(Preshow) Preshow Facility

[Gildarts]

Mouth of the Hallway

The painful crackling of rusted squeaks grated with unsubtle ambience from his metal appendages, sounding through the hallway and causing immense agony to the closer participants and Syntech employees who were passing him by. He had stopped in place, realizing that the shrieking pitch had perturbed others based on the many eyes which had looked bug-like as they first bulged and then angled angrily at the source. Some covered their ears, others merely scowled at the red-haired wizard and scurried along. Too busy to chat, yet mindlessly going anywhere that their feet would wander.
 
Gildarts allowed his eyes to pass over the bustling crowd, most of the wayward faces blurred together in mixed shades of undistinguished gray. This particular mage had never been keen on observation, if his mind spent too long on a thought and there was always consequence. Such was the power of his cursed magic. This result could be detrimental and he could get exiled from the competition for endangering others before he’d found the treasure he sought. Breathe. He reminded himself and his eyes scoured the pristine architecture of the pleasantly sculpted hallway filled with humans, humanoids, and others with more extreme figures.
 
Only one other Prime stood still in the moving crowd, it was tall and monstrous, it had dark skin and it was likely male. His eyes were sinfully dark, not in color, but in how deep his rage filled the chasms of his soul. Flint struck metal and things seemingly normal shattered into a true, unrelenting storm of chaos.
 
The fluorescent hum of lights flickered as though an omnipresent being was cackling as the faltering light delivered pulsating flashes smearing the opaque darkness with light. A shadow had crossed the mage's mind and his blood had seemingly been transmuted into ice while a fear-born sweat accumulated on his brow. The rush of terror filling his heart and mind plunged deeper into his soul as he was submerged in the perfect picture of death. The flashing strobe from above blinked with his adjusting eyes and he scanned the scene with growing guilt.
 
Icy chills prickled his neck as his eyes darted over the scene, each time finding fresh, newly daunting details around every place his gaze settled. One where everyone who had passed him by were now far from the picturesque mirth they had been exuding, the walls had been shattered and left into mounds of cubes, a trace that it was his magic which had created this broken scene of the essence of death via travesty. Splattering the ground in thick, syrupy pools was an ankle-deep puddle of blood as though fresh out of a horror novel. But it wasn’t just on the ground… Their clothes were covered, no, smothered and drenched in pungent metallic-scented fresh blood. The Primes and Syntech Secondaries surrounding him were now corpses, surrounded by their life's blood all of which that should have been contained by their skin.
 
One clicked and chittered with chatter as its bones rubbed together, completely skeletonized yet somehow still walking as the crimson tide stained its svelte ivory shins. Others wore undead, pale gray skin, hanging off them like overly-baggy garments, for there was atrophy and decay within the gaunt skin and little muscle leftover. One person's skin was a moldy green and had a face like a ghoul's sagging in large lumpy clumps while their mouth remained open and thirsting for something more than air, while their gums glowed black with grotesque decay. The tangy taste of blood and repugnant smelling disembalmed tombs leaked on his tongue, sending a wave of nausea into his swaying, twisting stomach. The Prime gulped as his eyes hurriedly took in more of the scene, shock had tumbled within him like dominoes of horror cascading down past his flesh and embedding itself into the root of his bones, his expression twinkled with fear as he looked around the room, his eyes filling with sorrow for what he had assumed to be his folly. He’d let his own magic control him and now… He could not explain what he was seeing.
 
His neck turned to the left and a girl with her eyes gouged out was smiling at him, instead of eyes, were empty sockets as though sketched from charcoal, filled now with only hollow black shadows. Her chin and expression turned as though she could see him though, and Gildarts gulped as he took a few steps away from her, now feeling the weight of the heavy water caught on his black cape and sticking like gooey glue on the bottom of his boots.
 
The mage’s breaths deepened with an immense sense of panic, it was overwhelming, like a tsunami flooding his body with the realization that he was responsible. The title "Murderer" plastered on his forehead with great bold letters and he felt himself losing grip with reality, he reached out, bracing himself against the wall.
 
Only one creature remained still, unmoving, and unchanged. Standing in the fray of the picturesque image of death that had warped before his eyes, there was one whose chilling, near demonic image remained the same. It was the tall, dark elf standing still while the rest of the room continued to move as though nothing was wrong and their faces were not stained by death’s gruesome hand. The dark elf remained completely still, nonchalant to the death that had struck the room as swift as lightning in Gildarts’ mind’s eye, the rest of the corpses had continued moving sluggishly along, as though they had better places to get to than attending their own death. Gildarts had to have been seeing things, for the ghosts continued to wander. But why?
 
Suddenly, with the touch of the wall, the flashing of darkness intermingling with the mania of the light ceased and the light froze. A single blink cleared the vivid scene from his eyes and delivered quenching clarity. But nothing could cure him from the ghastly haunt of his still-borne memory. All was back to normal, except for the mage's racing heart and his mind which was moving at the speed of a tornado. The image of blood splattered throughout the room remained etched behind the curtain of his eyelids and made Gildarts double-take the mundane hallways with a new light. He was dumbfounded and the girl closest to him was back with her eyelids batting over her eyes, blinking at him.
 
“Did you… Just see that?” Gildarts said, his grisly voice choked out, confounded as his eyes searched her expression for the shock he was feeling embedded in his rattling cage of ribs. He hurriedly sucked in another breath seeking to tame his unruly mind. This was the first time in his life he had ever been scared nearly to death.
 
“See… What?” she blinked and looked around the room finding nothing to have changed except maybe a few primes departing and leaving.
 
Gildarts found his hand reach for his temples which were tense and constricted with abounding stress. It had been some sort of hallucination, but he hadn’t eaten any bad chicken. The source of this was unknown, but through it all, Gildarts had noticed one thing. In the mirage, the tallest man in the room's appearance had not changed a single bit despite the many other people embodying their own corpses, granted, Illidan was already terrifying enough.

A single step forward would lead Gildarts in the right direction for finding out the answer. What was happening to him? And who was this strange villainous looking creature? If the elf had a name, it would be spoken.