Bethabelle, Lizana, Odipius, Nikiva, and Saffra. Looking around, those were the faces Listina could count that had all been teleported with her to the same place by Ophiuchus’ stars. Her parents, her older sister, and the two queens of Monotum. It was a rather large batch of people, all six of them in the same place that appeared to be some sort of torture room. There were mixtures of white, black, and red blood scattered all along the nasty equipment, Listina carefully taking everything in with a calm and steady demeanor while her mother, Lizana, stepped forward.
Everyone watched very solemnly when the woman moved to pick up the nearest knife that had been bloodied in thick white muck, the white blood stiff and hardened along the blade, encasing the sharp razor in a thick shell. And Lizana rubbed her thumb over it, watching apathetically as the pieces crumbled off. “...if I’m remembering correctly, it was Ophiuchus’ theory that the white-blooded monsters were the truly foreign creatures from the apocalyptic plane we know nothing about, while the black-blooded monsters are humans who have been turned into such things with the concept of evil. Our only lead with this is that Arcadia was able to turn Kyavir back into a human and erase her transformation completely… but, say, if we found a dungeon full of the black-blooded monsters, do you think we’d be able to heal them in the same way?”
“I don’t think that’s something we should count on. From Nadia’s intel, Feather’s the only one who can do it, as the only person who can wield the concept of good in this day and age,” Nikiva responded blandly, kicking at a large stretcher that took up the back wall of the room while she knocked on the straps used to tie people to it. “Either way, just looking at this, it’s clear they’ve tortured and experimented on all kinds of things. We should be careful.”
“I don’t see anybody, though,” Saffra commented, walking forward to tilt her head at the stretcher beside her wife. She was a very tall, thick bodied woman who was often looked to as the epitome of beauty, and many people who didn’t know her viewed her to be the soft and fragile counterpart to Nikiva. But Saffra was an undeniably curious person who, in reality, would get herself into many messes just because she couldn’t help where she stuck her nose, far from the serene and angelic force the masses tried to paint her as. That was why she was forced to pause when Nikiva grabbed her shoulder, stopping her from moving further before she dragged the woman behind her arm.
“Be careful, Saf. We’re in enemy territory, don’t go wandering around recklessly.”
“Yes, I know, I just wanted to know what was behind that door,” Saffra pointed to the only exit in the room, Odipius moving a bit closer to peek at it as he looked through the glass window.
“Well, I admit I don’t see anyone behind it,” the King of Ovin commented, the red-haired man scanning through the glass before he took a few steps back. “But there will probably still be somebody close by. Should we go through and meet them, Lizana?”
“Ah, exactly. Ophiuchus sent us down here, and his stars wouldn’t have aligned like this for us without a reason, would they? That’s all I need to know. I’ll walk through first if anyone is afraid,” Bethabelle crossed her arms, staying right in her position beside Listina as the younger sister of the two continued to only silently listen, not feeling very pressured to speak. Bethabelle, on the other hand, who just happened to be the Crown Princess of Ovin, was good enough at speaking for the both of them.
Still, Saffra pulled away from her beloved to go pick at some of the bloodied sheers that were seemingly stuck to a table, picking them up and moving the gears to slice at nothing but the air. “I’m sure Ophi sent all of us here and not just a few because there are probably many, many powerful enemies outside that door. Or maybe just one or two super strong ones… either way, we should go through that door and find out, Bethabelle is very correct. We did come here expecting to fight in the first place, didn’t we?” she looked towards Nikiva, as if looking for some sort of confirmation that her words and appraisal were wise and correct.
“Agh… fine. Saffra, you’re the one with the map, so before we do anything, where are we now and where should we go from here?” Nikiva sighed while turning to her wife for answers, which only made Saffra ecstatic, the woman turning around to give a wonderfully bright smile.
“Of course! We’re in the torture room. The hallway leading out will take us through the dungeon, and it’s kind of a maze down there. But if we just keep going straight, we’ll eventually find ourselves at a set of stairs, and going up those will lead to a bunch of labs. After that, the path gets far more tricky, but I’ll be able to guide us through without an issue.”
“We should make it our priority to find those labs and see if we can figure anything out about their experiments," Bethabelle announced for them all, Lizana staring at her eldest daughter for a long moment before she turned back towards the door.
“Ophiuchus’ concept of the stars is quite flexible, isn’t it?” she commented merely, moving past her husband to trace fingers along the rusted and corrupted doorknob. “It leads us to the spot that is most optimal for us, with his wish to have the star’s align. In his mind, I’m sure he was trying to have the constellations teleport us to the nearest enemy we would be best fit to deal with. Given that, we should try to at least figure out where our targets are before we look for information,” she instructed, hand firmly gripping the knob before she began to pull. “Now, all of you should prepare yourselves, and we shouldn’t waste any more of our precious time. Let us—”
Though she was cut off by a dazzling orange light, the brightness consuming everything in its path as Lizana, Odipius, Nikiva, and Saffra were all engulfed in its blinding intensity. It highlighted everything, as if it were eating away at their bodies before they disappeared into the pit of swallowing bright orange light, and Listina couldn’t see anything at all, but… that didn’t matter. Her reflexes were sharp and her concept was perfect for times like these… with one of her prime concepts being the concept of the mirror. Anything her enemy threw in her direction, she could deflect. And with one raised arm, a giant silver oval surrounded her entire body, along with her older sister who had been holding onto her very wisely, and the two of them were shielded from the fantastical orange light that had been hitting every single corner of the torture room. And when it passed… when the mirror around them finally dissipated and shattered into useless broken shards that melted back into the flesh of her body… they were the only two left in a room where everything else had been burnt to a fine black crisp. Not even the twisted contraptions used for torture were left behind. The room was now just a large rectangular box, all traces of blood and gore having completely vanished while Bethabelle looked towards the open door that swung innocently on its hinges.
“What… our parents… where did they go?!” the older woman hissed, already quick to make her angry demands, grip too tight on Listina’s shoulder while the younger woman scanned her full brown eyes around the now charred and empty room.
She lifted her face to the air, taking a long sniff of the room’s interesting smell. She could smell iron, burnt wood, and a few other melted metals, but… “I don’t smell anything similar to that of a burnt human corpse. Even if they are dead, their remains aren’t in here. It’s more likely they were teleported,” Listina stated her knowledge calmly, Bethabelle only giving her a defeated scowl.
“Well, it can’t be denied your concepts are useful,” her older sister declared, moving her hands through her thick heap of wavy brown curls, flaming orange eyes becoming alert and zeroing in on whatever was outside this damn room. “But there’s no point in dwelling. The door’s open now. Whatever that was, it’s over… so we need to do what we came here for and find whoever did that as well as where our parents have been taken.”
“As well as the queens of Monotum. Our parents weren’t the only ones taken away,” Listina corrected dully, Bethabelle ignoring her before she took her younger sister by the arm and started dragging her out into the hallway.
“Come on, focus. You might need to use your concept of the mirror again at any moment. Stay alert, Listina.”
“I am alert, Betha…”
“Stay more alert, then.”
“Okay… fine…”
They walked straight into the dungeon Saffra had told them about just moments ago, both of them warily observing all the monsters that were clawing hungrily at their barred enclosures the moment they passed, trying to reach the two women with unnerving bloodlust. Both of them had fought these monsters before, or at least they’d fought the ones with white blood. Not that you could tell the difference without cutting them open. Still, the more they walked, the more unsightly things became. The monsters came in all shapes and sizes, from shriveled apes to large lions with gangly teeth twice the size of their face. And yet no matter what appearance they took, none of them were pretty sights.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“This is absurd. To think some of these might have once been people,” Bethabelle frowned in open disgust, the tall, slender woman having summoned her spear to be at her side. She was a very impressive woman, she was. Everyone knew it. Bethabelle had three concepts, the concept of the spear, the concept of lightning, and the concept of the jaguar. It was the exact type of flashy power that the leaders of Ovin always had, and she was fit to be the next queen. Listina wasn’t jealous, though. She had the concept of the mirror and the concept of the five senses, and she was more than satisfied with those. She never had understood why people wanted to be queen or king in the first place. None of that interested her, it just seemed like a lot of work she didn’t want to put effort into. Either way, Bethabelle was a much better fit for the position.
“You need to keep your emotions in check, Betha.”
“I know, Listina. Don’t remind me.”
“But you’re getting worked up…”
“I’m fine. Stop worrying about me and pay attention to our surroundings.”
“Well, someone is in front of us, but—”
“Listina!” Bethabelle turned on her, completely outraged she hadn’t said anything about that sooner as her younger sister could only begin to frown. “Say stuff like that as soon as possible! Now, come on, we shouldn’t keep our opponent waiting. Maybe they can tell us where mom and dad are so we can rescue them.”
“...and the queens of Monotum,” Listina muttered under her breath, but if her sister had heard her, she didn’t respond to it. Either way, she’d just been trying to make sure Bethabelle was calm before they went and faced their opponent… whenever she got too emotional, she started getting sloppy, which was never a good thing, much less in scenarios like these. Listina was just trying to keep her in check to make sure she could fight at her best, that was all. But she was always misunderstood…
“Who’s there?! We know someone you are hiding, so come out!!” Bethabelle demanded, Listina preparing to open up another mirror as they watched the corners of the hallways that branched out into the labyrinth Saffra had warned them of.
She knew someone was there. She could hear them breathing, and she could smell their sweet fragrance. However, before she could blink or process another moment of time, a monster was already turning the corner in the place of a human, and moved to lunge at them the moment it laid its sights on two beings that were actually alive with beating hearts and warm, running blood. However, Bethabelle’s spear was faster. Lightning fizzed off it, and in one giant explosion, the monster was pierced and sliced into motionless sizzling pieces of pink flesh, white blood oozing out from its limbs before Bethabelle ran forward and turned the corner.
“I asked you to show yourself!!” the woman thundered, lightning zipping all over her body as Listina hopped around the monster’s corpse and followed along, both of them entirely prepared to fight… only to be frozen in their tracks instead.
Right there in front of them was… a crack in reality. And it was coming from somebody’s hand. Listina had only ever seen the open cracks in reality a few times in her life, but they always looked like little white lightning strikes simmering off the vibrating air, as if the world around them was paper being burned. Holes would emerge in the sky, some small while others large, and from it, death, monsters, corruption came forth. They called the unknown place behind reality’s cracks the abyss, and no one knew anything about it. .
The man they were looking at had white skin that almost appeared to be glowing, as if the dim lights from the dungeon’s ceiling were reflecting off of him and making him look like a ghost. His hair was a smooth and bright teal, draping down and around his shoulders with soft and fluffy bangs, the top half of his hair tied behind him in a thick ponytail that was all too sloppy. But his eyes… looked like they were staring into the abyss itself. They were pitch black, like looking into a void, and there were tiny sparkling lights glittering inside them. And coming off his middle finger was a small tear in reality, before he opened it wider and another monster lunged out.
“What is this?!” Bethabelle roared, her spear splitting the monster in half before she lunged at the man with zero hesitation. “Who are you?! Are you the one who’s been starting all these apocalypses?!”
Though the man didn’t respond to that, and merely pressed his back alongside a new crack in reality, fading into it and disappearing, the cracks fading the moment he did. It left Bethabelle and Listina staring after him in shock, their minds not able to comprehend what they were witnessing. “He… he just faded…” Listina wavered with a falter, before she sensed another uncertainty coming from behind her, and blared her mirror at the man who was now falling from a crack in reality from above them. Her mirror took hold of the knife he was showing her, the man falling on top of her mirror while his knife got sucked through, only to be thrown back at him to lodge tightly into his small shoulder.
“Answer my questions!!” Bethabelle bellowed, throwing her spear at him once more while the man rolled, his bright red blood leaving marks on the floor from his injured shoulder as he quickly hopped back to his feet, as if the pain meant nothing at all.
“Sorry, you asked too many of them. Maybe try asking one at a time instead,” he smiled, voice low and melodical. It was the type of voice you’d imagine the most mythical and ethereal of poets to have, so gentle and alluring it could captivate any audience. And with his pretty face to match, along with a body that was slender and tall, he looked almost like a beautiful creature from a legendary myth of yore. And he merely dusted off his injured shoulder, not even bothering to stop the bleeding before he gave the two a thin smile. “Anyway, I have no intention to kill you. I have no interest in killing anyone on your side, for that matter. I’m not really on Sinicus’ side, either, if that makes you feel any better. He just said he’d give me information if I did something for him in return, but I told him killing you would be too great a price. So you’re safe from me, okay?” he smiled, Bethabelle’s expression breaking out into a horrific scowl as she pointed her spear at him nonetheless.
“Bullshit!! Don’t mess with me, you jackass!!” Bethabelle roared, lightning forming against her long blade before a giant ball of fizzing electricity was being fired at the man, Listina watching in slight horror. The underground of the facility shook underneath its weight, fumes of smoke puffing out against the force of the attack while the ground split into two. However, when all of it faded away, the man was gone. Only for him to reopen yet another crack in reality before he stepped into the exact same place as before, looking completely unbothered.
“I’m not messing with you. Anyway, you did ask if I started the apocalypses, didn’t you? I can safely tell you I did not. I can’t control those cracks in reality. I can only control the ones I make myself, so I have no clue who or what made those others,” he smiled, finally moving a hand over his shoulder to pat down the blood while he applied pressure along his flesh, red splattering down onto the pavement while he gave a dissociated sigh. “Anyway, I’m sorry for attacking you. That is truly my bad. I was just testing your skills, you know? Harmless things. Seiree would be pleased.”
“Seiree? Who’s that? Another wretch in your organization?” Bethabelle snapped, the man simply shaking his head with his ever-remaining calm smile.
“No, no… she isn’t. She’s actually on your side of things, you just haven’t met her,” the man told them, continuing to roll his shoulder as his body only proceeded to relax further. “She doesn’t want the apocalypse to happen, either. In fact, I’m sure if you met her, she’d be able to give you a lot of information on how to stop it.”
“Then how would we meet her?” Listina decided to speak up, intrigued by this strange man’s words. She could tell Bethabelle was listening to a single thing he said, but she was curious. He obviously wasn’t on their side, that was certain enough, but there was just something about him that seemed so otherworldly, like he wasn’t completely human in the same sense that they were… was it his appearance, perhaps? His demeanor? A mixture of both?
Maybe it was his smile… because it really was such an eerie thing to look at. And when he smiled at her question in turn, it was thin and small, but said all too much. “You can meet her right now if you wish. She lives in the abyss… so you’ll have to go there to meet her, I’m afraid. Here, I’ll help,” he hummed, a rift in reality opening right above Bethabelle and Listina’s heads as it reached around to consume them. However, the moment they entered the rift, their bodies lost all consciousness and collapsed before anything else could be said or done, the man hovering above them with the same eerie smile as he appreciated their fallen forms.
“Perfect. You’re incapacitated, just like Sinicus asked of me. I’ve done everything he wanted me to do, so now it’s time for me to learn what I want, too. Maybe next time I’ll help your side out… if you name the right reward,” he chuckled rather softly, placing hands on each of their backs as he dragged their lost floating souls back into their chests and behind the webbing of their rib cages, carefully brushing their arms as he soothed their suffering bodies and repaired them as best he could. It was never a fun experience to have your soul ripped from you, he knew. He’d experienced it himself back when his planet had been hit by the apocalypse. But that was over a million years ago… no one remembered his planet anymore. Back then, the one who had saved him had been… Seiree.
She’d stopped his soul from leaving his body when he’d tried entering the abyss. She was a good and lovely person… if only she hadn’t died. All those years ago, during the conception of her successor… hm… he wanted to meet him sometime, that man… Cirrus Aixon, the being who had been chosen to succeed a being as legendary as Seiree. Oh, how time moves on… he couldn’t believe it was almost time for the next one to awaken. He couldn’t wait to see how it went this time. He hadn’t been alive during Seiree’s awakening, but he was excited to witness the next one. So with that, he lowered himself back inside the black abyss he called his home, stepping around monsters on a black and white landscape as he moved to meet the woman he worshiped. His work here was done, so he would now slip between the cracks… and wait until the battle passed so that he could figure out the location of the real person he was looking for, a person with a lovely and fragile soul… he needed to find her above anything else. He needed to find the woman who could make tangible the ghosts of the dead, the only person alive capable of guiding their souls to rest, and he would do just about anything to do so.
Is this teal-haired stranger a weirdo
