Chapter 10

Shades’ eyes were drawn to Mel once again. She was walking in front of him, taking a break from flying, for a change.

They’d been walking for what felt like days. The winding tunnel didn’t seem to have an end. Sloping downwards and upwards, from left to right. Sometimes the floor was rough, like something bulldozed through, other times it was smooth.

If whoever made this had the intention was making people insane, they would have done an excellent job. Shades knew he’d go crazy, if Mel wasn’t there. Every time his thoughts spiralled out of control, he’d just look at her and they would refocus.

‘Is this why champions get companions in the first place?’ He wondered. ‘To keep them from going insane?’ The average person wouldn’t be able to survive these ordeals so, Shades guessed, unless the champions teamed up together, they would need something to ground them, something to keep them on the straight and narrow. ‘Or am I the only one that got someone?’ He’d had those thoughts as well. What if there were people out there that had gone mad due to isolation and turned into killing machines.

He’d found it slightly suspicious that, in the two months they’d been travelling, they hadn’t found any other people like himself.

“Hey, Shades?”

Mel’s voice broke him out of his musings, and he found that he’d practically been staring at her ass this entire time.

She looked behind her as she walked.

“You alright there?” She asked with a mischievous smile, and he knew she’d caught him.

“Y-yeah.” He shook his head. “Sorry, I was thinking about something.”

“I can see that.” She lifted an eyebrow, still smiling.

“Well you try and not to stare when walking behind perfection.” He muttered, looking ahead.

She seemed surprise at that, her eyes wide. She then laughed and turned around, shaking her head, tabling the conversation for a later time.

Not long after, as they travelled in companionable silence, they spotted light coming from up ahead.

“Finally.” They both said, picking up their pace.

The tunnel opened up into an enormous cavern. Hundreds of feet wide and stretching so high into the distance, they could barely see the ceiling, even with their enhanced eyes. There were hundreds of holes into the side of the cavern’s walls. Like a huge beehive. They didn’t see any noticeable exit. Near the top and exactly in the middle of the cavern was a circular platform, held there by four bridges, connecting to four different holes.

“I’m guessing we need to get up there.” Shades said.

“Do we just choose a hole and hope it leads to the correct one?” Mel asked. “It would take us forever to search all of them.”

“Hmm… Why don’t we just climb the walls?” Shades wondered.

“Of course, why didn’t I think of that?” Mel said sarcastically, smiling at him from the corner of her eyes. “Aren’t there rules to these things? Ways we’re supposed to complete the tasks?”

“Probably.” Shades replied. “But where’s the fun in that.” He remarked, and walked to the centre of the room.

Throughout their discussion, they’d stayed at the exit of the tunnel. Not really entering the large chamber. Now Shades strolled to the centre, expecting something to happen when they finally started the challenge.

He wasn’t disappointed.

A sound started up, as if something was being dragged across the ground. Something big. Bones started rattling.

Out of one of the exits, a huge skeletal snake slithered out. About as wide as the average height of a man and tens of feet long, it slowly slid closer. It reared itself up and flared its hood. Bones stretched to either side of its neck, below its head, and began that rattling noise. It almost looked like it was growing more and more agitated as it slid closer.

Shades saw it preparing to strike and gathered his power, increasing his speed to what he thought was necessary to deal with it.

‘Doesn’t seem too fast.’ He thought.

Shades was surprised when it finally did strike. Its speed far faster than it appeared at first. He just barely dodged out of the way, one of the snake’s fangs practically grazing his arm.

“Careful Mel, it’s faster than it looks.”

“No, really?” Came the reply.

‘Should’ve never taught her how to be sarcastic.’ He grumbled to himself.

The snake didn’t give him much time to relax as it reared itself again and struck over and over. It couldn’t correct itself very much while striking, but its speed was deceptive for its size.

“Hey, Mel?” He called.

“Hmm?” She replied from where she was casually floating, fiddling with her hair.

“Anytime you want to, you know, help out…” He rolled under another strike. “Just jump in whenever you want.”

“Why don’t you just finish it off yourself?” She asked, now on her stomach, watching him dodge the snake’s giant fangs.

“I don’t want to waste too much energy increasing my speed more than I need to.” The ground was now becoming pockmarked with small craters. “We don’t know what else this place has in store for us.”

“Oh, very well.” Her hair began flowing faster as she prepared herself, aiming at a weak point. When she was ready, she shot toward the thing’s spine. Reaching out with a single claw, she severed it where two bones joined, at its thinnest point, practically cutting the snake in half.

The upper half of the snake fell to the ground, it seemed to writhe, rolling around, bones clacking. Shades almost felt sorry for it, not being able to rise itself up anymore without the help of its lower half. Just as he was about to turn around and start his climb, the snake… changed.

Its many rib bones merged into two large, bone arms, ending with three-fingered clawed hands. It rose itself up on its hands, the rest of its upper half still sliding on the ground. Now looking like a huge front half of a skeletal lizard, it reared its head, rattling its hood bones as it prepared to pounce.

“Now who’s making things worse?” He narrowed his eyes at Mel who shrugged innocently.

He jumped over its head as it tried to pounce on him, stabbing his claws into the front of its skull and dragging his hand over it as it sailed by under him, cutting open its head. He noticed its skull was probably as hard a steel as his claws found more resistance than normal bone would’ve given.

It collapsed behind him, and struggled to bring itself upright again, but only for a moment as it then fell over and didn’t rise again. A strange black sludge seeped out of the wound on its head. Tilting his head curiously, Shades approached it and noticed how the tar-like sludge ate at the skull like acid. Soon enough, in barely a minute, it dissolved the entire skeleton, leaving nothing behind but a small puddle of sludge. The sludge then moved to the lower half of the snake as if drawn to it and devoured those bones as well. This time, there was no more sludge left.

“Its own cleaning facility.” Shades muttered, slightly amused. “I guess no one really wants bones all over the place. Wonder what happened to the piles of Reaver bones in the other room…”

His pondering was cut short as more dragging noises were heard.

This time, two skeletal snakes slithered out of their holes.

“Of course.” Shades sighed, looking at Mel. “C’mon, let’s not waste our time.” He took a running jump to the wall of far side of him. He kept jumping from one wall to the other until he was about halfway between the ground and the platform.

Grabbing a hold of the wall, he hung there and looked down to the ground. The snake were nowhere to be seen, supposedly returning to their holes.

“Well that wasn’t too-“

“Shades look out!” Mel shouted, but was just slightly too late.

Shades cried out as he felt a sharp stinging pain in his hand. Looking back at it, he saw it was impaled with a thick black bone claw. He couldn’t pull away without his hand getting ripped off. A sound was heard from the hole next to him, and he saw what the claw was attached to.

A long, sharp beak, gnashed its teeth at him, exposing its triangular jaw with wickedly sharp, black fangs, biting air repeatedly as it neared his face. Its claw was attached to a leathery winged limb. Just as it was about to bring its other claw around to stab him in the face, Mel appeared. She cut off its arm just at its started swinging.

Getting over his shock, he severed the arm holding him in place and ripped the claw out of his hand. The creature didn’t seem to notice and reared its head to take a bite out of him instead. Mel didn’t seem like that idea very much as she dug her claws into where she figured its brain was, causing it to tumble out of the hole like a limp sack of leathery bones.

Looking at the falling creature brought their attention the rest of the cavern. The same type of bone-like bird started crawling out of the hundreds of holes.

“I guess that answers the question of it being too easy.” He said, flexing his hand to check if it was working properly after his regenerative powers went to work, while holding onto the wall with his other.

The bird creatures started circling the chamber, some of them diving at him at incredible speeds. He had to increase his speed phenomenally to be able to keep up and twist out of the way of their sharp talons.

“They’re pretty fast, Mel.” He looked at her, she was still standing in the hole. “Get ready, this is gonna get dicey.”

She nodded, getting ready. Shades prepared himself, gathering his powers.

He leapt up from the wall he was on, grabbing the wall and pulling himself up. Practically leaping up the wall, he was making good progress, Mel flying next to him, keeping the creatures off of him, but the birds were diving at him more and more, the closer he got to the platform. Fairly soon, even with Mel’s speed, she couldn’t keep up with them and Shades needed to dodge more and more, delaying him even further and increasing the chances of one of them getting a lucky strike. He was burning a lot of energy to keep up with them, his reserves only at a little over halfway now.

He pulled Mel into an empty hole to get them some reprieve from the violent onslaught. They were both breathing heavily, Shades quickly recovering due to his red energy but Mel taking a while longer to get her breath back.

Shades eyed the flying creatures.

“What are you thinking?” Mel asked, seeing his look.

He smiled, “You’re not going to like it.”

“Do I ever?” She replied.

He snorted, “Right.” After a moment longer of staring at the flying shapes, he continued. “Climb on my back.”

She raised an eyebrow, but got on his back. Locking her arms around his neck and legs around his waist.

“Hold tight.” He said. “Don’t be afraid of hurting me.” He grinned.

She snorted, “Me, hurt you? Please…” She held on tighter nonetheless, hooking her arms under his and around his chest, her legs around his waist. She would have crushed a normal human with the strength she holding onto him with.

She couldn’t resist, however, with her mouth so near his neck. She sank her teeth into his shoulder, simply savouring his blood and enjoying the feeling it gave her, rolling it around her tongue and inadvertently licking his shoulder in the process.

Shades was having a hard time focussing on the task at hand with the extremely distracting presence behind him and the euphoric sensations she was causing.

“Mel.” He managed to groan. “Not exactly the right time.”

She moaned sadly as she finally released him, licking his shoulder for any stray drops she might have missed.

“So what’s this plan of yours?” She asked, leaning her head against his back.

After shaking his head and reaffirming his reasons for stopping her, he finally managed to think about what his plan actually was.

This caused him to smile as he gathered his power around him again.

“Whatever happens… Don’t let go.” He replied.

Taking a running leap, he shot out of the hole, his arms outstretched. He didn’t really need to aim, there were so many of the things. Near the middle of the cavern, he finally managed to catch one of the huge birds. Land on it, was probably a better description, as he lowered his weight to almost nothing when he reached it. Mel’s extra weight was barely noticeable.

In practically one motion, he kicked off of it, shooting to the next bird, and the next and so on and so forth. He avoided most of the birds diving for him through his shear speed, jumping from one bird to the next. The creatures practically dived each other in their need to get to him. Those he couldn’t avoid, he deflected, twisting his body this way and that, or simply cut through them. Even using them as springboards to get to the next.

His green energy was burning up at a phenomenal rate, he couldn’t keep it up too much longer. Already, it only had about a third left.

He focused his mind, concentrating as hard as he could as he tried to use less energy for dodging. It reached a point where he practically only relied on instinct, moving and shaping his body to the rhythm of the carnage around him. He opened his senses to their maximum. Becoming as if in a trance. Using just that little bit of energy that much more efficiently. Burning up less and less but using it to its utmost. He became less of a blur of a speeding arrow and more like wind, flowing around his enemies. Using his abilities just a little bit better, just a little bit less, becoming one with the Etherea. He didn’t even seem to land on the birds anymore, barely touching one as he went to the next. Always going up. Always progressing. The only sound, his heartbeat. The only touch, his breath flowing smoothly through his lungs.

At this moment he wasn’t death incarnate, he dimly realised. He was barely even there. He barely touched the world. He wasn’t a storm of destruction. He was… His eyes lost their red colour and became the black of the midnight sky, the outline of his skin became indistinct. …a shadow.