Anthony Alves
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WH inspired book chapter 4 (rough draft)
🕑 Added 2025-02-24 14:00:14 +0000 UTCThe volcano detonated with a deafening roar. As Angar and the demon were flung skyward, time grinded into a sickening, sluggish crawl.
His neck snapped back, a brutal whiplash tearing through sinew. His spine felt shattered, battered and bent as it shouldn’t. His skull throbbed with a vicious, unrelenting ache, and his ears screamed with a piercing, endless wail.
He screamed a slow, tortured howl lost in the suffocating ring that drowned out everything. Scalding droplets seared his flesh, sizzling like acid, branding him with every torturous hiss.
Rocks and jagged debris drifted past or were headed towards him, promising death when they reached him in this sluggish torment.
The force of his ascent was slowing twisting him around, and as he spun, more chunks of stone and ash loomed closer, inevitable.
Almost stuck in time, a monstrous torrent of lava erupted upward, a thick, choking pillar of molten fury crowned by a towering shroud of black smoke. Mount Shirdis itself was almost no more, its entire bulk exploding outward in a cataclysmic rupture.
Crimson-orange flecks glinted in the air. Lava, he realized, the same that blistered his exposed skin.
Then, a bright spot above him turned into a colossal bolt of lightning that tore through the stagnant haze above, moving at normal speed. It slammed into his shoulder with mercilessly, ripping out through a finger on his outstretched arm.
He had always heard lightning strikes caused unconsciousness, at least for a moment. He was hoping for that. But the myths lied. There was no merciful blackout, no escape into oblivion. Just raw, searing agony.
Hard on the lightning’s heels, a blast shredded the air, a slow-motion detonation that ruptured his eardrums in a sickening and bloody pop. His lungs collapsed inward, as if punched by an invisible and massive fist, and his brain blared with fresh torment.
The glittering lava and debris seemed to pull back, but it was his own body hurtling faster, propelled by the savage explosion of air.
He clawed through the sky, every inch of his body screaming in torment and misery, watching jagged bolts of lightning lash the earth below. Hundreds of them, a relentless barrage of electric wrath.
His spin slowly brought the demon into view, a massive slab of rock grinding through its torso in excruciating slow motion. Knowing that monstrous thing was dead, or soon would be, made him glad.
How easily and effortlessly the demon caught his hammer wasn’t right. It was unnatural. Unfair. Having the courage to face a nightmare like that was one thing, but the scales were too unbalanced. No warrior stood a chance against creatures of such obscene power.
In this twisted, sluggish nightmare, spysparks erupted in blinding bursts, and lightning rained down like divine vengeance. Angar prayed, begged, no more lightning would strike him, and for unconsciousness to finally drag him under and relieve him of this pain.
His mother had been correct. The volcanic eruption was far more deadly than he could’ve possibly imagined. He would be responsible for a lot of deaths. More than he could fathom.
If the Kondunean Empire still harbored a desire to rule this land, they would reign only over ashes.
He watched the rock tear free from the demon’s chest. Its eyes no longer blazed with infernal fire. They were no longer filled with anything besides lifelessness, and that gladdened him.
As his spin continued to slowly change his view, a strange sight appeared before him, hovering in the air.
A woman, maybe his mother’s age, floated there. Ignoring the sheer madness of seeing a woman floating in the air, this was not a normal woman. Everything about her reeked of the unnatural.
Even as the volcano’s apocalyptic fury shredded the sky and the most savage lightning storm imaginable clawed at the earth, she radiated a chilling, serene dignity, untouched, unshaken, unruffled, a calm that mocked the chaos.
Her hair hung straight and platinum blonde, neither being a hair quality Angar had never witnessed, never even thought possible.
Her eyes were also impossible. A soft, almost translucent blue that made them seem piercing and brutal. Somehow, despite that, these eyes only reflected warmth and kindness.
She didn’t wear crude hide or anything close to familiar to Angar. It encased her body in a material so alien he couldn’t even guess at its nature. It was seamless, as if forged whole, not pieced together by any craft he knew. It hugged her form tightly, molding to her shape, yet unmistakably distinct from her skin, clearly a separate layer and not flesh. It seemed to change colors in a magical way, but subtly, making Angar question if he was imagining it.
She floated about five or six paces away, but that was hard to judge. If his guess was right, then she wasn’t just taller than any woman he had ever seen, but every man too. And not taller by just a little. She would tower over all men.
The shape of her body was elongated as if a giant rock rolled over her prone form, smooshing her and stretching her out, making everything way too thin and long.
Her face was too oval, her chin was way too soft, as were the other facial features except for the high cheekbones, which were sharp. Her ears tapered to odd, sharp points. Her nose was mostly normal besides the thin nostrils. Just a straight, good nose. Her lips seemed too large as well, were plump, and a strange color.
She was pale in a way unlike regular humans. Pale with a luminescent quality, smooth and unblemished, indicating she had lived a life of ease indoors, probably in soft areas of the south, and spent little time in the burning fog and rain.
She stood in the air perfectly straight, her posture impossibly perfect, her arms clasped behind her back.
Time had stopped crawling forward and was now stopped completely, or almost so. Two lightning bolts inch their way towards the ground in maddingly slow motion, but that was the only movement Angar could see. Even skypark explosions sat petrified mid-blast.
He assumed this woman, like the dark whispers and mysterious words, was some form of demonic trickery.
And this belief was only reinforced as the woman became somewhat transparent, clearly some type of malicious spirit, only cloaked in false grace.
As she stared at him with those impossible eyes, a small smile crept onto her lips before she nodded her head slightly and said, “Angar.”
Since the eruption had sent him soaring through the air, Angar’s mouth had been releasing a scream. One long scream he couldn’t even hear before his eardrums had burst and deafened him.
But he heard this demon speak his name. He could hear again. Miraculously.
He didn’t think he’d be able to speak, but he said, “I won’t fall for your trickery, demon,” normally, despite the stopped time.
He then realized his body was free of pain. Somehow. Miraculously too. And not just that. He could now move normally. Or as normal as possible while floating in the air.
The smile on the demon’s lips grew wider. “I’m no demon. My goal is to save this world.”
“Are you some kind of spirit?” he asked, his skepticism clear.
The woman nodded her head once as she said, “I guess you could say so. But not as your people see spirits.”
“What are you then?” he demanded.
“Someone offering help.”
Angar was more and more impressed by this demon’s demeanor and confidence. She exuded calm authority. So much so that if she gave an order, he’d instinctively want to obey her commands. The impossible eyes of her steady gaze were filled with trustworthy compassion, causing him to feel doubt.
But he knew it was all a lie.
“Like the help you offered my mother, Moloch? You corrupted a great woman. You knew her desires and used them to twist her mind until she committed those atrocities. I know your game, and I’m immune to it. My only desire is to meet my father in Qitakai. The Great Lord is calling for me. No more tricks. End this. Let time flow naturally. Let me ascend gloriously.”
No matter how hard he tried, Angar couldn’t tear his gaze away from those impossible eyes. As he looked deeper into them, drowned in them, Moloch whispered, “See.”
A vision smashed into his mind, drowning him. Strange looking folk poured into a titanic shell made of an unyielding substance, a great behemoth that made the Ulimuns peaks themselves look like pebbles.
Countless souls flooded its guts, then it tore into a boundless dark, soaring for a great time, many, many generations, bound for a new world, a world named Arcadia.
It faltered, an emergency forcing it to land on a different world. He was shown this world from high above, it churned like a festering wound, a swirling orb of sickly yellow-orange and brown.
The massive thing carrying all the people landed, but the world ate metal, and the titanic thing was put deep underground to protect it.
The people were weak and couldn’t handle the great beasts, heat, and the burning fog and rain. Many, many died, frail husks rotting in droves.
Over time, generation after generation, the people began to look normal, as Angar knew people to look, and spoke differently, as Angar knew people to speak.
The new inhabitants called this planet Bitter Pill. Over time, that changed to Vefol.
“The inhabitants of this world are a testament to the human spirit,” said Moloch, voice steady. “The spaceship your ancestors arrived in landed not all that far from this spot 3,762 years ago. Survival on this hostile world wasn’t easy.”
Moloch floated higher. There was a lightning bolt Anger hadn’t spotted slowly inching its way down towards him. It disappeared as she touched it, and she became more translucent.
After returning to her old spot, she said, “And I’m not Moloch. I’d appreciate it if you stopped thinking I am. All creatures of Hell are my enemies, and none more so than the Demon Lords.”
When he had been shown those words in his eyes, some words had stood out. One of them was Hell. He didn’t know its meaning, but it seemed she claimed not to be Moloch, and that Moloch was from Hell. If so, those of Hell were his enemies too.
“What do you want of me?” he asked, voice rough with suspicion.
“I want the people of this world to live, including you. I aim to help you eradicate the Hellspawn and close this gateway to the Underworld.”
The words shown in his eyes had used that word too. The Underworld. They said his mother had torn asunder the veil between this world and the Underworld. He assumed it was another way of saying Hell.
“Hellspawn are the demons?” he pressed.
She nodded. “Yes, sort of. The things you think of as demons are called reavers. For Minor rated invasions, it’s always reavers, fiends, or imps. True demons are far worse, a lot more powerful.”
Given how powerful these reavers were, Angar wondered how much more formidable these demons could be.
“You’re offering to help me do what’s already done. The eruption is much mightier than I expected. I’ve killed all these reavers. Not yet, with how time is flowing, but they’ll soon be dead. The gateway will be destroyed too.”
“The gateway will persist,” she countered. “Some reavers will survive the eruptions, and more will come until we close it. Those killed by reavers eventually rise as undead, and the same for those they kill, spreading their blight. Most inhabitants of this world will be dead before the Crusaders arrive.”
All men not of Mecia were enemies, especially those of the Kondunean Empire. That was just fact.
But if this woman spoke the truth, allegiance to specific peoples, kingdoms, or empires mattered nothing now. All grievances and loyalties had to be set aside until this threat was ended.
The Weirding Witch released this plague upon the world, and her blood coursed through Angar’s own veins.
He knew what the Great Lord would want of him, what his father would want of him, and what the blood debt his mother incurred demanded of him. He would do all he could to save his world. “How will you help me?”
The small smile crept back onto the woman’s lips. “By swearing you into the Knighthood and allowing you to ascend as a Crusader.”
Comments
Tony
Thank you very much
Oponette
tftc!
Tony
Thank you very much
Tony
Thank you very much
Eric Kellar
tftc enjoyed it
Actually
Great chapter really enjoyed it Tyftc!
