Chase screamed in terror as beings began to arise from all sides...
He snapped his eyes shut straggling against the rope, gripping at his own face with the hand that wasn't hanging onto the rope at all costs.
Fear...
Fear...
All sides...
He was trapped...
Horror...
Blood began to pour from each and every one of his pores, as a resonate and distorted hum began to fill his ears, causing his brain to quake in pain at each and every thump.
"HAAANNNNSSS!!!" He screamed in terror, pleading for him to lift the rope as fast as possible, but his voice grew more distorted with every scream... Turning into a language he could not understand.
'Oh my Gods... Oh my Gods... Please! MOTHER!' He screamed internally for anything as a resistance began to build up in his eyelids, trying to force themselves open as colors began to glow beyond them.
Then they snapped open...
Several sights caused his heart to stop...
With a giant rocky hand wrapped around the central tower of the upside down castle... A giant figure the size of an entire kingdom glared at him with horrifying colorless eyes...
A being draped in shadows with tendrils and a purple outer glow was slowly getting closer... Its size completely indescribable because of the void it was arriving...
Giant shackles began to rise from the void below it...
Chase's brain was on the verge of tearing apart...
He was going insane...
He tried to climb, blood dripping into the void below as his body tried to rip itself apart.
The corruption... Seemingly keeping him alive when he should have died the second his vision met the beings.
Distorted noises filled his brain, horrifying and indescribable languages cackling in his ears like a curse.
"GO AWAY!" Chase screamed, green flames igniting within his hands...
The floating... Thing... continued to grow closer... Until Chase turned his gaze... Meeting the now visible face of that... Thing...
It was grinning with such horror in its indescribable ever changing face that Chase almost vomited on the spot...
It reached its slithering arm upward towards Chase, its limb stretching across an impossible vast length...
Until its hand touched Chase's face... Causing his heart to squeeze... Nearly ending his life in that second... Until a blue light began to glow within Chase's body... That same blue followed by a horrible purple glow began to crawl onto the God's arm...
"Hehehe..." Its distorted voice cackled... Echoing throughout the void with horror.
Then a click resounded through the void... Making everything freeze... Chase's already frozen breath stopped even further and his eyes could no longer close... In fact... His frantic movements had seized entirely...
"I'm supposed to kill you..." The being chuckled... Somehow with human tongue...
A strange liquid with no color began to fall from its lips...
"Ahhh... How strange indeed... You are not supposed to be here..." The God growled... Slowly moving its hand away from Chase in what seemed like disgust...
Time returned... And Chase's body fell limp, only being held by the rope around his waist. Drool and blood spilling from his weak face...
His head hung lazily as his body hovered above the void... His mind almost completely broken... Until everything vanished... Even the upside down kingdom had disappeared from sight.
However, Chase's mind had indeed been broken... Although not as bad as it could have been...
The corruption in his chest vibrating with intensity as the shackle on his wrist trembled violently.
'Chase!' A distant voice yelled from within his head.
'Chase! You have to climb! They need you! You need to fight it! Pull yourself together! Please! You cannot die here!' Luna's distant voice pleaded with the idol mind of Chase that felt as if it had been snapped in half and defiled...
It was true horror... To face the unknown and survive... Deep within his mind he pleaded for death... Pleaded for his body to be ripped in half and his soul to be extinguished...
He wished that he had not survived the fall in The Dark Forest... That his suicide had been inevitable... The horror... The indescribable feeling of not only seeing... But hearing and feeling the touch of one of those beings...
Was horror...
...
Equan dodged, narrow avoiding one of the countless flowing spikes of ice that destroyed the entire room in a frenzy of attacks.
'How can he even do this...?' Equan pondered eternally, drawing another arrow and aiming for the head of Gemini...
But he hesitated... A tendril of ice smacked him from behind, launching him into the direction of another tendril that caught him, the cold touch curling around him and crushing his body with horrible strength.
...
Kaylynn reached out, trying to shake Gabriel awake as he stood motionless in the corner of the chaotic room.
He was not responded no matter what she did... Yet she couldn't stop trying... If one of those tendrils hit him at the speed at which they were moving...
He would die...
"GABE!" She screamed, shaking his shoulders before...
A green light emanated from his once azure eyes...
"No..." Tears began to flow down her face as a liquid begin to rise within her body...
Water began to flood her organs... Drowning her as a terrible smile that was not his own covered Gabe's lips...
...
Luke ducked and dodged, searching the vast room for Reinhart who had vanished without a trace...
He was going to kill him...
He had known this would happen.
Anger rose within his chest as hope died.
"Damnit all!" He screamed, stopping in his tracks before turning towards his students who were amidst a battle that could only end in terrible death...
He couldn't allow this too happen... He needed to do something as their teacher...
He remembered the feeling of watching Poppy of House Aries be smashed in the face with the mace of his once friend... Or when Neo's head had been pierced and he should have died...
It was his responsibility to keep these idiots alive... No matter the cost...
...
Leo growled violently, grabbing Neveah and picking her up over his shoulder and sprinting towards the narrow hallway.
"PUT ME DOWN! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING LEO!" She screamed, thrashing against his back.
"We're leaving..." Leo said grimly, his eyes locked onto the small hallway that was only thirty meters away.
"We can't! You can by all means! But these are my fri-" She yelped, as they were hit from behind with a large tendril of ice.
Leo struggled in mid-air, doing everything he could to catch and secure Neveah, tucking her head as his back hit the ground at devastating speeds.
She pushed him away, standing up her own as Leo growled in terrible pain.
She drew her Greatsword, pointing it directly at Leo...
"I am not leaving them like this..." She growled back... Threatening to fight with her body's posture...
Leo could not respond... Not because of the pain that his body was in... But because she was right. And he knew full well that he could not leave his friends behind like this...
They had been through too much together... But this...
His vision wavered as it zoomed out... Showing him the full scale of the hell that had taken over this once empty room...
Behemoth structures of ice covered half of the room... Michael was locked in combat with an enraged Hans... Fighting each other with no regards for their own lives atop a large landmass of ice at the top of the room...
Both of them were ridden in blood and injuries that should have killed them... Yet... Even though Michael was under some sort of mental control... Even though his ice had evolved into the perfect fatal weapon... Hans had not been hit in the head a single time...
"Yo!" Griffin yelled from behind a pile of debris near Leo and Neveah.
Leo threw his head back with a laugh.
"So we're doing this!?" He asked, feeling as if everyone had gone completely insane.
Griff chuckled, pulling his golden lute out with a grin.
"Please tell me you have a spell for this Griff!?" Neveah pleaded, her eyes cautiously glancing at the barrage of ice tendrils slamming and destroying everything in their path.
"Nah!" He chuckled, his fingers inches away from the string.
"But if this is the end... I had a hell of a time fighting alongside you all!" His eyes snapped shut, his face straining with determination as a powerful melodic sound rang throughout the halls.
"Let's at least make this shit show a good god damn time!" He yelled, violently ripping into his strings as golden light began to radiate from his body.
...
Meanwhile at the center of the room... Gemini gripped his head in defiance...
He would NOT be the catalyst of this chaos...
A small sliver of hope remained in him, as between the constant switching momentum of the battle of two minds, he could see flashes of the bronze gauntlet slowly slipping into the void below... The same Gauntlet Hans had left behind in order to buy time for Chase...
"Who are you!?" Gemini screamed dropping to his knees, not going down without a fight.
'Your mortal mind could not comprehend WHO I AM!" A horribly sinister voice boomed within his head, causing his brain to tremble in pain.
...
Above the ruins of Olympia...
"Ivy! Tell me when..." Jacob's hands trembled above the padlocks that held the shackles around his ankles...
'No... You will wait... There is still yet time...' Her voice responded, refusing his plead as he could feel the terrible aura radiating from beneath Olympia...
"I'm going in..." The gruff and raspy voice of the unknown man who had referred to himself as The Harbinger, stepped in front of the deep void below the cellar.
"No! Are you a fool! You can feel that can't you!?" Justin yelled in response, as he hid behind Brody who also wore a look of bewilderment...
"You do not understand... I am not here for Unity... I have come for something much more vile..." He turned his cloak covered head, as the fabric of his black and purple cloak danced aside only for a second, revealing the handle of a sword at his waist...
The sword had the pommel of a dragon's head...
'Let him descend...' Ivy said darkly within Jacob's head... Causing Jacob's eyes to widen in amazement at the revelation of just seeing the familiar sword.
"You're alive...." Jacob whispered in astonishment.
...
Hextra boomed with sinister laughter that echoed throughout the vast throne room drowned in a green hazy fog...
"My slaves... You may now show yourself..." She grinned wickedly as Rakshaa's mindless figure stepped out of the fog... Followed by two deranged beings that she had picked up for free along the way...
"I hope you pathetic wastes of air make yourself useful... Your kind disgusts me..." She spat at the beasts with frail bodies and ugly large maws...
They recoiled in fear at the goddess, hiding behind the incoherent troll.
"Go ahead and mimic something powerful when you arrive..."
She reached out, her hand glowing with dark green energy... Then a flash of that same energy shot across the room, cracking the wall between them and the battle taking place.
"It will take some time... But prepare to end the fight swiftly..." She snickered, watching as her energy slowly began the process of breaking apart the ancient wall, in doing so- making a door for her troops.
Rakshaa lifted his two weapons... A crimson axe with bloody flesh from previously slain monsters dangling off of each intricately crafted fragment of the weapon...
And in his right hand... He wielded a crimson glaive, somehow bigger than the large axe in his left hand... Its blade engraved with an ungodly amount of runic emblems and curses.
Hextra expected no less of the Troll's outcasted general of war... The first monster to gain consciousness in this world... Rakshaa The Destroyer...
...
Zephyr stood... Looking at the fragmented vision that Ivy was projecting before them.
"Tenk-" Zephyr shoved a hand in front of Dorian's mouth before he could send the serpent of death to intervene...
"What are you doing!? He muttered from behind the draconic hand of Zephyr...
"Chase has not ascended from the void yet... Do not make a move... Or in the name of Mother Hell... I will end your existence you pathetic gambler..." The dragon in human formed growled with clear killing intent at Dorian.
"You know what lies in the void... I am sorry... But the heir is dead Zephyr..." Dorian calmly stated with a saddened expression, but Zephyr's voice immediately boomed.
"THE HEIR CANNOT DIE! WHAT DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND! I HAVE SEEN HIS WILL WITH MY OWN TWO EYES!" He yelled, his ancient voice shaking the walls of Phoenix Academy.
Ivy nodded, trying to focus on portraying the projection while also communicating internally with Jacob.
Poppy and Neo bursted into the room, slamming the door open with their weapons drawn.
"What the hell is happening!?" Neo screamed, the skin of his face appearing like the scales of a reptile from all of the wounds the has endured.
Poppy instantly dropped her ivory spear the second that she seen Ivy's projection in the air...
"Ch- Chase? Is he alive?" She asked with dread clearly escaping with her voice at the sight of the horrible battle taking place between comrades.
"We do not know-" Zephyr delivered a terrible strike to Dorian's face, sending him flying into the wall with terrible force.
"Vile serpent... How dare you worry the girl... Chase is alive." He assured the girl that did not know that she was his only child...
"In fact... I'm bargaining on one hell of a performance..." Zephyr grinned, feeling the gates of The Underworld slowly creep open...
'It has begun...' Lilith's ancient and raspy voice whispered into the minds of Zephyr and Dorian...