After seeing the young boy with tears now streaming down his face, Witch immediately began to pick up her pace.
Normally when people would see a child crying near one of Mercy's front gates they wouldn't even bat an eye. This was because of all of the kids that came to visit their parents that had just made it back to Mercy after finishing a job.
However, not everyone was lucky enough to make it back home. So when kids would hear about their mother's, father's, or sometimes both of their parents' tragic passing, they would break down and cry.
But there was something different about Vigil that made him stand out from the rest of the children that were normally spotted in the area.
He, unlike most, came through the gate. He wasn't waiting at the gate, no he walked through it.
That fact, accompanied by his currently worn face and attire as well as the sword that was hanging from his hip, could only mean one thing to the curious people that were passing by.
The boy was most likely a Child of War.
Thinking this, Witch thought that it would be in both of their best interests to hightail it out of there.
So she quickly picked up the crying boy and ran.
Thankfully by the time that she had grabbed him, no one's attention had been garnered enough for suspicions concerning Dread's identity to arise.
After running for a few minutes, Witch stopped for a second to look around, then put Vigil back on the ground.
By the time that he had been put down, the tears had already stopped flowing.
Rubbing his now slightly swollen red eyes, Vigil took a second to get adjusted to them then took a look at the scenery that was now sprawled out in front of him.
The boy could barely understand the view that had been laid before his eyes. But even then, he still knew one thing.
'Even in my wildest fantasies, I never would've imagined a city to look anything like this.'
He could see hundreds, if not thousands, of giant buildings that seemed to touch the sky, with bridges that connected some of them to one another. Attached to a few of the bridges, as well as hanging from giant chains that were attached to even more of the giant buildings, were vast plots of land that had small town houses of different shapes and sizes on them.
Some of the small house's designs looked familiar to him, while others looked like... Well Vigil couldn't really describe it too well, but the word that he was looking for was modern.
But even with this giant concrete jungle surrounding him, that didn't mean that there was no greenery around.
Growing off of the sides of some of the buildings were humongous trees whose leaves let just enough sunlight through to seem relaxing and tranquil. Most of the trees seemed to double as houses for people to live in too, with a few having small rope bridges connecting them to either other tree houses or concrete bridges.
Speaking of greenery, about half of the giant buildings as well as the concrete bridges had beautiful vines full of all different kinds of flora growing off of them and extending downwards towards the ground.
However the cityscape wasn't the only thing that had brought Vigil great interest, because its people soon did too.
All around were people of different races and ethnicities.
There were angels, demons, orcs, ogres, elves, dwarfs, humans, beast folk, you name it. He'd seen all of these races before except never in such abundance.
But that was just it, that was why he'd found it so interesting, the diversity of it all.
Where Vigil had grown up, there was nothing but humans with the only differences between them being their skin, hair, and eye colors. So, seeing how different this place was compared to Gravolta was just so... Exciting!
As Vigil was looking around, something had caught his attention.
Sitting with him, and plenty of other people, on ground level was the stone statue of a man standing on about a meter and a half (~4'11") tall pedestal. But compared to the man's height of about 3 and a half meters (~11'), the pedestal looked like nothing.
As of currently, Vigil was facing towards its back side, only able to see the long trench coat that the depicted man wore, as well as his arms that seemed to be holding something in front of him. That and his boots of course.
But even then, with that being all he could see, something about the statue had enamored him.
Breaking him out of his enthrallment was the sound of Witch's voice coming from his left side.
"You remind me of me from when I first saw one of these statues... Why don't you go around and take a quick peek at what he actually looks like."
Vigil nodded his head without even looking in her direction, then proceeded to walk to the other side of the statue, making sure to keep his eyes locked on it as he did.
However, as the young boy was walking, he began to observe something... bizarre. No matter how many times he'd circle the statue, its back was always facing towards him.
Noticing this, he circled the statue once more. But this time, instead of keeping his eyes trained on the man, he made sure that his sight held onto the pedestal in which the man stood atop of.
Contrary to what happened before, Vigil was actually able to see the different sides of the pedestal.
Once he returned to where he had originally started, standing next to Witch, he was able to see a nameplate that had only two lines of words, nailed onto the statue's pedestal.
The lines wrote:
"Blessed be Warden Godsworth, founder of Mercy.
May you be acknowledged."
The nameplate had left Vigil confused. More specifically the second line of the nameplate did.
He could understand the first part.
All that it meant was that this statue was dedicated to the man who had founded the City of Mercenaries, Warden Godsworth.
But the second one...
'May you be acknowledged? Is it talking about the founder or... someone else?'
"Yep, I had a feeling that you would understand quickly. I mean, who am I kidding, of course you would! From what I've heard, all Children of War are quite quick on the uptake."
Witch said as she walked closer to the statue and towards Vigil.
Befuddled, the young boy turned around to look at the woman with a questioning look on his face, prompting her to explain what she'd just meant.
Stopping next to the boy, she spoke.
"You see, that second line, may you be acknowledged, is truly meant for the one who reads it. At first, people had no clue as to what it meant, but as time went on, we began to come up with a meaning behind those words."
She paused for a moment as she looked towards the statue in admiration.
After her long drawn out pause, that slightly ticked off Vigil as he was waiting for her to continue, she began speaking once again.
"No one knows exactly what it means to be acknowledged, but multiple theories have been made. The most popular theory originated with a random mercs past account about how he had seen the statue turn to look at him... and do nothing. At first, no one cared and just chalked it up to being the ramblings of some crazy nutjob that had received one too many concussions while working as a mercenary."
She paused in order to catch her breath.
As she was doing so, she had taken the gauntlet off of her left hand showing a thin silver bracelet tightly attached to her wrist.
Bringing her right hand up to the bracelet, she began to tap it in a rhythmic pattern. A second after she had finished her tapping, the bracelet then turned into a small reflective silver slab that sat comfortably in her hands.
Witch then began to swiftly tap her fingers against the surface of the sleek silver slab.
When she had finished, she turned the side of the object that was once facing towards her into the direction of the boy that was standing right next to her.
On the object read an article about a man that had committed suicide.
"This article was published a few hundred millennia ago. However, there is a reason as to why this case is still being talked about today."
She said as she drew her eyes to the statue once more.
"That is because cases like that one have been occurring ever since then. People claim that they've seen one of Wardens' statues look at them and then they either end up killing themselves or just disappearing, as though they had never existed to begin with."
Before Vigil could ask her any questions however, she had continued to speak.
"Even with all of that said, it is still just a theory with no actual evidence to back it up. Hell, no one has had any evidence that has pointed towards anything with these statues. People from all over the planet have been coming here since they were first made to try and study the mystery behind the statue that never looks at them, but it's all to no avail. So instead, most just gave up and called it a lost form of magic so that their heads would no longer hurt so much anymore"
After saying those words, Witch let out a long breath then turned around and started to walk away.
"Come one Dre- I mean kid, follow me. There are plenty of things that I want to show you and that you have to do, so stop just standing there and hurry up."
As she said this she began to wave him forward, signaling for him to follow.
Seeing her actions, Vigil began to chase after her, but not before taking one last glance at the statue standing before him.