A blinding light illuminated the hall as the beam fired from her hand showered the monster. It screeched in pain, taking several steps back as it tried its best to block with its many arms the light coming out of Eleanor’s hand.
Eleanor slowly stood back up, pushing the light forward and into the monster, whose screech turned into a woman’s high-pitched scream. The monster’s body started burning and melting away, with the arms losing flesh at first, and then bone. As Eleanor continued to push, the steps of the monster backing away started getting desperate, and the woman’s scream turned into a bassy, monstrous one, which then was followed by the mix of all of the sounds it had made before.
Eventually, the light coming out of Eleanor’s hand subsided, leaving nothing more than a thin white line in the air that quickly disappeared. Eleanor fell to one knee, heaving heavily as she looked up at the monster. The floating black hand on her side disintegrated into shadow pieces in the air, and her actual left arm was left radiating heat and steam from it.
The monster continued to scream, scrambling backwards as pieces of the body fell to the ground like decaying meat. Legs fell in piles of charred meat that quickly stopped moving, and the woman’s face melted to the ground as the many arms tried to contain the destruction of the body.
At one point, as it was retreating back into the dark hall from where it came, the top half of the body that had the shape of a woman’s torso fell down, leaving behind the spider-like body that spasmed for a moment until it stopped moving. The lower half tried with its hands to crawl away, with the pained voice of the monster resounding with every difficult movement, until it, like the rest of the body, finally stopped moving.
There remained nothing more than piles of bones, pieces of meat, and charred limbs at the end of it all, with a foul stench quickly filling the hall. It was once all movement stopped that I saw the great amount of power that composed this monster leave the body and flow into Eleanor.
“Ugh…” she groaned, unaware about the power that was going into her, since normal mortals in this world couldn’t see that flow of power.
Once it was completely inside of her, she took a deep breath, stood back up, and gripped her left arm with her right hand. She looked at the remains of the monster with furrowed eyebrows and refused to approach it.
I also had my eyebrows furrowed—at least, as best as this cat-like body could. However, I wasn’t looking at the monster. I was looking at Eleanor. That light spell that she used to defeat that monster was the same kind of magic that the Goddess taught to the people of this world.
Using God-like magic wasn’t something that mortals should do, mostly because it could destroy the user of the spell if the body wasn’t molded to carry that power. It could both drain the body completely of magic and tear it to pieces in the process. The followers of that Goddess would spend their lives trying to learn how to use her spells, and forging their body to withstand the explosive release of magic, but…
Eleanor wasn’t trained to do that. Just the fact that she was able to gather her power, launch such an attack, and be left standing was amazing. Though, looking at her steaming left arm, it seems like most of the damage that a spell like that would’ve done was absorbed by it.
It also bothered me that she used one of that Goddess’ spells… But then again, she was part of the same Empire that believed in her, so at some point, she saw part of their teachings.
“Urhg…” she painfully groaned, turning to look at her left arm, before looking up at the ceiling. “Thank you, Goddess.”
How bothersome.
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It was while she was looking at the ceiling and me glaring at her, that a bright, golden light illuminated the dark place from where the monster stepped out. Both of us turned our attention to it. Eleanor stood prepared for whatever was coming—despite still holding her left arm—and I simply tried to have a better look at what was coming next.
The light dimmed slightly after a moment, and it allowed us to properly see what was making it. A large, rounded shield with several golden decorations on its edges was glowing. It was standing on a pedestal, surrounded by nothing more than the deformed, mangled, and dead bodies of knights, mages, and people of all kinds of appearances, including demonkind.
Eleanor took a couple of steps towards it, but as soon as she did, the shield’s glow got even stronger, then concentrated on itself, and fired a bright beam, going over our heads and hitting the rounded wall that stood in this large hall. The intricate decorations of the shield were engraved on the large wall, leaving on it a mirrored pattern of the shield.
After burning the wall, the shield stopped glowing and the hall that it resided turned back to darkness, hiding once more the many bodies inside.
There was a swallowing sound from Eleanor as she looked between the door and the dark hall as she considered what to do. She might find things of use if she went into the dark hall, but the same monster from before might just pop again to fight, and she was currently in no condition to face that monster again.
Though, Eleanor didn’t have to consider for much longer as from the glowing decoration on the edges of the large rock door a loud clicking sound could be heard, followed by a rumbling noise. She finally let go of her left arm and reached for her sword, which was still on the ground a couple of steps away from her.
Once she pointed the sword to the door, it started moving to the side just like a wheel. The golden decorations were swallowed by the wall as the door moved aside and we were able to peer beyond what it was hiding.
A brightly illuminated passage opened for us. It wasn’t quite as wide the path we took to get here, with torches on the walls clearly illuminated both the floor and what was at the end of it all, something we had seen a couple of times already.
Another dark veil, just like the one we used to get into this whole place.
Eleanor looked at it for a moment, turning to look behind at the dark zone that had the golden shield, then at the paths that connected to this area, and finally, back down at me. “Should we… Go that way?”
I tilted my head to one side and then the other, hoping to let her know that I didn’t know what we should do. She appeared to not understand what I meant, so I walked closer to her and sat by her legs, looking up at her face. “Kyun.”
“Ah, so it’s up to me, is it?”
I nodded in response. Eleanor looked away from me and in the direction of the newly opened path. “Okay,” she said, and put away the sword on her side.
She took one final breath and started making her way to the dark veil. I followed behind her, and despite the large area we were in, we reached the path behind the large rock door quickly. There was an indentation in the ground from the movement of the large door, where Eleanor looked both ways. On one side, there was nothing more than the place where the door connected before, and on the other one was just the door itself. She didn’t linger there and hopped over the short gap. I did as she did, and continued walking until the end of the path, where the dark veil stood.
“Okay,” Eleanor said with a worried tone. “We’re going to the next place. Goddess, please, let this be the exit.”
She closed her eyes, tightened her lips in an anxious frown, clenched her fists a couple of times, and then, looked at the veil with determined eyes. She glanced down at me, and I nodded to let her know that I would follow. She nodded back, and with one final breath, she stepped into the dark veil, disappearing just like the last time.
Before I stepped onto it to go after her, I noticed something moving in the large hall where she fought with the monster, so I looked in that direction. The same blob from before was dragging its way into the hall from the path we didn’t take.
Since the hall didn’t have as many pillars, it was forced to drag itself by crawling on the ground, until it reached the remains of the defeated monster. Just like it did the wolves, it opened the large mouth, and it absorbed the remains, before dragging its way to the few remaining bodies of the hall, repeating the same thing.
However, it refused to go into the dark passage from which the monster walked out, choosing instead to continue into the path that we used to get there. It stopped momentarily by the edge of my vision, looked at me, and then continued dragging itself away.
What an odd monster that was… But I didn’t have the tools to know exactly what it was doing or thinking, so once it was out of my sight, I turned around and jumped into the dark veil, disappearing into it like Eleanor did.