Chapter 182: Sanctuary (5)
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Writers-Ablood
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Zamyr whispered, «Keep left.»
Void nodded, he deftly shifted to the left of the winding tunnels, a cold gust of wind combed the plates of his armour in thin streams. Every turn he took in the maze-like tunnels of Hellmouth felt slightly wrong: As if the place itself had been built inside out.
The tunnels were stacked like rings around a core. He ran the outer circuit around an inverted spire, then cut across a hanging bridge made of fused bone and slag, its handrail a chain of teeth set in iron.
He crossed through a nave that had been carved directly into the rock, supported by gargantuan chains that dug into the Moon's crust.
«Keep going», Zamyr said. «Then take the bridge to the right, and drop hard. There's another tunnel below it.»
Void darted straight for the bridge and leapt off, free-falling till he spotted an opening in the rock and reached for it. He grunted and pulled himself in.
Inside, the air changed. Not warmer—denser. The sound shifted from the hollow hum to a deep guttural groan. The dark wasn't just present; it was overwhelming.
Void stepped forward, and the pale aura surrounding his body surged, more present than ever. He looked ahead, his eye flickered blue, and he dashed. Void took three more turns till he reached a spiralling staircase carved from hanging boulders.
He jolted, deftly crossing down and dropping into a hall that opened like a wound. At the furthest end was a Knight. Its shoulders were as broad as the titanic doorway it guarded, sword propped into the ground ike a standard. Its armour was etched with old fights, and a green fire coursed through its scars.
"Looks like we got company." Void took a breath. He took one step forward and let his hand fall to the blade's hilt.
The Knight reacted, its bones cracked as it heaved to life. The blade in its hands shifted, its rusted edge burst into flames, slowly returning the blade to its old shine, and then a dark visage flickered in its eyes.
It hunkered forward, dragging the blade with its steps, and it roared.
"Shatter!" Void said, not a shout nor a whisper, just a word that seemed to etch itself into the world.
He swiped and cut the air. Void's blade dragged a thin, grey line across nothing, and nothing agreed to split. The Knight's first stride faltered as if it had trodden on a space that was no longer there; the strike cut cleanly through its knees. Lines cracked outward along its armour like invisible seams. Sensing the danger, the Knight raised its sword.
But it was too late.
[Klink]
The world went white.
A smile curved at Void's lips as he lowered his sword and sheathed the blade; a thin cut appeared across the Knight's body. An instant later, the Knight fell.
"Bit of an overkill?" Void raised a brow.
«Just fine», Zamyr chuckled.
Then, something strange happened.
The Knight's shell didn't fall apart; instead, it simply stopped moving. As if what Void had cut wasn't the Knight, but its soul. Now what remained was simply ash and dust, a vessel without power.
Void pursed his lips. He crept closer to the Knight, prodding the shell with a finger. As he brushed it, everything scattered. Void watched as the Knight itself eroded into dust, the last flecks settling and vanishing into the ground.
His eyes shifted to the blade by his side, "Is this something new? Never seen you do this before."
«How strange.» Zamyr hummed in thought, entirely puzzled. «It seems the more we descend, the stronger the dark acts against you, drowning your Light. But the gradient between the light and dark is my territory, or rather, the realm of possibility. As it stands, the deeper we go-»
"The stronger you get," Void's eyes flashed with understanding,
«And the deeper I cut.»
He nodded once and went on towards the door. Void shoved and the door groaned open, revealing a lightless descent that stretched towards the dreadful halls of Hellmouth's core.
Void squeezed himself inside and kept his hand on the inner wall. He moved fast, breath measured, as he silently continued downwards. Ever so often, the walls of the lightless chamber would shift in a strange rhythm and then settle down, as if mimicking a song.
When he got to the chamber's end, he stopped at a ledge of a cliff where sound rose, akin to a crowd drawing breath.
He looked over and deep below, a fiendish fire pulsed in disciplined waves. Sigils burned in circles as perfect as compasses could draw. Between those circles, you could see figures moving—wizards, robed and thin as blades, hands raised, voices shaping the air.
The effect was immediate. Rifts opened along the Moon's crust and vomited out legions of Hive. Void watched as the Knights and the acolytes rushed to the surface to defend the gates of Hellmouth.
But the cohort of wizards assembled below did not stop chanting. To them, summoning a new wave was only a matter of minutes. But to Void, it was disastrous. There was a limit to what the Nightstlakers could hold.
He wanted to go down and break the summoning rituals. His hand tightened on the blade by his side.
«Leave them, you must not act. Not yet ... not now,» Zamyr said. «They're just fingers. What you must cut off is that hand that curls them.»
Void tensed. He held his breath and stayed where he was till his thoughts settled. Then, he pushed off the ledge, digging his hands into the rock as he silently descended towards the core chamber, his pale aura masking his presence.
«You are nearly at the core,» Zamyr said. «She is there. Omnigul. My power is still not enough to answer her. She holds more power than I. A direct argument is not a fight. It is a mistake.»
"How do we fix that?" Void asked.
«Consume. Take. Grow. But we do not have the time. We must do what we can to stop her ritual.» Zamyr replied in a grim voice.
Void's eyes narrowed, his gaze shifted to the choir of Wizards busily summoning more Hive, then to the legion of Knights that stood guard at the gates of the core, and finally to the acolytes that crawled from underneath the pits.
The corners of his mouth curled up. "There is a plan. But, it's a bit risky."
«What is it?»
"You'll see."
«O brother mine,» Zamyr said, a sound between warning and wry, «everything you do is risky. But remember, there is no light to bring you back here.»
"You're right about that," Void said, and moved, "But the thing is, I just know it'll work."
«How so?»
"Let's just call it a hunch." Void smiled.
Void flickered towards the core and scanned everything around him.
A long avenue led to the central dais, and along that avenue, a legion of Knights knelt in lines, swords grounded, helms lowered. They did not shift, akin to statues.
Around the dais, a cohort of wizards stood equidistant, palms up, a seal drawn between them in a loop of runes that seemed to circle them. Far in the distance was a single door that led into a chamber.
Void let his sight slide past the obvious as he peered through the door. And there it was. He hissed a cold breath. He could see it.
A wretched crystal that hung in the air with a ruinous aura emanating from it.
He softened his focus, instead tracking down the aura of the fog he had chased here. The lines ran inward. Not towards the crystal, but past it. Or rather around it.
She was also here, Omnigul the Ascendant witch.
"She's inside that chamber. Guarding the crystal with her life." Void's jaw tightened. "I can see the fog curling in her palms."
«Yes,» Zamyr said eerily, «But be careful, O brother mine. Any closer to that chamber, and you will enter the Prince of Ruin's throne world. A realm entirely encompassed by his power. A realm where he is the only law.»
"Relax. We won't be going inside." Void said.
Void pulled back to the far reaches of the halls and set his feet to take a stance.
The Knights did not lift their heads. The wizards did not turn. The seal didn't waver. They couldn't see him. They couldn't sense anything. There simply wasn't any Light to track.
Void continued and reached for his blade.
"When I attack. Be ready."
«Yes,»
He unsheathed the sword slowly. The pale along the edge thickened, not bright—dense. He raised it over his head and held it there.
Then, Void took a deep breath.
The strain arrived first in his feet, an immense weight dragged his shoulders down, and finally, his back shook. But all Void thought about was the line from here to the chamber's door, and from the door to the crystal.
«Hold your breath, draw it in!» Zamyr's aura surged as it realised what Void wanted to do, «Keep coiling the power around the blade!»
Void waited and listened, focusing only on the witch.
A moment passed. Seconds rolled to minutes, and then finally, a soft breath escaped his lips.
He cut.
The strike did not blaze. It arrived. The pale ran off the edge and into the floor, into the air, into the very seam of the chambers, and the world bent a line from one point to the next. The Knights shivered, the seal contracted, the crystal flared, once.
A harrowing power tore through everything.
The core shook. Tremors ran through the galleries. The spiral bridges thrummed. In every tunnel, dust leapt and landed and leapt again. Every being in that place felt the strike that cut towards the very core of Hellmouth.
Omnigul raged, wretched magic spilling from her bones.
She sensed it. The strange power. The same power that seemed to hide something from her, the same power that seemed to run amok on the surface. And now? The same power was here. Here to finally hunt what she held dearest.
No. She could not let that happen. The Witch shrieked, raised her hand, she flicked her wrist, and a powerful wave of fire tore towards the chamber's door.
Her shriek blew out of the arch and across the chamber—a sound that carried anger and oath in equal parts. The seal shuddered. Wizards lost their measures and found them again with effort. The kneeling Knights did not rise, but their gauntlets tightened on hilts hard enough to squeal. The crystal flickered and steadied with a hitch.
A terrifying tremor shook the ground, and a dark presence warped from inside the chambers.
Omingul was here.
The air tore along a seam she made with her own hands, and she stepped through, dragging the dark like a cloak that didn't touch the floor. Her eyes were like bleeding rubies under the mask. She looked first to the dais, then to the circle of wizards, then to the long avenue of Knights.
Nothing moved that should not. Nothing stood where she had not put it. She turned her head slowly, eyeing the small dent in the chamber's seal, and her head whipped back towards the halls.
Omnigul floated forward over her own seal. She smelled the air. Her gaze ran the balcony's underside and slid past the place, it was here, she was sure of it.
Her eyes darted following the winding trail of energy, but the traces were simply a loop. A cheap trick she had realised instantly. But it had been easy, far too easy. Almost as if the intruder was challenging her to a game
The Witch's bones shuddered, and a ghastly rage overtook her.
Her palms opened, and all the fog returned, curling inwards towards a single point. An instant later, an orb of fog brewed above her hand, and she raised her palm.
The orb broke, and fog spilt out, slowly circling the room like a rising tide.
=
A/N: Hope you enjoyed the chapter!! Check out my Patreon for extra read ahead!
patreon.com/Writers_Ablood
Void nodded, he deftly shifted to the left of the winding tunnels, a cold gust of wind combed the plates of his armour in thin streams. Every turn he took in the maze-like tunnels of Hellmouth felt slightly wrong: As if the place itself had been built inside out.
The tunnels were stacked like rings around a core. He ran the outer circuit around an inverted spire, then cut across a hanging bridge made of fused bone and slag, its handrail a chain of teeth set in iron.
He crossed through a nave that had been carved directly into the rock, supported by gargantuan chains that dug into the Moon's crust.
«Keep going», Zamyr said. «Then take the bridge to the right, and drop hard. There's another tunnel below it.»
Void darted straight for the bridge and leapt off, free-falling till he spotted an opening in the rock and reached for it. He grunted and pulled himself in.
Inside, the air changed. Not warmer—denser. The sound shifted from the hollow hum to a deep guttural groan. The dark wasn't just present; it was overwhelming.
Void stepped forward, and the pale aura surrounding his body surged, more present than ever. He looked ahead, his eye flickered blue, and he dashed. Void took three more turns till he reached a spiralling staircase carved from hanging boulders.
He jolted, deftly crossing down and dropping into a hall that opened like a wound. At the furthest end was a Knight. Its shoulders were as broad as the titanic doorway it guarded, sword propped into the ground ike a standard. Its armour was etched with old fights, and a green fire coursed through its scars.
"Looks like we got company." Void took a breath. He took one step forward and let his hand fall to the blade's hilt.
The Knight reacted, its bones cracked as it heaved to life. The blade in its hands shifted, its rusted edge burst into flames, slowly returning the blade to its old shine, and then a dark visage flickered in its eyes.
It hunkered forward, dragging the blade with its steps, and it roared.
"Shatter!" Void said, not a shout nor a whisper, just a word that seemed to etch itself into the world.
He swiped and cut the air. Void's blade dragged a thin, grey line across nothing, and nothing agreed to split. The Knight's first stride faltered as if it had trodden on a space that was no longer there; the strike cut cleanly through its knees. Lines cracked outward along its armour like invisible seams. Sensing the danger, the Knight raised its sword.
But it was too late.
[Klink]
The world went white.
A smile curved at Void's lips as he lowered his sword and sheathed the blade; a thin cut appeared across the Knight's body. An instant later, the Knight fell.
"Bit of an overkill?" Void raised a brow.
«Just fine», Zamyr chuckled.
Then, something strange happened.
The Knight's shell didn't fall apart; instead, it simply stopped moving. As if what Void had cut wasn't the Knight, but its soul. Now what remained was simply ash and dust, a vessel without power.
Void pursed his lips. He crept closer to the Knight, prodding the shell with a finger. As he brushed it, everything scattered. Void watched as the Knight itself eroded into dust, the last flecks settling and vanishing into the ground.
His eyes shifted to the blade by his side, "Is this something new? Never seen you do this before."
«How strange.» Zamyr hummed in thought, entirely puzzled. «It seems the more we descend, the stronger the dark acts against you, drowning your Light. But the gradient between the light and dark is my territory, or rather, the realm of possibility. As it stands, the deeper we go-»
"The stronger you get," Void's eyes flashed with understanding,
«And the deeper I cut.»
He nodded once and went on towards the door. Void shoved and the door groaned open, revealing a lightless descent that stretched towards the dreadful halls of Hellmouth's core.
Void squeezed himself inside and kept his hand on the inner wall. He moved fast, breath measured, as he silently continued downwards. Ever so often, the walls of the lightless chamber would shift in a strange rhythm and then settle down, as if mimicking a song.
When he got to the chamber's end, he stopped at a ledge of a cliff where sound rose, akin to a crowd drawing breath.
He looked over and deep below, a fiendish fire pulsed in disciplined waves. Sigils burned in circles as perfect as compasses could draw. Between those circles, you could see figures moving—wizards, robed and thin as blades, hands raised, voices shaping the air.
The effect was immediate. Rifts opened along the Moon's crust and vomited out legions of Hive. Void watched as the Knights and the acolytes rushed to the surface to defend the gates of Hellmouth.
But the cohort of wizards assembled below did not stop chanting. To them, summoning a new wave was only a matter of minutes. But to Void, it was disastrous. There was a limit to what the Nightstlakers could hold.
He wanted to go down and break the summoning rituals. His hand tightened on the blade by his side.
«Leave them, you must not act. Not yet ... not now,» Zamyr said. «They're just fingers. What you must cut off is that hand that curls them.»
Void tensed. He held his breath and stayed where he was till his thoughts settled. Then, he pushed off the ledge, digging his hands into the rock as he silently descended towards the core chamber, his pale aura masking his presence.
«You are nearly at the core,» Zamyr said. «She is there. Omnigul. My power is still not enough to answer her. She holds more power than I. A direct argument is not a fight. It is a mistake.»
"How do we fix that?" Void asked.
«Consume. Take. Grow. But we do not have the time. We must do what we can to stop her ritual.» Zamyr replied in a grim voice.
Void's eyes narrowed, his gaze shifted to the choir of Wizards busily summoning more Hive, then to the legion of Knights that stood guard at the gates of the core, and finally to the acolytes that crawled from underneath the pits.
The corners of his mouth curled up. "There is a plan. But, it's a bit risky."
«What is it?»
"You'll see."
«O brother mine,» Zamyr said, a sound between warning and wry, «everything you do is risky. But remember, there is no light to bring you back here.»
"You're right about that," Void said, and moved, "But the thing is, I just know it'll work."
«How so?»
"Let's just call it a hunch." Void smiled.
Void flickered towards the core and scanned everything around him.
A long avenue led to the central dais, and along that avenue, a legion of Knights knelt in lines, swords grounded, helms lowered. They did not shift, akin to statues.
Around the dais, a cohort of wizards stood equidistant, palms up, a seal drawn between them in a loop of runes that seemed to circle them. Far in the distance was a single door that led into a chamber.
Void let his sight slide past the obvious as he peered through the door. And there it was. He hissed a cold breath. He could see it.
A wretched crystal that hung in the air with a ruinous aura emanating from it.
He softened his focus, instead tracking down the aura of the fog he had chased here. The lines ran inward. Not towards the crystal, but past it. Or rather around it.
She was also here, Omnigul the Ascendant witch.
"She's inside that chamber. Guarding the crystal with her life." Void's jaw tightened. "I can see the fog curling in her palms."
«Yes,» Zamyr said eerily, «But be careful, O brother mine. Any closer to that chamber, and you will enter the Prince of Ruin's throne world. A realm entirely encompassed by his power. A realm where he is the only law.»
"Relax. We won't be going inside." Void said.
Void pulled back to the far reaches of the halls and set his feet to take a stance.
The Knights did not lift their heads. The wizards did not turn. The seal didn't waver. They couldn't see him. They couldn't sense anything. There simply wasn't any Light to track.
Void continued and reached for his blade.
"When I attack. Be ready."
«Yes,»
He unsheathed the sword slowly. The pale along the edge thickened, not bright—dense. He raised it over his head and held it there.
Then, Void took a deep breath.
The strain arrived first in his feet, an immense weight dragged his shoulders down, and finally, his back shook. But all Void thought about was the line from here to the chamber's door, and from the door to the crystal.
«Hold your breath, draw it in!» Zamyr's aura surged as it realised what Void wanted to do, «Keep coiling the power around the blade!»
Void waited and listened, focusing only on the witch.
A moment passed. Seconds rolled to minutes, and then finally, a soft breath escaped his lips.
He cut.
The strike did not blaze. It arrived. The pale ran off the edge and into the floor, into the air, into the very seam of the chambers, and the world bent a line from one point to the next. The Knights shivered, the seal contracted, the crystal flared, once.
A harrowing power tore through everything.
The core shook. Tremors ran through the galleries. The spiral bridges thrummed. In every tunnel, dust leapt and landed and leapt again. Every being in that place felt the strike that cut towards the very core of Hellmouth.
Omnigul raged, wretched magic spilling from her bones.
She sensed it. The strange power. The same power that seemed to hide something from her, the same power that seemed to run amok on the surface. And now? The same power was here. Here to finally hunt what she held dearest.
No. She could not let that happen. The Witch shrieked, raised her hand, she flicked her wrist, and a powerful wave of fire tore towards the chamber's door.
Her shriek blew out of the arch and across the chamber—a sound that carried anger and oath in equal parts. The seal shuddered. Wizards lost their measures and found them again with effort. The kneeling Knights did not rise, but their gauntlets tightened on hilts hard enough to squeal. The crystal flickered and steadied with a hitch.
A terrifying tremor shook the ground, and a dark presence warped from inside the chambers.
Omingul was here.
The air tore along a seam she made with her own hands, and she stepped through, dragging the dark like a cloak that didn't touch the floor. Her eyes were like bleeding rubies under the mask. She looked first to the dais, then to the circle of wizards, then to the long avenue of Knights.
Nothing moved that should not. Nothing stood where she had not put it. She turned her head slowly, eyeing the small dent in the chamber's seal, and her head whipped back towards the halls.
Omnigul floated forward over her own seal. She smelled the air. Her gaze ran the balcony's underside and slid past the place, it was here, she was sure of it.
Her eyes darted following the winding trail of energy, but the traces were simply a loop. A cheap trick she had realised instantly. But it had been easy, far too easy. Almost as if the intruder was challenging her to a game
The Witch's bones shuddered, and a ghastly rage overtook her.
Her palms opened, and all the fog returned, curling inwards towards a single point. An instant later, an orb of fog brewed above her hand, and she raised her palm.
The orb broke, and fog spilt out, slowly circling the room like a rising tide.
=
A/N: Hope you enjoyed the chapter!! Check out my Patreon for extra read ahead!
patreon.com/Writers_Ablood