Chapter Seventeen
Zev
“Like fuck,” Farren responds immediately. “We’ll help you kill it.”
“You can’t kill them. They don’t die, but you can hurt them, and with this many of us we should be able to chase it off. No creature likes pain,” she replies.
There’s no time to say anything else as the same creature that Farren fought before comes bounding out of the trees, immediately taking a swipe at one of the Others, as his sword bounces off it, not harming it at all.
“Fucking hell,” Loki curses, as he dives out of the way. His fangs have descended and look even bigger and more deadly than they usually do.
Well, that’s curious.
Honestly, it takes me a moment of staring at Loki and the creature as he lunges for it before I kick my arse into gear and jump into the attempt to make the creature flee with everyone else.
I can’t believe that Farren fought and killed one of these by herself.
Well, I can. It’s Farren, but holy hellfire.
My weapons don’t make a scratch, let alone a slice or mortal wound on the creature, not that it can die. At least the Others don’t seem to think that it can.
We know differently because Farren already killed one. There is a chance that was a fluke though, and that she won’t be able to do it again.
We spend the next ten minutes giving the Abyss creatures everything that we’ve got.
There’s magic flying everywhere, and the Others are being launched and swiped at, but are fortunately all still alive.
When one goes down, another one guards them until they can get up again.
It’s very clear that they have all fought together for a long time.
We aren’t faring much better.
Storm and Kill are using their shadows to whip at the creature, Storm doing so from the air and distracting it while some of the others attack it from different angles.
Reaper is shooting fire, but there’s too much chaos for him to transform into Ryu, and I know that he does that as a last resort anyway.
Unless, of course, Farren’s under threat, then he will loom menacingly in the darkness.
Now that I think about it, he rarely uses his dragon form when we’re in a fight. I wonder if it's because he’s worried about losing control. I know that was a problem in the past and that there is so much trauma surrounding Ryu.
It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s not actually aware that he doesn’t let Ryu out when we’re in a combat situation very often, or it might not even be his decision. It could be Ryu’s.
It’s something that I probably need to check in with him about, but I have no idea when I’m going to get the chance.
Hades and Khaos are fighting the Abyss creature together, their magic complementing each other, as they fight like they have been in combat together for centuries, which I guess they have.
Khaos is Hades’ right-hand man after all.
Rival charges the creature as Storm’s shadows pull its attention in the opposite direction, and he calls on his magic.
Doing something that I have never seen before, Rival somehow manages to combine all of the elements at his disposal, without them fighting against each other, and then blasts a hole straight through its back leg.
Lock’s eyes go wide with shock at the display of power, and I sigh in relief knowing that they can be trusted. They were, after all, the ones in my vision who were to help us get to the castle.
Plus, my magic would tell me if they couldn’t be trusted.
It did not like the guards from the compound.
Instead of the giant hole in the Abyss creature's leg slowing it down though, it just seems to make it madder.
Which is exactly what we need.
Not.
At least we now know that we can harm it. I was starting to lose hope that it was possible to damage the creature at all, and that Farren killing one really was a fluke.
Wait.
I’m just assuming that the Abyss creatures are all one kind of creature. We couldn’t see what Farren was fighting. I just assumed that this was the same kind of creature, but I could be completely wrong. There could easily be more than one kind, and that complicates things slightly.
What works for one might not work for another one, and some might be more aggressive than others.
I don’t know why that didn’t occur to me before.
One of the Others goes flying through the air, and Farren catches them with a cushion of her air magic, gently lowering them to the floor before they can get hurt.
We’re all circling it, taking turns to attack, some attacks are successful, and some aren’t, but despite our onslaught, the creature isn’t showing any signs of retreating.
If anything, it’s just doubling down on its attack. It’s locked into a hunting frenzy, and it’s absolutely clear to me that it has no plans of stopping or retreating, no matter how much we actually manage to hurt it. Not until it’s managed to consume one of us at least.
I wonder if it eats anything else?
Its job is to consume realms that are throwing off the balance so that the balance is restored, right? So does that mean it has to eat the realms or it’s starved, or does it mean that it is only its job and it can eat other things?
I know that this is usually Rival’s area of interest, but I would be extremely interested to find out which it is. However unlikely that’s going to be since we can’t exactly talk to them.
As I dive out of the way of another swipe, something else occurs to me.
There have been a lot of things that have had catastrophic consequences: wars, mutinies, and the King and the people in the Fae Realm who are in charge are incredibly corrupt.
The Order that’s a big one that’s in several realms, not just one, over the centuries.
Is it possible that it's due to the fact that the Abyss creatures can’t destroy this realm like they were supposed to do?
They haven’t been able to do it, so the balance is still off, and that’s why all of this shit has been happening.
But that can’t be right because Ignatius said that we need to stop the realm from being consumed so that the balance isn’t thrown off, which is why the King shut the realm down completely to stop the spread of the Abyss creatures.
There’s something that we don’t know.
I mean, there’s obviously a lot that we don’t know, but what I mean is that there is something that we don’t know in direct correlation to the Abyss creatures.
They’re here, and they’re only supposed to be out of their realm if the balance has been tipped and they need to restore it by consuming the realm in which the imbalance happened.
That would mean that this realm caused an imbalance somehow, right?
No, that’s not right.
Aldrastos said that the balance had already been tipped, and that they were working their way through the realms to destroy them and cleanse them so that balance would be restored.
A lot has happened since we had the conversation, but I seem to remember that he said that the Ancients had betrayed Siorraidh and started to send the Abyss creatures here.
So, I was wrong. The King didn’t shut down the realm, it was the Ancients who shut it down so that they could use it as a prison for the Abyss creatures.
Did that tip the balance more?
Would Siorraidh have been spared if it wasn’t for the fact that the Ancients locked the realm down in order to use it as a prison? I mean, the creatures have got to eat, right? No creature wants to starve itself to death.
Or because there was already an uprising happening here from the punishment side of this realm, was this realm always going to need to be consumed too?
I wonder what caused the imbalance in the first place. Which realm it was in and whether the realms start over once they’re consumed. I mean they must do? This can’t be the first time that it’s happened.
Do they consume the whole of the realm, or do they only consume whatever it is that caused the imbalance from each realm? That would make more sense otherwise the innocent are consumed too.
Maybe by the Ancients interrupting the natural way that the Abyss creatures work, they messed with the balance so much that it caused this to happen here. Did the darkness fall before or after the Abyss creatures arrived?
Did the escaped cause the Darkness?
Did the King?
Did the Abyss creatures consuming parts of the realm cause the darkness?
Is there any way of actually knowing without talking to anyone who was there?
The best people to ask would be those souls who lived it. You can’t trust or talk to the ones from the punishment side, so that would mean talking to someone from Terran, and no one knows where that is anymore or if it even still exists.
Even with all of that, surely the Abyss knows that destroying the realm where the dead go is not a good idea and that it would cause an even bigger imbalance?
Maybe they weren’t called here naturally.
Maybe someone somehow managed to call them and set them upon this realm for some reason. Maybe the Ancients did it on purpose?
What if what’s happening now with the princes, the god, and the Dragon Realm is simply history repeating itself?
It all sounds very familiar to what is currently happening outside of Siorraidh. We thought that when Rast first told us about this place, but now that we’ve been here for a while, other things are starting to fall into place.
I am certain that history is somehow repeating itself, but we’re missing vital pieces.
We need to know how the imbalance was thrown off in the first place, whether it was the uprising in this realm that caused it, or whether the Abyss creatures started consuming and restoring the balance on other realms first because Siorraidh is the place where the dead go.
Maybe they had to do it in that order, or something else would happen to the dead, and it would be more complicated.
Perhaps the realm had to consume the other realms and then consume all of the people again in Siorraidh in order to do the job properly?
Fuck.
I need to fill the others in on my theory.
As soon as the thought forms in my mind, I’m hit with a loud and blaring no.
Awesome, so I can’t tell them any of that yet.
As annoying as that is, it has confirmed that my theory is right or part of it is at least.
This isn’t a new situation for me, I have been dealing with not being able to tell people things, important things, since my visions first appeared when I was younger.
It doesn’t mean that I like keeping something so important from the others, but I am used to it, and fortunately, they know that I can’t tell them everything and don’t pressure me or get mad at me because I can’t tell them something.
It makes it so much easier.
I yelp, pain shooting through my chest, and I find myself flying through the air.
Oh, that was such a rookie move.
Getting distracted mid-fight was just stupid.
I groan as I push myself up off the damp ground and check myself for injuries.
“Are you okay, man?” Storm says through the bond line.
“I’m healing, should be good as new in a couple of minutes,” I reply, the pain evident in my voice.
“Alright, I’m done,” Farren says.
I watch in utter shock as she has a brief argument with Khaos, which he clearly loses because he picks her up and throws her like a fucking javelin at the beast.
I’m not the only one who yells in shock, and the Others are now distancing themselves from us, as well as the beast and clearly thinking that we’re crazy and are now throwing our own people at the deadly beast.
Which, to be fair, I agree with right now.
What the hell was Khaos thinking throwing Farren?
“She made me!” Khaos grunts, sending it through the bond line and fighting off the creature.
The Others carry on trying to fight it off as well.
Farren flips herself through the air, using her magic to push her further and landing with expert ease on the back of the creature, who immediately starts flailing.
Storm, Khaos, and Hades launch themselves into the air, all hovering out of the range of the beast as they try to get as close as possible to Farren in case she needs a sudden rescue.
I push up to my feet, getting ready to catch her or help or something, my body completely healed now, thank fuck.
“Tell everyone to back the fuck up. If this is like the other creature, then this gets messy,” Farren sends through the bond line.