Chapter 14 #2
Images filled his mind. Their black-painted lips parting with desire, the tips of their talons trailing lines of fire across his flesh, their skin against his own, faces crowding around him, the sweet and heady savor of lust…
Again, Harald pushed the urges away, but this time it took greater effort. Were they coordinating this mental attack? He felt himself trapped like a fly in the center of a web, his mind straining to retain its clarity.
But each moment was buying his friends time. This wasn’t going to end well, but if he could delay these demons…
“Well, you’re going to have to do a better job than that,” he said, pretending to relax. “Other than boring demon sex, what does she have to offer? Vorakhar has claimed a Throne, and this guy over here—” Harald thumbed at the mote, “will tear my head off if I go haring after another demon.”
“It seems mere words won’t sway your mind.” Elixethera reached behind her back and drew out a heavy coiled whip, its black length gleaming as if wet, barbed with cruel hooks. “No matter. We don’t mind a little roughhousing, either.”
Time seemed to slow as all around him a dozen demons tensed as they went to attack.
Harald engaged Abyssal Imperium.
And the abyss answered his call. Heeding Eadwolf’s wisdom, he allowed the power to flow through him, to not think of it in terms of its composite parts, but as one unhallowed whole, a wellspring of the void, of the emptiness he now carried permanently in his soul.
The air dimmed, grew thick and turgid, sounds muffled, distances skewed. Motes of void glass appeared in the air and began to drift with lazy indifference. The energy of the abyss began to collect within him, to form the heartbeat, that potent pulse, that had so sickened and upset Eadwolf.
But he wasn’t the only one with superlative powers.
He could simultaneously sense the air growing charged with the Handmaiden’s own powers and auras, felt the crash of their will and lust and beguilement crash against his mind, seeking to sweep away his resistance, to force him to drop his sword and bend knee, to weep tears of bitter shame for having resisted the Handmaiden’s beauty, to—
Harald ceased repressing the Crown of the Abyssal Tyrant.
The platinum ring of cold power manifested in the air above his brow, and with that, the air seemed to thunder as he projected his displeasure, his ire, his fury at the Handmaidens around him.
Ambient dread filled the air, flooding the lawn like a tidal wave of black despair, repelling their focused mental attacks.
It washed out over them all, causing their burgeoning grins to falter; their eyes widened as their delight at the prospect of battle was replaced with something utterly alien to them: fear.
From his depths he summoned Shadowpaw even as he charged Elixethera. From the depths of his Cosmos, he drew the great mastiff, who appeared off to one side, made massive and even more formidable by Harald’s newfound connection to the abyss.
Shadowpaw lunged toward the closest demon, baying as he went, and his terrible howl caused the very air to feel jellied and cold with nauseating panic.
Even as Harald rushed at the stunned demon, who had clearly not expected such vigorous resistance, Harald unveiled the last aspect of his might: he unclenched a spiritual fist, relaxed his mortal vigil, and allowed the Well of Starless Dominion to open like a baleful eye.
Baleful hunger swept out across the battlefield.
The desire to consume. To drain, to drink the very life force, the living essence of every living being around him filled the air, overlaying Imperium’s own distorting malice.
Instantly, he sensed the wounds appearing on the demons who were only now beginning to react around him.
The floating motes of void glass left razor-thin slashes of pure black across their alabaster skin as Imperium worked on degrading his foes, weakening them, weighing down on them, turning the very landscape and air against them.
And with those first cuts, the cycle began.
But this time, it felt different.
From Eadwolf he’d received vitality. Hot, potent, and crimson in his mind, it had poured into the abyss and felt mortal and succulent.
From the demons?
He drew something new, something familiar, something inebriating and heady beyond compare.
Their demonic essence.
So familiar to his own.
The very stuff of the abyss flowed through their bodies.
Dark majesty fueled by the void, by Eclavistra’s power.
Demonic energy.
It was so much more potent than anything he’d drawn from Eadwolf.
Exhilarated, Harald laughed and leaped, his Form-changed body soaring through the air to crash down upon the Elixethera who rolled lithely away—or tried to.
Imperium made her clumsy, Crown delayed her reactions so that what should have been a smooth evasion was a rough dive to the side.
Harald missed by a hair, then turned to block a whip that snaked out in an attempt to wrap around his neck.
The whip curled around the Scourge, and the demon yanked, trying to tear it from Harald’s grasp—only for the Epic-ranked edge to slash the whip apart.
A halo of black fishhooks appeared around the demons closest to him, even as the third lunged in for a grapple, her eyes burning like purple fire.
Harald spun away, smashing the flat of his sword into her shoulder with such force that it should have sent her staggering—but it felt like hitting a tree.
The blow that should have sent her staggering barely made her shift—for all his Constitution, he simply wasn't strong enough to move a Level 10 demon.
Harald stumbled, decided to go with it and fell into a roll, coming up just in time to parry a wicked black sword that flashed toward his face.
“Desist!” cried a Handmaiden, her black lips drawn back from perfect teeth in a snarl. “Stop fighting and know that you are beaten!”
Her words hammered against his mind, then curled around his thoughts with insidious intent, seeking to undo his resistance.
For a moment Harald sagged, but then the Crown burned away the command. But it was a lethal moment of hesitation.
Demons were closing in all around him, unhurried, delighted, laughing and calling out insults.
A dozen.
For all his power, all his might, for all that the Well was steadily draining them of their vitality even as Imperium warped and slashed them, he knew himself outmatched.
Ah, well.
Everyone had to die one day.
Harald grinned and clenched his jaw, willing the very air to consume the hissing demon.
Darkness closed about her, a sudden cloud of ruin filled with slashing blades, and she screamed even as she threw herself aside.
But Harald could sense the dozen wounds he’d opened in her flesh. Black smoke fled from the cuts toward him, an inrush of demonic vitality that fed the Well, which augmented him in turn, and then cycled out to imbue Shadowpaw.
And all the while the void motes slashed and cut and razor-touched the demons who closed around him. Each cut gave the Well more purchase and more power that flowed into him.
The demons circled him, their confidence now tinged with a hint of wariness—the wolf pup could nip, it seemed—but little did they know. His energy had built up to a sufficient mass. With a grin, he released the first pulse of nauseating might.
It tolled forth like the boom of a great bell, rolling over the lawn and washing over the demons. They flinched, blinked, faltered, and he could only imagine the spike of nausea and vertigo they’d felt for a second.
And it would keep coming.
But they had their own dark magic at play.
Even as they recovered from the pulse, he realized that they were beginning to weave around him in circles, their actions growing ever more frenzied.
Some power that augmented their martial skill, a dance?
He could sense their growing ecstasy, their delight in battle—and how they were moving quicker for it, forming an ever-shifting ring of blades and whips and floating barbs.
Exeros had floated above the fray, easily lost against the starlit sky, a single, disinterested mote.
No ranged attacks yet. Which was good, and also a waste of an Artifact. Harald turned in place, Scourge raised before him, trying to decide where to strike, knowing that each moment not only put Anna farther away, but allowed the Well to drain the demons further.
And somewhere the Fallen Angel wept. Because their essence felt good.
Time to battle.
Harald focused his anger on the closest demon, and the darkness coalesced around her, a thousand blades manifesting to slash and cut and pry her body apart.
The demon screamed in shock and fury, and every gash that was torn open sent more demonic vitality into his Well.
Not hesitating, Harald dove at her, a hundred hooks catching on his shadowed flesh and scoring thin cuts in his skin despite his shadow-fortified defenses, and he brought the Scourge down in a great overhead slash.
The demons hadn’t yet figured out how potent his blade was. Thought, perhaps, it was Masterwork level, or something equally suitable to a Level 9 raider.
The Scourge rippled as it cut through multiple dimensions, sheared the wounded demon’s hand off at the wrist as she raised her black glass blade to parry, and then clove straight into her chest.
Which burst into great crystalline chunks of black gore, her chest rupturing, her scream shrill and panicked, then cut off as she fell to the ground, undone.
A great flood of energy poured into the Well, but even as Harald captured her vitality, he reached out and snagged something else. A wisp of elusive essence, something only dungeon monsters possessed, her very spirit, her core.
He snagged it, grasped it tight, and yanked it down into his Cosmos. Even as he stumbled, turned, and raised the Scourge once more, he felt the Handmaiden coalesce within his depths, and instantly summoned her right back.