The scene was lit in flame.
The hell bones moved rapidly, even in worn defective armor, they rushed like a wave of a forest fire burning down everything and leaving a trail of ash and smoke. Braelor shifted his grip to one sickle, letting the others dangle down as he swung them forth, reaping five skeletons at a time. They dissolved with his strikes, cleaving apart like a knife through butter.
Statis leaped toward him and jumped across the walls as a blade of distortion conjured up in his palm. Lloyd simply smiled in glee and threw a glob of biomass his way. The blade pierced through the tissue instantly, it dissipating around the edge. A beam of shadowflame burst out of his maw, Statis nearly grazing its grasp. The distortion blade consumed the blast. It fueled brighter, the matter around it warping to its subjugation. Lloyd turned his arm into a flurry of the hungry, ravenously chomping forth. Statis severed their tendrils but they simply flew out, several gnawing onto his back.
"Enough."
Statis began to overlap with shadows as he dashed across in a cosmic veil. Ricocheting across the ceilings, walls, and floor, a kunai of wrought black shards was summoned in his hand as he struck in pure silence. The kunai hit like bullets, cosmic saw blades shedding out and homing into Lloyd, dealing deep lacerations. His limbs were punched off as he fled to the ceiling, tendrils replacing his wounds. The hell bones army: massacred by Braelor and his men.
Shit.
His limbs quickly regrew as he dropped down from the ceiling. The men slagged their shotguns forward. Lloyd raised an arm and pointed it at the men, a muscle rope leeching onto all five of them, his hand morphing into a beastly claw to hold all in one fist. They squirmed and tried to shoot but quickly fell into control. Lloyd tilted his head and waited for Braelor's response.
"Coward." The warlord proclaimed.
He charged forward, sickles rattling behind, and spliced through Lloyd, along with all of his men, their bisected bodies toppling to the ground.
"That...was...unnecessary," Lloyd said, the blood of the soldiers around him pooling under his upper body.
"You seem to have mistaken me as another type of man." Said Braelor, "I cannot be mistaken."
"Welp, that's not how you can kill me either," Lloyd said as tendrils pulled his two sides together, "Good luck with whatever hell you're gonna raise, you'll need it."
Vulcan rushed forward and stabbed one of the executioners in the chest, then pulled up his shotgun to strike the other. He looked to Laurence: he laid on the floor, half his head vaporized. Mere onyx weapons couldn't penetrate their tarragon codpieces, Yharims soldiers reformed a phalanx and dragged Ren's body into the center. Vulcan conjured a claymore from his wrist and knocked down two of the three. The third tried to run before a whipping sound cracked through the air.
A tentacle, drilled right through the executioner's skull, as he collapse through the hall. Laurence, a finger raised with the tentacle connected to him. The phalanx stared at him with awe or terror, he couldn't tell. He rushed to a puddle in the corner and grasped a hand against his face. He had felt the stinging pain of the slug on his head. everyone had seen it.
Yet his head was fully intact. Not even a single drop of blood.
"What the hell just happened?" Vulcan questioned.
"i-I wasn't shot."
It sensed it all. Every movement, scream, or slight shift all around the labyrinth was fed to it. It had sensed a new presence long before they came, and now it must hunt. The specter is a terror to the dungeon, yet nevertheless, the only thing that sustains it. The old city runs on the fuel of the entrapped, their suffering contributes to the mana architecture. No tumultuous structures built beneath the surface could be achieved simply with sweat and muscle, once the fuel runs dry, all will collapse.
It will never fall.
The specter is beyond others. It is aware. Restless souls are much like others. They cannot recall their past lives, only emotion drives them. No sense, no life. Only souls who wield insurmountable fervor can display complex thoughts. The specter, The Polterghast, masquerades as a collection of souls in unification, though in reality simply all other souls serve as the husk of the one who started it all. However, the husk screams for itself, driving it into insanity. Unchained, unfettered, pure madness.
Its existence is simple: Suffer.
A miracle, no phantom has ever achieved such. Ghosts cannot be seen or felt by the naked eye, only by deities and ones who are attuned to necromancy. Yet somehow, all can see the specter. Necroplasm is an entirely new substance derived from the specter, no other has yet to possess it. It is a concept that none truly know how it can exist, the agony so potent it creates tangible matter.
There's only one possible answer to this, the void.
A titan marched out of the shadows.
Clad in ornate hallowed armor, it moved like a machine—nearly twice the size of Kade and wielding a warhammer and a heavy aegis. Engravements of steadfast battles and armies through every plate glistened in the waterlights, A spartan-like helm with a visage bearing no life. Arching its arm back, the hammer snapped like thunder and hastened toward Kade, dust dancing in its wake.
Taph pulled him away as the hammer smashed into the walls, sending rubble flying. He unsheathed the greatsword and clashed, but each slash was thwarted by its aegis. It blocked and spun in a rhythmic order, with no recoil and a steel gaze. Through a stab, the paladin peeked its hammer and trusted it into his stomach, carrying Kade through its swagger until he plummeted and bit the tar-like floor. Kade felt one of his ribs snap or whatever it was.
"C'mon, help me or something!" He said to Taph.
Taph threw her Old Reaper at the paladin, it simply swerved against the aegis, but a streak of blight slowly bubbled into its armor.
What the hell is that armor laced with?! How many more hits can it take with just a scratch?
"Sigh...My blade isn't going to work, that armor has an enchantment that's fierce, I'm gonna have to use my corrosion. It isn't gonna let us flee anyway..."
"But you don't have any mutagens left...this mission isn't going to end soon, it's too much of a risk."
"We have no other choice, you try to weaken the armor with more blight."
Kade formed both arms in heavy seraphim pauldrons and gauntlets. A crystalline rapier grew into his palm as he shifted into a stance. Taph threw more waves of blight onto the paladin, its left forearm eventually falling off. Its mighty stalwart posture was left diminished, each movement now rusted and jittering. It threw its hammer once more, and Kade swiftly slid under. Corrosion armored his legs and with a steel-studded outsole, he kicked away its aegis with ease.
"Taph...hold off its other arm!"
He held the rapier at the center of its cuirass, cranked his other arm back, and struck the hilt like a hammer to a chisel.
*(CRACK)*
The paladin's chest was torn asunder, like the crater of a meteorite, and its remaining limbs and head fell apart. What was inside was a degrading skeleton and mounds of necrotic blubbers, slathered in ectoplasm. Kade unformed his armor and looked down on his arms and legs: purple and pink stains like blotches of paint.
"Shit...don't think I can fight that much...also my thermals are wearing off, could you get it from the bag? Can't see anymore."
Taph helped him drink the vile before they set off through the pathway. The path segmented into a steep spiral staircase, half the steps granulated and some crumbled when they stepped on them. The two noticed with every step the walls around them became more and more well-kept, black sludge no longer dripping from the cracks and the bricks in pristine order. After a solid minute of descending the flight, they reached a doorframe with two cultist banners hung on each end. Passing through them was an abyss of emptiness, a room of the likes he'd never seen before.
From what he could picture from the few lights torched against the pillars they were surrounded by dozens of balcony layers. Each pillar divided a small cabinet filled with shelves of thousands upon thousands of tomes and books, details within the rims carved miraculously fine and preserved finer. From the doorframe, they stepped on a rocky suspension bridge connected to the center, the ceiling and floor shrouded as if the place never ended.
"The Great Archive..." Taph said, "All of man's greatest achievements in magic, all in one room."
The center was a platform held up from below, the bridges connecting to it. Kade shivered, huge chains tethered on something dispersed and faded away in the shadows.
The glisten of ancient steel hung above the platform, followed by a darkness that seemed impossible to be so dark. An unfathomable shade, one that should never be seen.