Chapter 645 - Storm of the Abyss (XVIII) (Patreon)

Light was pouting.

She was a bit angry, and she was a bit frustrated, and she had nothing and no one to lash out on. Her eyes, every few minutes, would wander off the stony halls glittering with motes of death and agony and toward the top of one man's head, where a bird was perched. That damned, ugly, filthy, blathering bird!

The damned bird had taken her spot!

She was always riding Master's shoulders, looking down upon the world from the most gilded throne, and now she had to walk, one foot in front of the other, while a damned bird got to look down upon the world.

She was indignant.

But she couldn't voice it. Bit by bit, she had gotten older. Just enough that everyone, including Master, had started treating her a bit differently. They wouldn't coddle her as much, or indulge her whims. They'd be a bit stricter, and a bit more curt, and they'd tell her no more often than before.

Even if she used the art to keep her body as close to how it was when she first met Master, she couldn't fight nature. She was growing taller. Inch by inch, every month it felt like. There was a time when the tip of her head barely reached the beginning of Master's thigh, but now... now she was above his waistline, approaching his chest. In two, three more years, perhaps, she'd be as tall as that wretched Xiu.

She'd become like all the rest of them.

Just another of Master's disciples. Not special. Not unique. Not doted on.

She was sad.

A cloud hung over her head, and she didn't know how to vanquish it. Even she could not stem the tide of time--all things, strong and otherwise, bowed to the emperor of all emperors. She recalled her father's words more often these days, Even Dao, in its majestic omnipotence and fearlessness, is weathered through time.

She'd wonder how, for there was a path called Dao of Time--few, very few indeed, ever walked it, and those who did seldom took more than a singular step, and of those few who went past it, none took the third. She knows now, however. Her Master's lessons, however scatterbrained they may have been, were an illuminating ray to her.

It marched on, detestable time, and did so without a stop. Before long, she'll be asked to leave--all Disciples, after all, must leave their nests, must flap their wings, and must experience the world on their own. Xiu would leave, Zhao would leave, even scary Brother Tao would leave. And in their stead, Master would find others to teach and others to care for and others to love.

And once he does, she would have to leave, too. Leave the home that had filled up a heart that was void of anything but pain.

She didn't want to leave. She knew well enough how to reach the pinnacle without fanning her wings. In due time, she'd get there, whether she was by her Master's side or as far away from him as the rest. So, unlike others who had to leave to find themselves, she already knew herself. And she wanted to stay.

Master, though scary on occasion, and though strong in many ways, was fragile. He hid it in his smiles, and he hid it in his jokes, and he hid it in the scars that time here had inflicted upon him--but he was fragile. And she had to protect him. It was her duty as his Disciple to protect him.

Shadows spat out of the walls and attacked yet again. She found them quite cumbersome, the not-living yet not-dead. Sapped of their thoughts, of their wants, of their desires, they were husks of flesh and blood and bones. Sort of like the strange man they'd met back in that winterly castle, the husk of a weird, demented master.

Light wondered, time and again, what would have happened to her--to all of them--had they not met the man wearing a bird as a hat. Would they have died? Or become mindless husks? Or, perhaps, mindful sort, slowly but steadily trying to pursue Dao?

Zhao would have died.

Xiu would have died.

Lan would have died.

Most would have died.

Brother Tao would have lived--though, she knew in her heart that his life would have hardly been called 'living'.

She, too, would have lived.

... lived.

They made it past the brief interruption, winding across another hallway and out into an open chamber. Low walls hung some sixty yards up, gems of cyan light embedded in a flat pattern. There were no pillars to hold it up, just an open space. There were no dead, either--at least not ones visible to a naked eye.

But Light saw them.

Hundreds of specters ghoulishly screaming in agony, haunted and tormented. And that man standing at the center, garbed in black and gray and red, shadows stalking his frame, was the source.

The man stank of camphor and rot, his heart made of putrid black. She saw it--desolation beyond human. If he ever was one, she knew, he'd stopped being a human many, many, many years ago.

She'd never come across another one like him--not even that filthy man that Master had her kill before they left was this corrupt.

The man cackled, his laughter a grating, discordant noise that made her frown. She loathed it, especially because he channeled his filth into the sound, trying to harm Master.

"I've heard there was a group of champions scorching through the halls and hallways, unstoppable," the man said, his voice high-pitched and droning. "That must be you. Please, I beg of thee, be kind; I am tasked with not letting you pass, and if I fail, they will skin me alive. Indulge me for a while and simply wait, would you?"

So many were screaming.

Dead trying to rip their souls apart, end their existence, rather than endure the torment. Captured in a state of deathlessness, in a morbid never-there; the man was enjoying their symphony of agony, keeping them enchained.

A yowl blew out--it was young, Light heard. Younger than her. A barely formed little thing. Its skin was ash and black soot, and dark, black flames burned out its eyes over and over and over again.

Master must never learn, Light realized.

He must never see the depths of that depravity.

She stepped forward before Master could respond, her body phasing through them all and reaching the man immediately. She was some five feet from him, looking up just as he looked down. His thin, purple-dyed lips stretched out into a malignant grin, and his hand began to reach out towards her. She heard shouts from behind, and she heard Master calling out her name, but she ignored it.

Slowly, she lifted her left arm and extended her index finger and she pointed it at the man's forehead.

They would have struggled, she knew.

Even Brother Tao would not have been able to kill the man with ease.

In the brooding death of the innumerable souls the man had slaughtered, and in the rivers of pleasure he'd taken in for it, Light found the luck in the rot of life.

Black plume of energy shot out from the tip of her finger like a tiny bolt and pierced through the man's forehead. He stopped, his hand a mere few inches from her head, his thin, bony fingers in a grasping motion.

But they couldn't move further.

"N-n-n-n-n-no," his thin lips stuttered out as they began to shake and shiver, grating eyes widening out as all terror he had inflicted in his life began to pour into his soul. It began as a drizzle, a drop or two at a time, but within just a few seconds, it was a world-ending downpour.

Terror became corporeal--black and gray shadows stirred from his skin, blistering out into arms that latched onto him and began to claw.

Drip, drip, drip.

There was no blood, but she heard it.

Scratching.

Tearing.

Ripping.

None of it was visible, but she heard it.

"NOOOO!!!" he screamed so loudly that his throat was ripped apart, blood spewing out through his clenched teeth. "STAY AWAY FROM ME, YOU DEVIL!!!" his eyes bulged and began to bleed black blood, skin melting like candlewax. "GO AWAY, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO--"

His skin melded into his bones, and the bones became profusely malignant as they grew tiny needle-spines and barbed filaments. Invisible to an eye, but visible to the soul experiencing eruption of barbed filaments across every inch of themselves.

Death worthy of a soul as black as night.