Chapter 389: Battling the Darkness
Watching this happen, Laz’s jaw almost hit the floor.
"Celes?" Laz asked, making his way to her. While she was looking around, she noticed Laz as though seeing him for the first time.
"Laz? What happened? Where are we? What’s happening? WHY AM I NAKED?" Celes got all of the questions on her mind out in a word vomit. Noticing she was naked and that he was naked, her mind added one plus one and got to five.
"It’s not what you think... Well not the way you think. Tell me what you see. NO. NOT ME! Out there?" Laz needed to get her opinion. The shell around her might have disappeared, but it was clear that the shroud over the room was still there.
"Its’... this... I did this?" Celes said, realizing quickly that there was a bigger problem than the state of their clothing.
"Did you? What is it?" Laz questioned.
"It’s... hang on. Let me just get rid of it," Celes said before raising her hand up and waving it in the air in some kind of weird gesture.
"Wait... Hang on." Celes tried waving her hand a few more times, this time with more intensitity.
"It’s... not listening. I can’t control it..." Celes voice seemed lost as her hand dropped.
"What is it?" Laz asked again.
"It’s like my realm, so to speak. I can cover the area around myself in this veil of darkness. Normally, it’s world I see when travelling between shadows. So I tried it out the other day, you know? Seeing if instead of just moving through this shadow realm if I could bring a bit of the realm out to trap something or someone. It kind of worked but kind of didn’t. It was like trying to scoop water with your hand. You could get some, but if you didn’t have your hand positioned correctly, it would just leak out. And even more than that, the way you held your hand and then moved your hand would allow you to get more water. Well, when I tried grabbing the water with my hands, I got some, but only like a small bit. A very thin veil. But this? This is much denser than anything I could do just yet." While Celes was a bit scared, she was also strangely impressed with whoever did this.
"So then... if it’s still here..." Laz started to question, but Celes cut him off.
"The whoever summoned it is also here. Afterall, to hold the darkness, one must be next to it."
As Celes finished explaining, a dark shadow crept up from the floor to stand on the opposite side of the room from them. This shadow wasn’t just dark, it was more like an absence of light all together. The blackness of it didn’t allow for any light to pass, not that there was much available.
Seeing this, Laz drew closer to Celes who didn’t look afraid, more like confused. As he reached her, he reached his hand over and touched her shoulder, causing her to flinch. She relaxed though as she felt the gentle warmth of his black flames surrounded her body as though protecting her.
"Who... or what... are you?" Laz asked, the black form.
"This is me... another me... a shadow me... she’s been the one helping me grow lately, helping me connect with my bloodline," Celes surprised Laz by answering the question instead of the shadow.
Laz tensed, his body becoming rock hard as he entered his battle form. Reddish white hair, golden eyes, grey tattooed body. Of this this because he sensed a dangerous vibe coming from this shadow, one that even made his bloodline take notice.
"I see... the food is interfering. You should have just been swallowed whole without complaining. That would have been... wait.... GGGGRRRRRAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWHHHHHHHH!" A gutteral, beast like roar escaped the shadows lips as it was staring at Laz, frightening both him and Celes.
"YOU! IT’S YOUR FAULT. THAT FLAME.... IT CAN ONLY BE YOU!!!" While the voice sounded robotic the first time it spoke, this time it took on the flavor of a screaming banshee, like sharp nails on a chalk board.
The shadow then transformed, changing from a human form into some strange horror, dredged up from the depths of chaos itself. It’s arms elongated while it’s legs grew longer as well. It didn’t stop until it was at least three times it’s normal size. Despite that, the arms, like mangled branches of a dead tree, hung down low, right next to where it’s kneecaps should had been... if it even had knees.
But the scary part about it was it’s mouth which now hung open, revealing pristine white fangs in a mouth full of other razor sharp teeth.
Then the final horror came as several more of the exact same creature appeared from within the veil, some walking out like the one in front of him. Others crawled out and climbed the walls like spiders while others scurried along on all fours on the floor.
Soon, they were surrounded.
Despite this, Celes still stood up and blocked it’s path.
"STOP. HE IS MY FRIEND. YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO TOUCH HIM." Shen screamed at the lead horror.
"He is Asura, those bastards who were the death of us. You, your line, somehow has preserved our blood. You and you’re grandma are the only ones left, but she is far too old now. So this is all up to you. And the reason we are trapped forever in this dark hell is because it was the only way to escape the destruction wrought by those damn Infernals. They burned it... they BURNED OUR WORLD. AND THE ASURA, OUR ALLIES... THEY FLED AND LEFT US TO DIE!!!" The voice was now clearly higher pitch with a soft tone to it that made Laz think it might belong to a female. Of course there was no way to know for sure.
What he did know was that he was in deep shit. These shadow creatures had him surrounded and what’s more, it seemed like more of them kept appearing.
"We thought we could trust them, that the dark flame would never pick a race that was evil, despicable and traitorous but we were obviously wrong. The flame can be tricked, just like we were. And now there is one of them in front of us... we have no choice but to kill it. Once we can claim the black flame for us, we can rebuild our race, starting with you, my only remaining descendant. We have no choice," the shadow, despite his horrifying appearance seemed to be gentle when dealing with Celes.
Of course once it faced Laz, all gentleness was erased from it’s visage. Instead, it looked at him with murderous rage and after being accused of a crime of his people that he had no way of even countering, Laz knew he had no choice but to fight.
Even with the situation what it was though, Laz was strangely calm although he didn’t know why. Still, seeing the dark horrors coming closer, Laz got ready to fight. But he knew that if it came to that, he would have no choice. While Laz wasn’t sure what realm came after the void palace realm, he felt an immense pressure from each of the dark shadows in this shadow realm. While he couldn’t see a palace behind them, he did see these strange symbols. They didn’t look like runes or glyphs or anything he could recognize. Instead, the symbols looked to be unique to each individual, with different colors and sizes. And each one of them gave off a... pressure. Something like one would feel when meeting someone important for the first time. But even more than that, it gave them a rather royal feeling. One that made others want to follow their wishes and orders without question.
Laz didn’t understand it, but he felt that each of them might have been at least a realm higher than him.
Still, he didn’t back down. Although his palace might be weaker than these symbols, he still brought it out, it’s violet golden glow pushing back against the inky blackness of the room and they suffocating pressure of the symbols. Then, to support himself even more, Laz brought out the apocalypse ring despite not knowing if it would do him any good. It’s blood red color and immense glow was clearly visible in the darkness of the shadow realm.
With the palace out and surrounded by the ring and it’s four symbols, Laz felt the energy rush into him as he brought his hands up, clearly not willing to hand away his life easily.
To Laz’s surprise, his full battle form gave the shadows pause as they watched on him with complicated expressions, for what little he could read from their stone like faces.
Despite this pause, the lead shadow shook it’s head and simply said,
"Take him," before throwing Celes out of it’s way and charging.
Laz ducked underneath the swipes with their long claws, getting in range and slamming his first into what could only be described as the stomach of the first shadow, sending it flying. He then jumped sideways, barely avoiding another claw attack as he leg spun around and caught the creature in it’s head, all the while the black flame coated his entire body, allowing him to touch these dark creatures.
Running forward, Laz took the initiative to attack the next shadow, burying his knee in it’s jaw before jumping off at another shadow.
’They’re weak,’ Laz thought to himself as he plowed over one after another after another.
While he wasn’t wrong, he just had no idea why that was. As their world was being purged by the Infernals, the remaining members of the race decided to hide in the shadows of space to escape. Unfortunately, the only way they could hide their presence entirely was if the one hiding was so weak that it didn’t bend nor distort space in any way. So therefore the only ones who could survive were the weaker ones, no stronger than the stage above void palace. And what’s more, being in that dark hell for extended periods of time had many negative effects on their bodies, changing them into what they looked like now.
And after they had finally escaped, many of them were so worn out that they immediately fell asleep, leaving their bodies to those who were still awake to move them to safety. As such, those sleeping would only be woken when the ones carrying them either got too tired or died from the exertion. And so they moved through the cosmos from the safety of the shadows, looking for a dark world that could sustain them. While dark worlds were many, those that had actual life on them proved to be non-existent.
That is, they travelled until one day when they were summoned by one’s whose bloodline matched their own but one who hadn’t been consumed by the darkness. Her body had their bloodline but none of their weaknesses. While she didn’t know it yet, she was their best chance to survive. This world wasn’t what they wanted or needed, but if they could become like her, they could then survive in the light just as easily as they survived in the shadows.
While they had been recovering in the shadow realm that Celes herself had just discovered, they were still far weaker due to the prolonged absence of world energy in which to feed and heal themselves. So when it came time for them to actually fight, even the ones who knew how barely had enough energy to keep their eyes open, much less take one someone as vigorous as Laz.
After a while of getting their asses kicked, the lead shadow finally shouted out,
"ENOUGH. DRAG HIM INTO THE SHADOWS AND WE WILL SIMPLY WAIT UNTIL HE IS WEAK TO SWALLOW HIM."
And just like that, instead of trying to subdue Laz, the shadows instead started ganging up on him to drag him beyond the veil.
At least, they tried to.
"BACK. THE. FUCK. OFF!!!!"
