Bell drew a deep breath and strode away from those mud hills. His boot struck soil on an exhale. Pulled up on an inhale. Struck on an exhale. Pulled up on inhale.
Vibrations raced outward from him. Soil shifted beneath the surface, clumps ground against clumps, pulverizing into dust.
At each pull, earth rose with him. At each strike, it sank in kind. Leaves wrenched from the trees ahead, branches bent taut as a drawn bow.
Fissures clawed from his left leg and ripped toward his flank, swallowing meters whole, every crack pulsing in rhythm. Inhale. Exhale.
Soil erupted from them, red, superheated, bleeding upward like hot blood in motes of ember.
Those fissures seared across trunks and branches, carving red veins into them. Air warped from heat. The trees wavered, their outlines bending in a rising mirage.
Fractures split from his right leg and tore toward his opposite flank, surging across soil, timber, and foliage. Black crept along a leaf's spine and ribs, devouring any light from its surface.
Where embers erupted from his left. Dark motes gushed out from his right.
Those motes ascended and hung suspended like raindrops caught mid-fall.
The forest splintered in two, one side a domain of darkness, another under the dominion of flames.
Bell's steps halted at the forest's center. He stood for a breath, unmoving. Then he extended both arms to opposite horizons, fingers spread wide.
Clunk.
His left hand ignited in flames. His right hand flaked away in black.
He pulled.
Those motes answered, rushed toward him in a violent convergence. Red and black clashed before him, crushing together, fusing into one whole. The heat at left and dark at right screamed against each other, forging a living contradiction.
A silhouette took shape before him. It had four limbs with hooves. Left side condensed from solidified flames, right side a skeleton of black bones veiled under abyssal darkness.
A war horse.
It snapped its eyes open with a wail. One was crimson, another pitch black. Reflected in those twin orbs were Bell's own eyes, an identical crimson and pitch black.
"Neighhh!"
Another neigh and the beast rose on its rear hooves, front limbs reaching skyward, desperate to take flight.
Bell's hand shot forward, gently settling on its forehead as it descended. The beast understood and lowered itself, settling down on the ground.
His hand remained on its forehead as the horse looked up at him. Bell gazed back.
"You're the first mount I've forged for the war ahead. I'll call you Omen. The sound of your hooves will herald our arrival."
Omen pushed its forehead deeper into Bell's palm.
"We'll introduce you to the others later. Right now, we have somewhere to be."
Omen stilled at those words, then silently rose to its full height, dwarfing him by its size alone.
Bell walked to its flank. He bent his knees, calves tensing, and vaulted onto its back, heels landing on Omen's spine, left foot forward, right foot back. The beast tensed beneath him, shoulders rolling.
"Ready, partner?"
Omen's spine curved inward, neck arcing back, front hooves leaving the ground to punch air. The domain of embers and darkness that had overturned the forest folded inward, aligning at its shoulder blades into two enormous wings.
One of pure blaze. One of pure dark.
Its rear legs tensed, coiling like springs.
He looked up at the ceiling, felt his connection with Alfia through countless dungeon floors, and shifted Omen's body in that direction.
The springs released.
Omen exploded off the forest floor. Ground cratered inward for a hundred meters. Roots and trunks wrenched from soil and hurled away. Ignited grass spewed upward in a reverse waterfall.
Bell dug his soles deeper.
The mud hills shrank behind him—gigantic moments ago, three small dots now.
Air melted in their wake, a shriek travelled through vegetation and streams, stripping trees of their leaves, scattering water in all directions, flattening bushes for kilometers on end.
That shriek reached Rivira's boundary wall and slammed into it.
One moment the market street murmured with haggling, weapons unsheathing, the clink of valis. The next, silence, every conversation dead, hands frozen, heads snapping upward by reflex.
A wine glass shattered in a bartender's grip. The wine leapt from his glass in a single droplet, hung a half-second, dissolving into mist from the sound wave.
The shriek resounded through Rivira and kept going. Dust shook loose from every brick in fine grey curtains, drifting down.
A blaze hit floor eighteen's ceiling crystals.
They detonated. Shards sprayed in a circle, each fragment trailing smoke, melting before it could fall.
Omen's wings beat once.
The dungeon groaned. Floor eighteen's ceiling caved outward. Rocks crumbled. Stalactites tore free from their formations and disintegrated mid-fall.
Crystal fragments hurled upward from floor seventeen's base. A single shard hung mid-ascent, its surface catching the reflection of other shards rising, then the outline of a winged horse flashed across it. Then nothing. The shard had already burned to cinders.
Floor seventeen was a wall.
It stretched from bottom to ceiling, from end to end, a monolith of calcified rock.
The Wall of Grief.
Omen's hooves struck the wall's surface. Vertical. Running across the wall as though it were level ground. Each hoof fall punched through stone. The left hooves ignited a trail in their wake. The right hooves drained color, leaving stones grey and brittle, collapsing into powder behind.
A line of fire and darkness etched itself horizontally across the Wall of Grief.
Goliath's eye tracked them from inside the wall. Its embedded arm convulsed, fingers raking furrows through its prison.
Bell's hands found Crimson Order and Typhon. He unsheathed and leveled them at the Wall of Grief.
Flames expanded from Crimson Order's edge, swelling the sword into a giant cleaver of heat that bore deep into the wall and Goliath.
Darkness extended from Typhon's spine, stretching into a matching cleaver that seeped through the wall into Goliath.
Cruel Swords.
Omen's stride extended. Three steps became one. The beast launched from the wall's surface into open air, wings folding tight against its flanks, body straight, hooves aimed at a point where floor seventeen's ceiling had already begun to crack from their initial shockwave.
Behind them, Goliath roared. Wall of Grief split down the middle into three columns, and Goliath split with it.
Omen punched through floor seventeen's ceiling.
Floor sixteen. Ceiling. Through.
Fifteen. Ceiling. Gone.
Fourteen.
Each floor arrived and vanished in a heartbeat. Bell's vision narrowed to a tunnel, peripheral world dissolving into streaks of red and black. Wind slammed against his chest, trying to rip him off Omen. He ignored it and sheathed his swords back, crimson and dark climbing further up his arms.
Thirteen. Twelve. Eleven.
Monster spawns swarmed the corridors above. As a floor gave way, entire packs of minotaurs slipped, plunging into the abyss below.
A single line of blinding light climbed up from that abyss. One falling minotaur spread its arms toward it, desperate for an anchor.
The minotaur took a breath. That line was still distant. Then it took another breath, and the line was upon it, a flaming boot enlarging in its vision.
It barely opened its mouth before that boot crashed into its snout, snapping its jaw shut and launching it back down like a meteor.
The minotaur tumbled, swallowed by dark. It looked around to see hundreds of its brethren falling alongside it.
But then—
That same line of light screeched down toward them. No, not one line. Hundreds.
The minotaur spread its arms wide, eyes watering with sudden, inexplicable gratitude for a savior.
It still had its arms open when a blazing spear pierced its chest, from front to back. More spears rained down, finding the rest of their group just as swiftly.
Ten. Eight.
Floor eight was consumed by flames. Every monster on the floor was dead. Every adventurer lay unconscious, flames curling away from their bodies.
Seven.
Floor seven was only darkness. Every monster had vanished without a trace. Every adventurer was fleeing like they'd glimpsed something horrifying.
Six.
There was no floor six. Its ceiling was gone, melted rock and powdered stone raining down in a cascade.
Five—
...
A corridor. Torchlight. Two men waiting.
Dix leaned against the corridor wall, crimson spear slung across his shoulder, hair slicked back, goggles on. He looked like he was expecting someone.
Beside him paced another man. Long white hair. Yellow-green eyes. A white skull mask tied at his hip.
Olivas Act.
He hadn't stopped pacing since they'd arrived, radiating a restless, coiled energy, fingers flexing at nothing, yellow-green eyes sweeping the walls like he was listening to someone no one else could hear.
"She's ahead," Olivas said. Not to Dix. To himself, or to the thing that lived in his mind.
"I know." Dix rolled his neck. "Try not to get us killed."
Olivas looked at him. The stare lasted one second too long.
Dix faced forward.
The corridor opened into a wide chamber, and there she was.
White hair. Dark dress that pooled around her. One eye green, one grey, both fixed on Dix before he'd taken his second step inside.
Alfia stood at the chamber's far end, motionless as stone.
Behind her, the Xenos had formed a line without being told. Lyd flexed his claws. Wiene raked her nails through air. Ray's wings hummed.
Dix exhaled through his nose.
"Woman." He paused. "Step aside. This is between these monsters and us. It doesn't concern you."
Alfia's eyes narrowed, just barely.
"Noise," she said.
Her voice dropped low.
"That is what you are." Her gaze moved to Olivas, then back. "Noise that needs to be silenced."
Olivas swallowed. "The woman who burned half of Orario calls us noise."
His fingers flexed again around nothing. "She's here. She told me you were coming. Did you know that? She knows everything you—"
"Quiet."
Olivas stopped.
Dix glanced sideways at him. Even he hadn't expected that.
Alfia remained still. But gravity in the chamber had multiplied, pressing down on both of them.
Dix leveled his spear at her. Its tip caught the torchlight from nearby.
"Last time," he said. "This doesn't concern you."
Alfia looked at the spear. Then at him. She raised one finger and pointed.
"Come, then. Noise will be—"
The floor detonated outward.
"—Silenced."
A static-laced voice finished for her.
Olivas' eyes constricted as abyssal fingers clamped around his face.
Dix leaped back, goggles caving in as flaming fingers seized his skull.
Alfia and the Xenos caught a single frame: A silhouette of fire and dark astride something that should not exist.
Then it, and the two men it had seized, punched through the ceiling.
All that remained was a hole. Melted sludge dripping from one edge. Grey dust sifting from the other.
...
..
.
***
[300 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter]
[8 chapters ahead on P@tr3on = [email protected]/Not_Aaryan]
...
[Authors Thoughts]
And it has begun. I have something planned. Hold tight.
Take care everyone!