Without missing a single beat, Chase hurled his ivory Lunarang at the throat of the middle guard...
And so Chase had taken the first blood of this gruesome night...
Jack shot forward with a power-slide, flames shrouding his left hand as he ripped the heart from the left guard's chest, along with an arm-sized hole...
His body hit the ground with a thud... But before it could, Rayan shot forward with his blade, reeling back with a powerful stride...
However, Justin let out a swift chuckle, outstretching a hand as the blood dripping from a cut on his wrist turned physical... And with perfect command, shot around Rayan and pierced through the third guard's throat.
Rayan's blade only struck a corpse...
All three bodies fell in well timed unison.
Jack wiped his hand in disgust after tossing aside the molten heart.
"What gruesome display of abilities!" Chase clapped with no regard for stealth.
Jack was already stomping off in the direction of some poorly lit stairs that could only lead down.
"Where the hell are you going?!" Justin yelled, glancing at Rayan who just shrugged before running after his master.
Chase grimaced.
Turning his head towards the direction of a dark tunnel, he felt a chill go down his spine.
The sound of knocking echoed through the empty hallway...
"Come on..." Chase waved his hand and began jogging as Apocalypse slowly burned to life within his hand.
Justin just sighed and followed after his own master.
Suddenly...
They were faced with horror...
The flat moss-covered stone walls were slowly replaced by appealingly infinite prison cells... Each filled with their own tale of terror...
Chase nearly gagged at the sight of several small shriveled skeletons in the corner of the first cell on the left.
Justin stopped.
His stare wearing shades of several different emotions... And Chase couldn't read a single one of them from their short glance.
"What the hell is this place?" Chase asked, his eyes widening as a malnourished half-human half-turtle sat: Bleeding out against a spike on the wall.
"Holy shit..." Chase gagged again, backing up into a pair of hanging chains as they made a terribly loud rattling noise.
"Don't just stand there! Help them, Gods damn it all!" Justin slammed his shoulder into the cell door, knocking it open, running past as it slammed into the wall with horrible force.
Justin's eyes began to glow crimson, at the very same time he was already slowly pulling the Beast-kin on deaths door off of the bloody spike.
Chase continued to stand there... Completely shaken... Unable to even come up with coherent thought.
He couldn't dare walk further... Not when the shadows seemed to be a different kind of darkness compared to the usual.
It was living...
Chase took a shaky step... A single glance at Justin's heroic efforts, using his affinity to save the life of that boy by using his own blood to repair his body... That was all it took.
At first he had been about to panic... About to somehow crawl through hell in order to force some sort of healing magic on every one of these slaves...
But that was unrealistic...
He was no healer... Nor was he some sort of hero.
Chase had learned how to use his strange elements in order to make a fire burn brighter...
And sometimes... When placed in situations where your ability to fight is not enough to overcome the odds...
All it takes is a single look around... And to light the fires that are just waiting to spark around you.
Chase took a deep breath, letting his grip on Apocalypse loosing and his muscles follow suite.
"IF YOU CAN HEAR THIS... IF YOU CAN TRULY COMPREHEND THE POSSIBILITY OF THIS... THEN HEAR ME NOW AND LISTEN!" Slowly... Chase's body began to overflow with energy... Energy that had been itching to escape beyond the limiter of the corruption...
Something powerful was brewing within him...
He took a single glance at the boy Justin was helping out of the cell...
He could see a look in his onyx eyes...
It was hope...
Chase's body began to burn... Flames escaping from every pore of his body, and slowly crawling onto the floor... And burning straight down the infinite hallway with a flash of fire.
Light had paved the way...
"IF YOU HAVE THE PASSION TO STAND UP AND FIGHT FOR A CHANCE OF FREEDOM- THEN BREAK DOWN THESE CELLS... And slaughter every guard in your way..." His voice echoed... And suddenly...
From a single cell about a hundred or so cells down the burning hall...
The knocking ceased...
...
The little girl's eyes shot up in shock... At first thinking that the yells and the fire were of some sort of twisted delusion...
However, when the Jackal stood... His giant furry arms tensing, as the chains around his wrists began to tremble...
The girl's eyes widened...
SNAP!
Jackal ripped the chains straight off of the wall that held him down, his giant friendly blue eyes turning to vicious anger.
He lowered his snout... Growling lowly as he shot forward into the door of the cell, slamming it straight off of the hinges and straight through the opposite cell's door, luckily not hitting the little old fox-man who resided in it.
The little girl gasped in fear as a massive group of guards immediately appeared in her vision, sprinting straight at the blood-lusting Beast-man.
The girl backed away with a panicked crawl, catching her already bruised knee on the corner of a cracked skull.
"Ow!" She yelped, unable to look at the bloody battle taking place just outside of her cell.
Suddenly the Jackal caught a blade to the side of his torso, falling to a knee as his eyes shot up in petrification at the guard above him.
Then... Two giant gorilla's with mechanical helmets bolted into their heads tore through the hall, one of them smashing the head of the first guard in the palm of his hand.
However, as a spark of hope appeared in the girl's eyes... That spark instantly vanished... Watching in horror as that same gorilla's brain exploded with a terrifying boom.
Jackal held a hand out and barked at the other Gorilla to not fight, but found it was hopeless as his blurred vision had caught the sight of all of the destroyed cells and wounded slaves carrying each other into the lit hall...
"So it's like that..." His sad whimper turned into snarl, as he turned his glance from the other Gorilla now pridefully pounding his chest with rage.
Jackal tensed his fingers, lowering his body as he dashed straight at a guard with lightning abilities, the lightning of course missed the speedy jackal entire, and his gruesome claws quickly tore into the throat of the lightning user... But it was no use, as a giant blade of darkness formed from a small shadow in the corner of the hall...
Jackal watched in horror as Oren's presence slaughtered the other Gorilla where he stood with zero honor...
Then a fully armored guard easily parried away the next attack from Jackal, using his offhand to then land a devastating punch on the Beast's snout.
The girl cried out in horror as Jackal's body folded back, landing on the fire in pain.
The guard laughed, readying his sword with a twirling trick as he snarled.
"Should've known your place stupid mutt!" And as the sword began to fall, the girl's body had moved on its own, tripping and stumbling as she frantically dashed in front of the blade's path...
Death...
She saw death...
Jackal's eyes suddenly flashed with defeat at the sight of this horror... The slow torturous sight of that blade coming down on the girl he had remembered giving all of his food too.
She heard a low voice... Almost amused...
"That was pretty damn sick..."
The girl's eyes watched in stillness as a giant crimson axe made of flesh and flame came down faster than the blade...
It shattered, but not only that...
The man who soared in the air above her... Had launched the axe with inhuman precision, slashing and spinning through every guard down the hall in a horrifying show of bloodshed.
Chase landed with a sliding spin, as he summoned Apocalypse once again as once guard had survived his attack.
He let his body go horizontal with momentum, the monstrous Axe singing with reverence in his bubbly right hand.
He grinned.
The axe fell as he twisted his body into a barrel roll, and just like that...
Chase had duplicated the guard.
Both halves of the guard's body fell pitifully, but he paid it no mind and swiftly smashed in the hinges of several more cell doors with a look of determination.
The girl watched in awe... Several other Beast-folk trying to pull her and Jackal back with the group.
"I- I want to be like him..." She whispered, refusing to even blink as the infernal hero disappeared down the hall.