𝐒𝐓𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐆𝐓𝐇, Clarisse la Rue

𝐨. prologue

STRENGTH
━━ prologue.

ˏˋ°•*⁀➷

NABI CHO-HEE WAS GOING TO DIE.

Perhaps she deserved such an untimely death, right here—on a street dimly lit by the flickering streetlights, with the darkness draped over the sky like an omen, as a man... or what seemed like a man, trudged toward her. An awfully stereotypical setting for such a small child's death.

   Maybe she was fated to die this way, alone and frightened. Death followed her wherever she went, after all.

The man's suspiciously large teeth and intimidating grin were enough to have Nabi second-guessing what he truly was, especially with the singular eye in the centre of his deformed face.

He sneered, cracking his fingers, "You'll taste so good, filthy half-blood. I have not eaten in a while."

Nabi didn't know what he meant by that, but his words made her tremble. Her heart was hammering, and the dreadful, twisted feeling in her stomach had spread down to her legs to freeze her in place. She needed to run.

   My child...

   "Hm." He sniffed, then grinned. "I smell death on its way.... maybe since yours is soon, demigod."

She took off into a sprint. But when she turned around to catch a small glimpse of him, he was smiling wickedly. The monster must've had supernatural strength, because with his bare hands, he had managed to rip a streetlight from the ground and throw it at her.

She yelped as it barrelled towards her, ducking just in time for it to hurl past her head. Though Nabi slipped and tumbled, scraping her hands and knees.

She scrambled to get back up, wobbling to her feet as her ears began to ring and her insides began to coil. But Nabi had already been trying to lose him for ages. She had grown tired. The entire evening, she had ducked into alleys and hastily sped past groups of people to lose him. It hadn't worked. It was as if he had caught her scent and had tracked her down like she was prey.

He strode toward her and plucked her up with one hand, snorting at how easy she was to grab hold of. Nabi swallowed a lump in her throat as the monster examined her, so tall that he was dangling the small girl from the ground, and breathing so close to her face that she could see the terrifying sight of his veins throbbing in his eye.

   "Please— please don't kill me." Nabi begged.

   My child...

Nabi tried to block the voice out.

He laughed, cruelly. "You are so young. Barely eight or nine. So ripe to eat."

   "I— I promise I won't taste good!" She cried, "See, I actually don't like vegetables that much, so I'm probably not nutritious, and—"

   "Heads up, you one-eyed freak!"

The monster turned as a baseball bat swung at him, and he let go of Nabi with a disgruntled noise. She fell to the concrete ground.

A man in what seemed like a gym teacher's clothes had been the culprit of the baseball bat's trajectory. Except... Nabi's eyes widened. He had goat legs. He puffed up his chest, ready to fight, then said, "I'll distract the cyclops, kid. You save the girl."