The dark sky shattered.

Pieces of impossible crystal fractured and rained down into infinity. The chimera grappled into the wall with ease, their everchanging body allowing for maximum efficiency. Optimal solutions.

They didn’t know how to go back to the prison, they had been teleported out of it by the bird statue into the soil of the place the fairies called the Barren Lands.

They, unfortunately, noticed this when they arrived at the spot where they had excavated to freedom, only to find more dirt below. No sight of the prison.

But they felt it.

They felt the Death lingering on the Barren Lands. The prison had to be close.

Shifting their body into a perfected tracker, the chimera looked for Death.

Death was a curious thing. They had only known death since the very begging, but at the same time, they were incapable of it. Death, much like Life, was tangible, detectable.

At vertiginous speeds, the chimera sped across the Barren Lands. In her wake decimating the local fauna adapted to the extreme conditions to get more knowledge on their surprising biomass.

Their thoughts were vague but direct. Their actions were fast but precise.

The moons couldn’t even equal them in speed as they rushed for the vortex of Death, hidden in a commonplace location for the Barren Lands, and entered without a shed of hesitation.

They broke through the prison’s darkened ceiling.

Alta breathed as their memories finally caught up with their thoughts. The chimera finally understood what it meant to assimilate multiple shapes into one, to turn their body into an abomination.

Ruthless efficiency at the cost of straight thought.

A worthy cost.

They thought as their body throbbed like a heart. Sustaining this much biomass was complicated, especially since it hadn’t been completely assimilated into their body.

With a thousand eyes, Alta looked at the prison. It remained the same as it did since they left. Then a few eyes twisted to look at the dark sky the prison had for a ceiling. Even if they had just broken it with overwhelming force, it was already healed.

It didn’t take much for the tangible blue light to make its appearance as Alta gathered her thoughts.

Their mind fell like an endless ocean of sludge, every coherent thought requiring a lot of energy. They trod slowly, every step with care so as to not distract themselves into mindlessness.

It was difficult.

Alta would have never thought that maintaining her own lucidity could take this much work. They slowly descended along the prison walls searching for their objective.

The chimera had to go up to escape from the prison, so it was obvious they had to go down to meet the warden of wardens. The being that ruled over the undead legion.

Death.

Their arthropod legs clawed on the prison’s stone wall with a solid grip. The chimera descended in a vertical walk, one step at a time.

As more time happened, more and more light blue light gathered around them. Yet they descended, nonetheless. Unlike before, they weren’t starving. Now they were filled to the brim with biomass, having more than enough to waste to stave off the warmth-leeching light.

With their claws, they cut the palm of one of their many hands, blood spilling out with high pressure. It didn’t take long for the fire to appear, healing the wound but most importantly, threatening the light.

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Alta’s red flames were of Life.

The light blue tangible light was of Death.

They didn’t know how they knew that, or even how they comprehended it, but they knew. It was instinctual. Two forces that didn’t necessarily clash, but also didn’t respect each other.

The chimera continued cutting her arms as her legs pounced deeper. The fire kept the light away, but even then, they felt their warmth seeping away. The light stole their life, yes, but now it wasn’t the light that was threatening their body temperature.

They were deep down, far more than they had once been. Even if the dark void before them showed no end, it felt less infinite than before. But most importantly, it was colder.

The light wasn’t currently able to leech her warmth, it was the decreasing temperatures of the prison. That told Alta a very important piece of information, she was getting closer.

At one point, the stone walls became rougher. They lost their bricked pattern and changed into a more cavern-like structure. Their legs dug without difficulty. Even in their scaled-up proportions, insect body parts were incredibly efficient. Their legs were composed of a handful of them, too many for their afflicted mind to count, and they didn’t even know most of their names to remember them.

Alta began hearing noises. Not of their crumbling body, nor of the cacophony of tormented souls.

No. The heavy sounds were familiar and hateful. Those were the steps of wardens. A lot of them. Far more than they had ever heard.

And they were close.

Clink.

An almost metallic sound resounded on the cavern as her chitin-covered leg impacted with something. Not the wall, but a floor.

It was all dark. They hadn’t even noticed they already were at the bottom of the abyss. With a jump, they separated from the wall like a loaded spring, flying tens of meters away in a single movement.

When their body landed, it was met by a cushioned fall and a wet sound. With the eyes on their belly, Alta looked below them. There the corpse of a mutilated warden lay unmoving. A moment later the darkness surrounding them became less oppressive and revealed the horizon.

A blue light tainted the ceiling as if it were a fake sky. But that didn’t matter. An army awaited them.

Hundreds, if not thousands stood before them, weapons drawn and ready for battle.

The chimera’s myriad mouths curved into a smile.

It wasn’t a killing squad to hunt them down.

It was a field blooming with biomass ready to be reaped.

The wardens didn’t allow Alta the first move, as they charged into the tens toward them. Unlike the humans who formed their body, the wardens were faster, stronger, and infinitely more numerous.

The first two wardens got a hit on the chimera, but having learned from their mistakes, their chitin armor now worked properly and rebounded the undead’s weapons.

The rest of the attackers of the first wave fell as Alta’s claws penetrated them. A single claw, that’s all that it took. The ebony protuberance infiltrated their bodies, growing and assimilating their biomass into the chimera, and ultimately exploding in a thousand needles.

Exploding... The visceral image gave the abomination an idea.

They raised eight corpses of the wardens they had impaled. They were unmoving, having died twice already, and covered in more needles than a hedgehog. That’s where it ended, they would either retire the bodies or absorb them into their biomass.

But upon seeing the endless army, they came up with a better plan.

The chimera threw the eight corpses up high into the fake sky by cutting the claws that connected them to them.

Then, as the wardens reached the zenith of their flight, their corpses busted into gore, the needles they contained being shot everywhere.

The cries of pain were instantaneous, and the chimera rejoiced on it.

That didn’t mean the “living” wardens stayed still, on the contrary, now they charged with renewed vigor. Foolishly dotting them with more biomass and weapons.

More and more came in endless waves.

The undead soldiers’ axes impacted the chimera’s insect armor, and whilst most rebounded and promptly killed, some managed to penetrate into the legs.

But cutting one out wasn’t enough to take the multilegged behemoth down. Flames spurted off the wounds, incinerating the closest wardens, the cacophony of the souls muted by the painful screams of the soldiers.

By the time a new body made its way to Alta, they had already regenerated their leg, and it became ever-so-tougher.

The dead didn’t stop coming.

It didn’t matter how many the chimera slaughtered or consumed; the prey continued throwing to their jaws. Infinite biomass, yet the army managed their job, keeping the chimera away from their objective.

Their hunt.

Alta took a step forward, and the sound of unnumerable bodies crunched bodies under their legs reached their ears.

Every step was hard fought as they didn’t stop coming. But Alta didn’t stop. Not moving, not losing their consciousness to the bloodshed and carnage.

More and more biomass were assimilated into their body and unconscious and instinctive action. Yet the body didn’t grow any longer, control and mastery were slowly being achieved.

As more death littered the underworld, more Alta became acquainted with the whisper of Life.

A blade cut shallowly on their underbelly.

In a blind rage, the chimera threw that warden into the sky and a giant maw shifted on top of them where they ate it alive. Eating was a quicker way to assimilate biomass. And a more ruthless way to kill.

Alta inspected inside their body where Icasondra’s dead body rested. The body was warm as the chimera had inserted blood vessels to keep the heart pumping to avoid any necrotic decay. But what mattered most was that it was unscathed. The wild swing hadn’t hurt her.

With steeled determination, the chimera massacred forward. Advancing ever-so-slowly towards Death itself.