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Chapter 21 : Cries of the Abyss
🕑 Added 2024-08-18 16:00:33 +0000 UTCDiluc's eyes narrowed at the sight of the intruders. "Abyss Herald, Abyss Lector," he growled, his grip on his greatsword tightening. "Here to protect the crystal, no doubt.".
Orion's gaze fastened on the new arrivals. There was a dark mask, finely etched with intricate figures, concealing the face of the Herald of the Abyss, while the robe of the Lector of the Abyss appeared to crawl like a living thing in its own right. Malice dripped from both figures, its chill radiating in cold, otherworldly light from their glowing eyes.
Eula's expression turned cold as she drew her sword, her eyes locking onto the duo from the Abyss. "We won't let you get in our way.".
Orion turned to see, through the crystal, Xiao's struggle; he knew they had very little time left. He turned to the group; his expression was set in grim resolve. "We must act quickly," he said, steady of voice despite chaos. "We need to break the crystal and sever the connection before these abyssal forces have a chance to stop us.".
The Abyss Herald and Abyss Lector glided with a grace so unnatural; they began to shape-shift as they prepared themselves to launch at the intruders. The vibe in the cavern surged, ratcheting to ever more chaotic levels as the group braced for the incoming battle, knowing this was only the beginning in their struggle against the abyss.
As the figures neared, their words built a weird, jangly harmony out of a multitude of voices in agony, each one carrying the gravity of their words with an almost agonizing extreme sense of insistence. "Touch not this place," they recited, chilling words providing the echo behind the sound of their voices. "The seal must remain. This is the will of the A—" It was then that they faltered, their speech cutting off as if they struggled against some unseen force inside themselves. A guttural sound ripped from them, the struggle to suppress the name, as their entire forms shook with the compulsion to speak.
Orion and Diluc exchanged glances, their looks of unease at that display. The Abyss creatures seemed to be suffering even more than Xiao, their bodies writhing as they fought to contain the words coming out of their mouth. Orion gripped his polearm tightly ready to strike, but hesitated—not out of fear, but something else. A strange sense of pity welled up within him as he watched their agony a feeling that conflicted with his will to strike.
Orion would still find himself wrestling with his thoughts, but he turned to Eula, his voice calm yet urgent. "Guard Xiao. I'll take care of this with Diluc."
Eula nodded, sprinting to position beside Xiao. Now that he made up his mind, Orion jerked his thoughts back into focus, forcing the gnawing feeling of strange pity away at last. Gripping his Skyward Spine tightly, he launched himself at the Abyss creatures. His polearm cut through the air with deadly precision.
Just when Orion was about to land the killing blow, it raised its head all of a sudden. The voice of the Abyss Lector tore through the torment, barely above a croak: "Her… Kin… My… Liege…" And still the words hung, heavy with their weight, in the air—and stopped Orion mid-air in his tracks. The creature had recognized him, looked him straight in the eyes as if it knew him, causing Orion to stagger back for a moment in pure amazement at this sudden turn of events.
Orion's eyes widened in shock as the words hung in the air. "What?!" he exclaimed, but his question was met with nothing but a eerie silence.
The creatures of the Abyss immediately changed and turned, if anything, much more horrifying. The unhindered scenes of the creatures' agonizing expressions twisted into so much more. They lunged forward at him, suddenly emanating new, dark energy. The change in their attitude was sudden enough to catch Orion off guard, yet this is something he had steeled himself for almost immediately, and his grip on the Skyward Spine tightened even against itself. The fight was on, and whatever strange connection they had suggested was buried beneath the fury of their assault.
Diluc’s voice cut through the chaos, sharp and commanding. “Orion, what are you doing? Be careful—they’re no ordinary enemies! Don’t hesitate!”
Orion snapped back into reality, his eyes flicking to Diluc, who was already fully engaged in battle. He realized that Diluc hadn't heard what the Abyss creatures had just uttered to him. Orion still had these words echoing in his mind, but he pushed them aside, shifting all focus back to their current situation.
"Let's get this over with," Orion muttered, steeling himself as he charged forward, ready for enemies to the front. His heart, still holding on to a glimmer of hesitation, was to cave before battle instincts and ready his full power to bleed out in the fight.
Orion signaled to Diluc with a nod and the grizzled knight didn't hesitate. They had already spared once to trust each other’s instincts without the need for words, without needing any words. Diluc gripped his Greatsword tightly, his squinting eyes anticipating Orion moving into position.
With a swift move from Orion, who impaled his polearm onto the ground; an icy surge busted from the point of contact, moving shockwaves rippling outward. The very ground upon which these Abyss creatures stood froze in an instant: ice spread in a spiderweb, catching at their feet, rendering them immobile for just a split second. Their twisted forms thrashed against the sudden cold, but the frost held firm—if only for a second.
"Now!" Orion yelled, but just as he had feared, the Abyss Herald and Lector broke that icy cage in an explosion of dark energy. They burst out, their twisted forms radiating malevolent power as they hissed and snarled in those strange agonized voices.
"It's not going to be that easy, Orion," shouted Diluc, his voice tinged with grim determination.
The Abyss Herald lunged forward, its huge sword crafted from void energy slashing at the air, creating terror with its slash. And Diluc faced the the attack head on , greatsword enkindled with the flames of fierce hell. Two greatswords finally clashed with a loud boom. Plasma met dark energy in a wild dance of strength. The inhuman Abyss Herald, in response, baptized in the flames of Diluc's hell, pushed back the darkness.
Orion, meanwhile, faced the Abyss Lector. The creature hovered, crackling with ominous purple energy, its hands weaving a deadly spell. Bolts of dark magic shot toward Orion, each one laced with chaotic, soul-piercing power. Orion deftly spun his polearm, deflecting the attacks with a series of swift, precise movements. His Cryo energy flared, countering the dark magic with bursts of icy wind that shattered the bolts mid-air.
The Abyss Herald opened the brawl with a relentless and vicious shower of strikes that drove Diluc on the defensive from the beginning. With every blow, came the power of the next man over; the Herald did not yield and felt like overpowering him. But Diluc was not just any other warrior. He bellowed, funneled all his Pyro energy into the greatsword, lighting it into an inferno. The heat was such that the air seemed to waver around it, and with a powerful swing, "This is your Retribution!" Diluc released a fiery wave swirling around the Herald.
Screaming, the Abyss Herald was devoured in the fire, its dark form squirming in pain. Not missing a step, Diluc followed through, pushing his greatsword into the creature's chest. The flames intensified, burning through the Herald's dark armor, reducing it to cinders shortly after.
At the same time, Orion faced off against the Abyss Lector, who had begun chanting in a guttural, otherworldly language. Dark energy coalesced around it, forming a massive sphere of destructive power. Realizing the danger, Orion knew he had to act fast. He focused his energy, his bright yellow eyes glowing with a fierce determination. As the Lector prepared to unleash its spell, Orion surged forward, his polearm cutting through the air with blinding speed.
The Abyss Lector never had a chance to react. Orion's polearm cut through the dark sphere, Cryo and Pyro energies merging together into a destructive force as the blade found its mark and pierced the Lector through the head. The combined elemental power surged through the creature, Cryo freezing its form and Pyro incinerating it from within.
The energies didn't cease their tear through the monster however, and the face of the Abyss Lector remained in a twisted visage of pain. Its body shook endlessly, the dark energy inside of it twisting and wriggling with chaotic patterns. With one last haunting wail, the head of the Lector started disintegrated into ashes, its dark essence slowly dissipating into the air.
Before the Lector's death was final, its one remaining eye flickered with a ghostly light, haunted—and it managed one last, agonized plea. "My… Lord… Save… Her." The words came barely as more than a whisper and choked by the force of its own self-destruction, with the annihilating power of Orion's attack closing over it.
Orion suddenly found himself staring down at the remains of the fallen Lector, breathing heavily through gasps ragged from the effort. As his words and the final echoes of the Lector's plea merged with the growing echoes of the cavernous gloom, Orion felt an odd unrest. For all victory in this place, the words spoken by the dying creature stuck in his mind, left him with a sense of disquiet, an uncomfortable weight that he couldn't shake.
The fight had been long and hard, the victory costly, but Orion couldn't shake that feeling of odd dissonance. The now fallen and defeated enemies had become debased and perverted, their last utterances laced with the suggestion of despair and sorrow; and in their last plea, there was tragedy, a reminder of their complex being and the motivations and discrepancies that ran their lives..
He drew back his polearm, looking down to see that the blade was still glowing with residue energy. Diluc approached with his greatsword balanced against his shoulder, flames burning down into a more controlled state. "Nice work," he says, calm but within that way that seems to almost exude respect.
Orion looked up, puzzled about something, and a little contemplative. "Yeah, it's just. something doesn't quite sit right, it suddenly felt like they were something more than just enemies that came to stop us."
Diluc looked down just slightly, gaze shifting to the disintegrated remains of their foes. "They were Abyss creatures. Their beings were twisted by dark forces. They don't deserve empathy."
Orion looked back to the shackled statue and crystal behind him, from which Xiao had been inflicted with untold suffering. "Right."
