Chapter 1 - Broken Peace

Chapter 1

Broken Peace

Ash hurried along the abandoned boulevard, breaking the silence in the deserted town with his running steps, along with the occasional noise of wind blows and the dreaded echoes of gunshots and explosions from distant battles from neighboring districts. All the running had consumed much of his energy, but he cared not of it, nor did he have any choice against it. Besides, operating a vehicle would render him from being spotted easily in such a location– a war zone. Best to avoid from attracting unwanted attention. Properties; buildings, houses, shop lots, and vehicles which he came across a few, were left abandon on almost every corner of the town where he could set his sight upon during the run.

He slowed down and began to walk normally across a long, straight street in a residential area, catching his lost breath, setting his eyes upon a series of luxurious double-story homes built on the slope at the very end of the street, quickly searching for a suitable spot for him to get a clear view of the rest of the city below it.

His vision locked onto a house, one that was built on a higher position in comparison to others in the vicinity on the hill. Ash hasten his tread, slowly accelerate to the point of dashing faster than he did prior and leaped with all his might, up to a few meters high. His target was reaching the roof of the house, but his jump began to slow down rapidly in mid-air, ended up reaching not the targeted roof but only the wall of the second floor, grabbing the exterior pipe lines and climbed to the top of it. Gotten soft haven't I... he thought, recalling how back in his most active days would have reached the roof just in one go. He stood there on top, the highest point in the district, gazed into the view towards the rest of the town downhill, breathing deeply, once more catching his lost breath while maintaining his relaxed manner. He saw smokes and several minor explosions from several spots within the town shipping port’s vicinity kilometers away, and could hear wailings of sirens from various local authorities’ vehicles, several gunshots, and battle cries. The views were burning red from the twilight, the day was ending, waking the darkness of night to take over. Still functioning streetlights were starting to automatically switch on. For once, he thought of how big the town was and chastised it for being so at such critical moment of when he needed to reach his destination in a hurry.

He flexed his muscles, comforting himself in his adorned battle outfit: a dark-black long leather coat reaching his calves, with a built-in cowl-big hood that covered his visage under its shadow, long sleeved, zipped and clip-buckled onto his upper body, making it the most of his torso’s guise, while his waist down was outfitted with a pair of black jeans and a pair of lightly grieved combat boots for his feet. A sheathed broad sword fastened onto his back, not the possessions that struck his fancy, nonetheless he had not a choice but to equip those just in case should he ever get caught into the fray, though he preferred not to get involved into battle in any possible way.

He ran his fingers through his short, spiky hair, un-doing the hood in the process, letting the somewhat calming breeze touched him directly in the face, granting a speck of peace into his mind before the chaos that soon to come.

His eyes gazed upon the rest of Wharf Newland below the hill. At the edge of the port town was the pride of the country itself, the 'Wharf Ship Port', a well known ship port that connect various ship trading routes between countries and influences, a country well respected also for its marine strength despite being a neutral country, yet to fall into the greedy influence of AE nor its rival. Setting sunlight shone upon the wavy sea, reflection seen as though it was a ruby-red filled sea.

            Alas, there they were, the pirate invasion, poisoning the majestic view. Few numbers of hostile pirate ships designed with the resemblance of those from the middle ages, especially the masts and the sails. It was not even a surprise for the pirate’s movements being unpredictable, lurking in the 'fog' in the ‘Null Zone’. However, what weird him out was; the fact that the pirates actually made it into one of the lands under Allied Empire’s (AE) influence of control, a breach that has never been done before ever since the world war, two centuries ago. He suspected the pirates might have acquired aids from the AE rebels for the breaching, and vice-versa, must have also aided the rebels in their rebellion movements at the AE outskirt country, Canopy. It seemed like the rebel had their base founded there, a country located at the outskirt of the AE’s influence, and it seemed to be the most unfortunate to be located at the furthest reach of said influence. From sufficient amount of info he had obtained, he understood that even the AE’s peacekeeper faction, the GF, had been mobilized… but it was already too late…

            Canopy had silently fell into the clutches of cornered rebels, which were hunted down throughout the neighboring AE lands for decades. GF had anticipated that they would flee to Canopy at the outskirt of AE’s land of influence, and was the closest to the Outland faction and would then escape to there, the hostile land. Should the rebels managed to flee to Outland, then they would remain undetected as AE had no jurisdiction behind the enemy’s border. It was a matter of time before the AE’s global police, the 'Lawbringer', to get hold of the rebel's position and pin down their positions subsequently, but the rebels were one step ahead: rebel runners were sent for infiltration to seek aid from nearest entity beyond the Null Zone, which turned out to be the Salvas Pirate. However, even if the rebels struck a deal with the pirates for supply aid. It didn't make much sense of how the pirate could physically arrived for military support without being detected neither by local authority nor the GF… unless if they were detected but somehow the info did not reach the GF. The Null Zone border had always been a tense warzone between AE and Outland, and was tightly guarded by both factions’ military forces. With how the chaos seemed, it was clear that the rebels wanted to claim the whole Canopy itself now, a whole country, though it was true that the rebel factions had always wanted to claim some of the AE lands in the name of ‘independence’ ever since the world war ended and fell into the grip of AE as the winner's prize.

             By how the events appeared to flow, the land will imminently be swallowed whole by the time GF arrives as it was already swarmed with rebels, pirates, and resisting local military.

            Ash let out a sigh, his objective however paid only a minor interest in the conflict itself, and only cared about the scale of collaterals in future to come. His concerns were locked tightly towards his current goal; the safety of the orphanage near the center of the town, a place where he would usually go to relatively frequently along with his daughter to find comfort and peace. The orphans, the nice men and women he knew there, he could not muster such strength to abandon them and ended up returning back there just to make sure they were safe, or at least to offer any aid he could lend his hands for. He had the premonition weeks before the current event; during the worsening political turmoil and detection of the rebel bases in prior months, and quickly had himself working on investigation, only to come across the intel of the incoming pirate interventional military threat despite the blocked entry routes. Canopy was at the verge of war.

            Soon after acquiring the intel, he quickly acted by smuggling out his daughter out of country along with the old couple, Jonathan and Marianne, his neighbours, to care for her during his absence, and several others he could get his hands on in his immediate vicinity. Even the escape was considerably difficult since most of the traveling portals, be it land, sea, or air, were subjected to lock-down to the point of 'none shall enter nor exit' after the complete sealing.

            Not too long following the external sealing, local authorities discovered and pinpointed several states and specific districts as the locations of the rebel bases, and started to carry out the internal sealing, blocking all major routes and most minor ones they could find that connect districts and cities. Then, the local military initiated the 'sweep' movement, said to hunt down every bit of the pinpointed rebel and to smoke them out of their hidings.

            Delle, a local policeman, also one of Ash's close acquaintances from the orphanage had volunteered to provide aid at the start of his investigation, but Ash declined and had him to look after the orphanage and work on their escape– in case of trouble– instead. Besides, having a good policeman to ensure one's safety is more convincing. Especially in dire times.

            Or so he thought...

Ash had no communication device in his possession except for a two-way beeper that was kept hung onto his waist. Cell phones or any other registered devices might render him vulnerable to being tracked by military intel-unit interception during his investigation. He could not risk that.

There was no text received from Delle's beeper for the past month except until recently– two days ago– a textless distress message beep was sent.

This can't be good. Where the hell are you, Delle.

            Everyone in his immediate vicinity was smuggled out. Now it was time to head for the orphanage. Unfortunately, the objective was located at Wharf Newland, one of the pinpointed locations  in Canopy.

            This might prove as an unwanted difficult mission indeed.

He leaped downwards from the roof, headed few meters below hills to the other side of the town, resuming his run along the deserted neighborhood. The sounds of explosions and gunshots getting louder and clearer by the second as he headed further into the sealed area, and so was his fear of the orphanage’s safety. He kept on running, the views were only of those damaged buildings and smokes in almost everything in the vicinity. Some even got obliterated and leveled to the ground by what it seemed from explosion or artillery shell attacks.

At a point, he stopped running, began to walk slowly to search the proximity, and ended up walking on a pile of scattered rubbles from destroyed building. The neighborhood was deserted, some of the buildings were destroyed, and reeks of smokes starting to fill his nose. Again, he ended up walking on a main street, with both sides, left and right, abandoned vehicles, most were covered in dust, and most were destroyed by various forms of firearm attacks. He reconned some vehicles and buildings nearby were left with trails of great-but-tactical destructivity, much like those from vehicle-mounted repeating machine guns', assuming a battle took place not too long ago with the deployment of some powerful fire-prowess.

Much was the same until he made a turn at a junction towards the dedicated road built solely to reach the mansion, surrounded by grassy fields, and faintly inclined upwards geologically.

Goodness... there he was, standing in front of what was left of a destroyed steel gate entrance of said mansion. Brick walls that ringed the mansion were partly destroyed along with traces of bullet holes and explosions. A siege.

 Almost everything beyond it was in ruin. What left standing was some ripped garden floras. Ash walked through the hollowed wall onto a pile of rubbles, stepped on somewhat of a remained from a ripped green metal signboard. He recognized it instantly: a piece of the orphan mansion’s signboard, he was standing at the very doorstep of his objective that lied in ruins, and he was searching the very neighborhood he loved before he could recognize it. His arrival was too late to even witness the event that took place.

He headed towards the mansion, about twenty-meters from the front gates, entered it from a hole blasted on its side and made a round of search, only to find not even a presence of a breathing soul. It was pillaged thoroughly, traces of struggles covered the area, several spots of blood painted the floor and walls, bullet holes bored the walls, but still nothing, not even a dead body. It was silence, accompanied only by the sounds from nearby battle along with the crunching glass and concrete under his boot steps. Up he went to the first floor, followed by the second floor and what was left of the attics, then descended back to the ground floor, calling out names along the way but to no answer.

His objective lied in ruins, frustration dwelled into him and the only importance at the moment was his composure. His mind was in a state of which he knew maintaining his calmness was a paramount and an ideal act.

Not even the orphanage was spared. Such collateral.

The original plan was to quickly escape the area with as many people he could get his hands on. But since the plan failed to even start, and he was alone, he thought no harm in doing further investigation at neighboring proximity just at the junction where he made the turn to the mansion earlier, back to one of the destroyed and deserted parts of the town.       

A moment of silent walk took place. He rummaged through random piles of rubbles from flattened buildings along the way in search for anything at all to keep his mind occupy... until he heard a faint echo of a loud shouting expression not too far away from his position, mixed together with the sounds of growling heavy vehicle engines and cracking sounds of crushing rubbles in its tracked path in the background. Soldiers and trucks... he guessed as he began climbing to the roof of one of nearby still-intact buildings, curious about the activity especially the loud commanding voice, finally decided on a course to run, treading hastily on one rooftop to another, following the engine sound, witnessing the view and the condition of the rest of the town along the way. Further parts of the town towards the other end of the outskirt were less affected by prior attacks, many buildings in the vicinity were still intact, and some were even in good shape.

The grumbling engine sounds slowed down. They were stopping, and so was Ash in response as he crept from one rooftop to another, with speed but silently, towards the source of the sounds.

 He crept from one rooftop to another, with speed but silently, towards the source of the sounds, especially curious about the loud shouting voice in particular.

He peeked downward from a rooftop of a small building few blocks away, and saw a group of local authority. Three of them–by the ‘more majestic’ differences spotted on their uniforms–were officers and the several other infantries carried assault rifles and SMGs, together with protective gears; helmets and Kevlar. They were surrounding of what it seemed was a rounded up group of helpless townsfolk.

The hell, Ash whispered.

The situation seemed off: one of the officers was speaking loudly with his helmet taken off and he held it by his side, seemingly demanding for something but it was unclear what, as his echoed voice dispersed in the air by the distance. Ash switched his observation into the group of townsfolk. They looked slipshod and were trembling in fear, which was the weirdest part there was; since they were supposed to feel safe in the presence of authority. He tried to look for anyone he knew among the crowd, but it was hard to recognize the townsfolk as they were at quite a distant, plus the bright-red setting sunlight was limiting his eye sight.

Seemingly losing his patience, the officer approached one of the townsfolk. He dragged out a teenage girl away from the group and placed her facing one of the other soldiers that then pointing his rifle to the confused and frightened girl. Some men from the group tried to pull the girl back to them, but the officer hit them hard with the butt of his rifle, followed with combat-booted kicks, and even brandished his helmet, crippling his victims who dared stood against his mean. The officer put on his helmet, then demanded again – this time, with an artificial voice, filtered through the helmet’s mic – to the frightened crowd in a loud, angry, and threatening tone. As the group’s men could not stop what had befallen them, women and children were crying out of fear and hopelessness as they could do nothing but to only watch.

Shit! They gonna kill her! Ash did not linger to guess what would. He dashed and leaped from one roof to another, approaching the local soldiers from above, swiftly and unnoticed.

The officer signaled the gun pointing soldier to open fire.

Ash drew out his sword, pulled up his hood, and threw himself into the middle of the group of soldiers, right behind the gun pointing one. With the hood put on and the setting sunlight that put a limit to visibility, his features appeared hidden behind its shadow, nothing was left exposed except for his lower face by the nose level and below.

Surprised, the soldiers had not the time to react but to point their guns to Ash. The one behind him–one with his gun pointing at the girl–turned to see what was going on, but the last thing he had a glimpse upon was Ash’s blade as it sliced his helmeted head, literally cutting off the entire upper half of it. Ash grabbed the dead motionless body, threw it to a soldier nearby.

Panicked as a dead body flung towards him, the soldier hit it out of the way, but the next very thing coming was Ash's blade piecing him in the mid section, made him the second to fall without fully grasping the situation.

Ash quickly moved about to reach another target near him, hacked and slashed his way through, one after another.

“Archstride alert! Archstride alert!” shouted an officer alarming the others nearby. His voice echoed through the helmet with an artificial electronic voice, filtered through the helmet.

They scrambled their formations to face the Archstride threat, few of them remained firm, stood their grounds and started to shoot hail of bullets, a common strategy for a group of non-Archstrides in case they encounter an Archstride. This strategy is always used to corner Archstride enemies in sheer numbers, which the subject will have difficulty to reach from one target to another.

Ash dashed and leaped, avoiding the line of fire from hitting him, slashing and piercing his way while drawing the firing line's attention away from the civilian group behind him.

 Ash's sword once more brandished to cut down another one, but this time his target did not even move a pinch. His sharp blade was on the verge of hitting the victim, until it was parried at the very last moment by a swift-and-vicious blow to the blade, sending the sword strayed from its cutting path.

Damn! Careless, am I not...? He taught as he leaped away, comprehending the sudden change of impression, intuitively felt the raising difficulty from it, gritting his teeth in minor frustration in response.

Ash then noticed that the target was one of the officers. In trance earlier, he failed to notice not only his target did not make any prominent movement, but also had not any firearm nor any prominent weapon equipped on him like the rest of the footmen, except for a set of brass knuckles already worn on his gauntleted right hand, the one weapon that struck fail his prior sword strike.

The officer still had not make any prominent movement except very calmly taking out another set of brass knuckles out of his jacket pocket and worn it on his gauntleted left hand. Very calmly, almost taunting-like.

Just the very clash Ash wanted to avoid… Archstride…

The area was silent from the absence of deafening gunshot. Both Ash and the brass-knuckle officer traded glares, measuring each other.

            Ash tightened up his grip upon his sword, wanted to make the preemptive move, but he hesitated. His judgment was clouded by the surroundings; the hostages and the outnumbering soldiers, and Archstride officer.

The soldier squad took seconds of their time to quickly refurbish their ammo magazines, some even swapped their arsenals into bigger and deadlier ones, breaking the silence with the faint sounds of weapon slides being racked.

            The momentary calm ended when a soldier squeezed hard a trigger, fired a grenade shell from the underbarrel grenade launcher, aimed directly towards the tar street under Ash’s feet.

It took him less than a mere second to sense the shot projectile, Ash quickly made his move to jump out of the way.

            The grenade blasted a tiny crater in the tar, but Ash got away a few meters from the explosion radius, covering his face with his left forearm, avoiding the blistering shards of blasted tar from hurting him in the face.

            He wanted to make a counter strike, pulling back his sword, prepared to negotiate his way by dashing into the middle of the crowd.

But the brass-knuckle officer came charging towards him with blinding speed, intercepting Ash’s intention with a volley of punches along with suppressive fire from the soldier squad from various possible angles.

Ash blocked and dodged the brass-knuckle’s blows, but the bullets made the situation too much of a handicap for him to handle, crippling his movements, and some even wounded him on several spots.

He managed to feebly trade several blows with the brass-knuckle, but red liquid of blood was starting to show and trickle from his armor.

Shit!

His situation worsened with more explosions from grenade shells interrupting his movements. Every time a grenade explodes, the brass-knuckle came amidst the distraction to deliver few punches he could hurl.

Ash had no choice but to take a few steps aback at a time, blocking and dodging, to a point he narrowed down his options to just quickly perform a series of zigzag jumps between two three-story height buildings in the immediate ground, towards the roof of a taller one between the two.

The brass-knuckle persistently did the same, intercepting Ash’s action in between the zigzag jumps, until he ended up at the roof of the shorter building right-next-to and under the one Ash stood atop on. He looked up and chuckled in fervor in the heat of battle, confidently leaped onto the taller roof, and charged straight towards Ash.

"Artlac, you idiot!” voiced the earpiece nestled in the brass-knuckle’s ear. It was the voice belonged to the one of the other officers below. “He’s drawing you out from the line of fire!” shouted the officer on ground, into his earpiece.

Hearing it, then only the brass knuckle realized he was fighting a harder fight, lured into his enemy’s playing field, into a one-on-one combat. Ego aside, he started to realize the raw physical strength gap between him and his opponent, clearly proven now he had no suppressive fire to aid him on top of the roof.

He tried to leap back, attempted to withdraw to where the other soldiers were, but Ash intercepted his retreat before he could make his move. As he turned, Ash was a step ahead in front of him, followed with a series of sword brandishes and thrusts. The brass-knuckle dodged the first few blows, and parried the next ones with his weapons. Each time he successfully blocked an attack, he could feel a great impact from it, hurting his hands in the process on top of gradually draining his stamina.

What the freaking hell with this guy?? He was wounded and cornered. How did the tables turned?! He knew he had to somehow retaliate soon before he truly drained out of energy, and saw an opportunity when Ash swung his sword with concentrated strength. Artlac dodged the attack, with his body span and his right arm extended outward. With the spin momentum, he hurled a punch directly to his enemy’s face.

It was a direct hit, a powerful blow right to Ash’s jaw. A blow strong enough that Ash’s movement was put to a pause as he endured the pain with blood dripping out from his mouth due to injury. He felt the impact flowing through his head and the banging aftermath inside his head was overwhelming, causing him a considerable difficulty to keep his bearing.

Artlac paused as he successfully landed a hit. Should he had hit a normal person with such a punch, it would have shattered the whole head in the process. Confident, he was sure the hit would at least immobilize his foe, though the foe in question was still standing, he thought his victim was unconscious since there was no movement.

In trance, he thought of his next move; to pay back all the tiring effort he had put to evade and repel from being attack. But something was not right, his body would not move, and slowly he felt a strong surge of pain. His mind went blank as the pain appeared more and more prominent by the second. He looked instinctively upon his abdomen, and– to his surprise– there was a huge horizontal cut on it. Blood spilling out from the wound, and his whole body trembled from extreme and sudden pain, a cut he sustained without him noticing somewhen during the brawl. He was too in a trance and was too focus on fighting and did not realize a critical hit landed on him. His instinct of a human being began to think of nothing but to stay focus to endure the pain. His teeth were gritted, veins were emerging at the surface of his face, and he breathed in-and-out heavily through his mouth and nose.

He looked back up to his front where his opponent stood, but Ash was nowhere in sight but a very meter in front of him with his sword positioned to strike. But in all that chaotic mess of thoughts, he saw it, and he realized; it was not due to the lack of strength output in his punch that the enemy was still standing, but it was the art of Preservery, a healing type discipline that caused anastasis, mending the suffered wounds by excessively forcing regenerative cells to work hundreds of times faster.

The prove of Preservery art usage was shown clearly on Ash's body; faintly glowing veins expanded from his heart position to throughout his body, seeking any immediate damage for it to make amendment for and the glow were showing as if emerging from his armor itself, the effect from 'Abstenik'.

The brass-knuckle gathered all of what was left of his remaining strength to at least block the incoming blade, resulted in both weapons clashed, but the blade passed through his weakened defense and cut him down.

His enemy fell decapitated, blood gushing out from the huge cut from the slash. Ash turned and rushed back to where the battle had first started. The brawl had much delayed his rescue attempt. He did not anticipate an Archstride to appear so soon. To his agony, the military squad had begun to shoot at the rounded civilians, killing a large sum of headcount at a time, person after person. He could hear screams of death coming from the group, loud but fading per passing moment. His movements were momentarily but literally paused as he could only watch the civilian were diminishing in numbers too quickly, even quicker than him brandishing a blade. Even if he went rushing down below, he would not be able to save anyone on top of jeopardizing himself in the process.

Ash’s attention caught upon an officer– the one that gave the order to shoot the girl earlier. He was hastily escaping the scene with his one hand dragging the teenage girl by the hair with him, forcing her to run to keep up with his hasty walking pace. The rest including one remaining officer stayed behind, commencing attacking position.

Seeing all those, Ash rushed on the roofs towards the officer and the girl. Infantries remained below him opened fire towards his position above. The infantries’ attacks were more patternized; they used grenade launchers more frequently, and spread even further from one another to widen the effect of outgoing attacks, and to avoid being easy targets from splash-type attack– just in case– as a standard battle pattern against an Archstride-type threat. But little did they realize, Ash kept on running, ignoring the threats they posed below as they anticipated Ash would come rushing to rescue the civilian. But instead, Ash hurled himself near the fleeing officer, quite a distance from the other infantries.

The fleeing officer heard the radio chatter installed in the helmet screamed in regard of his jeopardized position. Realizing his objective to flee was in peril, the officer drew out his combat knife sheathed on his waist. His other hand– that was dragging the girl– pulled the her by the hair, and the blade was directed to be placed onto the girl's neck, with the intention of holding her hostage. But he did so without realizing his actions were outsped as Ash charged toward him with the speed he could not comprehend, grabbed him by both his wrists as he turned to commence his part of the threatening.

His movements were immediately seized by the wrists from the powerful grip, and bore witness with his very pair of eyes; the extended glowy veins of Preservery art in the middle of wounds amendation process, slowly restore the appearance of his captivator as though before the whole clash started.

Panicked, the officer tried to thrash-about his way loose, but the hostile grip upon his wrists greatly strengthen in return. At the first few moments, it was nothing he could not withstand, but the grip was getting even more powerful thereafter, to the point of slowly crushing the said wrists. His grunting steadily turned into a painful scream parallel to that event, mindlessly cursed and called for immediate assistance through his helmet-mic as his wrist bones slowly snapped from being crushed. Both his hands, aside the torment, were still persistently holding firm onto his objectives; the knife and the girl. He mindlessly rocked his body to all possible directions, but was proven utterly futile.

The officer was getting frantic by the second. In desperation of his remaining rationality, the officer launched a headbutt with all his still-existing strength, aimed straight at Ash's face.

Ash saw it coming, but the battle had terribly worn him out from organizing any reaction of self defense, and the helmeted headbutt hit him hard straight in the middle of his face.

He gritted his teeth, endured yet another painful blow. With his head leaned aback from the impact, he counter attacked with his own headbutt with it, crushing the officer’s helmet in the visor, then immediately released the officer’s wrists as the victim's clutch loosen upon the knife and the girl, and the motionless body fell to the sidewalk with blood flowing out of the partially crushed helmet.

The opening from the crushed part of the helmet exposed its wearer's crushed face, as well as revealing the components install inside; bluish color projection lights from the 'Heads-up display (HUD)', and was letting out a series of blipping sounds and indistinct crackling chatter voice at the other side of the communication.

Those aren’t from these guys…

Ash though, laying his eyes towards the swift approaching infantries. He reconned contact has been made to the rest of them nearby and had their situation reported, and a high probable that it was from acknowledged reinforcement respond.

Released from being hurtfully dragged around, the girl fell to the floor right next to the motionless bleeding officer. One of her feet was bared, bruised and bleeding as the other pair of footwear got torn from being dragged. Her shoulder length blond hair was a mess from being tugged, her bruised face bore the look from mixture of negative emotions– prominently fear and trauma– and her eyes were red and swollen from crying but without the presence of sound except sobbing and heavy breathing. She bit her lower lip, not saying a word nor looking elsewhere other than the floor, with her hands pressing her head from the sides, reactively trying to protect herself, an effect that lingered from prior event.

Threats were closing in fast, and Ash was not in any desire, or more importantly, in any advantage to persevere anymore combat. He quickly grabbed the girl, carried her on his shoulder, and hastily fled the area with a considerable depth of hope that the enemies did not find the vicinity familiar more than he did.


Decorative Picture. Source, Nazgul from LOTR series, copied from google: