hand over one of his feathers and gave it the most gentle tug in the world, to which it popped free without a hint of resistance. He rubbed his thumb over the edge of the feather, where they used to be sharp as a sword, yet he didn't get so much as a paper cut.

But that did not mean the feathers were soft either, instead their edge had completely dulled. Their soft and luscious texture replaced with the rough, dry texture of sandpaper and their black lustre had been replaced by a sickly grey.

The feather felt feeble in Seth's hand and, with a slight pinch of his fingers, it crumbled to dust and scattered as ash on the wind.

A worried expression painting his face, Seth whipped his head around and looked over his shoulder. He completely ignored the snarling Hell-hounds, instead focusing on the trail of feathers being left behind with every flap of Omelette's wings.

"What is going on with you buddy?"

{Father... I don't... I don't feel so good...}

With those final words, Omelette's heavy eyelids sunk closed and his frantic wings grew still. The pair plummeted from the air, but they did not have to plummet far. Omelette's body flipped over as it slammed into the ground, causing Seth to be thrown from the saddle from the momentum.

The Wyvern's body dug a deep, long furrow in the dirt of the beautiful highland hills as his body came to a gradual stop. His rider, on the other hand, bouncing across the grass like a skimming stone.