Monarch of Darkness, Arsene

Blood was spilling from my nose and mouth under the enormous pressure of the two crosses. I Pierced my sword through the soil to hold my own against the fearsome winds and bent my knees to keep low like I had seen those mortals do long ago during a tornado, with one arm on my sword and another on a wide tree that appeared to exist for countless cycles. I held on for dear life.

I hadn’t known what was happening, but the skies were bleeding, taking on a glow of gold and scarlet black, the clouds were parting, and a mist was approaching. An eerie mist that made every cell, atom, and electron in me wishes to flee. My blood had all but begun to race backward in fear.

“What is going on!” I stammered, vomiting uncontrollably. A fountain of blood spewed from my lips. The pressure was increasing, and if I were to live. To survive, I needed to flee. Centering my balance the best I could, I didn’t hesitate. I bolted in the opposite direction of these two entities that seemed to stand a the zenith of power.

Unhooking my sword, I whipped past thee’s and whatnot, alongside the whimpering cries of other abyssal beasts. Also sensing their destruction, their extinction, I followed after them. I’d no other options. I didn’t know the layout of this land, and monsters’ senses and instincts were far above the level of most humanoids, especially feral one whose mind was bred from nature.

I’d even heard stories about some monsters who had gained sentience after gaining human form, claiming their instincts had dulled after gaining awareness. Something that should have been the opposite, as, with the rise in power, even we felt our instincts become enhanced and grow into something I could never dream of. Nevertheless, all of the beastkin I knew had all agreed about the dullness of sentience, of cultivation. While it was a blessing, it was also a cage that only those born of the wild could grasp. It was a strange phenomenon many simply could not understand, myself included. Not that it mattered now.

My eyes narrowed, and I glanced back at the mist expanding, hissing with untold danger. I thought I was looking at the face of death—a great exterminating hand.

Reaching into myself to my soul, where my Soulforce laid dormant, I pulled, and at my beckon, my muscles tensed with a myriad of divinity, and under my direction, I pierced forth.

I had been getting stronger each day, but ever since I came to this realm, my speed, while still the same, didn’t seem as dramatic as before. It felt compressed to fit the Abyssal Laws, while for the life of me, I could not break through the sound barrier despite being capable of moving faster than the speed of light in the bed of chaos. It was annoying.

Racing forward with all my might, I glanced back, and my heart throbbed at the mist slowly expanding, pressing forth, the hairs neck upon my began to rise.

Gritting my teeth at the expansive mist moving faster than I was, a ripple of blood energy began to race through my pores as I readied myself to burn my core blood when something strange appeared within my line of sight.

My feet paused as space began to bend, but before I could see anything. A blur whipped over me, shattering hundreds of bones. Blood exploded from my mouth and eyes. Pain flooded my mind, but I held on. Barely releasing a cry, I bit my tongue and turned to glare at the entity.

“Sorry.” Arsene grimly declared, his entire face scarred beyond recognition, a deep black, but those injuries were slowly healing before my very eyes. At the same time, Ty sat behind him, uninjured but a deadly pale.

He whipped me over the edge of his bike just behind Ty, and before a question could be asked, the cries of the engine bellowed, tearing past the hundreds of abyssal monsters. 𝒷ℯ𝓭𝓷ℴ𝓋𝓮𝓵.𝒸ℴ𝓶

“How long have you been here?” He grimly asked.

“Huh?”

“HOW LONG!” he howled, and I held on, feeling the deadly winds cutting across my arms.

“A few weeks, possibly a month!” I said, and a bit of relief raced over his lips. “What is going on.”

“Good, so only a few seconds pass in real-time. Good. Ty! How are you doing?” He shouted, and the little girl peered her eye up at me, wet with fatigue.

“Ty, sleepy!”

“Then Sleep! I’ll wake you up! When we are free or if danger strikes,” he remarked, and I felt his intent fall upon me. Despite not looking at me, I felt my life in his very hands at this moment.

“What do you see? Past the Mist? Look hard.”

My heart dipped at his command, but as I turned to look, the hovering bike pierced into the skies reaching high into the cloudless skies, tainted gold and scarlet. My mind shook, but through the darkness, through the mist that seemed to carry laws of every possible nature, I glared at the armies of each opposing side.

Heaven and Hell.

Dear Lord, has it already started? So soon?

My fingers clenched, using my Heavenly Qi to hold my broken bones together, I focused the qi into my eyes to get a better look. Where a dark-skinned demon whose hair fell to his feet stood, carrying a staff that appeared blurred, causing my skin to feel like millions of insects were crawling through my veins. Disgust clung to life, but I dared not look away. Holding onto a demonically obsidian ax that seemed larger than him with his lean figure, I shifted my attention to the seven arc angels seemingly untouched by creation.

“Their forces are gathering, and quickly.” I relayed to Arsene.

“Shit.” He swore, pulling out a holocube, where the hologram of Lilith quickly appeared, ” You ok?”

“Yeah. Avar and the others are all with me. This is what happens when you break formation. How was Subspace?”

“Two thousand years of trying not to die,” he responded. “Ty saved me. I’m sending you all some coordinates. Head there when you get the chance.” He said and turned back to me, his handsome features tarnished by chared flesh where bone seemed to show, ” I found Cleo, so this is one win. Let’s hope the others are not so—”

A massive explosion of heavenly and demonic essence rippled through the skies, and from the center of the clash, I saw an immense black hole swirling with its devouring glow.

Fuck Me.”