Seren Pov
Seren hadn't caught the subtle shift in Cassie or Sunny. To her, their behavior hadn't changed at all, and she still felt welcomed in their small cohort, but something had shifted and she didn't notice.
The days flew by as the cohort continued their trek west. Soon, they were climbing the slope of an ashen barrow, the place she had arrived on the first day.
Her [adaptability] attribute activated almost immediately. That was the first thing that tipped her off that something was wrong.
The second thing to tip her off was the behavior of her companions. Within a short amount of time, they were acting… strange. Seren was young, so it was difficult for her to make sense of what was happening, but her instincts appeared to be telling her that this place was dangerous.
She summoned her echo. Though it was merely in its stone form this time of day, she knew she needed something for cover, and she didn't trust the big tree at the center of the barrow. Even if Nephis, cassie, and Sunny did.
~~~
Massive black circles had appeared in the sky. Seren had gone to warn the other members of the cohort about them, and the four of them watched for the birds to land, but they left after a few hours of bird watching.
Then the cohort decided to check the western edge of the Ashen Barrow. There, they found the slope of the island much steeper, descending into a colossal depression into the ground, stretching as far and wide as their eyes could see.
In no time, torrents of rushing water appeared from beyond the horizon, and the dark sea rushed to fill the brim of that colossal crater. Soon, the world was covered in the strange liquid.
Quickly, they began to discuss options for escape.
"Why can't Seren's echo just fly us?" Sunny asked, shrugging.
Nephis shook her head. "It would work… probably, but the skies are dangerous, and we'd be nothing more than sitting ducks during the day time in that crater."
Seren sat on the sidelines. She traced little pictures in the ash as the others debated. The image of a gargoyle fought against a big crab. She drew Kallen playing some game on his computer. Her favorite singer, Night, mid performance.
Eventually though, she grew bored and toed at the water with the edge of her shoe, dark and unnatural. Something about it irked her—she wondered if it bothered her brother too. Would his powers work with this strange black water? She wasn't sure.
Sunny kicked a small bit of ash into the sea, still talking to Nephis. "Well. What do you propose then?"
Nephis crouched at the shoreline. "I'm not sure. But we need to do something eventually."
A guttural screech split the air.
Seren's echo moved before anyone. It didn't wait for command, it lunged, snatching her in its gargantuan hands, throwing her to the ground just before the ash in front of her exploded.
A tendril of black water, thicker than a tree trunk, lashed upward where she had stood. It writhed, suspended for a moment before collapsing back into the void with a whisper.
Cassie staggered back, falling, and Nephis moved to scoop her. Sunny's tachi was already in his hands, and Seren activated her dormant ability, bolstering both her echo and Nephis.
The crater trembled. The surface of the dark sea bulged, then ruptured as skeletal figures woven from liquid shadow rose from the sea, their hollow eyes trained on the cohort. They moved like marionettes, joints jerking, mouths unhinging to reveal rows of endless black.
"Shit!" Sunny said, scrambling inland. "Damnation, what do we do?"
Nephis moved in front of Seren, standing next to Sunny. White flame billowed across her longsword, cutting through the first of the shadow-like thralls.
The problem was, where her fire touched them, they didn't burn. They multiplied. It was like spilling more ink onto a canvas. Each new spawn was identical to the one before it.
Sunny's sword froze mid-swing as they realized this.
The thralls lurched forward, their movements jerky and relentless. The Elder Gargoyle, still bolstered by Seren, unleashed a towering torrent of flame at the shadows, but it did nothing. The creatures did not burn.
Nephis glanced around. She didn't extinguish her flame, but she also didn't lash out either. "Cassie?"
Cassie's breath came in short panicked gasps. Her blind eyes flickered. "I didn't see anything about them."
Nephis visibly calmed.
"Then we retreat?" Sunny asked.
The two girls answered, "Yes," in unison.
After a moment of hesitation, Seren recalled her echo and retreated inland alongside Nephis, Sunny, and Cassie. To her surprise, the thralls tried to follow them, but dissolved no more than a hundred yards away from the shore.
It appeared that they couldn't leave the water for very long.
Then we're safe? Seren wondered, squatting down to feel the ash in her hands. She waved her hand a few times. They probably attacked us because of my flaw…
~~~
Kallen
[Lightfoot] made Kallen lighter on his feet and improved his balance, while keeping his movements silent. [Arachnid's Grace], helped him adhere to most surfaces. [Leap], allowed him to lunge at frightening speeds.
These were the three abilities gifted by Kallen's new Awakened Armor. With them, and the ring that increased his dexterity and attunement to vibrations, he was now nearly indistinguishable from the creatures he had been hunting.
Aside from Wyrm's Tongue, Kallen didn't have any more Memories equipped. Not that he was cut off from the spell or out of essence or anything, but because he couldn't remember how.
The venom inside him, though largely purged, still pulsed beneath the surface, clinging to his senses. His eyes flickered beneath the mask of his new suit of armor. One moment, he was focused on the dim tunnels around him, the next losing track of what was real.
The ache of his shoulder where there was now a cauterized hole had become distant. Like it belonged to something else.
Kallen heard skittering.
He was adhered to the ceiling of the tunnel, lying in wait. The nest of Iron Spiders, freed from the Matriarch's intelligence, had begun to turn on itself. Not even half the original nest was alive anymore.
Kallen watched a worker Iron Spider scuttle into view, its legs lashing at the ground in a haste to escape. A hunger roiled inside his gut, and without thinking, he lunged.
[Leap] activated.
His body moved faster than it should have, his gladius a blur of silver as it cleaved the air. The sword sliced clean through the spider, a shrill screech barely registering before it collapsed.
Black blood splashed Kallen's mask.
A few seconds later, a hunter came into view. Fine by him.
It hissed at the obstacle in its path. Kallen darted forward, his armor propelling him at superhuman speeds.
He batted away the spear-like leg of the spider with his vambrace, snaking his arm around and grasping. Kallen then used his leverage and momentum to shoot in close, feeling a sickening crunch of chitin giving away before his blade.
"Another," he growled.
After a more drawn out battle, a warrior fell before him.
"Another"
"Another."
The world continued to shrink, each new kill, each new conquest bringing him closer to perfection. The primal urge to own the nest was overwhelming. It gnawed at him, slipping between his thoughts.
He moved in a haze, driven by instinct and flame. Each kill was a step toward dominance. He was the apex.
~~~
Seren
A few days later, Sunny, Nephis, Cassie, and Seren had made camp on the Ashen Barrow. They had found the apples hanging from the tree as a nutritious source of food, and soul cores.
Sunny had taken to climbing the thing's branches as of late, and the Elder Gargoyle was doing its best to rid the world of any and all of those apples, much to Seren's dismay.
In fact, currently, a dispute between the gargoyle and Sunny was occurring.
"Come on you big bastard," he said, waving his sword. "Fight me. Or are you too scared? So indignant, knocking apples out of peoples hands, but you won't man up and stand by it?"
A giggle escaped Seren. Sunny wasn't making any sense, was he? But she smiled as she watched the young man pick a fight with her echo.
Why would it fight him? It didn't know right from wrong… it had a reason for knocking the apple out of his hands, Seren just didn't know why.
She could feel her adaptability attribute tugging on her senses though. Was that related to the apples? Seren shrugged. She couldn't remember. If it was important, she probably would have, so then there wasn't much reason worrying, was there?
Sunny swung his sword at the Elder Gargoyle. The echo batted his blade to the side, snorting as it turned away.
But then something strange happened.
It forgot all about its quarrel with Sunny, and turned its head to the sky. Two black dots circled above, but they were bigger… no, they were closer.
A slight twinge of fear bloomed in Seren's stomach. Then, her echo took to the skies with a powerful beat of its wings, roaring the entire way up.
Seren scrambled forward, reaching out, demanding that he come back down.
But maybe he shouldn't. Because the two circles in the sky were going after him as well. When a powerful burst of flame erupted from her echo, Seren finally knew what was happening. They were fighting.
~~~
The Elder Gargoyle returned battered and injured from its fight a few hours later. Seren had watched the bout go down, but neither Nephis, Sunny, or Cassie seemed to pay it too much attention. That was weird, wasn't it?
That wasn't all. Whenever she tried to get them to plan out there trek west, none of them seemed to care much about heading in that direction. Wasn't that too strange as well?
Better yet, why was Nephis doing nothing but sitting on the western shore? And why had the Elder Gargoyle taken Seren from this barrow to begin with?
Seren thought she was beginning to understand. We need to get out of here… this place… the tree is trying to keep us here, isn't it? That's why I feel the strange pull on my adaptability attribute, isn't it?
Seren scrambled to her feet.
By the time she had made her way to the western edge to talk to Nephis, she found that Sunny had beat her to it. The two of them were conversing.
"We need to build a boat," Nephis said.
Sunny blinked.
"What?"
She sighed and turned her face to look at him. "We've been here, on this island, for many weeks. Our minds are slowly being erased by the Soul Tree, turning us into its slaves. Forever. However, the process is not complete."
The two continued their conversation, while Seren silently disagreed. We won't make it on a boat. Not with my flaw… the boat will probably fall apart or get attacked by some dangerous nightmare creature. We'd be dead in no time.
"Um…" Seren interjected, feeling as though she were about to make a terrible, terrible mistake. "The boat idea will not work. My flaw—my uh, flaw won't allow for a plan like that."
Nepis and Sunny slowly turned to face her.
"Why n—" Nephis began to ask, but she stopped herself.
"I promised my brother I wouldn't tell anyone, but I also can't think of another way to convince you not to build a boat… so, um, yeah. We should fly on my echo when he is finished resting."
Nephis seemed to think this over for a few moments. Then she nodded, speaking no qualms. Sunny, to Seren's surprise, didn't seem to have a problem with it either. Perhaps they trusted Seren's knowledge of her own flaw?
"Then it's decided," Nephis said, sharing a look with Sunny. "That's what we'll do."
~~~
The escape by Gargoyle went surprisingly smooth. After setting flame to the Soul Devouring Tree, the four of them, plus Seren's echo, took to the skies and cleared the colossal distance in little time.
Of course, they had to stop and land during the daytime, and they were indeed sitting ducks in the hulking basin, but even with Seren's flaw, nothing attacked them from the skies or the ground so long as they stayed perched atop the stone gargoyle's body.
And so the time passed leisurely, allowing for much idle chatter between them. Nephis and Seren gossiped about their favorite singers—both favoring Night from Night&Gale.
When their journey had reached its end, however, something still gnawed at Seren. Even as she saw the towering stone walls and the majestic city on the horizon, she got the sense that Kallen just wasn't there.
Her thread of connection only gave her a vague feeling, but even still, she knew he was too far away to be in that city. And that meant that he was still out there… somewhere.
She could only hope that he had powerful allies to help him. If only just to ease the burden.
"Kallen," Seren said, watching the wall inch closer and closer. "... my brother isn't in the city."
Cassie, who was sitting at the base of the Gargoyle's neck didn't say anything. Nephis, who held Seren from behind, also said nothing, though Seren did feel her chest deflate. Surprisingly, though, it was Sunny who said something… something she hadn't seen coming.
"We'll go find him, isn't that right Nephis?"
Seren looked over her shoulder, past Nephis to meet Sunny's obsidian eyes.
"Right."
Sunny gave Seren a reassuring smile. "He probably knows not to move from wherever he landed in the dream realm. It's basic wilderness survival not to move if someone knows your location. He's probably just staying put and waiting for you to come get him."
"Yes," Nephis said. "That is the most plausible outcome. Assuming he is here in the same area of the dream realm. He is, isn't he?"
Seren nodded. "Uhm, yeah. He's far, but not too much so."
"Then there's nothing to worry about." Sunny shrugged. "We'll establish ourselves in the city, hopefully find the gate, and go after your brother. How does that sound?"
A slight smile found Seren's face. "That… thank you."
A/N I abridged most of Nephis, Sunny, Cassie, and Seren's journey and only showed the important changes because this fic would probably be like 40k words longer if I didn't. But for anyone who forgets, they spent like (3-4 months I think?) together in the labyrinth before they make it to the Dark City.