Kamen Rider Bloodstone, Chapter 20 – Living in the Nightmare
"Is that really what you're asking?"
There was a chill in the air even in the carefully sealed room they occupied. It would have made a tempting target, some of the wisest and most influential of Makai Realm's residents. And in such interests, their faces were shrouded in shadow and their voices muffled by sorcery to hide as much of who they truly were as possible.
"Is this some kind of joke?" the same obscured figure demanded. "Who is 'the Man who Speaks in Hands'? You called all of us here on no notice for a hunk of gibberish like that?"
"My friend, this is why you should be keeping in better touch with your alma mater," another retorted. "This sounds like an idiotic prank, I admit. But then that exact message was painted on the back of my school, and not only my school but every monster school who responded to my inquiries. Which was more than those that didn't. Much more."
A wave of murmuring passed through the circle of envoys. The one who'd just spoken went on. "And not only that, this wasn't simple paint. It couldn't be removed even with magic. No mere vandal could create such a thing, and I'm becoming very worried about what's going on and what it means for the safety of our world."
"We've heard of you and how often you operate with plans and motives only you are privy to, M—" the first said, rising and pointing an accusing finger.
"No names, brother," another of them interrupted. The one he'd interrupted sat down heavily and crossed his arms. A few scattered sighs of exasperation rose from around the room. "Yes, we are all familiar with his 'games,' if you will. However, has he ever brought a truly frivolous case before this gathering of the Dark Lords?"
Another wave of murmurs passed through them but no-one argued the question, and he went on. "I've heard tell of similar things…my own grandson told his nanny about a giant flat head that talked about a 'man who speaks in hands' who fell into his own creation and had his life cut short. And that it wasn't wise to talk about someone who was listening to their conversation."
"A child's story carries weight with the Dark Lords now?" the first demanded.
"Then what about one of your own?" protested a feminine voice. "I walked into my own office just yesterday and there was a man wearing all black and with a smiling mask on inside. He wasn't searching for anything, he just stood there, and before I could decide what to do he just disappeared. One instant he was there and the next he wasn't.
"And some kind of sound was coming from those holes in the middle of his hands…it was in no language I could understand, but it was speech all the same."
Murmuring again. A voice rose up above it, "No language you could understand, my lady?"
Her hooded head bowed several times in a nod. Again, murmurs from the envoys. Another female voice rose up, "So we are in agreement that some unknown party is harassing us, and we have no idea of the extent of their power. Any suggestions on how to detect and catch them in the act?"
Although he didn't hold out much hope, Tenmei Mikogami sat down to listen carefully to his comrades' suggestions for what they could do to deal with their mysterious opponent. But for one person, he already knew it was too late.
The gang of Soul Rangers tightened their circle around Bloodstone, Yukari and Moka, spraying the three of them with smelly brown water kicked up by the Rangers' bikes. Yukari sputtered and coughed some of it back up, but the vampires were crouched in fighting readiness. Moka glanced over her shoulder at Bloodstone, but then she was off and running, ivory white hair dancing her behind her as she hurled herself at the first Soul Ranger unlucky enough to cross in front of her. She jumped and threw a roundhouse kick that knocked him off his bike with such incredible force he hadn't even hit the ground before he'd spun out of sight into the darkness.
Behind her she could feel the air starting to part around the bullet before she heard the blast of another Soul Ranger's gun. She leaned away and charged at him, but it was if the Soul Ranger could see what she was planning just a second ahead of her and the bullet still grazed her arm as she ran over at lightning speed and planted her foot in his rib cage with all the awesome force that was hers to unleash. He went flying off his bike and bounced off the ceiling with a crash before splashing down in the dirty water and splattering some of it on her blouse.
Moka grimaced in annoyance, but as she did the Soul Ranger she'd just slammed off his bike stood back up, the cracks in his rib cage starting to slowly flow back together, and his bike stood up at his side by itself.
She launched herself at him again and he fired twice, one biting her shoulder and the other clipping her ear and blowing a wisp of cloudy white hair away. He was rewarded when she slammed her first straight into his skeletal face. His head jerked back but in less than a second Moka followed up with a high sweeping kick that knocked it right off his shoulders. Then she swung her arms in diagonal chops in different directions through his torso, shattering his ribs and arms. They fell into the water with a series of plops before the rest of his body toppled into the water, and this time it didn't get back up.
So these things were no match for her strength after all, she just had to be a little extra thorough than she was used to when taking them out. Without even looking she whirled around and lashed out at another two Soul Rangers behind her, taking their heads off with a ferocious spinning kick.
Like a streak of red, Bloodstone dashed and landed a kick on the front wheel of one of the skeletal bikers' machines. It swerved violently and narrowly missed crashing into Yukari, clipping the rear wheel of another Soul Ranger's bike instead. The first hit something hidden underneath the filthy water of the sewer tunnel and pitched forward, throwing the rider into the muck. The second skidded back and forth for a few seconds before slamming into the wall with a crash that echoed up and down the tunnel. The wall cracked where he'd hit and started to crumble.
A few of the others fired their spectral six-shooters at Bloodstone. The bullets left blackened dents in the armor around his chest and one dug into the softer red material on his arm, but he couldn't spare much of his attention to it.
As the wall came down, smashed by the Soul Ranger Moka had kicked into the wall, he noticed another tunnel on the other side, and limping away from them was a made covered in moldy bandages from head to toe. He looked back over his shoulder in alarm and started limping even faster.
"Hold it, Harbinger!" Bloodstone yelled but the mummy only dragged himself down the tunnel faster, clutching something to his chest in one bandaged hand. Bloodstone turned around and yelled to the others, "Let's go!"
"You go!" Moka replied, turning for just a second to face him, and Bloodstone was a little startled to see a red ribbon of blood trickling down her ear. Like this, in her true form, she'd always seemed liked the perfect predator: strong, swift, invincible. To see her hurt, bleeding…it was wrong. As she knocked a pair of Soul Rangers off their bikes with two kicks in midair she turned again for a second and grimaced as she saw him still there. "Go, idiot! They'll just chase us down if we all go after that mummy!"
"Yukari, let's go," Bloodstone said, turning to keep the mummy in his sights.
"But what about Mo—" the young witch started to protest, but stopped as a Soul Ranger's gun went off four times and Moka grunted in pain. Fresh tears in her uniform decorated her sides, and thin streams of blood from her wounds were trickling down her leg.
But Bloodstone pulled her away, after the mummy. "She's the strongest girl at school, right? She'll be fine. Besides, if these Harbingers can open a door from Hell, think about all the damaged they'd do." He cupped his hands behind his back, and with one last look over her shoulder Yukari jumped up and held on tight to his shoulders. Then Bloodstone ran down the tunnel after the mummy, the sound of a spectral gunshot seeming to echo even louder behind them.
Almost immediately Bloodstone lost him. But a second later he could hear the sound of feet being dragged through the ankle-deep sludge-water in the distance and chased after it. A minute later Bloodstone stopped at a junction, scanning for any sign of the mummy's passing. His senses were some of the keenest among the monster world, but they were being overwhelmed by all the various smells of rot and filth down there, and there wasn't much in something undead like a mummy for his senses to lock in on.
It wasn't helped by Yukari grinding her face into the back of his neck and whimpering softly. Bloodstone couldn't help cringing. A kid her age had no business being in a place like this, but he couldn't just turn around and drop her off at the door when he had a Harbinger to chase down. Too much was riding on this.
But then a few hundred feet away he could just hear a long, slow and very small splash in the water. It might've been something like a rat or whatever Hell had like them, but to his instincts it sounded like someone taking a step and trying not to be heard. Maybe like the mummy they were chasing down.
He bolted down the tunnel and after coming around the corner where he'd heard the noise he spotted the shambling form of the mummy walking into a large open room in front of them with a sloping pile of debris in one corner. If he climbed it he'd be able to get to the surface easily, but he suddenly stopped in the middle of the room and started mumble something through ancient purple lips. Bloodstone set Yukari down in the entrance and stalked closer to the mummy. "Hand over that Keystone!"
"No, wait!" Yukari screamed as the mummy raised his arms above his head and a small vortex of red power started to swirl between his hands.
"In the name of the chaos of Apep, of the spite of Set, feel the curse of the tombs!" He lowered his arms and the energy spun through the air to cover up Bloodstone. The flowing red patterns on his armor expanded suddenly but then shrank into small strands until they were almost invisible against the black. Bloodstone himself gave a dry gasp of pain as his skin retreated inward, showing bony outlines through his armor, and he bent forward while his legs creaked, like he'd suddenly been turned into an old man!
The mummy laughed. "Don't think I'm just another limping undead for you and your kind to stomp on, vampire! Khufu the mighty will return and raze the world of the living, and not even you, who think you're the rulers of the night, will be safe!" He raised his hands to gather power for another attack.
And then the roof caved in above him and a dented metal wash tub broke itself in half over Khufu's head. "Leave him alone," Yukari whispered, but her voice quivered.
Khufu staggered and the power he was gathering disappeared. But then he turned to face Yukari and held up a withered hand, a black stone tablet with the shape of a key carved into it. "Let us duel, little witch," he proposed. "Your pitiful might against mine."
"I'm not bad," she retorted in another whisper.
Bloodstone stumbled a step closer, holding out a bony hand toward Khufu before he fell down and let out a pathetic, dry gasp. Yukari clenched her hands nervously for a second but steadied herself and desperately leveled her wand at Khufu, who just laughed again. "Maybe you aren't. But how do you I think I ended up here?! I mastered magic the world today doesn't even know about and I ruled an empire that lasted five hundred years! What have you done?"
"I'm in advanced placement."
When he heard that Khufu threw back his head and laughed. The stone in his hand, one of the Keystones that would give him his freedom from that place, started to glow as he focused his power through it. Then a slicing desert wind full of sand and angry, biting locusts blew into the room.
The lock rattled uselessly in Kurumu's hand, and the succubus scowled in annoyance. What was someone doing in the cooking classroom so late after classes, she wanted to know. Especially since she had a feeling she already did.
Glancing around to make sure nobody was nearby, especially that new head of campus security, then her wings uncurled out of her back and her barbed tail followed. She flapped once and hovered a few feet off the ground, just high enough to peek in the window.
And there, leaning over a stove and wearing asbestos gloves, was Mizore Shirayuki. Kurumu pressed her face against the glass to try to see what was in the pot Mizore was stirring, but Mizore set down her spoon and turned around to look right at her. She pulled the window open and leaned out.
"What?" Mizore asked in her usual toneless voice.
"What are you doing?" Kurumu asked, deciding to just along after being caught in the act. "You making some kind of treat for Nigeki?"
What Mizore said was the last thing she'd been expecting to hear. "Come in and see."
Kurumu climbed in the window and as soon as she did she pinched her nose shut from a thick, burning smell that filled the room. Then she saw how all along the counter were bowls that were full of black and purple stew with things like fish heads and chunks of food she couldn't even identify floating at the top. They seemed to be releasing a gas into the air, but Mizore didn't seem to notice. "What are those?"
"I'm trying out a recipe my mom sent me," Mizore explained. "She said she made it for my dad on their first date. My first tries didn't go so well…," she said, pointing to the bowls of poisonous slop. "I never really learned to cook before."
"Wow, yeah…," Kurumu said. "I'm kind of surprised…I mean, I was expecting you to attack me when you saw me."
Mizore only shrugged. "I'm not worried about you. I'm going to win, after all."
Kurumu bristled. "Oh yeah? You definitely said you knew just because you combined with him, it didn't mean you two were in love!"
"I also said it didn't mean we couldn't be if I tried," Mizore replied with a faint smirk. "That's another reason I'm going to win, I'm actually paying attention to the competition. And I'm actually working on a plan instead of just raging on another girl."
Kurumu hissed through her teeth but Mizore turned away from her and added a pinch of something else to the stew. The temperature didn't drop, and Mizore's hair didn't start turning into icicles the way it did when she was getting ready to fight.
After watching her for a minute and nothing happening, Kurumu cleared her throat. "So…back when that guy broke into the school and stole that whip…thanks for being around when Nigeki needed you to power him up."
"I'm always around," Mizore replied. "But you were around too that time, weren't you?"
"Yeah, I was. And maybe I choked for a second then," Kurumu confirmed, but then held up her fist. "But next time, I won't! I'm going to beat all of you in the end!"
Mizore surprised the succubus again by extending her hand. "I'll be looking forward to competing with you."
This made no sense. They were supposed to be enemies, weren't they? Kurumu reminded herself what she was supposed to do; wasn't she going to die if she didn't end up with the person she was destined to be with? She'd been told that over and over since she was little…for just a second as she shook Mizore's head with a steeled smile on her face, Kurumu wondered just what she'd be willing to try to win this.
And what she'd do if she didn't.
The ancient power surging through Khufu's Keystone intensified and Yukari was blown off her feet and slid across the floor until she crashed into the wall. She desperately clenched her tiny, trembling hands around her wand and sent a flurry of winged tarot cards flying at Khufu but the desert storm he'd summoned blasted most of them away before they could hit him. The rest just lodged in his body, not seeming to do any damage. Locusts landed on Yukari and bit into her skin, and around a scream of pain she barked an ancient word that surrounded her in a bubble of whistling air that blew them away.
But Khufu kept up the attack, winds howling and sand and biting insects bouncing off her, and the young witch's protective spell started to shrink.
She had been willing to help fight their enemies before. But she hadn't thought of the dangers of doing it: they were the heroes, justice was always carried out when they faced their enemies and bravely refused to back down. But now, Bloodstone for all his incredible power had lost his strength and Yukari was about to be obliterated by a crazy mummy.
Her stomach clenched like a fist with fear. She realized she was trying to think of the last thing her mother had said to her before sending her to Youkai Academy, and couldn't remember. Would Yukari ever get the chance to see her again? And she was already in Hell, or some part of it. What would happen to her if she died here? Would she be trapped forever, suffering the same as someone who'd been sent there because of their evil in life…?
Then suddenly the wind died down, and through the yellow haze of the sand Yukari could see that Bloodstone had dragged himself over to Khufu and sunk his fangs into the mummy's leg. He still looked like a skeleton in his shrunken armor, but he was attacking Khufu with what little strength he had left, to save her. Khufu cried out in pain and aimed the Keystone at Bloodstone, and for a second Yukari saw her chance.
She whipped her wand and another blast of winged tarot cards pelted Khufu, digging into his grey skin or getting tangled in his bandages. He growled in anger and fired another blast of harsh desert sand and locusts at her, making Yukari cry out and curl into a ball as it roared across the room to surround her.
"No!" Bloodstone screamed.
After a few deafening seconds Khufu lowered the Keystone and the murderous air-blast faded. On the other side of the room, there was nothing left but a tattered cape and pointed hat.
"You…bastard…!" Bloodstone wheezed pathetically.
"Then join her, lord of the night," Khufu laughed. He pointed the Keystone at his helpless enemy, yelled a word of power and another blast of scalding air knocked him off the ground and he hit the wall with a horrible clattering of bones. Locusts landed all over him and started chewing through his armor. It would be a while before they got through, but Khufu laughed at the sight of the vampire stripped of all his legendary power. "Just the first of many, boy. Take some comfort in knowing you'll be out of the way first."
Then a strange piping music started to play, louder and louder until Khufu could hear it even above the wind he was conjuring. The locusts all over Bloodstone stopped chewing on him and seemed to look up at something above them. Khufu grunted in confusion and looked up to see Yukari sitting in a hole in the wall. Her clothes were torn and her wand, stuck through the waistband of her skirt, was scratched and battered. But she had a small flute to her lips and as she played it the locusts all over the room that Khufu had conjured suddenly splayed their wings and buzzed at him like a giant brown cloud.
Khufu screamed as they landed on him and chewed at his decayed flesh. He fired off the Keystone's power again and blasted some of them away but this just created even more locusts that swarmed him to the sound of Yukari's music. The evil mummy went down, surrounded by biting insects, and Yukari dropped from her perch over to where Bloodstone lay. She clutched his shoulders and gently rolled him onto to his back, and he gasped out, "What's going on?"
"He summoned those bugs, but he didn't think he'd need to actually control them I guess," Yukari answered as she examined him for wounds, which wasn't easy with his armor gone totally black. "We need to hurry, it won't stay like that for long."
But Bloodstone put a thin hand on her shoulder. "We can't leave, we have to get his Keystone away from him so he can't use it to escape."
"You're not up for a fight like—" Yukari protested, but he silenced her with a surprisingly sharp squeeze to her shoulder with how weak he looked.
"You let Khufu think he killed you on purpose so you could control his bugs without him trying to stop you, right?" She nodded. "What made you do something so risky?"
"Is this the time—" Yukari interrupted, but was interrupted herself by another authoritative squeeze to her shoulder. "I…! Because you and Moka were the first people who ever stuck up for me before. I had to save you but I'm not strong enough by myself."
"Yukari," Bloodstone wheezed. "Maybe you aren't strong enough by yourself, and god knows I'm not…but it doesn't have to be one person who saves the day. You see what Khufu's like…you think you can feel what you felt for me, for everybody he'll hurt if he gets out of here? It'll be a disaster."
"Nigeki…I can't…"
An angry shriek seemed to shake the entire room as Khufu sent the locusts flying off him with a dark haze that seemed to ooze out of his bandages and dissolve in the foul air. His cry of anger faded just soon enough for him to hear another voice.
"Hex Heart. Synch!"
A flash of light came from where Bloodstone had been lying as power flowed through the Joining Nexus in his body. He stood up quickly, proudly, his body filling out again and the veins crisscrossing his armor throbbing loudly with strength. As Khufu watched a short purple cape trimmed in black unfolded from his shoulder armor. Lines of power carrying strange white runic symbols ran from his shoulders to his wrists and from his waists to the cuffs of his armored boots. His bone-white mask had gone completely smooth, except for a small black crystal orb lodged where his left eye would be. And over his heart was a small crystal orb, glowing with purple light with the image of a golden pentagram floating inside it.
"What are you?!" Khufu demanded.
Bloodstone said nothing, wordlessly passing a hand in front of the gem on his belt buckle, and a red rectangular shape with a short black handle appeared in his gauntleted hand. "Hunters Myriad," declared the Bloodstone itself. Five points sprang out of the edges, forming a star shape. Then he swiped it through the air and a blast of hissing sparks, like miniature stars, jumped at Khufu.
He almost missed Hood's help.
Every shadow seemed to hide an enemy, eyes seemed to peer out of every crack in the broken ground. Even to a veteran monster hunter like Revenant, this place was chilling. It didn't exactly put the ever-shifting passages and dungeons of Castlevania to shame, but every few seconds he was sure he saw movement out of the corner of his eye but when he turned to look whatever he'd seen had scampered out of sight.
If indeed anything had been there in the first place.
Was anything there, or was the power of this dark place itself somehow mocking him? That Gatekeeper character seemed the type to mess with his prey…
Then he rounded the edge of a half-fallen building, heard a high-pitched cackle and ducked into the shadows of a pile of debris. He peered over it and the lenses in his mask zoomed in on a pair of humanoid shapes standing by a small fire. One looked like an old woman with wrinkled face and an impossibly long beak-like nose. Her spindly grey hair reached all the way down to her ankles and her gaunt arms were held high, two small stones with the shapes of keys engraved in them clutched between long hooked fingernails. Her eyes were nothing but dull black marbles, but he could recognize a kind of sight in them nonetheless as she stared deeply at the two stones.
"You've had your fun, Madam de Chantraine," interrupted the growling voice of the other, and at once Revenant recognized what he was. The blue color to his thick fur was unusual, but the long snout full of knife-like teeth, clawed fingers and powerful angular legs could only belong to one of the most fearsome of supernatural hunters, a werewolf. "Return that stone," he growled.
"Don't try my patience, beast," she croaked. "My grasp of the power these contain is far clearer than yours."
The werewolf started to growl in anger but his ears suddenly pricked up a second before the air cracked with the sound of the long whip that snaked out and struck the old woman's hands. She shrieked in pain and dropped the Keystones, but when the werewolf dove for them again the whip stretched out and lashed across his side. "Step away from those, Harbingers," Revenant commanded as he stepped into sight. "Anne de Chantraine the witch and Gevaudan the werewolf, I presume," he rattled off the names AGES intelligence had given him.
"And who in blazes are you?" Gevaudan demanded in a growl. "You don't look like the type to end up here." He looked Revenant's glistening armor up and down.
"When I first lived, I was named Simon Belmont."
"Belmont?" Gevaudan huffed, unimpressed.
But the witch went back a step, sparks jumping from her curled black fingernails. "Belmont?" she hissed in disbelief.
"Belmont," Revenant confirmed, then swung his arm and made his whip jump from the pod where it was mounted, giving Gevaudan second thoughts as he started to close in. "Fear my name," Revenant declared.
It was hard to tell with a wolf, but Revenant thought he saw a look of uncertainty cross Gevaudan's face. Then with the speed of a lightning bolt the wolf lunged for the two fallen Keystones. Revenant's whip cracked through the air and sliced against his side again but this time the wolf only clenched his teeth and grabbed at the stone tokens.
His furry fingers wrapped around one but the other lifted out of his grasp and floated over to the witch's gnarled hand. He glared at her, teeth still pressed together angrily and her only response was a toothy smile.
"No matter," Gevaudan growled, and the Keystone in his hand glowed with power. Then the next thing Revenant knew something had slammed into him that he had never seen coming and knocked him flat on his back. Gevaudan seemed to appear out of thin air above him, grinning a ferocious lupine grin and flicks of spit dripping from his jaws down onto Revenant's mask.
But that wasn't the first monster he'd tangled with, and this pain was nothing to him. Revenant brought back the arm his whip was mounted on but with a snarl the wolf clamped his jaws down on the monster hunter's arm, then yanked fiercely as if trying to pull Revenant's arm clean out of its socket. But the savage wolf was too focused on his seemingly helpless enemy, he didn't notice Revenant swinging a precisely-aimed chop right into the center of his throat.
Gevaudan let out a strangled cry and coughed blood onto Revenant's arm, yanking even harder with his teeth. Another chop and Gevaudan's mouth was torn away from him, shattered teeth flying away into the darkness. He retreated from Revenant but then turned into a black blur that dashed away out of the ruins of the building they were in. By the time Revenant had turned to face him the black blur had crashed into him and knocked him into the air.
This time Revenant was expecting it and twisted himself to get his legs behind him, letting him vault off the wall and fire off a pellet at the ceiling. It shattered, spraying holy water all over the area and the droplets burst into flame wherever they landed on Gevaudan. He howled in pain as he tried to beat out the patches of flame, and failed to notice the sound of Revenant's next attack.
"Banshee Boomerang."
The cross-shaped projectile came flying out of nowhere and crashed into the base of the werewolf's neck. He hit the ground with a crash and tried to roll out the flames on his body, but a booming voice distracted him from his own pain for a second.
"Banishing Strikes."
Revenant's whip snaked through the air and slammed into his chest twice as hard as it had last time before retreating back into its mounting on Revenant's arm. But then it flew out and belted into Gevaudan again. Again and again the whip pummeled him, coming faster and faster until it was just a blur in the air striking without stopping. The whip was smoking as it retracted into Revenant's armor, and as Gevaudan went down his body disintegrated. A puff of smoke was left behind, the shape of a howling wolf's face appearing in it for a second before flying upward, his soul imprisoned once again with his defeat.
Revenant ducked back into the shadows then the monster hunter casting a cautious eye around for the other, but the witch was nowhere to be seen. She'd probably run off when she saw Revenant making short work of her comrade. He bent down to pick the Keystone that had seemingly given his enemy a burst of supernatural speed. Could it do the same for anyone…?
"Not bad!" called a cackling voice from above, and Revenant didn't even have to guess that the cowled, craggy face above belonged to the Gatekeeper. "But that old biddy moves pretty fast for an old lady, huh? She plays the game smarter than you, eh?"
He'd seen this being's power, and had no wish to end up in the "bleggol," or whatever this grinning ghost had sent the rest of his party. More humility seemed in order until he had a better idea of what he'd be up against. "I've been playing this game a long time, too. I'm—"
"Simon Belmont! Oh yes, I heard about you! We've got some of your old friends down here! Or should I say…up there!" The Gatekeeper craned his head back to look at the thrashing, glowing souls chained to the sky above them. "Just how old are you, anyway?" he sneered at Revenant.
"Aren't you more interested in this little game of-"
Thunder cracked and the thrashing souls overhead stopped moving out of fear. "Answer me, maggot! I asked you a question, and you answer!" the Gatekeeper roared, all joking gone from his voice.
"I was born in 1669," Revenant answered.
At once the Gatekeeper gave one of his snide, cackling laughs. "That's a really funny number! And oh boy! Another fossil! You'd better get after her! A fossil race, that's a good one!"
Revenant ignored the taunt. It was a nuisance that the other Harbinger had escaped, but as long as he had one of their precious Keystones, their plan couldn't be carried out.
But what would they do to get it back…?
A swarm of blinding sparks erupted in Khufu's bandaged face as Bloodstone's strange weapon swung through the air. He gasped in surprise as small fires erupted in his bandages but the Keystone in his withered hand glowed as he prepared to channel his power through it again.
But as he did Bloodstone grabbed the edge of his cape, whisked it up over his face…and then it dropped to the ground, completely empty.
Khufu looked around angrily and spotted five Bloodstones appearing out of thin air behind him. "Chroma Pester!" They held up their weapons and Khufu braced himself and with a roar they spewed a cloud of colorful ribbons and confetti all over him. Khufu scowled in rage and gathered his power for another attack, then realized only four of his opponents had piles of confetti at their feet.
"Tub Polar!" Bloodstone spun on his heel and as he came back around to face Khufu a cloud of small round magnets flew from the weapon in his hand and landed all over the mummy's ancient body. He felt a strange pulling sensation and for a second panicked at the thought of being pulled apart…would that even kill him with how he was already a member of the undead? Would he spend his eternity as a collection of living but disconnected body parts?
Then three portals suddenly opened in the air; above and to either side of him, then out of each flew a giant wash tub ten feet from end to end, pulled together by the magnets and mashing Khufu between them. They flickered away but already Bloodstone was launching another attack.
"Crisis Popper!" The dazed mummy flinched at the name and fired off a desperate blast of desert and locusts at his enemy, but only a stinging breeze came from the Keystone. Had Khufu used up its power? Or had he used up so much of his own power it had little to amplify anymore…?
He had other things to worry about as Bloodstone suddenly charged and spun again, glittering spheres shooting from the end of his Myriad. They expanded until they were as big as the wash tubs that just all but flattened the mummy, but then his fear turned to anger as he recognized what they were.
Soap bubbles.
His anger faded and was replaced again by panic when he saw Bloodstone jabbing one of the bigger bubbles with a prong on his Myriad and then pulling his cape around himself to disappear. The bubble exploded with a deafening boom and then two touching it exploded too, and then more that had been touching them. Khufu was picked up off his withered feet and flung him across the room. He hit the far wall with a crash and just kept on going as the rock crumbled away.
He let out a feeble, dry wail with dust spurting from his lips as he hit the ground and finally lay still. Bloodstone grabbed the Keystone from where it had landed and tucked it into his belt, then suddenly went rigid.
Against a darkened sky with grey fog wreathing her feet, Yukari looked up and over one shoulder. Not far away Nigeki stared straight ahead at an image of the room where they'd fought Khufu.
"Did we kill him?" Yukari asked softly.
"I don't really think so," Nigeki said and slipped an arm around her shoulders, gently pulling her against him. "What kind of hell would it be if you could get out that easily?"
"But…" Yukari looked at him, eyes quivering, then looked away.
"What's wrong?" he asked with practiced patience, as if this wasn't the first time he'd had to comfort a frightened child. "It's all right, Yukari. You can tell me."
She threw her arms around his waist and jammed her face into his side. "That was so scary…he really wanted to kill us, didn't he? What would happen if we died down here?!"
Nigeki gently hooked his finger under her chin and raised her face up to look him in the eye. "Yukari, we didn't die, and it was because of you being brave, okay? I couldn't do anything, he turned me into a mummy too."
"I still don't think I like being in real fights," Yukari mumbled, and then shoved her face into his thigh again.
"Hey, look…!"
Yukari shrieked and pulled herself harder against him than ever. "Is he alive again?!"
"No, relax. It's okay, it's Moka," Nigeki said. Yukari looked up and indeed Moka was standing there next to them, her uniform torn to shreds. Someone she'd been fighting had taken care to rip open the top of her blouse and acres of soft white skin were spilling out of the space between the popped buttons. The top half of a Soul Ranger's skeletal remains still clung to one shapely leg and clawed uselessly at her skin with broken stumps of bone where his fingers had been. She casually kicked backward and sent the undead scavenger flying to shatter against the far wall.
"So you two didn't mess it up," Moka said, the faintest of smiles on her pale lips. Bloodstone said nothing, standing totally rigid, and Moka scowled. "What's wrong? Can't you talk?" she asked. He put the Hunters Myriad back in his belt, then reached up to where the orb was lodged in his chest armor and pulled it free. His form glowed, writhed and then split back into Bloodstone and Yukari Sendo.
"I guess I can't when I'm like that," Bloodstone shrugged. "Figure it. We can beat the ever-living crap out of a mummy, but I can't talk when there's someone else in there with me."
Suddenly his ears pricked up at the sound of a soft, but angry statement. "You overestimate your accomplishments." Khufu had gotten up from where he'd landed and was starting to chant, an accusing finger pointed at them. Bloodstone and Moka went into fighting stances and Yukari held up her wand.
"Stop!" roared an angry voice punctuated by a crack of thunder that shook dust from the ceiling. "What do you maggots think you're doing?" asked a transparent image of a floating face, of a craggy-featured old man wearing a ragged hood. "Players helping each other is against the rules! You two are banished! To the bleggol!"
And in the next instant they were gone, absorbed into a dark spot in the air above them that closed up as soon as they'd been pulled inside without a sound. Khufu let out a cry of anger almost as loud as the Gatekeeper's. "You FOOL! He had one of the Keystones! Now the rite is impossible to complete!"
The Gatekeeper just grinned and laughed at his rage. "It matters so much to you? Then why don't you go find it! You're banished too!" A point of darkness opened in the air above Khufu and drew him inside, then closed after him.
Moka took a step closer to the Gatekeeper's image, coming down with such force the ground cracked. Her fangs are out as she demanded, "Where are they? What did you do with them?"
His expression turned cheeky. "Tell you what, sweetie, ask me nice and I'll tell you all about it!"
She scowled, then ran past him and jumped through the opening in the ceiling.
"Your loooooss!" he called with a snigger after her.
It took Bloodstone a second to recognize that his eyes were in fact wide open, but all he could see was a weird blackness that he floated through like water. He could see his hand in front of his face, but the only the other thing he saw was Yukari floating nearby, and he reached out and grabbed her before she had the chance to drift away.
"What's going on?" he asked. "Where are we?"
"What makes you think I know?" Yukari asked, eyes wide with confusion and a trace of fear.
Bloodstone shrugged. "Well, you knew what those Soul Rangers were. I thought maybe you'd recognized what the 'bleggol' or whatever the hell he was saying was."
"Well, I think he was saying 'black hole,' " Yukari replied. "But I don't know where this is…or how we get out."
He sighed to hear the news. "I was afraid of that." Then he gasped in surprise and almost let go of Yukari as a gleaming robotic soldier, like the ones he'd run into at Witch's Knoll, smacked into his back. It aimed a weapon on its arm at him as it turned end over end but no attack ever came and a second later it was lost in the darkness.
A second later he could make out something else drifting closer, a large wooden box with paintings of clowns and a circus tent on the sides. It turned end over end as it came near them and suddenly the lid swung open, making Yukari shriek and cling to Bloodstone in surprise. A china doll popped out and stared at them with her icy, vacant eyes.
"The Keystones, give them to me," the doll said in a low moan. "Give them to us, and we will all be rulers when we escape this place…"
"Another Harbinger, huh?" Bloodstone asked. "No thanks!"
The box spun away from them, the doll fixing them with her empty gaze the entire time, and Bloodstone felt a chill race up his spine. Luckily for him Yukari tapped him urgently on the shoulder and he saw something else drifting their way. It was a man covered in dirty bandages: Khufu.
"Back for more already?" Bloodstone called out.
Khufu looked up in surprise at the call. "There's no point fighting now, vampire. We've been dropped in the Black Hole, the deepest part of the underworld. Many have fallen in, but few have ever made it back out. I can see why, now…"
Bloodstone grunted in annoyance. It was the last thing he wanted to do, but he said, "Look, maybe if we team up we can find a way out of here."
"Oh, no need for that." I'll be leaving shortly," he said, holding up another Keystone. "And don't get any ideas of fighting me into your pathetic little minds. This is the only thing that works in the Black Hole. You might as well be human for as long as you're here."
Yukari screwed up her face and pointed her wand at him defiantly but the glow at the tip had gone out. Bloodstone even noticed flecks of his armor starting to peel off and the light at his belt seemed to be fading as well.
Then without warning Khufu pushed himself through the void at them and grabbed the other Keystone out of the surprised Bloodstone's belt before he kept flying past into the darkness. Yukari grabbed Bloostone and whispered something in his ear, then pulled her knees up to her chin curled herself into a small ball.
Khufu clutched both Keystones possessively, a feeling of reassurance creeping through his ancient body. He'd hoped for the chance to put a few young upstarts in their place to remind himself what it was like, but soon he and the other Harbingers be out again, and there'd be plenty of people like them to put down…
Suddenly something slammed into his back and knocked him spinning into the void. Yukari unrolled herself and pushed off his back with her feet toward the Keystones he'd dropped when she crashed into him. One she grabbed in her hand, and hooked the hollow heart on the end of her wand around the other before it had a chance to slip away. Bloodstone drifted by and caught her by the arm a second later.
"Nice plan," he said.
"Thanks!" she beamed, clutching her hands to her chest.
"Maybe you're more ready to be brave than you think."
She flinched. "Can we figure that out later?"
"Sure. If you can figure out how to make that thing get us out of here," Bloodstone replied.
"Oh, that's easy," Yukari smiled confidently and held up one of the Keystones, channeling her power through it Then without warning a stream of winged tarot cards the size of refrigerators shot out of it and pushed them violently down until Yukari managed to get over her screaming and cut the flow through it.
"Wrong one," she said sheepishly. She held up the second Keystone, and a gentle glow washed over them.
For a minute Bloodstone wondered if they'd really gone anywhere until he could make out writhing points of light against the darkness. The damned souls shook back and forth above him, and he shivered and quickly looked around to see if he could recognize where they'd reappeared instead.
They stood in a ring of white stone obelisks, ragged chunks missing from most of them. He looked up and down the paths leading away from the circle but could see no-one, and nothing looked familiar among the ruins to orient himself in this forbidding place. "How are we even going to get back to Felicia and Toriel? I don't suppose Botan gave you a map when I wasn't looking?"
Yukari shook her head, but there was a faint smile on her dirt-smeared face all the same. "Guess we'll just have to start walking until something looks familiar," then she quietly added, "And then we can go home where there's no more mummies who want to turn us into more mummies."
Bloodstone chuckled a little. "Yeah, just crazy zombie music teachers with magic guitars." Yukari made an "eek" sound and hid her face behind her arms, then started walking down the nearest path without exposing her face again. He walked off behind her, chuckling again. "So now I'm joking with a kid in Hell. There's something I never thought I'd be able to say about my high school years."
"What did you think you'd be able to say about high school?" Yukari asked him suddenly.
"Oh, hell, I don't know. I guess that somebody on my floor would sneak in some booze and I'd end up telling embarrassing stories about how my sisters threatened to cry unless I played 'wedding' with them."
The witch made a "hmmm" noise. "Your little sisters are pretty cute."
But Bloodstone grunted in annoyance. "You know, that was gross enough when Kurumu asked me if I thought my cousin was cute, even if Laura is my age."
Yukari giggled. "How's she doing? Laura, right?"
He thought about how to answer, since he hadn't heard much of anything from Laura lately except about the graffiti of "BEWARE THE MAN WHO SPEAKS IN HANDS" on the back wall of her school. And he didn't especially want to think about that if he could help it either. "Pretty good, I guess. She's going out with this huge basketball player now, she said."
"Huge basketball player, huh? Oh, so you're into that kind of thing," Yukari teased.
Bloodstone was about to protest when he spotted something moving against the sky. For a second he thought it was one of the chained souls, but then realized it wasn't glowing. It was pumping long, tattered wings to propel itself through the air.
And it was coming straight at them.
Its frayed old wings were those of a bat, and around its mouth was a set of vicious steel jaws. Its skin was graying and covered in withered purple veins, but there was no mistaking it: this creature was a vampire. An ancient, degenerate vampire, but it looked like they had another fight on their hands already.
"Get ready, Yukari," Bloodstone whispered.
"Wait, Nigeki…," she whispered. "Something's wrong."
"Shit, you're right," he just had a chance to say before the airborne vampire let out an ear-piercing cry, and the ground around them shook and then exploded. Pale, rotting hands erupted from the dirt around the path as a gang of zombies dragged themselves into view. Yukari screamed but brandished her wand and sent a wash tub crashing down on the nearest zombie's head.
"Yukari, get ready to combine again!" Bloodstone ordered. But suddenly the flying vampire went diving between Bloodstone and Yukari then pulled back up into the sky, scattering them with the force of the air as it went past them. As Bloodstone looked up the sky was obscured by a gang of moaning zombies.
And from behind a crypt not far away, another zombie in a tattered suit watched the unfolding chaos with a smile on his face. He spun a tattered top hat on the tip of one finger, flipped it back onto place on his head, and melted into the shadows to wait for his chance.
Well, here it finally is. Not super happy with it myself, adapting Atmosfear into a story arc sounded better in my head. Just one chapter to go, though.