Out of Light, Into the Dark

[Proto Man]

For some reason, the Pale Moors didn’t feel too bad.

Maybe it had something to do with Proto Man’s inability to experience true human emotion or true human responses to outside stimuli. As the trio ventured further from Darkshire, the preteen machine would glimpse at his two allies. While Snake Man seemed a little more observant than normal, Mireya appeared more unnerved than he had ever seen her. The huntress, who had survived in the wilds of the Tangled Green for who knows how long, never once kept her gaze in one place. Even following their fight with the blighted Wood Man, Mireya looked unnerved, but something about the atmosphere of the Pale Moors was getting to the woman in a manner that Proto Man was unable to feel or experience.

“Are you okay?” He finally asked as the group came to within a quarter mile of the dense patch of trees where the town’s garrison had battled the necromancers.

It took her a moment to realize he was talking to her. “Y-yes, of course.” She shot back without looking back at the android. “There’s just this… heaviness to the air here that I’ve never felt before. It feels like the entire place is trying to smother me. “

“You’re having trouble breathing?”

“It’s not like that,” Mireya responded after recalling the synthetic nature of her two travel companions. “When you have hot or humid climates, the air feels heavy because of moisture. That’s what I felt when I went to the Vasty Deep for a few weeks, but this is something totally different. “

“Strange.” Snake Man muttered as they paused in front of the tree line.

“It’s just psychology…” the half-night elf added. “It’s no wonder most of the people in that town looked like they were about to kill themselves. The atmosphere of darkness and despair in this place is enough to do that to people, let alone the demons and monsters and all the other terrible things rumored to live out here.”

“Glad I don’t have to worry about that stuff,” the serpentine machine stated with a faint smile as he knelt down. Setting his buster on the ground, his companions watched as a series of mechanical snakes slithered out form the barrel. Without looking back, they vanished into the underbrush and into the woods. Their creator stood back up and glanced over to his companions. “They’ll scout ahead of us and relay any information or danger back to me.”

With that, the trio entered the woods in search of blighted beasts and undead creatures.