"Claudia, the darkness is spreading rapidly. We may need to reconsider our strategy and seek the Witch Queen's assistance." A woman, almost as tall as Claudia urged from the shadows of the underground room, her voice tinged with urgency.
Claudia, undeterred by her fellow witch's concerns, commanded the doors to be opened. She was determined to cast a new power seal on the anomaly site. Little did she know, the power they had been containing for centuries was about to break free on that fateful day.
"We must not fear for this all within standard operational capacity! We are witches! Second to none! We must never let this raging power out of its containment, for it will bring forth the death of many!" The doors to the sealed room soon opened, and just as Claudia prepared to cast another seal on top of the current one, the old seal began to break away.
"Claudia! You have to come back! This power! It's spiking!" The assistant screamed, but of course, since the sealed room tended to be extremely loud, the young Claudia didn't hear the warnings as she walked forward into a deadly bomb.
"Bend the laws of nature and cast a new seal to replace the old one that's giving away already! Let this seal be! UH?" Claudia soon noticed the seal breaking apart right before her eyes as she cast the new one on top, but just before she could finish, the old seal gave away.
A burst of darkness rushed out from the hole in the ground, quickly forcing Claudia to cast the seal in the open air. The seal soon expanded to cover the immediate space between the entrance of the broken seal and the doors to leave. "AAHH!!! MAXIMIZE MAGIC! Tsk dang it, that will only stop it for a little longer."
The new seal soon began to break directly in front of Claudia's face; she still struggled to realize just how difficult the situation was until the seal started to leak, forcing her outside the room through the gate. The power that had been kept away from the world was about to burst forth, but even so, the witches kept their cool.
"Seems like you blew it, Claud; I bet the witch queen will be disappointed." One of the researchers murmured behind Claudia's back instead of doing something productive like running out of there to call for the witch queen.
"This won't hold it for long; find the Witch Queen and tell her the seal is about to collapse." Claud, being the collected type, ignored the insulting comments and instead kept her focus on the current situation, gathering her wits to take a fast-paced decision within seconds.
"What'll happen to you?" Another researcher asked while preparing for immediate departure to look for the help of the Witch Queen, the only one who could maybe do something about the impending problem at hand.
"Until she arrives, we are the last line of defense." Nero, one of Claudia's best friends, responds as she throws her power into the gate seal to help with the containment effort, and a small group of witches leave to the surface to look for the Witch Queen.
"That gate, how long do you think it will hold?" Nero asks Claudia as more and more witches join the defensive line, throwing everything they have toward the receding seal.
"That depends on us," Claud responds as she leads the main effort to keep the disaster at bay. None could've expected that the time required to get the Witch Queen there would take so long, forcing many witches to drain themselves and collapse completely. Hours passed by, and one by one, the count of witches diminished until only Nero and Claud remained.
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"Nero, it might be wise for you to leave now that you still can. I can hold it alone."
"I'm here with you until the end, Claud; you know I can't let you keep all the glory to yourself!" Nero expressed her sincere views even as the situation grew direr by the second, as both showed incredible amounts of exhaustion and were themselves at the point of collapse.
Suddenly, after many hours of waiting, the one and only true Witch Queen finally arrived. The tall, mighty Witch Queen, whom everyone respected and held in high regard, finally arrived with a grim look on her. The Witch Queen looked to be concerned with the situation yet still walked quite calmly toward the breaking seal.
"My thanks to you all; I will take it from here." The Queen commanded power with her very words as she kept her calm even in the face of evident destruction and power so intense it knocked out many high-ranking witches within minutes of the encounter.
"Sure, you don't need a hand?" Nero, being always the polite type, offered the Queen help, knowing full well that she would deny it as she wouldn't need anyone's help EVER. Not if the legends about the Queen were true. The Queen of the Legends surely wouldn't need a meager high rank's help.
"Quite sure." The Queen answered in a calm, collected tone as she approached both of them, finally stopping just before the cracking seal.
"Wow, so what's your trick, uh? Would you let me guess?" Claudia asked the Queen, with her all too normal, chill attitude, which returned after seeing that the troubleshooter had arrived. It was her way of trying to lift the mood, but this only annoyed the Queen, causing Claudia to retract right away.
"Meeh, who knows? Maybe it's just your self-righteous nature." Claudia simply diverged the conversation so she could leave the area, along with Nero, who gave her a helping hand.
"Sounds about right," Nero says while helping Claudia leave the dungeon since Claud clearly tired herself to the near point of collapse as she could barely walk, let alone run.
Once alone, the Witch Queen simply stood firm right in front of the collapsing seal and didn't even flinch as the breaking seal began to leak some darkness. The Queen simply stood still and waited for the seal to break by itself.
The gate finally gave away after a couple of seconds, letting forward a massive amount of raging darkness against the Queen. The room soon got covered in the darkness of the abyssal power for a couple of seconds until the Queen's light managed to return much of the darkness or destroy it entirely. The earth trembled at the clash of pure light and pure darkness.
"A day may come when the prophecy is fulfilled, and the abyss bursts forth!" The light emanating from the Queen's hand grew brighter as she pushed her hand against the darkness, slowly trying to overpower her. Yet the Queen still stood firm, commanding a far greater power against the raging darkness.
"But it is not this day!" With one last push, the darkness finally stopped creeping around the edges of the Queen's seal, forcing the darkness back into the room it had escaped from. The Queen then began to walk forward, pushing the darkness back with every step.
"This ancient power could easily obliterate an entire world." The Queen exclaimed as her light kept pushing the darkness back into the abyssal chamber. The ancient power that was in the abyss was now receding back into the hole, still trying to overrule the Queen without much effect.
"This raging darkness! Would unleash endless catastrophe." The Queen finally pushed the darkness back into the containment chamber just to seal it away for good, this time with her light power. The seal of the destructive abyssal power would soon prove to be one of the Queen's many morally questionable decisions.
"This darkness is too destructive and corruptive. Forgive me for suppressing it against the god's will." Thus, the wheels of fate changed against the witches. Many would then come to believe that the defiance of the witches against the gods would soon become their doom, for all the other gods aside from Andromeda would begin to work harder than ever to destroy the witch nation.
There can't be anyone out there strong enough to defy the gods. It cannot be allowed, many lower-class gods argued...