Chap 126: Out Numbered
Tee’s teammates were nowhere nearby. She looked up to the pitch-black void. The extra weight on her empty hands was alarming and she looked down. The two orange dots that reflected on her claws were the same distance apart as her eyes. The faint white glow above was her hair.
She needed no more proof that her sclera had turned black again. She inhaled and then let it out. Her claws pulled back into her fingers, and she concluded her eyes were normal too.
The gleam from the energy bubble around Sade illuminated his form and the beast he sat on. His face blended in with his bob-length grey hair. His black-filled eyes had a purple shimmer beside his tiny white pupil. After remaining open for a while, they blinked.
The large ring was still caged in his palm by his fingers. It was the fragment. However, like the light that once shone and the shattered Sealed Bond’s glyphs, it had long left his mind.
He and his members felt the strong energy signature go out. The energy was much like Lilith who was the strongest link to the dark lord. It was the reason they had not left that space with the fragment.
Lilith kept in her black smoke form and blended in too well with the dim void. The strong energy signature was a reminder of their higher aim. They were not interested in collecting all the scraps of the ancient relic. They still lacked the Omega Stone and adding that fragment to their collection of over a million was bleak. However, using the vessel would speed them in fulfilling their purpose. It was indeed time to test the vessel’s development and eliminate a Sentinel if not all.
Sade volunteered through their telepathic link. He added that he was the perfect candidate to test the vessel.
The thundering chuckles from Legion clogged their telepathic channel. Why of course Sade would volunteer, his many voices told them. The silent stalker was desperate for personal interaction with his obsession. He was not fooled by Sade's attempts to ignore the mortal during their physical encounters up until then.
Sade's stone face did not flicker. He switched the subject to the Omega matter created by their other members across the Vale. It was perfect for the atom-less void making it faster and requiring less control. Utilizing it would revive its usefulness from that which it did not do.
With the limited energy he had left, he could open the dimension to release the matter. However, his energy would get depleted to a critical low making him unable to teleport them. With him out of the picture, Lilith would have to widen the gateway and control the matter.
Riven did not get the point Sade brought forth, since it could teleport all its members quite fine.
Sade continued. His drained after-state was the perfect means to test the vessel. He could pull energy from her. The magnitude they sensed not too long ago meant he should come back fully replenished. He sensed the other guardians nearby, which meant they were separated from the vessel. Thus, there would be no interference.
Lilith ordered Riven to accompany Sade on his task to test the vessel, granting his preposition.
Sade’s eyes glowed dark purple as he moved one hand at the speed of light. He drew a circle composed of thousands of tiny symbols and pushed it outward. The glowing circle glided beyond his energy bubble and stopped several yards away. The center began to glow red—his cue to leave. His eyes dimmed, ceasing their glow.
Riven created a red vortex, but he was not the first to dash through. Sade, still inside his energy bubble, led the way, allowing his levitating beasts to disappear into the swirling red center.
Riven disagreed that Sade couldn’t maintain a Dark mana form like his members while deactivating the Sealed Bond. The sorcerer valued his human-like form too much and needed the bubble to breathe in the vacuum. But Sade was no longer truly human due to his profound use of dark sorcery. Who, then, was he trying to fool?
Legion and Lilith were left alone. They could sense the four remaining Sentinels nearby through their light energy. Unlike Legion’s orange glowing eyes, Lilith’s presence remained imperceptible. She moved toward the gateway and, with her power, began pulling apart every side of its red glowing edge.
Kie couldn’t get Tee off his mind. But he and the remaining teammates had no choice but to face the Harbingers without her. He glanced toward the distant purple gleam, hoping to plan a strategy, but its absence unsettled him.
“The purple glow disappeared,” Zod gasped.
Miko blinked into the distant void, realizing time had flown again. The purple glow was no longer where she had been staring. Concentrating on distant objects to trigger her teleportation seemed pointless. Or was she simply too afraid?
“Did they leave?” Saeda asked in her monotone. “With all our eyes glowing like glow sticks, they must have seen us even in this darkness.”
Kie summoned two swords and infused them with flaming blue energy. He whipped them forward and moved back—but it wasn’t enough distance. Worse, he could only retreat.
“That’s it,” Zod said, rolling both hands into fists. “I’m going to blast my way to the Harbingers. Wish me luck.”
“Wait,” Miko interrupted. “Look.”
They all noticed an expanding red glow where the purple had once gleamed. The larger the red circle grew, the more it puzzled them. At about fifty times the size of the purple gleam they had assumed was Sade's energy bubble, they realized just how massive it was.
Saeda’s eyes glowed blue, and she received a vision. She saw all three of her teammates get swallowed by a strange red cloud, obliterated to nothing.
Zod gasped, “Saeda—”
“Yes, that was a future vision. It showed you all dying by some strange red cloud.”
“We need to move,” Kie said.
Miko wanted to cry. “But how?”
In moments like those, Kie hated being the leader.
Tee shut off her foreseeing after realizing she was alone among the hills. The shape-shifting creatures had disappeared. If only she knew what had happened.
Had her supersonic scream scared them off? Maybe they were weak to strong sound and had been obliterated to nothing. A puff of chuckle escaped her lips, but her throbbing abdomen wiped the grin away.
Two-way communication was off—over a minute had passed since she last heard from her telecom. The ground shook, and cracks formed everywhere. She abandoned the thought of contacting her teammates and leaped over the openings.
Oddly, the tremors stopped, and the cracks weren’t wide enough to swallow her feet. So what was the point? When the tips of the hills began to disappear, racing down to their bases, her brows contracted.
Unbeknownst to her, the disc-shaped land had shrunk. Moreover, it was vanishing farther away, moving toward her. Sade had deactivated the Sealed Bond, but the destruction that followed wasn’t as fast as a reset. Before it became a concern, she would be otherwise occupied.
She darted her eyes to the purple orb in the air. The orb finished gliding out of the red vortex—but something else followed. A clump formed between her furrowed brows from five long beasts trailing behind. The beasts had wings, but none moved to glide forward. The four red eyes on the moving black cloud were the last to leave the vortex before it began to shrink.
The purple bubble disappeared, and she darted her eyes back to it. The white-haired man leapt down from the levitating beast he rode. The four slits on his dress moved apart, allowing the fabric to lift above his feet, revealing shiny black boots. Unlike Legion, his boots were smaller and landed with no tremor. He lifted his head, and his black-filled eyes locked onto her.
Tee shivered and summoned two swords.
Saeda and her teammates watched as the red glowing circle expanded, taking up half their view. Their brows lowered in unison, eyes glowing, as something began to emerge from its center—a massive dark red cloud, alive with rich colors and swirls of light. The pitch-black surroundings made it stand out even more.
The Omega matter was perfect for the void. With fewer particles to consume its resources, it moved faster. Lilith accelerated it toward the four light energy signatures. The Sentinels had their work cut out for them. They weren’t facing a being but a matter that consumed everything in its path.
Kie, Zod, Miko, and Saeda watched the massive red cloud surge toward them. Up close, it resembled luminescent red fog. Against the dim surroundings and its vast scale, it glowed like a nebula.
It was awe-inspiring, but it also sent daggers of panic into the four guardians’ minds. They had to move, especially after concluding the Harbingers had left with the disappearance of the purple glow. But first, they needed to find Tee to teleport. Worse, only Zod could move with his steady energy blasts.
Four lumps formed within the cloud and darted toward them like hands. The teens’ glowing eyes widened. Before panic fully hit, Saeda’s right leg below the knee was snatched by the cloud. Her scream was drowned out by the blast of energy from her hands, which pushed her away like a rocket. The wave of yellow vanished as Zod blasted behind her. Zoom!
In a split second, Saeda and Zod zipped away, prompting Miko to teleport a foot to safety. The cloud devoured Kie’s right hand and his flaming sword. Before he could yell, an explosion of blue flames surged along his arms, propelling him behind Zod and Saeda. Miko screamed as the cloud consumed her lashes and grazed her nose. The flash of terror made her blast energy as well, pushing herself away.
The four guardians found themselves soaring through the void in a high-speed chase to escape the annihilating cloud. Thoughts of finding land to reach Tee vanished under the orange energy wave that narrowly missed them. Their focus shifted to the pair of fiery eyes and the orange glowing blade moving at a matching speed.
The dark moving cloud was unlike Legion. But Zod recognized those fiery eyes and the arched glow all too well. It was Legion and his axe. Things had just gotten worse.
Kie’s eyes glowed brighter as he spotted one of the irritants he needed to kill. He summoned a sword and channeled the pain from his missing hand into a powerful lash.
The blue wave shot from Kie’s sword at the speed of light toward the fiery eyes on his far right. The eyes dodged his energy wave, but the white glowing smile that appeared with a thundering chuckle struck a nerve deep in Kie.
A burst of energy surged from his eyes, engulfing his entire body. Like a flaming missile, he shot away from his teammates straight toward the freak named Legion.
He was going to defeat the Harbingers—and all those who left him behind would regret it! He screamed his rage and swung another wave of energy at the fiery eyes.
Legion’s axe outglowed his fiery eyes as the blue energy wave surged toward him. He soared above it to evade, sending another blast from his axe at the charging mortal.
Both Legion’s blast and Kie’s wave collided in a massive explosion. The Omega matter scattered from the impact with a deep boom. Yet it did not drown out Lilith’s far-reaching voice echoing across the vacuum.
“The time is at hand for the creators’ coming. They bring with them an age of never-ending torment, and you—the Sentinels—cannot save this world...”
Zod, Saeda, and Miko nearly slowed, unnerved by the mysterious voice surrounding them. They forgot Kie momentarily as the strange presence filled their minds. It was clear that Legion was not the only Harbinger present—but where were the others?
Meanwhile, Tee spun both her swords as she paced back and forth in a line, staring at Sade. Was he finally going to say something to her—like why she knew about him before going to Primus? Somehow, she doubted it. He had always been a man of few words, only ever speaking a handful during their encounters.
The red glowing eyes hovering nearby belonged to Riven. From her previous battle strategy session, she recalled Miko’s conclusion. Riven could only possess someone standing still. Her brows knitted as she counted the odds against her—five floating beasts with red eyes plus Riven made seven against one. Damn, where were her bloody teammates?