Chapter 507 The Door.
?Abaddon was led to the lowest level of the cathedral, where not even the light of torches tried to reach.
The further his descent, the more Abaddon began to get a sort of sickly, unnerving feeling.
It was oddly familiar.
Finally, he reached a single door located a few miles underground.
Karliah had been pretty chatty and trying to flirt with her new son-in-law quite a bit, but once they reached this place, even she fell silent.
Just as well, since there was only so much flirting that Abaddon could handle.
It had been a long time since someone had openly treated him like a piece of meat; most everyone else just let their internal fantasies run wild not knowing that he could read their minds.
But Karliah hadn't seen a man like him in all of her time plundering alternate realities, and she was damn sure going to let him know it.
However, now she had no more flirty remarks to dish out.
Instead, she almost seemed... afraid.
Something he couldn't help but notice.
"I do wonder about what's down here to make even you fall silent, Mother-in-law." Abaddon joked, trying to hide the uncomfortable feeling in his own stomach.
Karliah smiled bashfully. "Sorry, handsome. Somethings terrify even me."
"And I am not among them? I feel insulted."
"You arouse me. But if you are feeling slighted, I would be happy to express my sincerest apologies in your quart-"
"Oh? Sure. I'm sure Bekka and the girls would love to hear them while they rearrange the contents of your skull."
"You would let them harm my delicate self?" Karliah tried to make herself seem diminutive and fragile by cupping her face in her hands.
Which didn't really work all that well, considering the fact that she was 6'5 and more buff than peak Lou Ferrigno.
When Abaddon snorted in her face, she looked like she was about to punch him out of instinct.
*Click!*
The sound of the door being unlocked made both of them lose their focus and remember why they came down here in the first place.
Maliketh held the door open to allow Abaddon to enter, and he hesitated momentarily before intruding inside.
As expected, Karliah remained outside and tried her best not to think about what Abaddon would witness when he stepped inside of that room.
Once the door closed, he started walking towards the center of the empty space.
Surprisingly, there was only one thing inside.
A giant hole in the ground that seemed to lead to utter nothingness.
However, Abaddon's eyes worked well enough that he could see what was all the way at the bottom.
The gate.
The very same one that haunted his memories and symbolized his decent into something unrecognizable.
He could hear the whispers now as well, ever since he stepped into the room in fact.
'He's back..'
'He hasn't forgotten us..'
'He has come to free us..!'
'Come to us, now. Rejoin your friends...'
'We did not abandon you. Don't abandon usss....'
'Let us out, before he wakes...'
Abaddon's head immediately went to his temple.
The voices were almost too loud for comfort, and he almost thought that he had drums rattling around in his ears.
Even back then, they weren't this annoying.
And the reason for the change was staggering.
"Why...is the gate... open...?" he asked through clenched teeth.
Though it was hundreds of miles beneath Tehom, Abaddon could still see it.
The double gates that were supposed to be containing creatures untold was not wide open, but it was ajar.
Tentacles, claws, and other strange appendages were scratching desperately, trying to claw their way out from their nightmarish realm.
Tanin'Iver made some uncomfortable hissing sounds before spitting out an explanation.
"As.. part of the inauguration, each of the previous kings widened the doorway to-"
"YOU WHAT!?!"
In an instant, Abaddon became an abominable demon.
His skin was dyed black, his arms increased their count to six, and his hair changed into an unsullied white color.
He lashed out and grabbed each of the kings in the room by their necks and held them all above his head.
"FOOLS!! Why the fuck would you open the gates!?!"
"W-We... thought it was your divine will..!" Tor'Baalos choked.
Al'Diabolos: "B-Because we believed that your goal was taking revenge on the light maker, we thought that the gradual opening of the gates would-"
"SILENCE!!"
Abaddon's chest was rising and falling unevenly, and his pulse was rapid.
With every exhale, dark red embers could be seen escaping from between his lips.
His roar was terrible enough to shake the walls of the underground room and excite the horrors below that were still trying to escape their confinement.
Abaddon took several minutes to compose himself before eventually regaining some semblance of control.
"…How many did you let out…?"
"…Five." They answered unanimously.
Abaddon tightened his grip on their throats unconsciously.
"A-All is not lost..! Freeing them took an incredible amount of energy from us and it damages us just as horribly..! They would need several millions of years to recouperate back to full strength.." Maliketh sputtered.
"Where… are they hiding…?"
"N-None of us know..! Once they started slipping into alternate realities, they went into hiding to regain their strength..!" Al'Diabolos spat.
Abaddon turned his gaze toward Maliketh specifically.
"How long until the horror you released regains it's full strength..?"
"I… roughly 100,000 years, give or take." He answered with difficulty.
Abaddon dropped all of the spectators back onto the ground and changed back to his normal appearance.
Pushing back his hair, he finally composed himself to the best of his ability and became significantly less scary.
"Haaa… You will all find them and put them back."
Immediately, the abyss kings thought they'd misheard.
Tanin'iver: "L-Lord..?"
"I'm sorry, were you expecting my orders to be different?" Abaddon asked with no small hint of sarcasm.
"I don't even help my daughter clean her room because it's her responsibility. You think I'm going to clean up the messes of you five fucking idiots?!"
For some reason, hearing Abaddon speak to them as if they were lower than Mira filled them with great shame.
"We understand this, but the multiverse is infinite, Overlord… A thorough search to find them will take time." Tor'baalos said. "At least 10,000-"
"You have a hundred years." Abaddon said flatly.
He wasn't going to take any chances on the horrors reaching full maturity at their own pace, or even anywhere close to that.
He really wanted to demand that they bring them back in a month, but he was not quite so angry as to demand the impossible as punishment.
…But he was close.
Maliketh: "We will not deny your command, but... we can do no more than act as whistle blowers. Much of our power has left us, and we can no longer measure up to the strength of-"
"You just need your bodies back, right? That can be arranged."
Briefly, the light in the eyes of all five specters flickered back and forth.
Abaddon started ripping off heaps of his flesh and turning them into giant black chaos slimes.
"I will not accept failure on this particular mission.
If you cannot unfuck the realities you threatened to destroy, I am going to destroy you slowly, and unmercifully.
And I promise you that the power that I use to do it will not be any that you could possibly idolize." he said, his words a dig at Al'Diabolos.
One of the slimes instinctively crawled up his leg to sit on his right shoulder like a pet bird.
"Now, who's coming back to life first?"
-
After the former kings had left to get used to having bodies again, Abaddon remained behind, staring into the dark hole and at the horrors still trying to get out of the gate in vain.
He hadn't moved from this spot in over an hour, and it was hard to tell exactly what was on his mind.
But suddenly, he spoke.
"That sweet girl that you stopped me from conversing with a few months ago. Lucia. Does she have something to do with all of this?"
"... She does."
"The beast's blood that her husband consumed. It was a creature from behind the gates, wasn't it?"
"...It was."
"That's why she was able to slip into my mind so easily. He has become part horror and since they are linked at the soul, she is not exempt from transformation."
"...Correct."
Abaddon heard the sound of heels clicking closer to him, and Asherah emerged at his side.
Beneath the veil, she too stared into the dark hole where Abaddon had once spent millions of years of life.
"...We are sorry." she finally said.
"For what? Not coming to my wedding?"
"No.. Well, yes." Asherah admitted. "But also because of how we... When he created you, he thought he was creating a sentinel. But he doted on you similar to a pet."
"Ugh." Abaddon didn't like the word 'pet' being used around any sort of dragon, least of all himself, but he tolerated it just because he favored Asherah.
"Yes, yes, I know that such a relationship must bother you now. But you two were fond of each other nonetheless.
To raise you with companionship and then inevitably take it away... that was cruel of him, and you have his sincerest apologies. It is no wonder you were led astray."
Abaddon clasped his hands behind his head and stared up into the ceiling.
"I don't exactly need his apology, but should he not be the one to give it? Sending you to do it on his behalf is somewhat spineless."
Asherah chuckled beneath her veil. "Do you want to go and meet him then? Patch things up yourselves?"
Abaddon thought about it for a moment; unsure of what exactly he wanted to do next.
He wanted to rest.
He wanted to have sex.
He wanted to get to work on turning the endless abyss into some sort of livable domain, and he wanted to figure out what he was going to do with the 133 worlds he'd taken from Jaldabaoth.
Did he want an apology from the creator?
Did he need it?
He didn't really think so.
But he wondered if maybe... the creator felt he needed to give it.
"….I'll need to be back before my girls wake up, so can you agree to make this quick?"
Abaddon couldn't see it, but he felt like Asherah was smiling at him underneath her veil.
"Yes. We can be back before they-"
"Oi! Asherah! Why'd you leave without me, I told you I wanted to meat the big red prick for myself!"
Unanimously, Abaddon and Asherah turned around to stare at an intruder in the room with them.
He was an old man with a strong build that was covered in dark black robes with gold trimmings along the sleeves.
Atop his head he had black hair that was turning grayer by the day, and on his jaw he had a beard made of orange flame.
For the first time ever, Abaddon saw the omnipotent goddess tremble nervously. "Gulban, I thought you were going to let me make the introductions when the time was-"
"Bah! I've waited long enough! After all that bellyaching I heard at the tree, I couldn't sit on my keister anymore, no matter how nice it is."
Abaddon was still focused on the words ' Big Red Prick' he heard earlier.
"Asherah... Who the fuck is this?" he asked with a smile that was not a smile.
Once again, the mother goddess looked like she was growing a nervous ulcer.
"H-He-"
Before she could explain, Gulban boldly approached Abaddon while taking an adversarial stance.
"You got some nerve, don't you? Swearing in front of your father-in-law at your first meeting! Shame! Shame I say!"
"...My fucking what?"
"See! That right there! No way in hell you're getting my blessing now, you ornery bloke!"
Surprisingly, Abaddon did not respond to provocations.
"Asherah... Who. Is. This..?" he asked again through clenched teeth.
Finally, the mother goddess decided to bite the bullet and give an answer; already knowing how this situation was going to go.
"...This is Gulban.. he is a maker... he also happens to be Valerie's father."
As she expected ,Abaddon, who was already running low on patience from everything else he had learned today, completely lost his composure after being told the news.
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