Chapter 31

When the Skies Weep (II)

A sound of thunder ripped through the realm of darkness, followed right after by a resounding choir of screams as the ground beneath the party began to crumble. Cain gritted his teeth anxiously and began charging Wind into his limbs, flapping out relentlessly and tossing everyone out of the epicenter.

Accompanying a deafening thud, a pillar of crimson-violet light erupted out, smoking the world into a temporary lull.

Emma and Rick heaved to the front with anxious expressions, standing up by one another and thrashing forward, meeting a singular beam roughly thirty feet wide. Their steeled roars were snuffed out underneath the sizzling sounds of the beam as it began pushing them back, forming four canals beneath their feet. Jim and Sam rushed forward with all their might and rammed themselves into Emma and Rick, barely managing to stop the two from continuing to pull backward.

The beam died out slowly, yet before it even did, the creature flapped its tentacles violently once again and shot four spherical bombs, two in a flat, crescent arc at their flanks and two like mortar shells, dropping from above.

Cain charged Earth as rapidly as he could and slammed both his fists down, erecting a hundred-feet-tall wall in front of the party, one that quickly began shape-shifting into a fist that met the two falling spheres. Rick and Emma raced sideways to meet the flanking spheres, Jim and Sam hot on their tails. The former two raised their shields immediately, burning through Mana, while Emma once again swung her hammer with all her might.

Diya and Lamia repeatedly cast blessings on the party, running left and right with Gerald and Decker practically carrying them as to conserve the former’s Stamina as much as possible.

“Right, right, right!!” Cain hollered orders one after another, virtually without a stop. “Pull back! Bless Rick! Shields up! Back up, Jamal! Hide, Justin!!”

His heart beat like a heavy drum, anxiety and nervousness piling up into an ever-rising mountain. They weren’t fighting he realized -- they were surviving. He spent over ninety percent of the fight snuffing out fires rather than attacking, which left only Jamal and Justin as their damage dealers -- both of whom couldn't even approach the creature without risking their lives.

Rippling waves of light came flying off of creature’s tentacles once again, bearing on top of one another and forming a blade-shaped singularity nearly a mile long.

Cain spat out and charged Wind and Body, rushing in front of Emma and Rick who were on their knees, catching their breaths, desperately trying to stand up to no avail.

“Spell Creation--” Cain screamed out, though his voice remained snuffed out beneath the humming sound of the approaching blade. “Creation, Earth, Arcane, Frost, Aether --” upon being called, each element manifested into a palm-sized sphere before beginning to momentarily spin in a circle in front of him, dancing a silent dance. Right after, colorful beams shot toward the center, blending together and ripping out into a surging explosion that formed a transparent-seeming, purple-dyed shield.

The shield stood at nearly forty feet, over twenty wide, appearing almost like the glass. Settling it upfront, Cain spun around and charged Wind and Earth, ignoring Mana consumption, to pull everyone within the shield's defensive range. Just as he thought he'd make it, the blade ripped through, cutting off all sound from the existence, bending the shield forward yet not cracking it.

However, the blade’s remaining body bent forward for good two miles, in the process meeting a singular straggler -- Decker. The man was but a second late, yet that second determined his fate.

The blade had cut cleanly through him, splitting his body in two, distinct halves. The blood began to gush out like a river, echoing the mortifying cries of Diya and Lamia who were the closest to it, the former even passing out for a moment.

Everybody froze, blood in their veins doused in darkness and terror. Looking around, Cain realized that they were all out of commission for a moment, their minds still stuck at the gory scene in front of them.

Gnashing his teeth till they nearly cracked, he slapped his arms back, nearly dislocating his shoulders, and shattered the shield into a mass of colorful shards that began rotating around him. He charged Wind and Creation into his back, forming temporary, invisible wings as he rose up slowly into midair, the shards bending light around them rising with him.

Charging Fire and Arcane into his hands, he slammed them both forward and coalesced dozens of shards per a singular creation -- long-tipped spear, roughly seven feet long, rather thin for the make. One after another they blew forward, forcing the creature to use its tentacles to block them one after another.

“SNAP OUT OF IT!!!” he roared at the top of his voice, suffocating the creature’s bellows and hums, and ripping those still on their knees from their stupor. Light retreated into their eyes as the reality of everything sunk in, forcing several yelps out. “WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE! SNAP OUT OF IT!! EMMA, RICK, RESTORE THE FORMATION! LAMIA, WAKE DIYA THE FUCK UP, AND DO IT IMMEDIATELY! JUSTIN, JAMAL, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! ATTACK!! LOSE AN ARM IF YOU HAVE TO, BUT AT LEAST DEAL DAMAGE!!”

Whether it was the abysmally dark tone of his voice or the budding guilt, right after everyone slowly began standing up and following their instructions. In the meantime, Cain charged forward, past the front line, and toward the creature, all the while firing off sharded spears one after another.

He landed squarely nearly forty feet from the creature and immediately spun with a thunderous force, bending his leg over his body and slamming it down into the ground, having already charged Fire, Earth, Arcane, and Aether. A shower of grenade-like boulders blew out of the ground and at the creature, causing a chain-reaction of explosions that rippled across its body, forcing out a cry.

At the same time, Jamal blew past the disoriented creature’s tentacles and approached its lower body, swinging the blade with his utmost force in an upward arc, starlight beaming off like thunder off of the sharp surface, spilling out into a massive behemoth of light that shafted the creature’s flank.

Justin, similarly, flanked the other side, shadows ripping out of him and forming blade-like arrays that fanned out, digging never too deep, but enough for the creature to bleed.

Cain charged Body and Nature, strong-arming one of the creature's tentacles, veins over his body bursting one after another in a shower of blood, his teeth digging into his gums. He pulled with everything he had and managed to force the creature to stumble, though at the same time breaking his left arm completely as it dropped limply by the side of his body.

Right as it began to stumble, he charged his right arm with Creation and Arcane, a combination of milky-white and deep-purple colors coiling around his forearm like thundering dragons, roaring lowly. He snapped his arm forward, dislocating the shoulder to the abrupt movement, and sent out a bursting swath of colorful Mana that shaped into a ginormous hammer halfway between him and creature, ramming into the latter with the might of a thousand mountains.

A raucous explosion blew out, shockwave lifting Cain, Jamal, and Justin and hurling them backward like kites without strings while the creature itself heaved a good thirty feet into the air and arched back, landing squarely onto the ground from its floating position. The resulting thud shook the earth and forced those who had just begun to climb to their feet back onto the ground, reeling.

Blood gushed out from Cain's ears and nostrils, his health rapidly dropping, the sensation of tiredness overwhelming him momentarily. Taking a deep breath, he lowered his head and jabbed his teeth into his upper, right arm, clenching them until they dug into the skin and snapped back. A clanking sound boomed through his ears as his dislocated shoulder went back in place, a soul-sucking bout of pain assailing him.

He quickly charged Wind and slapped the palm of his right hand against the floor, shooting himself back up onto his feet.

“WITH ME!!” he roared at Jamal who was only now getting up himself, startling the man. The latter quickly began running, a few steps behind Cain, already charging starlight into his blade.

Cain charged Wind, Fire, Arcane, and Earth in a seismic fashion, his body resonating for a moment, his whole right leg lighting up like a lantern. He came to an abrupt halt and took a deep breath, forcibly spinning his body in a full burst of motion, heaving his right leg in a full circle and snapping it down, digging the heel into the earth.

A wave blew out like a tsunami, elemental dichotomy augmenting itself into surging chaos of energy, shapeless, formless, colorful. Jamal, almost instinctively, swung his blade forward and shot a blistering array of starlight that adjoined the wave, almost appearing to ride it, shooting off toward the creature that had just begun to stand up.

Nightmare screamed in anguish as it was hit squarely across its ‘body’, pushed back another fifty feet. At the same time, it swung its four tentacles violently and chaotically, ragging them against the ground and shooting repeated bolts, spheres, and underground rivers of Void Energy that ripped through spacetime itself on its way forward.

Cain, nearly spent, spat out a mouthful of black blood as he forced himself back up onto his feet and used the recently-created spell once again, Amnesty Shield. The sharded behemoth rose from within nothing and covered him and Jamal, while the rest of the party rapidly ran behind Emma and Rick who’d burned through their Mana reserves in a single bout to summon two shields in front of them, each standing nearly fifty feet tall.

The onslaught of Void Energy thundered against the Amnesty Shields, bending it forward in a curve as Cain pressed his right arm against the shield, holding it with all his might as the skin on it began to slowly rapture, veins popping like balloons, blood gushing out in torrents.

Emma and Rick were no better, holding the fort barely as they began to bleed from every opening on their bodies -- eyes, ears, mouth, nostrils, even fingernails. Behind them, Jim and Sam pressed their arms tightly against their backs, their bones repeatedly broken due to the sheer excess of energy and then repaired by Diya and Lamia who were burning through their Mana reserves without a stop, raging in disarray.

Cain’s arm snapped at the elbow, bending backward as the shield was pushed closer to his body. Screaming an unholy scream, he rammed his head forward and pressed the shield with his forehead, stopping it from bending further backward.

The barrage began to slow down, quantitatively, until it came to a halt, leaving behind the ruin, dust, and destruction. Amnesty Shield snapped into the countless shards, all stained red with Cain's blood, as they began to trickle down like rain.

He was still standing, his right arm extended forward lamely, snapping backward at the elbow. His forehead bled profusely, one of his eyes raptured, skin replaced with bone.

Jamal looked on in horror at the standing man in front of him, more dead than alive, a walking corpse. His limbs trembled profusely as he stood up and walked over, yet didn't dare touch him -- he looked too broken, yet was alive. At least... he was alive.

"... goddammit..." Cain mumbled, his eyes growing bloodier as they wandered to the side. He didn't look for the creature that still appeared alive, though equally on its last breath, but elsewhere, much, much further away. "Goddammit..." roughly sixty yards to his right, he saw an unmoving body lying limp on the ground, doused in the ever-growing pool of blood, an arm resting a good few feet away, cut cleanly at the shoulder.

Jamal followed Cain's gaze as his heart stopped dead in its tracks. His lips parted into an expression that had no norm -- horror, pain, anguish, regret. He fell right back down the same way he got up, his legs turning into unmoving noodles, refusing to work. There, some sixty yards in the distance, lay Justin's corpse, dab-smack in the middle of the shattered ground, and the fading shadows. He lay still, silent, and cold. Dead.