Magical Girls and Chtulutech Ch.7 (Patreon)

Chapter 7: Dark Descent, Pure Ascencion

“Shit!”

Bam!“Fuck!”

Crack!

“Son of a-!”

Thud!

Iroha continued to curse as she fell down. Her still activated War Song took the edge of the numerous impacts she had against the many outcroppings on her way down.

While not causing a lot of damage, the constant hits made her unable to focus on a basic skill most Luminaries learned to do before going out for the first time: flying. A skill she had not worked on, focused as she was on superpowered parkour before finding the Dark Spawns.

It took a while before she finally stopped falling. Laying on her back, Iroha dully gazed upwards, right into the hole she fell from, or where it would be if she could see anything in the darkness.. The rubble, from what was previously the floor she beat the Dark Spawn on, was digging into her back.

With a sigh, she got up and conjured another ball of flame to illuminate her surroundings. Now she could see the hole in the ceiling. She just had to fly up and leave.

Just as the thought reached her mind, she heard an ominous rumble resonate through the tunnel she was in. The ceiling started to shake and dust was starting to fall on her nose.

“Oh, God no.” Iroha hissed as she saw cracks spread through the ceiling.

Through sheer survival instinct, she switched her aura to Celerity as fast as she could while her body had already started running. The ceiling started dropping a moment later.

Completely focused on running away and not ending up as a gory pancake under God knows how many tons of stone, Iroha didn’t notice that the further into the tunnel she went, the brighter it became. At least until she arrived at the end of it where it spread out into a far bigger space.

Iroha bent over and gasped for air as the tunnel collapsed behind her. She had made it. She was safe.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

A flash of light and a deafening explosion removed that thought of her head quickly. She quickly straightened up and got ready to fight.

That was when she took in the sights.

The place where she fought the Dark Spawns with Frost Mirage had been the size of a pretty big amphitheater. This new place made it look tiny.

She was in an enormous cave where you could have put multiple football stadiums back to back. Half of it was empty, including the part she was in. The other half had a fifteen stories tall citadel carved out of red stones, with the back of it resting against the wall of the cave as if forbidding access to the other side.

And she could see all of it because the citadel was glowing, every stone casting a harmonious glow that lit up the whole cave.

Another explosion shook the place, and the top three stories of the citadel went sky high.

Iroha’s eyes widened as debris started raining down, the force of the explosion more than enough for some of them to fly in her direction. 

“What is with things trying to crush me?!” Iroha yelled incredulously before she had to dart away from a rock the size of a pick-up truck crashing down on the spot she had occupied.

She zig-zagged between the falling castle chunks until she cleared one just in time to see another just behind it. She had no choice but to jump up.

Right into the path of a third. She bent her back to avoid it, but a small part still clipped her, sending her spiraling on the ground.

Luckily, while she was picking herself up, no more rocks landed where she was.

“No more caves. Spelunking is a stupid hobby..” She groaned, knowing very well she would have to go back down anyway.

With the rain of debris finally over, Iroha was able to see the result. She wished she hadn’t.

Just like she saw, the top of the citadel had blown up. But smoke and rocks weren’t the only things escaping from it.

Burning demons flew from the opening as if the gates of Hell had just been unlocked, which was a more likely possibility than she liked.

Her brain decided to kick back in to tell her that they looked a lot like the monsters Pentos’s security had used when she had helped Sera escape, if not bigger and meaner than the flaming mutts.

Humanoids with wings, birds, different types of mammals, some creatures that had far too many tentacles for her Japanese taste, amorphous things with a lot of eyes like some kind of B-rated horror movie. They came in vastly different sizes with a lot of them being bigger than the mutant Dark Spawn she had dealt with.  The only thing they had in common was the fact that they all looked like they were made of red hot magma.

Iroha cursed as they all seemed to fly in her direction. She would have to fight. She didn’t know if there was a way for her to win, but she would go down swinging.

Then, a blur of white snapped into existence from the busted wall of the citadel, tracing blinding lines of white and red across the air. Where it passed, the fiery monsters were seemingly erased.

“Holy shit.” The redhead gasped.

The blur stopped above the horde, revealing what could only be a Luminary.

She looked like an angel, garbed in an all white dress that clung to her upper body before flaring out into multiple ribbons that covered her legs. Small wings adorned not only her Outfit, but also her skin.

Her face was doll-like. Orange eyes with white pupils glared down at the monsters below like one would at a piece of excrement on the walkboard. Her long hair was two-toned in a mix of back with pink-highlights. Square bangs covered her forehead. Six, tiny wings sprouted from the back of her head, twitching and partially hiding her face at times.

In one hand she was holding a very intimidating mace the size of her own body. It followed her biblically accurate motif with many wings converging into an orb that formed the head of the weapon. A head that was wider than her torso.

The angelic Luminary lifted her gargantuan weapon above her head. Rings of light gathered around it.  An white aura started to emanate from her body. Iroha recognized the aura of a Physicality user.

In another blur, the winged girl had reached the closest monster, her mace smashing its head off.

The rings shone, and Iroha was blinded by a second sun’s birth. When the redhead was able to see once more, A good chunk of the flyings creatures had been vaporized by the orb of light born from the weapon strike.

The white-garbed Luminary had already flown toward her next target. 

Iroha couldn’t help but compare her own explosive strikes to the mace-wielder’s. Her fire magic punches could be likened to fragmentation grenades. The black and pink-haired girl’s blows were hitting like heavy artillery.

The monsters, who had looked like an army ready for Armageddon, were fleeing. Wingbeats and jet-like combustions made them move at break-neck speeds, yet they weren’t fast enough.

The stronger ones tried to fight. One that looked like a classical demon, with hoover feet, and a crown of horns, fired a beam of bright plasma that tore through the walls like a hot knife through butter.

A white-gloved hand was raised and the beam splattered harmlessly over it.

A blazing behemoth tried to use the perceived opening to get her from behind. Her eyes barely flicked to the side. Interlocked hexagons of white light formed a wall that the beast’s arm slammed into. The burning rock that made the limb broke first.

The winged Luminary’s gaze went to the monsters that were fleeing. The tunnel that collapsed behind Iroha wasn’t the only exit.

She raised the hand that had blocked a beam of plasma, the white glove not even dirtied by sooth.

“Sanctum.” Her voice wasn’t loud, yet it echoed throughout the cave.

Massive pillars of light, shaped like they came from a Greek temple, slammed into every corner of the place.

A demon near an exit leaped for freedom. The two pillars he was crossing flashed. A wall of brilliant hexagons stopped its advance.

The same occurred for every tunnel. A barrier had been formed, not to protect, but to cage in the Luminary’s prey.

Iroha had never wanted someone’s autograph as much as now.