Skreetha found herself inside an open field. She saw burning houses around her. It was the center of a small village. Looking around the monster saw multiple dead arachnes. Each bore Skreetha’s face. Adira in her black armor stood in the epicenter, she was the reason for fires and destruction. Her own hands brought it and there was no remorse.
Under her feet, a young girl lay defenseless. The arachne looked at her face. It was the same as Adira’s. The young Adira held a glaive three times bigger than she was. Her small hands wrapped around the shaft, barely holding the weapon straight. The point aimed at her adult counterpart.
“You are a monster!” The child cried. “You took everything from me! You are evil!” The young girl reluctantly swung at the adult. Adira did not move, but her armor pushed the weapon back with an explosion, sending both the little girl and the glaive flying back. The woman stood without moving. The fire reflected in her irises, shining in sparkling tears flowing down her face.
“Monster!” The little one shouted in despair. “We were supposed to be heroes! Defeat the evil, become stronger, and help the Goddess. What are you now?”
The words were more effective than any weapon. Adira fell on her knees, unable to speak, defeated by simple childish ideals.
“Wake up, stupid brat. We need you!” Skreetha rushed forward, standing in between the two. She felt the same things the girl felt. Her desperation was eating at Skreetha’s mind. She had to do something so both could get out of this agonizing scenario.
“She won't listen to you.” A mischievous phrase interrupted the arachne, spoken with more venom than the little girl looked capable of. The child looked at Skreetha with spite. The monster was interrupting her fun. “She abandoned her fear. She is the Champion of Darkness now. You have no power over her. You both are stuck here, Greed won’t let you escape his clutches.”
Adira stood on her knees, looking at her palms with pointless recollections. Skreetha knew her every thought, felt her every emotion. Felt how lost she was. Before she was guided by hate, now it all burned out, leaving only an empty vessel that cannot be filled.
An idea struck the monster. She ran towards the child. The little girl could not offer any resistance. For her whole life, Skreetha was a terror, that hunted people. She would simply be a terror now.
“Hey!” A loud voice echoed over the raging fire. It immediately grabbed Adira’s attention. Skreetha stood among corpses and fire, holding her child counterpart by the head. The girl weakly struggled, trying to break free of the arachne's iron grasp. “Did you forget who I am?”
With that call, she separated the child Adira’s head from the body. That flipped a switch in Adira. The next moment, Skreetha’s head rolled on the ground. The enraged girl stood behind. Her gaze hatefully pierced the arachne’s dead body. That’s right, the young huntress needed to be reminded of her hate. Rekindling it returned her the sanity she was holding on to.
“Bloody Gods, things I do for this girl.” Skreetha mumbled in her language, as her head rolled through the mud, and she separated her consciousness from Adira’s mind.
The arachne slowly opened her eyes. She and Galen watched over Adira together, almost like a caring couple. Her breathing became less sporadic. The monster rubbed her neck, where the glaive slashed it. Somehow it still felt sore. In a few moments, Adira opened her eyes. The first thing she saw was Skreetha’s face.
“What are you looking at?” The girl spit.
“A weakling.” Skreetha replied in kind.
“Stop it. Not now.” Galen interrupted them, separating them with his hands. “We have a problem to deal with.”
Adira’s eyes grew wider as soon as she remembered the situation, they were in. She looked up at Salgos roaring in pain above their heads.
“We need to get out of here. Be a Godslayer for once.” Skreetha urged Adira. This time the girl could not argue with her. She turned to Galen, as he quickly explained the situation.
“Do we have a plan?” The young huntress looked around, but her eyes stopped at the old hero who so far was able to solve every problem. Unfortunately, this time he looked as lost as she was. Still, the man tried to offer some guidance.
“My best guess is this wall. It is not a wall, I suppose, but the insides of that Demigod. Can you break through it?” He pointed towards the wall where the face of Greed was. Adira nodded and prepared the dark glaive she borrowed from Salgos, as hers was lost to Infinity. Her attack jumped off the wall as if she was hitting stones.
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“No, not here.” Skreetha interrupted them, hissing in annoyance. She looked at Galen. “Remember I told I do not go to caves without having a thread connected where I started?”
The man quickly caught her drift.
“Do you think you have it outside the body of that Demigod?” The arachne nodded and led them following an invisible thread in her hands. They crossed a solid distance up and down the stairs. Turning left and right along the hollow structure leading to the bottom of the temple. For quite some time it felt like they were going in circles. Finally, Skreetha turned towards the wall and pointed.
“My thread goes inside.” A stab there still bounced off the stone. Adira tried again with all her might. The “Sky Crusher” only charred the internal walls. “Mana strike”, which was supposed to ignore any defense, was also deflected. The struggle continued to no avail. The girl was punching the rock wall.
“You sure it’s here?” Adira panted, infuriated by her failing attempts.
“I feel my thread.” Skreetha shrugged. “Can’t you hit harder? Your glaive is supposed to kill Gods. How can you not deal with the wall?”
“Shut up! Or I will make you.” The young huntress snapped, turning with her glaive towards Skreetha.
“We can’t break out from inside.” Galen concluded, studying the aftermath of Adira’s struggle. “If Salgos said he cannot break through, then we have no chance as well. Someone from outside must defeat this Demigod, that is our only way out.”
“And who would that be? Your army of hunters that we were supposed to alert?” Adira turned to the archer and mocked him. “No! It is too stupid to say we are helping the Demigod of Darkness! Let’s do it all by ourselves!”
Galen stopped himself from retorting. Instead, he focused on the air. It listened to their emotions, amplifying them. A sure way to make everyone mad. The whole place was wired to make them hateful.
“I am just saying we cannot break it from here.” The man sighed.
“You all are useless.” Adira paced in circles. Skreetha followed the girl with her gaze.
“Why can’t you do something? You are Godslayer.”
“Shut up.” The huntress spitted back.
Her aggression did not pay off, Skreetha simply watched her without care in the world. In the end, Adira weakly slid down the wall and sat on the stone floor. There was no need for the arachne to remind her of her weakness. The girl looked at the monster collecting her web back. An idea caught her mind. A reckless one, but she thrived in recklessness.
“I will break us out.” She stood up, feeling her determination quickly venting out. Whatever the plan was, she needed to execute it now, before she reconsidered. “Give me your thread.”
She approached the arachne.
“When I say, Galen, push me with your shadow as strong as you can in the direction we came from.”
“My magic will not be soft.”
“I don’t care! Do what I say!” The girl shouted in anger. Galen shrugged and reluctantly prepared his spell. Adira grabbed the invisible thread. Not even sure it was in her hand. Only when she wrapped it around her palm and felt a tug did she realize it was there. She hung the web over her shoulder and began to pull it, grinding the thread against the wall. When she felt like she was not moving an inch she shouted.
“Now, Galen!”
A pillar of darkness crushed into the girl’s side as hard as an earth dragon. The magic clashed against Adira’s body and braked challenging the thread’s strength. The girl heard her arm crack just before the pain bit into her whole shoulder. Her muscles cried as she felt her flesh tear. She screamed as well. Skreetha realized the girl’s idea. She ran in front of her, wrapping Adira’s waist with her web. The arachne tugged forward pulling the girl with her.
A small crack appeared in the wall, sliced by the thread. Then it grew, welcoming rays of daylight. The Demigod’s stomach was invincible from the inside, but the thread cut his outside body first. Little by little Greed’s stomach opened. A purple flesh bled out where the string split it. As the cut grew in size, all of them were forced out. Some sort of magic spit them through the gap, as something unwanted. Salgos was also thrown away a moment later.
They were back at the main entrance inside the temple. A huge worm the size of a house with a human face. Its stomach was cut open. Purple blood spilled outside. It reeled and screamed in a disgusting manner. Not exactly human, but human enough for its wail to disturb Adira.
Salgos grabbed the creature by its face snuffing out his cries. He pulled Greed to meet his gaze.
“Pathetic maggot. You served Gods you swore to consume.” He squeezed his palm harder, slowly crushing Greed’s head. The wounded worm looked at him in terror. “Now you die like their pawn.”
His face squeezed through Demigod’s fingers little by little. Rays of black shadows pierced the Demigod of Chaos’s body. They grew inside of him, piercing his body everywhere. Shadows wrapped around him and consumed Greed’s body entirely, leaving only purple pools of blood as a reminder of his existence.
Salgos picked his lost arm from the ground and reattached it back, probing how it moved.
“Good job getting us out of here.” He said to the group. “We will go directly to the bottom.”
The Demigod crushed the wall in a single blow, revealing a large cylindrical hole going all the way down. Without a moment of hesitation, he jumped into the darkness. Adira and Galen followed quickly, each with their own method of landing smoothly. Carefully, Skreetha looked at the free fall awaiting her and grumbled.
“Why can’t we take stairs?”