Chương 969: 999 - Trapped

Yu Nok Tor had seemed to come alive from the figure's screech, and not in any way that Leon liked. He sprinted back the way he and Tiraeses had come, the monk following closely behind. There was no more arguing from him as the sheer scale of what they'd just kicked became apparent. The buildings around them shook so hard that the mortar holding the bricks together began to crack, and the aura of darkness that had settled over the city thickened in an instant.

They were still able to move, but it felt like they were running through a swamp, their boots almost sticking to the street's stone pavers while the air felt almost too thick to breathe. Worst of all, the hair on the back of Leon's neck stood on end as he felt the attention of something great, something powerful, falling upon them.

It wasn't quite the same kind of all-encompassing feeling he had when facing Krith'is, where even resistance was obviously futile, but he did not want to face whatever he'd just attracted. His wants were of no concern to the creatures that spilled out into the streets. Most of them were human, but like the figure that started this, their bodies were emaciated and blackened by dark power, with missing eyes and noses, their jaws agape as shrill screams filled the air.

Their teeth were like obsidian daggers, their nails like onyx claws, but their auras were tight and concentrated in an alien way, not like the more diffuse clouds that most other auras Leon had ever sensed were like. There were other creatures amidst the horde, though similarly malformed. Dogs, cats, and spiders mostly, with charred bodies and far more strength than their thin and wrinkled frames implied.

Their braying and barking filled Leon with dread as they burst from buildings and flooded the streets ahead, behind, and all around them. Leon wasted no time whipping out Iron Pride and letting loose with a titanic wave of silver-blue lightning. A hundred figures were obliterated and the dark aura that threatened to suffocate him and Tiraeses abated for a moment, but it came crashing back as ferociously as the horde around them, who threw themselves at Leon and Tiraeses with no care for their personal wellbeing.

Tiraeses responded in kind, punching at speeds faster than a mortal could follow, slicing through countless foes in their path. Together, they cleaved their way through the horde in an attempt to get out of the ruins of Yu Nok Tor. They hadn't made it that far in and they made good progress, but as they hacked and slashed their way to escape, the dark aura suddenly intensified again. Leon's mind was suddenly assaulted by emotion and grave images.

He saw Elise dead by his own hand, he saw Valeria turning on him while pressing her body against a dark and featureless representation of Lord Kamran, he saw Cassandra abandon him and return to Evergold, and he saw Maia attacking him in an attempt to eat him as river nymphs were wont to do to their mates. He saw all of this in less than a second as hatred, fear, and wrath pressed in on his consciousness from without, while from within, he called upon his Ancestor's lightning.

Silver-blue lightning lanced through this power while Iron Pride glowed the same color. The aura was again pushed back, relieving his mind of these terrible visions and emotions, and he spun in place, his sword slicing and stabbing quick as lightning. Beside him, Tiraeses had fallen, three large black dogs tearing into his legs and arms. Lightning ended that in a moment, but Tiraeses remained on the ground, senseless.

Leon remained a whirlwind of death, his sword and power keeping the horde and dark power both away from them, and he was able to grab Tiraeses with his off hand and pull the monk over his shoulder. Now weighed down, Leon's magic output suffered, though with the power of the Iron Needle embedded within his blade, he was still able to make progress. He clawed his way through the city's outskirts, the horde pressing against him physically while the city's dark aura pressed against his mind.

But he finally hacked his way clear, and with Tiraeses still slung insensate over his shoulder, he took off back toward the hills over the wasteland that the plains of Arkhnavi had become. He was not further pursued, but when he glanced back over his shoulder, he saw a chilling sight. The horde remained in the streets, braying and screaming, but on the ruined walls and still-intact roofs of nearby buildings, he saw several more humanoid figures, different from the one that had kicked all of this off.

They were distinct only in their indistinction, their bodies clad in smoky black darkness that obscured their physical features from view. In the center of the dark blob where their heads should've been was a single red eye, large as a saucer and burning with malice, observing as he retreated from the city. When he reached the foot of the first hill, he glanced back again, and the horde and the darkness-clad figures had vanished as if they'd never been there at all.

The cacophonous city had fallen silent only moments before, and now seemed as lifeless as it had on their approach. When he reached the summit of the hill, Leon fell to his knees, his breath labored. The dark aura had lessened somewhat, but hadn't abated to pre-retreat levels, though his silver-blue lightning was doing some work in keeping it at bay.

He lowered Tiraeses to the ground as gently as he could and evaluated their surroundings, not wanting some flanking force to surprise them, but as far as he could tell, they were alone on the hilltop. Despite this, his golden eyes darted from shadow to shadow, seeing motion in each out of the corner of his eye. His heart raced, the possibility of what might've happened had the horde gotten ahold of him or if that dark power had managed to get into his head…

As that thought raced through his mind, Leon clenched his teeth and turned back to Tiraeses. The man hadn't moved from where Leon had dropped him, and black tendrils had appeared beneath the skin around his eyes. [Leon,] the Thunderbird whispered from his soul realm, her voice as calm and steady as it was deadly serious, [get the fuck out, now.] For only the briefest of moments, Leon felt terrible for taking away Tiraeses' choice in the matter as he moved to pick the monk back up and summon the silver twig from his soul realm. He had satisfied his part of the deal with Ambrose. He couldn't get to Tell Kirin and find out precisely what had happened to Qo Weylekh or his Universe Fragment, but even as a tenth-tier mage, that aura had been spectacularly dangerous.

The hordes were more manageable, though they served as an effective distraction to pull his concentration away from dealing with the aura. Regardless, the time had come to leave Arkhnavi. There wasn't much point in staying, not when his only reason for doing so was putting in a good-faith effort to fulfill Ambrose's request. With Tiraeses slung over his shoulder, Leon snapped the twig.

Space in front of him cracked with the fury of a thousand lightning bolts, hurling Leon and Tiraeses back hard enough to almost throw them off the hill. Pain rushed through Leon's arm as his bones snapped in several places. He hit the ground and lost his hold on Tiraeses, rolling several times before he was able to regain control over himself. Where he'd snapped the twig was a black sphere no larger than the palm of his hand, spinning faster than his eyes could track while its surface flashed with white light.

Lightning arced around it chaotically, carving large black trenches into the hill. [Don't get close!] the Thunderbird shouted. [The portal is unstable!] Leon didn't need to be told twice as he summoned his power, swallowed the pain from his broken arm, and protected himself and Tiraeses from the spatial maelstrom the twig had summoned. And then as quickly as it started, it stopped. The sphere winked out of existence, leaving only the lightning burns that scored the hill as evidence it had ever been there.

The snapped twig lay on the ground where Leon had dropped the pieces, now tarnished black, and it crumbled to dust as soon as Leon's eyes landed upon it. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. Leon stared at it in disbelief, regret, and fury. His only method for escaping the plane had failed. He had no other twigs, no other way to leave Arkhnavi.

The pain in his arm pulled him away from those thoughts before he could lose himself in them, though the tau pearl quickly went to work healing him. So instead of focusing on his own injuries, Leon turned to Tiraeses, who hadn't moved a muscle since falling in Yu Nok Tor's streets. [This power,] he said to the Thunderbird, [it seems like our lightning can banish it. Would it work on him?] [Try it. Carefully.] Thusly reassured, Leon laid a hand on Tiraeses' forehead and channeled a few tiny arcs of silver-blue lightning. His power sank into the monk's head, and the results were immediate—Tiraeses shot upward with a cry of pain, but in his haste, he lost his footing and went tumbling down the hill. Leon ran after him, but the monk only needed a moment to steady himself and come to a stop. He kneeled on the side of the hill, his eyes wide open, the tendrils of darkness around his eyes gone.

Instead, Leon noted several burns around his orbitals and the whites of his eyes had nearly turned red.

"What…" he croaked before collapsing, still conscious but clearly dead tired. [The influence of a Devil cultist,] Xaphan gravely explained and which Leon repeated when Tiraeses turned in his direction, noticing that Xaphan was speaking to Leon. [Corruption of the inhabitants of that city into extensions of the Primal Devil's will. Puppets only, not a shred of life to be seen within them. Twisted and degenerated as the Primal Devil absorbed all that it could from their bodies.] As Leon finished relaying this, he snapped his fingers and summoned Xaphan from his soul realm. The demon came without argument, and though Tiraeses was put on guard for a moment, Xaphan ignored the fallen ninth-tier mage and simply stared back at Yu Nok Tor, his yellow-hot eyes focusing on the purple light emanating from somewhere behind the tallest buildings of the city.

"Who were those people I saw watching us?" Leon asked.

"Cultists," Xaphan answered.

"Hardly much different from the creatures you fought, but much stronger and with more autonomy given by the Primal Devil. The dark remains of the city's population won't be hard to mow down, but those…

'people' channel the power of the Primal Devil more intensely." [They are the dangerous ones in the city,] the Thunderbird added, her voice grim. [I've seen scenes like this before, where a Primal Devil decides to drain some large human settlement of all the power it can, no matter what kind. Vague imitations of life remain, though they exist only as long as the Primal Devil allows it.] Leon, not caring at this point if it would spark any additional questions from Tiraeses, relayed that information, then asked aloud, "Let's set that aside for the moment—what the fuck just happened with the twig?"

"Spatial magic, much like nature magic, is made up a combination of elements," Xaphan explained.

"Darkness, light, and lightning. That twig was powerful; I wouldn't have thought it possible, but it seems that the darkness magic saturating this plane interfered with the formation of the portal." [That's precisely what happened,] the Thunderbird stated. [But it wasn't done by chance—something had to act to prevent the portal from forming. Your twig didn't fail, something sabotaged it.]"The Primal Devil…?" Leon asked, his anger growing as the reality he was stuck sank in.

"It was certainly Devilish power," Xaphan said, "but likely used at the direction of whatever is in control of that city." Tiraeses finally spoke up, asking with an exhausted voice, "What controls it…?"

"That light shining in the dark… That's likely some kind of focus for the dark magic in the air. The ritual that provides the Devil with power is centered upon whatever is emitting that light."

"So if we destroy it…" Leon leadingly said, his mind immediately latching onto something, anything, that might help him regain some measure of control in this situation. He'd been confident when he thought he could leave at any time, but now that that option had been taken from him, he was left reeling.

"The power of the Primal Devil will weaken in this part of the plane," Xaphan confirmed.

"To what end you may want to do that, I cannot say. I can't see any benefit to venturing back into that city. Better to avoid it—run and find some other way to escape this plane. Achieve Apotheosis and take the long way home if you must. Find some way to escape. Hold no other goal in your head than that. This plane is desolate and without hope."

The contract-forged connection between Leon and Xaphan flared, and Leon understood what it meant; he allowed Xaphan to retreat back into his soul realm, and he and Tiraeses fell silent as the silent remains of the city miles away loomed large. Leon was angry and terrified at having the twig fail, but Tiraeses seemed to have a more debilitating reaction—he slumped down on the side of the mountain, staring up at the black sky, looking utterly defeated.

After a moment of thought and doing his best to suppress the emotions that threatened to overwhelm him, Leon sat down next to the old monk. They sat in silence for a few seconds, and Leon thought that that silence would stretch, but Tiraeses quickly broke it, saying, "I apologize for my haste, Leon. I… by Valiant Ashatar, I had hoped to obscure my fear with boldness. I am afraid that I am alone, that the Red-Eyed One has taken everyone on Arkhnavi, save for me.

I should've kept Wise Farangeun more in mind and shown more caution."

"Enough," Leon softly growled, silencing Tiraeses.

"What's done is done. We're here now. We're trapped on Arkhnavi. Let's not wallow in misery. What are we going to do about this?" Leon stared at Tiraeses, a challenging look in his eyes. Tiraeses stared back, the redness slowly leaving the whites of his eyes as his light magic healed his burns.

"We… we cannot allow the devils to infest this plane," he stated. Leon numbly nodded.

"The way I see it… we don't have a lot of options left. We can run and hide and hope to survive the next year on our own. Or we can continue. We can subvert what we can of the Primal Devil's plans while getting closer to Tell Kirin."

"You would continue?" Tiraeses asked. Leon nodded again.

"I don't like sitting on my hands. They just hit us; I want to hit back. That focus in the city. Let's destroy it. Maybe give this Primal Devil a black eye. Xaphan told me earlier that the Primal Devil might still be sealed and all of these foci are designed to funnel more power to it and help it break free of its bonds. If that's true, then it's lending power to the cultists in Yu Nok Tor. I want to go and kill those cultists." Tiraeses frowned and stared at the distant city.

"We didn't get far before being forced back."

"Then we'll approach smarter," Leon responded.

"We'll start by moving. I don't trust that we'll be left alone here." Tiraeses bowed his head in agreement.

"You are blessed by Wise Farangeun," he whispered.

"I'm not so sure about that," Leon replied.

"I've made many mistakes. I'm hoping I won't have to add coming to Arkhnavi to that list." He pushed himself to his feet.

"But I have to say: with a few minutes to think, I'm starting to feel a little more hopeful." Tiraeses followed him to his feet, a curious look on his face.

"Have the gods given you some reason to be?" Leon shrugged.

"When I still thought that I could leave at any time, the question of why the ten mages sent by the other planes in the Divine Graveyard didn't leave lingered in my mind. If they were similarly trapped, their methods of escape failing just as mine just did—""You tried to leave?" Tiraeses interjected. Leon physically cringed.

"Yeah. Apologies; you were unconscious, so I just decided that enough was enough. The silver twig I told you about… failed to create a spatial tunnel." Leon indicated the burns on the hilltop not far away.

"I was going to take you with me, but that's moot now."

"I see… I… don't believe Just Helior would judge you harshly for such action, so neither will I." Leon nodded in gratitude.

"Anyway. If the only reason why they went missing is because their methods for escape failed, then… they might still be out here, somewhere. Way I see it… unless those in my soul realm would like to offer a suggestion, the best thing we can do right now is to kill all the cultists in Yu Nok Tor, then keep moving for Tell Kirin. If there's a method to escape, then it'll be there. If anyone else sent to this plane survived, then that's where they'll be headed. And if the cultists are based anywhere, it'll be there."

Tiraeses scowled for several long seconds.

"Wise Farangeun forgive me; I agree with you, Leon. I will follow your lead this time." Leon nodded again, this time with more determination in his heart.

"Let's get off this hill and find somewhere a little more secure where we can plan out a better way into the city." Together, the two shot off the hill, their injuries largely healed by this point. Neither bothered to hide the traces of their brief breather on the hill since Leon knew the cultists at least would've seen them there, not to mention the magic released from the silver twig would've been felt for dozens of miles.

Besides, he didn't have any quick ways to conceal their presence, so leaving with speed he felt was better. Tiraeses didn't argue, and they retreated further into the hills to plan their next move.

Burns on the hilltop, visible signs of humans running around on top of it, disturbances in the way the ambient magic whirled and flowed…

'At least two, maybe more,' the young woman thought to herself as she stared at the light screen only a few inches in front of her face. She tapped a few controls on the armrest next to her and the enchantments in her armor activated.

'Now I just have to find them…' The thirty-foot-tall suit of armor creaked and groaned as it straightened up. The woman inside didn't know where to go from there, but she figured she'd stay in the area for a little while longer than she'd planned. She wanted to find those who'd only recently been on this hill…