“Zonam calor!” Warren shouted, his voice reverberating through the hall as he activated the pre-selected spell on his MetaTEC. Though he wasn’t entirely certain if the volume of his incantation affected the spell’s potency, the act of shouting gave him a grim sense of empowerment. The air around his outstretched hand shimmered and crackled with latent energy, a radiant heat beginning to pulse from his palm toward the encroaching breach.
In those few heartbeats of charged anticipation, Warren took a critical moment to survey the nightmare before him. The breach had unleashed a swarm of Gheist—those spectral entities draped in tattered cloaks of impenetrable darkness. They jostled and writhed, each one fighting for a place at the front of the line. They were grotesquely uniform, their skeletal limbs emerging from the inky void of their cloaks. The bones ranged in color from an eerie moonlit white to a sickly, diseased cream. Each Gheist wielded a crooked scythe in one bony hand—a pale wooden snath crowned with a jagged, pitted blade—while the other hand remained empty, its long fingers tipped with jagged, broken nails.
The crowd of Gheist seemed to be a chaotic mass of hunger and malevolence. They grappled with one another, clawing and pushing in a frenzied rush, their gaunt, featureless faces a grim parody of humanity. The masks were merely curved bones, with a gaping maw of sharp teeth set in the lower half. The lack of eyes was disturbing, but more unsettling was the palpable sense of their gaze piercing through the void, locked onto the terrified people within the hall. The sound of their mouths chattering in anticipation was a maddening symphony of clattering enamel, a chilling prelude to the violence they sought to unleash.
Then, with a surge of concentrated fury, the spell ignited. A massive gout of fire erupted from Warren’s hand, a searing torrent that roared out into the mist-shrouded darkness beyond. The flames roared and crackled as they surged forward, cutting through the oppressive fog with blistering intensity. The firestorm swept through the ranks of Gheist, incinerating those at the forefront and reducing them to swirling ash. Warren watched with a mix of grim satisfaction and bone-deep exhaustion as the fire consumed the ghastly forms.
As the flames roared and crackled, Warren felt a pang of existential disbelief, an urge to question the very fabric of reality that had led him to this horrific juncture. But he quickly pushed those thoughts away, too afraid that delving into such questions would shatter the fragile grip he had on his sanity. For now, he focused on the immediate threat, channeling his contempt and desperation into the cleansing fire.
Several Gheist exploited Warren's brief lapse in concentration, slipping through the perimeter of his blazing spell with malevolent precision. Though they ignited upon entry, the fire's embrace was a languid crawl rather than an immediate inferno. These spectral entities, their bodies adrift in an eerie void, shrieked in torment as they entered the hall. Their legless forms floated with ghastly grace, their mournful wails echoing off the walls. Warren could not bear to look, but the desperate cries of the slow-moving evacuees, which had begun as panicked shouts, soon morphed into heart-wrenching pleas for salvation as the flaming Gheist descended upon them. In time, the screams were swallowed by the rising roar of the fire, leaving behind only the crackle and hiss of the flames as they consumed their horrific prey.
Tears of anguish welled in Warren's eyes as he realized the brutal truth of his failure—innocent lives had been claimed by the chaos. Yet, the more pressing threat loomed before him. Suppressing his guilt, he channeled his remaining resolve and allowed his contempt to burn through him. The flames in his hand surged with renewed intensity, targeting the dwindling horde of nightmares. The final Gheist succumbed to the inferno, and Warren, exhausted and battered, released the spell with a mental command. He glanced at his MetaTEC, which displayed a grim tableau: his mana reserves were perilously low, leaving just enough for one more spell. His stamina pulse flickered a weary burnt orange, reflecting the physical drain on his body. An unfamiliar orange flash marked his psyche pulse, leaving Warren uneasy about its implications, though his health pulse remained reassuringly green. The experience bar had inched significantly closer to leveling up.
A cold, mocking voice cut through the smoke and debris from the darkness outside. “Was that rewarding, little man?”
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Warren squinted into the swirling mist as a bony figure emerged and stepped into the hall, its presence sending a chill through the already frayed nerves of those present. Bathed in the harsh glare of the fluorescent lights, the creature revealed itself fully. It stood as tall as a man, its skeletal frame draped in a cloak reminiscent of the Gheist’s tattered shrouds. Unlike the plain, featureless masks of the Gheist, this entity’s visage was a polished skull of ivory, with a malevolent celestial light gleaming from its eye sockets. The palpable wrongness of its form was accentuated by the hilt of a tarnished sword clenched tightly in one skeletal hand. The blade, dark and menacing, promised only death.
“Reaver,” chimed the MetaTEC. “Level five Abyssal being. Caution. A direct challenge is not recommended at your current level.”
“Can you not speak, little man?” the Reaver inquired, ignoring the MetaTEC’s warnings as though they were mere background noise.
“Nothing about tonight has been rewarding,” Warren found himself saying, the absurdity of conversing with this monstrous entity settling heavily on him. It was strange, almost surreal, but the conversation felt almost normal amidst the chaos.
“Not true. You have put down an amicable number of my brethren,” the Reaver replied, its jaw unmoving.
“They were hunting my people,” Warren retorted.
“Yes, we are.”
The Reaver’s cold statement hit Warren like a hammer. He had anticipated some form of denial or defensive outrage, but instead, the Reaver offered this truth with chilling detachment.
“What are we, just your prey?” Warren asked, struggling to grasp the monstrous logic.
A lilting, almost melodic sound came from the Reaver’s skeletal form. Warren realized with a shudder that the creature was laughing at him.
“Oh no, little man. We Abyssal beings are quite unlike our Carnal cousins, who revel in their predatory bloodlust. We hunt your kind for the sport of witnessing your heartbreak as you surrender to despair. It pleases Nyxathalaya, the Dreaded Queen.”
The Reaver made a subtle, almost respectful gesture by placing two fingers over the area where its mouth would be if it were made of flesh. The name Nyxathalaya sent a shiver down Warren’s spine, his adrenaline spiking in response to the name's primal, bone-chilling resonance. Though he had no concrete knowledge of who or what Nyxathalaya was, the name evoked an ancient terror deep within him. It was a name that would haunt his every waking moment, a harbinger of cosmic dread.
“Enough of this!” Warren roared, struggling to reclaim the fragments of his resolve and ward off the encroaching darkness.
“Let me guess, Reaver. My reward for dealing with your little Gheist would be for you to harvest my soul for—” he faltered, the weight of uttering her name almost too much to bear, “—for your Queen. Well, guess what? Right now, I seem to be the only person with the power to banish you and your minions back to whatever frozen hell you crawled from. There are still many people alive in this building who depend on me to protect them, and you are in my way.”
If Warren had a weapon, he would have made a dramatic flourish, but instead, he grabbed a discarded walking stick from the floor amidst the clutter left behind by the fleeing survivors. He wielded it like a sword, using the crook as a makeshift hand guard.
Growling with fierce determination, Warren continued his defiant stance, finding solace in his performance, even if only for the purpose it gave him.
“Now, I don’t know what tomorrow may bring. But I can tell you, Reaver, you shall not see the sunrise.”
The Reaver’s jaw seemed to shift into what Warren interpreted as a grotesque smile, as it brought its sword up into a stilted salute.
“Well met, little man,” the Reaver said flatly, then advanced.
“Ignis Arma,” Warren hissed, running his hand along the length of the walking stick while his MetaTEC glowed with an intense fire. The flames, vivid and sunset-colored, ignited across the cane, but the wood remained untouched by the blaze.
The Reaver acknowledged Warren’s challenge with an eerie stillness, preparing to engage as the flames danced around Warren's makeshift weapon.