The Stranger Things
It seemed teleportation didn't feel like anything. For the briefest moment, Gabriel felt as if he were being pushed off the ground by a massive propeller, then it was over.
Prolessarch and Gabriel emerged from the depth of the Grand Diagram.
The air was thick with something that Gabriel couldn't place at first, like the interior of a cave, but fused with the essence of yeast and fermented, spoiled milk and the acrid musk of ancient sweat, like someone was constantly shoving a guy's gym shorts into his nostrils.
At once, Gabriel realized this wasn't the target destination of La Spezia.
Everything that surrounded them was a barren wasteland of gray rock, unnaturally dark as if delicately laminated to absorb light and never let go of it. There weren't lots of plants around them, but there were a couple, not dissimilar to blue, elongated mushrooms with squashed, nearly rotund caps. They seemed to be glowing faintly.
The sky above was a fractured pane of dark green and brighter green mist leaking from white-lime cracks, producing unnatural clouds. It was moving and shifting, fractal shapes in an unceasing and unnatural kaleidoscope between the cracks. It also didn't seem to move in the way it should when Gabriel's head bobbed around as if detached from reality. It was kind of like how in old cartoons the cel-shading let you know that some particular bit of rock was going to move and wasn't part of the background.
The sun was by far the most terrifying thing he'd seen. It was replaced by a disgusting mass of purulent matter, like a bloated tumor hanging from some invisible patch of skin. It still produced light from its interior, but it was crossed by the shadows of some great, living thing under the fake sun's surface.
Gabriel attempted to take in a breath to calm himself and quickly realized there was no oxygen, or perhaps that the content of oxygen per other gasses was too small to support human life.
At once, Gabriel released the pressure of Affectfire around him, flame in the color of magenta, amethyst, and violet bursting from his bare skin and from under his clothing to turn him into a humanoid elemental figure. The violet fire burst into existence with impossible but renewing vigor; the essence of restoration, filling his lungs with fresh oxygen or at least something that resembled it closely enough to let him survive. Maybe it was feeding his cells the stuff of life directly.
"I-" Prolessarch was cut-off before he could explain or analyze the situation, by an earth-shaking roar somewhere northeast of their location.
He thought better on what he was going to say, asking, "Are you alright?"
"Something's burning so hard it's taking oxygen from the atmosphere. Either that, or we're on another planet," Gabriel said, ignoring Prolessarch's question to fill in for his lack of analytical power. Not out of irritation, but out of pure survival instinct.
"The latter seems to be correct," Prolessarch confessed, looking up at the sky, which didn't seem to be a sky, as much as just… something. Something unnatural and strange, and impossible, but vastly distant nonetheless; an imitation of a sky, maybe? Gabriel considered the possibility of it being a hologram momentarily, but Prolessarch spoke before he could voice the theory, "This kind of atmospheric distortion is impossible, even if there were sixty stars above us. And I don't think that ball of pus counts as a star."
Gabriel raised an eyebrow. For increased safety, he took out the Mailman's Pistol from a leather holster that Hound prepared for him. "Another realm? Or you're telling me we're ona planet currently orbiting Nurgle's left testicle?"
"It must be another plane," the lich clarified, moving his hand in order to check something using his magic. He sagged promptly, with a cringe to add into the mix. "Damn it. That stupid chicken must have… damn it. We need to get back, it will take me five minutes to repair the Grand Diagram from here."
"Apocryphal Curse, goddamn me," Gabriel cursed to himself, a surge of irritation flowing through him. It was enough that he couldn't live at home, that his friends were unsafe, and that he now had a Rival waiting to break a stick up his ass - the Apocryphal needed to toss its five cents in as well.
There was another roar, much closer to them, and to the south. Two-hundred meters, if Gabriel's instinct was right.
"Orange barrier," Gabriel said, swiveling in the direction of the roar, poising himself for combat.
The Prolessarch interrupted his casting for a split-second in order to conform with the order. With a sweeping hand motion, he made a wide, orange bubble blink into being around them, then swiftly returned to what he was doing.
"One-directional," he informed, after a second.
"Nice," Gabriel said appreciatively, letting the Ring of Prowess activate at its optimal rate for both himself and Prolessarch, enhancing their entire skillbase comprehensively. Gabriel's knowledge, skills, and proficiencies were uplifted as if he were a trained man almost twice his age.
The source of the latter roar appeared over the horizon of a large pile of rocks.
It was some kind of unnatural monster; like a chitinous spider, but with big suckers at the end of each limb, like half-spheres clinging to the ground. Instead of a spider's, its head resembled something more like the blending of a deer and a deflated xenomorph, with no antlers. More threateningly, from its chest sprouted a pair of long, spearlike limbs ending in bony spurs, with six joints, moving in a hypnotic, sinuous pattern like enchanted snakes. It was bigger than a suburban family home, but not by much.
Gabriel looked towards the beast and raised an imperious hand in its direction.
Gently spinning pentagrams appeared in mid-air, crackling with energy; five of them in total. The Cursebearer clenched his fist, and the pentagrams released their accumulated power, blasting the monster with green rays of energy and causing it to roar as parts of it became covered in scorch marks. It wasn't enough.
This second roar seemed to vitalize some of the other beasts in the area, because the ground started to shake a moment later. Suddenly, another beast identical to the first appeared over the horizon to the east of their position, and then a nearby rock formation tore itself apart and came to life with cracked veins of magma, to reveal it was actually the shell of a fiery snail. It started to slide in their direction with speed more reminiscent of an angered, stalking wolf than a gastropod. Elsewhere, a bunch of spiders made from animated ice crystals stood up and began to skitter emotionlessly in their direction.
Gabriel turned to Prolessarch for a moment, and then back to the beasts - the lich wasn't even remotely done with his spell. Gabriel's heart raced with anxiety and adrenaline as the beasts closed in.
"We're going to be surrounded at this rate," Prolessarch said in a flash of realizational analysis of their escalating situation. "This is going to get us dead. Change of plan; we need to run and reach a fortified position. Do you have the sledgehammer?" The lich glanced at Gabriel.
Gabriel unslung the brutish weapon from his back. "Yep."
"Then lead the way," Prolessarch said, and with a motion of the hand, the orange barrier compressed around Gabriel's skin like a taut rubber suit.
Gabriel clenched the sledgehammer in his hand, a little spark of trepidation running from his heart and then spreading within him in regular pulses. For improved safety, he deployed another one of his accumulated Pentex spells - it was a mixture of offense and defense; three orbiting skulls that would fire bursts of kinetic force at anything that got too close and held ill-intent towards the user or someone they were protecting. It'd last around three minutes if at minimum use, or a minute at peak use.
And since he didn't want to leave anything up to chance, he flexed his inner connection to his Imaginary Element and surrounded himself in a typhoon of violet, furious Affectfire that followed him, as if he were the center of a never-ending explosion. It was an exhausting use of the magic, but one he could maintain for a good while.
"Let's go," Gabriel said, with renewed determination.
Prolessarch quickstepped forward and cast Mordant Flame with a gesture, the blazing purple bolts of soul-eating flame tossed at the nearest spider-giant and crackling across the surface of its armored skin and limbs, causing it to over-extend and veer forward with a chaotic step.
The lich quickstepped out of its way, turning around and leaving it to Gabriel, while he started casting a Battle Diagram of some kind.
Gabriel met the spider's head with the sledgehammer, the crushing force of his supernatural grip ringing across its exposed skull and causing a deep indentation to appear with a sickening crunch, like the shell of a crustacean being shattered open for consumption. At the same time, his Affectfire enveloped the monster into its lethal embrace, as the Cursebearer followed each hit with another, concrete-cracking blow. The spider squealed, roared, and thrashed, then began to stand up with panicking legs, the main body a veritable balefire of erupting, amethyst vengeance.
From the side, Prolessarch cursed, "Damn it."
Gabriel wheeled around in an instant and winced. Another one of the spiders had speared Prolessarch through the space in between the ribs, immobilizing him even as he kept casting the same Battle Diagram. Its head was moving its head in closer to bite.
The Cursebearer reacted with blinding speed, shooting forward and using his whole body to snap the extended spear-limb like a paltry twig. The creature roared and screamed, then prudently took a step back to evade a sledehammer's swing.
Prolessarch flared his life-draining power into the limb that speared through him, causing the skin and flesh to turn into black-purple dust and then vaporize in a second, leaving only bones that collapsed rapidly as he stepped out.
His Battle Diagram finished, and Prolessarch released its power. The sky above them suddenly twisted as if distorted from its might, a number of swirls like individual hiccups in reality. A second later, a storm of annihilating meteors rained down on the area; each boulder came in sizes ranging from a football to a minivan, crashing with force comparable to a missile. Gabriel was preparing to evade, but it didn't seem necessary; the meteors avoided him on their own, gaining slight homing as they approached the surface, and darting towards opponents, with a focus on large targets.
More creatures were converging on them. Gabriel was nearly caught off-guard by one of the fiery snails, but it was blasted with the power of one of his orbiting defense skulls. As the snail once again slithered up, Gabriel's eyes widened as the monster ignored him completely, moving in the direction of Prolessarch.
The Ring of Prowess' tactical insight filled out the gaps: they were after the lich, not him. They didn't care about him in the slightest.
"Mask your presence!" Gabriel shouted in Prolessarch's direction, as he shot a roiling blast of Affectfire towards the snail. It squealed with a surprisingly human sound, like the displeased moan of a frequent smoker in his sixties.
"I don't have any spells for that!" Prolessarch quickstepped into mid-air, then cast another Mordant Flame, shooting down over a dozen flaming purple darts at the nearest opponents.
While he was distracted, a third spider-beast climbed over the cliff behind the lich and started to move in his direction with a steady, cautious gait.
The meteors had stopped raining down, so Gabriel needed to take matters into his own hands.
Gabriel aimed the Mailman's Pistol with his left hand and discharged a few shots towards the spider-beast's eyes. One of them popped with a wet thunk, while the rest of the shots slid against its facial carapace uselessly. The monster ignored him entirely despite the injury, then leaned down and speared its forelimb right into Prolessarch's eye socket just as he turned around to face it. The spear came out the other side, pinning the lich in place.
"Run!" Prolessarch ordered. The remaining eye socket blazed with deep soulfire, like a lantern, then started to ooze out in a manner similar to frost leaking from a tank of liquid nitrogen, or smoke from a lazy exhaust pipe. "I'll take as many of them with me as I can, then I'll be back in a week! Find a way out of here before that!"
"I need you!" Gabriel said, a spear of hesitation stabbing through his soul. "How will I get out without you?!"
"You're one of the Accursed's spawn, aren't you? You'll figure it out!" the lich cheerfully emboldened, not afraid in the slightest; for himself, or for Gabriel.
As if understanding that wasn't enough, the lich's head creaked with desperation to defy the spider-beast. He managed to establish a moment of eye contact with Gabriel, and shouted, "Remember what you're fighting for! Don't give up, just because of this!"
As soon as he was done speaking, dozens of other monsters set upon Prolessarch with thrashing vengeance; flaming snails, spiders made out of animated ice, ants with bulbous neon-green bodies, and another gigantic chitinous spider monster. A hundred abominations of various colors, shapes, sizes, and natures.
In that very moment, as if drawing in the entire moment deep into himself, Prolessarch reeled in the monsters like a gravitational singularity. The beasts screeched. There was a bright flash of blue soulfire and a surprisingly temperate, calm explosion; not even much louder than a champagne cork being popped off. There was no dust, fire, or even much detritus; one moment, the mass of monsters was there, and the next one, there was a smoldered, immolated crater run-through with soulfire-blue cracks and motes of similarly-colored flame.
Gabriel didn't stare at it for longer than only a couple of seconds. He turned away from the scene and bounded off in the opposite direction.
Prolessarch was right. More than that, Prolessarch was a Lich of the Diagram, and his phylactery was the universe's memetic legacy of him – as long as Gabriel kept remembering him, then he'd be able to come back.
And there were more who knew of him: Gabriel's friends, the GRUP members, some randoms who saw the fight with the Mailman, and probably a good fraction of the POD, including Dr. Serpenti. If the Accursed counted, then the Accursed too.
He'd be back.
Right?
Gabriel kept sprinting away from the battlefield, hoping no beasts would attack him or otherwise take notice of him in any way.
To his chagrin, he encountered a neon-green ant as big as a dog almost instantly upon turning a corner. The creature looked at him and blinked its eyes lazily, then disregarded him completely in favor of, ostensibly, using its mandibles to mine the nearby stone.
He looked more closely at the ant and decided to feed the Eye the visual information about its body, with further observations on everything he had seen of the local flora and fauna thus far.
The Eye of Knowledge seemed to value the information, granting him something that was immediately useful: a short ritual in another world's magics that would nonetheless work in the eldritch realm he was in. It could be used in order to lead himself to the location of the closest portal or passage to his homeworld - or in the absence of either, an entity that could open one.
Gabriel closed his eyes. The ritual demanded imagination from him: a perfect visualization and encapsulation of certain thoughts in a short, but demanding sequence.
The first was a red spiral, with three winding helices that led up to convergence at the top, with a thicker bottom. The bottom of the spiral was a placid circle from which the helices rose together. Additionally, he needed to think and ideate that five plus ten equals five.
The second image was a complicated, flat plane of four squares: yellow, green, blue, and red. In their midst, a black cross that extended halfway to each square, emblazoned with golden-cyan runes that he understood represented the very idea of 'being lost and wanting to drink from the waters of a distant land.'
In this same way, Gabriel imagined four additional images, which brought him to the ritual's last step.
Gabriel opened his eyes, then stood up, and the myriad paths flared in his awareness.
A vague definition tinged each one: there was a demon, four kilometers south, that could be bargained with in order to seek entry into the city of Milan, where Gabriel would emerge on top of the storm that was occurring there right now.
Alternatively, there was an open portal, but it was twenty-six kilometers to the northeast, going through arduous terrain and filled with hostile monsters, and it led to a cavern that was underwater.
There were eighteen more paths, but each one was even less reliable than the initial two. One of them quite literally involved ritual suicide.
This spell was useful nonetheless. It was a real shame it could only be used in planes other than the primary one.
Gabriel sighed with a trace of frustration.
He embarked on the first path.
Demon it is, then. Let's hope he's reasonable.
It wasn't a long path. Four kilometers was no distance to someone who could sprint as fast as him, far surpassing even the Olympic athletes he used to admire as a child with wide-eyed zeal.
As Gabriel approached the demon's territory, the world around him seemed to change.
The sky, gradually, started to shift from a cracked green pane to a deep, flowing red; like the dome of the atmosphere was replaced by an ocean of blood in a bubble that surrounded the world. It was crossed with veins of pure black, darker than the darkest blackness that Gabriel had ever perceived. The sun was reminiscent of a glossy lollipop, red like a crystalline ruby, but it kept beating; growing larger with each beat's apex, then shrinking as it fell. It also kept rotating and gyrating wildly, and sometimes, splintered off shards of itself which speared out in various directions before snapping back forcefully into place.
Likewise, the gray stone of the terrain shifted and became more like an organic loam, a dark brown colored tinted with rust, on top of which grew a blood-red organism that seemed to be somewhere between moss and grass, but much larger; scraping by the thighs in some places, but reaching the knees nearly everywhere.
Gabriel was somewhat weirded out by the odd landscapes. But then again, he could shoot love-fire out of his hands and cast spells.
He was only 'somewhat' weirded out, initially.
Then, out of nowhere, the grass field collectively flexed its stalks and started singing; a harmonic tune, maintaining a constant, unending note of a single, high, angelic pitch. It was strangely beautiful, although not to the point where it was supernatural or literally 'hypnotic.'
Gabriel attempted to tune out the singing and ignore it completely. He suspected that it had the potential to fuck with his mind in unforeseeable ways, and did something to him worse than the Simurgh ever could.
As he approached closer to his target, the pitch gradually started to change. At first, it dropped to a deep bass, reminiscent of the throat-singing of a Tibetan monk, with individual stalks beginning to chaotically diverge, playing notes of their own at higher or lower pitches; some of them so high they were reminiscent of a chicken's talon scratching against a blackboard, while some of them were so low they were more like the background noise of an industrial machine running.
The pitch kept dropping as he walked, then, finally, the song ended as he emerged out of the grass field in front of a large circle of empty, rust-colored stone that surrounded a monumental edifice: like a Mayan ziggurat reaching to the sky, with a hundred steps.
To Gabriel's surprise, there were people around it. Both surrounding the ziggurat itself, as well as the small clay huts that were erected in a wide crescent around it.
Not people. He corrected his mistake quickly.
He didn't know what they were, but they appeared to be four-armed humanoids, their skins ranging from a color of light black to near-albino, but with dark-red spots surrounding ventral ports on their bodies.
Each one had ivory-white, bony growths on top of their head, not dissimilar to horns, but in neat arrangements like hairstyles or crowns, with a number of joints that emulated the flexibility of hair to some degree. They also had a set of four, brilliant cornflower-blue eyes that were sufficiently humanlike that if he was shown a picture of nothing but the eye itself, he'd have been fooled.
They seemed not to mind him too much, or even notice him - there was an entire group of them, maybe thirty to forty, each one sitting or standing around the ziggurat and speaking with each other. Others were attending to farm animals that seemed to be derivatives and mutations of Earth livestock.
Gabriel looked around with a mote of confusion in his face, but then he noticed the figure on top of the ziggurat was beckoning him, and he moved to walk up its steps.
The demon in question was an enormous serpent, like a primordial anaconda from before the times of the dinosaurs. Its scales were thick and heavy as if to armor it, and their coloration was a dark, lucent black, like the sky of the void with glittering stars cast across it. The snake was lying down on a velvet pillow several sizes Gabriel's bed, and in front of stood a four-armed, four-eyed humanoid demon like the ones downstairs, with a spear; ostensibly a guard and a translator.
The snake hissed, in a number of sibilant noises. The guard nodded, then looked at Gabriel, and said something in French.
"Italian," Gabriel said. "Or English."
"I know English," the guard remarked, voice casual and with a deep accent that didn't fit any of the Earth accents that Gabriel knew. If he was forced to say, the closest would be Chinese, but even that wasn't accurate. "One of those downstairs knows Italian."
"English will do," Gabriel said, nodding in agreement.
"Good." The guard nodded once, also in agreement. "The Great One asks the reason for your coming here, although he expects it."
"Safe passage back to my homeworld, for I have been misplaced by an error in a spell," Gabriel explained. It felt somewhat wrong to say that sentence. He couldn't have seen himself saying this stuff outside of a really weird game of Dungeons and Dragons a month ago. But here he was.
The Great One uncoiled slightly as its factotum translator relayed the message in the tongue of the serpents. It rose slightly, like a spring, as if standing to match Gabriel's height in contrast to its earlier laziness. Its eyes displayed a strange, cunning intelligence; one on par with Gabriel's own, if not superior.
It hissed once, twice; a third, longer, melodic hiss, and a conclusive hiss with a sense of finality.
"The Great One says he can do that for you," the translator confirmed. "But how can you pay him back?"
"What would he want?" Gabriel said, lowering both of his eyebrows.
"The Great One is always in search of great artifacts," the servant added without asking his master, "The Ring or the Eye would suffice, but if you aren't willing to part with either, there is one that he is looking for specifically, in this realm. If you would bring it for him, the Great One would be happy to do business with you."
Gabriel folded his arms. "What kind of artifact are we talking about, and what kind of threat is protecting it?"
The servant smiled wittily as if amused by the fact that Gabriel was savvy enough to recognize it wouldn't be that simple.
"The Scythe of Dannag-Ur," the man explained. "It can be used to harvest the bloodwheat you saw as you came here. It looks no different from a normal scythe, but with a golden blade carven with the image of a long snake. It has been stolen by the Great One's sworn enemy, Lararfarrenox. I have the map that leads to it with me, if you choose to accept. It would be guarded by at least one of Lararfarrenox's legions. Whether you sneak past them or vanquish them is of no concern to the Great One; he simply wishes to feed his people."
"Sounds good to me," Gabriel said, nodding along to his explanation as he evaluated the various tactics he could employ. Due to the Doom of Judgement, he'd have to sneak past them; killing them would only be a last resort.
The man turned to the snake, and hissed some words. The snake hissed back, then coiled back and turned so as to raise its back end towards Gabriel's hand.
Understanding the gesture, Gabriel reached out with his hand and shook its rear-end. The snake coiled back, then hissed a melodic, harmonious command at its servant; its eyes were full of recognizable joy, if not outright cheer.
"And if you desire, he'll also invite you to a celebration party. It is understandable if you'd rather go home at once, of course, given the storm outside. Only a polite consideration," the servant assured, handing the map to Gabriel: a parchment scroll with a black ribbon sealing it.
"Any more you can tell me about those…" Gabriel tried to remember the exact name, which came to mind a moment later. "Lararfarrenox's guys?"
"Lararfarrenox's demons are expert fighters," the servant said in a cautioning manner, like a parent warning his child not to play with a lighter. "I would expect heavy resistance. They are masters of the Pentex, and practice the devilish charms of their master besides. I would expect heavy resistance indeed."
"I use the Pentex too," Gabriel said in consideration, mostly to himself.
The man nodded peacefully. "So do all who are enlightened to His coming."
So this man knew the Pentex as well? And possessed some dangerous religion or ideology, possibly worshipping Yog-Sothoth. Gabriel desperately needed training in the use of any magic, so even a couple of tips could go a long way.
"Any advice on its usage? From a veteran to an adept?"
"I'm afraid there isn't much I can tell," the man denied regretfully, although with a good-hearted smile on his features. "Every user of the Pentex walks his own path, does he not? There isn't more to it. It is a part of the Gift."
Gabriel sighed and then shook his head. "I understand. I'll get your scythe as fast as possible, Great One."
He bowed respectfully, and then embarked on the path towards the artifact's resting place.
Following the map, Gabriel estimated the journey would take at least half an hour in a single direction, but at least it seemed to be a rather straightforward path. No monsters or major obstructions, if the map was honest and recently updated.
After crossing the field of singing bloodwheat once again, Gabriel started on the journey. He crossed a large canyon of gray rock that seemed to be a nesting ground for the neon-green ants, but none of them were overly bothered by the fact he existed, with most of them not even looking up at him as he passed.
For an alien realm, the creatures here so far were surprisingly docile - the initial ambush naturally aside. They were even calmer than the animals back on Earth; back there, if a deer saw you, it'd speed off in terror. Here, none of them cared, as if living in peaceful, non-violent coexistence and feeling no reason to fear or detest other sentients.
As he approached the enemy's location, the sky and terrain started to change once again. Gabriel theorized the Eldritch Plane was split into domains of some kind, with the neutral areas being mostly barren gray rock and the green, cracked sky. The Great One's domain was red in color, instead, with a black ornament to shadow it.
This place? What he suspected to be Lararfarrenox's domain was purple, instead: a dark, rich, full purple, with shades of purple, pink, and dark violet for accompaniment, like the colors of royalty. In some places, it edged over into slight redness, but it was mostly purple and nothing else. Curiously, the sun here appeared to be something like a dark, blue-white tree with branches or roots that expanded in every direction, almost like a tumbleweed rather than a tree.
Eventually, after three minutes of non-stop running through the domain and using landmarks to guide himself, Gabriel reached his goal.
It was built in a style not dissimilar to the Great One's ziggurat, with blocky stone walls and towers that surrounded some kind of city or large town. The map didn't instruct where he could find the scythe, but he supposed it would be the temple in the very middle.
Worryingly, there were demons swarming the entire place.
Stereotypical ones, too: a pair of white horns, red eyes, and pitch-black skin, wearing nothing but loincloths. Their features were slightly bovine and slightly batlike; especially when it came to the wings that fluttered occasionally. They also had hooves instead of feet and, to complete the image, the guards used copper tridents and bidents instead of spears. There seemed to be unarmed civilians too; males and females, tending to livestock and patches of what seemed to be a tomato farm on the outside.
This place was interesting. Prolessarch would have loved to study it, had it not completely desired his utter purgation for some reason.
Gabriel let his Ring of Prowess empower him with knowledge of stealth. It was imperative that he do his best to sneak past everyone and achieve a bloodless outcome; otherwise, the Doom of Judgement wouldn't be as merciful as it was in the past. Even if these were actual demons.
He managed to reach the corner of the wall, then used a nearby rock in order to tip over a brazier with burning wooden logs. As the patrol rounded the outskirts of the wall, they saw it and ran towards it with the intent of extinguishing it. They called down the guards on the walls in short order, as well as those at the gates, to help.
The distraction was more than sufficient to get into town. Climbing the wall itself was almost laughably easy, as not only did it have protruding bricks for handholds and footholds, it was also slightly tilted inwards.
The city wasn't much different from what he'd observed outside. It seemed to be split into three or four major districts, each one composed of a handful of city blocks, three to eight buildings per block. He could see a market near the middle, a short walk away from the temple itself. Fortunately, the streets were pretty desolate at the moment, so there wasn't too much of a risk in being discovered so long as he wasn't stupid about this. Gabriel tuned down his Affectfire to the bare minimum, keeping only a small bubble around his throat and mouth.
Swiftly, he moved down the wall, then navigated the tight alleyways and scaled the rooftops, careful to stay out of sight, as he approached the central ziggurat. It didn't take even a minute, because for the city's venerable size, the rooftops of its buildings were nearly on a flat level, and it seemed like a universal rule of their architecture that a building needed to be two floors tall; no less and no more.
Deciding to keep himself safe as he approached the ziggurat-temple itself, Gabriel cast a Pentex spell focused on stealth, managing to conceal himself in an invisible cloak. It fluttered slightly when he moved, especially down at his feet, but it would last for a good five minutes: sufficient to go in, grab the scythe, and move out.
The plan went off without a hitch. He ran across the buildings and then scaled the ziggurat's least exposed staircase, before moving into the annals of the construction itself. For some reason, the scythe wasn't even guarded, and despite his expectations, no alarm or traps were triggered when he grabbed it and started running with it.
Under the cover of invisibility, Gabriel managed to make it halfway across the town before one of the guards noticed him and bellowed a warning. A second later, there was a discharge as a bright plasma orb slammed into the wall of a house a couple of meters behind Gabriel.
There was the ringing of alarm bells, and the gate started to close on itself.
Gabriel sprinted forward. Another spell propelled him like a rocket, giving him enough speed for that one critical second to pass through the gate just as it was about to close.
He kept running, but as he did, he felt something sharp and warm slam into his back with the force of a punch. The sharp feeling persisted, deadly pain ringing through his bones and slowing him down calamitously.
No longer concerned with stealth, Gabriel unleashed a wild torrent of Affectfire to purge the wound and immolate the projectile stuck in his body. The amethyst-violet aura flared in sudden vengeance, causing his invisibility cloak to be consumed, turning him into a beacon for more enemy projectiles. The sudden vigor was more than enough to let him run again, however, so he continued and didn't even think about looking back at the city he'd just robbed of its precious artifact.
He remembered one of the better tactics he used earlier for concealment; Gabriel released a wide spray of Affectfire, behind himself and to both sides, covering a wide field to mask his presence among the fiery chaos.
It seemed like the soldiers on the wall, given their superior ground and vision, weren't fooled. A spear of chitinous bone scavenged from a spider-giant dug itself into the ground, slightly in front of and to Gabriel's left. Not even a full, complete second later, a mighty fireball did the same to his right, causing tremors in the earth and opening a crater as large as a villa pool. The Ring of Prowess flared, letting him barely dodge the third projectile.
Faster, Gabriel pushed mentally, adrenaline flowing through him like water through a hose, I need to go faster.
In seconds, he was out of effective firing range. More and more shots kept going wide or not reaching him entirely. With that, Gabriel kept sprinting for another mile and then slowed down to a trot. He started arduously back-tracking to the Great One's ziggurat.
He was starting to become tired, between the constant use of Affectfire and the stealth mission he'd just performed.
They would be chasing after him on horseback, he instinctively knew, from the Ring's skill imbuement. No civilization would surrender a spoil of a magical artifact's level to a robber, even if they weren't using it for anything.
Gabriel looked down at the scythe he was holding, and fed the visual input to the Eye of Knowledge, along with the description of it that the Great One had given him. It was deemed as mostly useless knowledge, and he received squat in exchange. Some farming techniques, and nothing else.
Gabriel sighed deeply, exhaustion settling into his overextended muscles.
Tiredness began to take the best of him. He had to find a place to hide soon, lest he become a pincushion for bone-spears.
Moving for the neon ants' cave system in the canyon he passed earlier, he elected to spend a couple of minutes recuperating there.
As before, the animals didn't seem to care too much, even when forced to skitter past his crouched form. One of them even stopped to look at him for a moment, as if to smell him, then moved back on track to its business.
"Thank you," Gabriel whispered, staying absolutely still, moving as little as possible as to not upset their ant-work.
Interestingly, they didn't seem to carry food or water back into wherever their nest was, or anything of the kind. No - they were just mining rocks, each one the size of Gabriel's clenched fist, for some inscrutable purpose. Some of them were carrying different rocks from the gray, flat stone of the realm he was in; something resembling pyrite, while a couple had azure stones as big as Gabriel's head.
Gabriel stopped in the caves for a little over fifteen minutes. It was all he needed to recover - prior to his ascension as a Cursebearer, it'd have taken him at least two hours to get back up again from such an exertion, but with the powers granted to him by the Accursed, it was all over with in less than half an hour.
When he stepped out into the canyon, he could hear the outriders of Lararfarrenox's demons up in the flatlands above him.
Many of them were cursing and screaming audibly, and Gabriel's ears caught also the sound of the ants fighting with them, clicking their mandibles as they defended their territory against an overwhelming, invading force.
Gabriel started to feel the Doom of Judgement pressing on him very slowly and understood why inherently: he brought those demons here, upon ants that were close to sapient, and hadn't done anything to hurt him so far. It was his fault, and each second that passed while the ants were being hurt for it was a minor sin accumulated.
Although so far it wasn't more weight than when he'd killed people in the past, he could tell that it would be far more than a complete murder's worth if he let it go on.
Gabriel realized he must protect these ants, for they had given him shelter in his time of need, willing or unwilling. Resolute and determined in his goal, he upholstered the scythe and blasted upward with a vigorous jet of Affectfire emitted from his body. He reached the edge of the cliff moments later, meeting six of the demons; each one seated on a bloodhound the size of a horse, with blood-red eyes and horns of their own. Around them was over a dozen ants, either dead or dying, some of them mangled beyond recognition while others seemed to be bleeding out still.
One of the ants thrashed as its gaster was pierced by a spear, pinning it to the earth. It let out a terrible, squealing wail of pain and agony, while the demon killing it grinned.
Gabriel dashed into the demons' ranks. The scythe was a terribly impractical weapon, and his relative inexperience cost him the killing blow: instead of expertly lobbing off his head, the impact caused the demon to be thrown off his steed.
As a result, he released the speer, and the now-free ant stood up and hobbled terribly, half-dead already, and started moving in the direction of its nest.
Gabriel released a burst of indiscriminate Affectfire towards the ant, to heal its mangled, injured body. The creature sat down as the flames reached it, and then seemed to breathe in as if through a pair of lungs, calming down from the terror of near-death.
All of the weight applied by the Doom of Judgement was relieved instantly. Gabriel felt lighter than he'd been ever since the Accursed's deal.
The demons used that time in order to surround him, spears pointed at his throat. Gabriel didn't give a fuck and released another burst of Affectfire in a wide, omnidirectional blast, centered on himself. All of them and their hounds screamed as the flame burned them, and Gabriel propelled himself with a jet and activated the domain of skill on his Ring, gaining enough proficiency to angle the scythe and his body relative to the closest demon, cleanly severing the head from the shoulders, then twisting around to stab the blade like a spear into another demon's back, keeping him thrashing in the air while his steed ran off without him. It was utter chaos.
Gabriel cast a spell, accelerating his personal timeline by a little over an eighth. Everything seemed to be fractionally slower as a result.
With swift, precise movements, he used the scythe and sledgehammer in both hands, dual-wielding to kill off every remaining demon-soldiers. One more fell to a blunt strike to the back of the head, while another was bisected at the midriff, spraying red liquid everywhere in a disgusting pile of viscera.
Once he was done, Gabriel took some time to heal the injured neon ants lying around. The creatures chittered at him as they stood up, in what he recognized as gratitude. It was surprising how close to sapience they were; more like parrots than dogs, if not beyond that. If there was anything left from the Doom of Judgement, that act of merciful healing cleansed those faults from him completely.
Nonetheless, the ants and he parted ways, and Gabriel began to walk back in the direction of the Great One's territory.
As he walked, he thought.
This fight had been pretty one-sided; these demon-soldiers were no match for his superhuman speed and strength, let alone the Affectfire and Pentex Magic. It looked closer to toddlers with sticks fighting adults with rocket launchers rather than demons facing a teenage boy.
As far as the killing was concerned… Gabriel felt no guilt whatsoever. Nor did he feel any for the 'theft' of the scythe which was already stolen from its apparent rightful owners. These were demons, who had no qualms about slaughtering innocent creatures. They had it coming. He wasn't sure if the Doom of Judgement accepted moral justifications like this; probably not, since its entire purpose was to be the remorseless, neutral judge that saw his actions in its own light.
No. Those justifications were more for himself, Gabriel realized.
When the ziggurat returned into sight, Gabriel walked through the singing bloodwheat, running his free hand through it.
As he did so, there was a subtle whisper from one of the stalks, one he didn't quite catch.
Gabriel frowned and got closer to it, to better hear the whisper which caught his attention.
"Help."
Gabriel's blood went cold. He stared at the bloodwheat.
After a long moment of standing and staring, blood as cold as a lake in winter, Gabriel swallowed his fear and breathed in once, deeply. Every bone in his body shuddered at the same moment, goosebumps spreading across his back and arms.
Closing his eyes and treading on, he ignored the bloodwheat and its subtle whispers - this must've been yet another trick of this demon-infested world, and he would not fall for it.
The Doom of Judgement filled up minimally once it understood this was his final decision, but not so much as to weigh down on him to a degree that bothered him. Gabriel weighed no more than five additional kilograms as a result, maybe up to seven. A treacherous quantity, but one he could deal with until he made up for it.
Gabriel walked back to the ziggurat, and up its steps. A flash of uncertainty and regret went through him, as well as the question of what Prolessarch would have done. Would the skeleton even care in his place? In his body, and with his powers? The lich didn't seem too moral, willing to disable his fondness for interacting with people if necessary.
Presenting the scythe to the ginormous snake, Gabriel said, "Here it is, Great One."
The Great One was delighted to see him back so soon, nodding its head and licking the air with its tongue, both of its eyelids turned down in happiness. The servant accepted the scythe due to the Great One's absence of arms and said the Great One was pleased to see him back already, then told Gabriel to follow the Great One.
The snake led Gabriel down a side of the ziggurat and into a long corridor. They passed through several chambers, some of them similar to dorm rooms, while another was some kind of canteen. The Great One led him even further down into the very heart of the monolithic temple, where a huge black archway patiently waited for them.
The Great One coiled up into a spring, then looked at Gabriel and hissed something encouraging, before gently bowing its head down and opening its mouth to reveal an opalescent, white pearl.
"What is that?" Gabriel asked, curiously looking up at the snake.
The Great One did not reply due to its open mouth, and the translator was no longer with them. It stuck its tongue out, pearl rolling down to its tip as if extended towards the Cursebearer. The Great One was expecting him to take it.
Gabriel picked up the pearl with one hand and inspected it with the Eye of Knowledge. It didn't have any illusions on it - that much he was sure of, but the Eye of Knowledge didn't seem to be able to provide any further clues.
The Great One coiled back, then looked at the arch in front of them, before hissing once in a commanding, but munificent tone.
With the mysterious pearl in one hand, Gabriel approached the archway.
As he did, the pearl lit up with various mystical sigils on its surface, in the colors of starlight, and the archway activated; a tear in space opened between its twin stone arches, showing a cobblestone plaza. There was a deadly storm-rain splattering down in inhuman quantities, almost with physical force within it, and some cars driving down the street, but no people. For such weather, it made sense.
"Well, wish me luck," Gabriel said with a deep sigh, preparing to step through the portal.
As if understanding him, the Great One nodded its head politely.
"Have a good day, Great One," he said, as he stepped through.
The portal closed a moment later with a sudden whooshing of air. There was now a physical archway on this side, Gabriel noted; in case he ever saw a need to go back to that place.
Gabriel looked back. His clothes and head were already splattered with rain, and he quickly saw there was something wrong.
In front of him was the Cathedral of Milan, or rather, what remained of it.
It had been destroyed utterly, black smoke pouring down from its ruins. Down further in the city, Gabriel saw a dozen similar streaks. The cars, he realized, weren't driving around leisurely but swiftly running the corners in hopes of evacuating a city that was collapsing around them rapidly.
"What the fuck is happ–" A dark wave of dread washed over him, as he realized that his parents were in this rapidly-collapsing city.
More importantly, he received his answer a second later, as a gigantic monster peaked over one of the buildings.
It was a humanoid with dark purple skin, cast in gray chitinous armor, at least two-hundred meters tall, an ineffable giant that'd be capable of crushing a car underfoot in much the same way that a person crushed a cockroach or a spider. It was four-armed, with a sword in one arm, a sai in another, and a bow shared between two arms, with arrows the length of a condominium and arrowheads titanic enough to sink a cruise ship.
It looked right down at him, then grinned with blood-stained triangular teeth. "Hello."
