Chapter 21

Eleanor Deveena

When she first put on the skull over her head, Eleanor felt a sting in the back of her head. A dull headache permeated her brain. Her red brows furrowed as Eleanor felt unpleasant.

She felt lightheaded. The ground beneath her feet felt like feathers. Feathers...feathers…

Concentrating, she put the skull to use as she imagined herself floating upwards through the cracks of the ceiling. It wasn’t difficult at all. At first she imagined it would’ve been difficult since she never learned the magic of flight, but the skull guided her; made it easy.

Blue eyes landed on a single writhing corpse with three arms. The abomination was burning with multiple colors of mana, each latching onto its skin, burning their way through the flesh and onto the bone. Ayperos wasn’t bothered at all though.

A massive shockwave shattered the sigil and the Prince was free. She gazed at Veronica, her three remaining arms grew claws, ready to strike down the exotic-haired Valkyrie.

[Stop] was the first thought on Eleanor’s mind. The thought felt like a command that coursed through her and infected Ayperos. The Prince stopped in her tracks, completely still. As if time itself around Ayperos stopped.

[Go back to where you came from] she said. Reality around Ayperos warped into a bubble, encasing the Prince. It slowly shrank in size, crushing the walking corpse. The paralyzation wore off, leaving a panicked majin crushed inside a tiny bubble that was rapidly contracting.

“No…..no…” Her hoarse voice muttered, kneeling as the heavy order weighed against her rotting shoulders. “No...no no no no….no!”

“I won’t allow it!” She extended an arm, wrapping around Eleanor’s face, stopping her from calling out another order, and dragged her into the bubble.

Veronica charged to them, but the twist in reality disappeared too quickly. Her hands reached empty air.

Ayperos and Eleanor were between the stars, just like that tunnel Eleanor banished Michael to. “Time to meet my mistress, Eleanor! I’ve had enough playing around!”

Eleanor tried to speak, to order the abomination to let go of her, but the majin had her mouth tightly closed with an arm and slowly squeezed her head with another. She used pain to distract the mage from forming any concrete thoughts.

Then the plunging sensation just...stopped. Eleanor found herself in a field of hyacinths. There was a sweet smell of something not unlike vanilla. Not quite the smell, however. She couldn’t place it, but the scent was very familiar, almost...heartwarming.

In the corner of her eye, she saw Ayperos’ broken body contort itself upwards; the majin’s rage evident on her face. Her extended claws were about to slice Eleanor’s neck when she was suddenly...not there anymore; as though the Prince was never there in the first place.

Two very pale legs were right in front of her. Somehow, Eleanor became captivated by the fair skin that suddenly appeared. Her eyes became entranced as they noticed no imperfections. No pores. No scars. No difference in tone. Peerless in nature and design.

She looked higher up. Her eyes drank up the contours and beautiful curves of this exquisite beauty. Eleanor didn’t dare stand up as she continued to kneel in front of divine royalty. However, with a peek, she noticed her face. The Empress’ eyes were closed and she swayed like she was in a deep sleep.

Until she wasn’t.

Eleanor felt her body pushed down, her back falling against the violet flowers. Wait. This was wrong. Wrong for Eleanor. Why was she feeling this way?

Yet she felt at home. As if she hadn’t been here in such a long time. She missed the woman in front of her. Eleanor’s mind couldn’t process her face, it was all a static blur, but deep in her heart, the mage knew the belle was nothing short of ‘gorgeous’. The veil of static she wore hid her eldritch beauty. She was breathtaking. Even the word ‘beautiful’ paled in comparison to how she truly appeared. It was a kind of beauty no God or nature could ever craft.

The Empress laid on top of her, whispers signifying something and everything. Eleanor couldn’t understand her. Not really. But her breath tickled the redhead’s ear.

The divine and eldritch belle’s warm and ticklish hand danced across Eleanor’s naked belly. Her stomach twitched in delight and apprehension. She felt another hand, like a soft feather, caress her inner thigh, dangerously close to her core.

Then pain. The hand on her stomach stabbed into her but no blood came out. It was phased into her flesh, like a piece of the bewitcher in front of her was moving into her soul.

She wanted to scream, shout, and beg. But a voice crawled out of her throat. Eleanor found herself, against her will, saying, “This is how we’ll be together. Soon, we’ll be more, I promise.”

Eleanor felt something slither into her belly. Willing through the pain, she saw her stomach twitch, as if something was swimming in her flesh.

Although panic should have been her first response, Eleanor instead felt overjoyed. They were going to be together soon.

Sudden vile rose up from her throat, like rotten poison. Her stomach clenched as nausea permeated into her mouth. She coughed, spewing black goo out of her mouth.

The heavenly deity had disappeared. She looked down at her stomach; there was no wound there. The hyacinths slowly faded into white.

Her head felt fuzzy and blank, as if a big purple fog settled in her mind. She tapped her crown and said, [Take me back to my group].

In a warp, she found herself in the arms of a startled exotic-haired girl. Veronica’s tears were like crystals as they fell on her crown. The girl wrapped her arms around Eleanor tightly. She saw the cuts of muscle squeezing tightly against her frame. A faint red blush heated her cheeks.

She pushed a bit of distance between herself and Veronica then removed the crown from her head, dropping it to the floor. Eleanor smiled at her classmate before getting up, dusting her knees in the process.

Hearing footsteps behind her, she turned and noticed Elsie giving her a toothy grin. Elsie laid a hand on her shoulder before yanking it away, yelping. “Ow! Did you get a bunch of static from that or what?” She flicked her hand, shaking off the shock on her hand.

“Hands off,” Veronica said, pulling Eleanor back into her embrace. She didn’t like the fact that Elsie had laid a hand on Eleanor’s bare shoulder.

Professor Leylon went near her as well, congratulating her in defeating the Prince of Fools. Eleanor didn’t feel like she really killed the creature, however. Her memory was hazy. All she knew was somehow teleporting them to a flowery field, then banishing Ayperos again to somewhere else.

The elf, Sixty-Six huddled next to the crown on his good leg, picked it up and inspected it before placing it in his magic bag. He nodded to Leylon.

“We should get everyone to a healer, especially you three students,” Professor Leylon declared, “This place is too dangerous to stay any longer.”

“Wait, what about the other elves?” Eleanor asked, finally feeling exhaustion hit her bones. She noticed Veronica’s wings were still out; it seemed she wasn’t quite relaxed yet.

Leylon sighed. Sixty-Six answered instead, “Commander disappeared and my brothers...murdered. The creature...tore their bodies apart and threw them in a strange portal.”

“Let’s just go,” Elsie shuddered, obviously fed up with the place. It was strange for Eleanor, seeing Elsie that vulnerable.

Eleanor nodded as Leylon led the way to the portal.

The group finally left the shadow dimension. Light greeted them. Miasma no longer hung above them, so they were finally able to breathe easy, or at least, easier.

Eleanor felt a great pang of guilt in her heart. Although her group did find a great relic, they lost too many people along the way. It was a miracle that only Sanctuary personnel perished.

Miracle was clearly the wrong word, Eleanor thought spitefully at her own self-preserving thought process. She had been pushing the Academy into accepting her proposition to head to the Harpocrates Caverns. While at first she was ecstatic about it being accepted...if she knew about the end result of the trip, she would have never thought about coming here.

They exited the Caverns. There was a hidden agreement between the group. No one was going to do any more exploration. As Eleanor walked through the seemingly quiet halls, a part of her both wondered and dreaded the possibility of ever coming back here again. The king would definitely want to know about what she learned about this place.

The sun was just setting, casting a beautiful haze of red and orange across the ocean.

Thankfully, the ship was still parked in the waters, as if the chaos that happened within those walls was just a nightmare.

BOOM!

A huge quake shook the sand beneath them. Turning, Eleanor saw a building collapse behind her. It was the one that held the Anomaly. The collapse came from the inside, as if something thrashed about, destroying the seams of said building.

A massive roar reverberated through the air. It was a distorted scream of a woman mixed with a beast. Flying up in the air was a mutated bundle of flesh and bone in the form of a dragon, descending rapidly. Its weight created a vortex of sand and corrupted mana.

“How dare you!” The voice, eerily like Ayperos’, shrieked. Its countless dull and mismatched eyes gouged in rotten skin focused on Eleanor. Killing intent reeked in the air, so much so that Elsie couldn’t help but wrinkle her nose in disgust.

Ayperos’ wings were made out of demon arms, each having rotted long ago to the point where only the barest of flesh remained. Back in the Caverns, Ayperos had merely toyed with her prey, not taking them seriously. She was like a lion poking a frightened rabbit.

Now she was furious. All that remained of her reasoning was the desire to destroy. She readied to pounce, the air around her swirling like a tornado, funneled by black particles of magic, mana, and sand.

Countless footsteps shuffled in the sand. Child-like distorted cries echoed like a symphony. Something brushed past Eleanor, nearly knocking her over as she bumped into Veronica’s shoulder.

An army of sirens emerged from the crimson-colored ocean, each of them heading straight to the Prince. They lunged and through brute force and number, tore through the vortex and latched onto Ayperos. "Of course you'd interfere, Maw! Get your rabid kids off of me!" She screamed.

Eleanor was shocked. These creatures that had attacked their ship had been completely ignoring her group and were solely attacking the beast. Leylon shook her out of her daze as he yelled out, “Let’s use this distraction! Head to the ship, now!”

Veronica held onto Eleanor’s waist and let Sixty-Six onto her back. She flew upwards and cut the distance to the Vadstena, while Elsie and Leylon used strengthening magic to catch up.

She used her wings to ignore the need for a ladder, dropping Eleanor and Sixty-Six onto the ship, then flew down and carried her father and Elsie.

As she landed and dropped off the last two of the group, the ocean shook, waves grew farther and larger. Sixty-Six yelled at Leylon to help him get to the captain’s room.

Eleanor inadvertently gazed over the waters and her jaw dropped. Tendrils, the size of towers, slammed against Ayperos. Each tentacle oozed black goo. She saw the infernal liquid drop on the Prince, seeping into her skin. She screamed in pain. Eleanor couldn’t tear her sights away as she saw transparent gas exude out of Ayperos’ skin, as if she was being exorcised.

The Vadstena started to steer away from the Red Zone, finally escaping the deadly trap known as the Harpocrates Caverns.

HARPOCRATES ARC END