The command reverberated like a thunderclap, forcing its way through the suffocating veil of despair that clung to the battlefield. It was not a plea, nor a request—it was an undeniable truth, spoken by someone who had long since learned to bend chaos to his will. The trembling child in the distance flinched as if struck by an unseen force, the words cutting through the haze of his torment with brutal precision.
Cillian regained his footing with fluid grace, his movements betraying no sign of the punishing heat that radiated from both the infernal sun above and his own burning resolve. His dark attire clung to him like molten tar, trapping the blistering heat against his skin, yet he pressed forward undeterred. Each step he took was deliberate, each motion imbued with purpose as he advanced toward the child.
"Mo comprendre so a yeke ngangu." he added, his tone softer but no less commanding. The words carried an undercurrent of empathy, a rare glimmer of humanity in a voice otherwise forged for battle.
(Translation: "I understand it's hard.")
And then he moved—a blur of lethal intent slicing through the battlefield with terrifying precision. His form became a streak of motion, a reaper wading through fields of abominations. The Azo pëpe fell in droves before him, their grotesque forms collapsing into lifeless clay as he struck them down in one devastating sweep. Their destruction was not chaotic but methodical, each strike calculated to maximize efficiency and conserve energy.
Yet even as their bodies crumbled to dust and mud beneath him, the sound began anew—
*SEEEEEEEJ
*JEEEEES*
—the sickening symphony of their reformation echoing across the battlefield. The Azo pëpe began to rise once more, their shattered forms knitting themselves back together with unnatural ease.
Reaching Popoto, Cillian grasped the child's thin, trembling arms with a grip both firm and steady. He yanked them away from the boy's skull, forcing Popoto's gaze to meet his own. The child's eyes, wide and terror-stricken, reflected a maelstrom of madness that threatened to engulf them both. Popoto's breath came in shallow, ragged gasps, as if each moment without his fingers clawing into his head stripped away another fragment of his tenuous sanity.
A sound, sickening and viscous, slithered through the oppressive air—an all-too-familiar harbinger of inexorable resurgence. The earth beneath their feet quivered, a grotesque parody of life as the Azo pëpe began their unholy resurrection. Their shattered forms reconstructed in a nightmarish ballet of unnatural motion, limbs twitching and contorting as they clawed their way back into existence, propelled by forces that defied mortal comprehension.
The air grew thick with the scent of sun-baked clay, damp and cloying. Yet beneath this earthen aroma lurked something far more insidious—a stench of decay and ancientness that spoke of eons-old rot and cosmic malevolence. It was the odor of truths too vast and terrible for human minds to grasp, a sensory reminder of the insignificance of mankind in the face of eldritch horrors.
Cillian's jaw clenched, the grinding of his teeth audible even amidst the cacophony of eldritch rebirth surrounding them. His grip on Popoto's arms tightened, not out of cruelty, but from a desperate need to anchor himself—and the child—against the tide of madness threatening to sweep them both away.
He had been slaughtering these abominations relentlessly, each strike a calculated attempt to uncover some hidden weakness, some flaw in their unholy creation that might serve as the key to ending this nightmare. His mind raced through every encounter, every blow struck, searching for a pattern, a vulnerability, anything that might offer a glimmer of hope in this sea of despair.
But they would not stay dead. They never stayed dead. It was as if death itself had abandoned this forsaken realm, leaving only an endless cycle of destruction and rebirth. Again and again, they rose from the clay that birthed them, each resurrection a perverse puppet show orchestrated by forces beyond comprehension. Their very existence mocked the concept of mortality, sneering at the natural order that Cillian fought so desperately to preserve.
As the Azo pëpe continued their grotesque resurgence, Cillian felt a weight settling in his chest—not just the physical toll of battle, but the crushing realization that brute force alone would not be enough. The relentless cycle of death and rebirth was more than just a test of his strength; it was a challenge to his very understanding of reality.
So—
Cillian's voice erupted from his parched throat, a raw and urgent sound that sliced through the suffocating miasma of the battlefield. Each word was imbued with a desperate intensity, carrying the weight of worlds teetering on the brink of oblivion. His breath came in ragged, shallow gasps, the oppressive heat of this twisted realm pressing against him like molten chains, threatening to drag him into the depths of madness. Yet he forced himself onward, anchoring his very being in this crucial moment.
His grip on the child's arms remained unyielding, a physical manifestation of his unwavering resolve. Cillian's aquamarine eyes, once lauded for their captivating depth on silver screens, now bore the weight of cosmic battles. They locked onto Popoto's mud-hued gaze, a connection forged in the crucible of eldritch horror. In this instant, there was no room for hesitation or doubt. This was the fulcrum upon which the fate of reality itself would pivot.
His last attempt:
"Mo hinga so mo yeke hon na yâ ti aye mingi fadeso na a ga ngangu na mo ti zia lê ti mo gi na ndo ti mbeni ye fadeso. Me zia bê ti mo na mbi. A yeke tongaso pëpe si a yeke sara ni. Ti duti clé ti mbeni yanga-da atâa a yeke kete wala kota, ayeke mbeni kota ye. A yeke kota ye mingi, mbi wara ni. Me a lingbi mo duti kpô ti gbu nda ti komandema kue na ndo azo ti mo so ayeke azo pëpe!"
(Translation: "I understand that you're going through so much right now that it's become difficult for you to focus on anything right now. But trust me. This is not how it's done. Being the key of a gate be it small or big, is a huge thing. It's overwhelming, I get it. But you need to calm down to fully grasp control over your non humans.")
His voice carried both an ironclad resolve and an undeniable plea, the duality of command and desperation warring in his tone. But as his words settled into the charged air, an ominous sound slithered through the silence—a wet, guttural rasp that coiled around them like a serpent born of nightmares.
The grotesque symphony of rebirth crescendoed once more. The battlefield itself seemed to convulse, the earth splitting open in suppurating wounds that spewed forth a fresh tide of Azo pëpe. Their reconstitution was a blasphemy against nature: limbs oozed from pools of viscous sludge, torsos bubbled upward like tar rising from hellish depths, and faceless heads swiveled toward Cillian with a hunger that transcended mere violence. Sunbaked clay cracked and hissed as their bodies fused back together, every fissure in their forms weeping a thick, black ichor that reeked of rot and millennia-old decay.
Their faces—or the shifting voids where faces should have been—turned toward him in unison. Though devoid of eyes, mouths, or discernible features, they radiated a predatory awareness. These were not mindless puppets, nor were they cunning adversaries. They existed in a liminal space between instinct and oblivion, drawn not by strategy or malice, but by the primal pull of his aliveness. In this realm of stagnant death, Cillian's heartbeat was a thunderous anomaly, his breath a siren song to creatures starved of vitality.
Cillian's stomach churned as the truth crystallized. These abominations were parasites wearing the guise of men, their existence tethered to the essence they lacked. They did not hunger for conquest or flesh, but for the mere presence of a living soul—a flicker of warmth in a world frozen in eternal rot. Every pulse of his veins, every shudder of his lungs, was a beacon they could not resist.
Around him, the air grew thick with their yearning. The Azo pëpe did not charge; they flowed, their movements a nauseating amalgam of liquid and solid, as though the laws of physics had abandoned them entirely. Cillian's grip tightened on Popoto, not just to steady the child, but to anchor himself against the visceral revulsion clawing at his sanity. This was no ordinary battle—it was a feeding frenzy, and he was the unwitting feast.
Turning back to face the Azo pëpe, These Azo pëpe seem dumb, instead of having a desire to enter the mortal relam, they seem to desire outsiders more, Cillian thought.
Cillian's hands curled into fists, knuckles blanching white as the last vestiges of his patience evaporated. It had been siphoned away, drop by drop, by the ceaseless cycle of slaughter and resurrection—each futile strike against these abominations a mockery of finality, a taunt against the very concept of endings. Their formless, writhing existence spat upon the natural order, reveling in a perverse immortality that made a jest of death itself. FINE THEN, he seethed inwardly. Since slicing them open won't do, guess I'll just have to show this realm who exactly has flames that bear the real heat.
Rising to his feet, he released Popoto's trembling hands, the child's fingers slipping from his grasp like smoke. His focus narrowed to a razor's edge, the world beyond the seething horde of Azo pëpe dissolving into irrelevance. His breath slowed, each inhalation a forge-bellows stoking the molten fury in his core into something darker, something primordial. Power crackled at his fingertips, arcs of void-black energy hissing like serpents poised to strike.
His lips parted—not in a roar, not in a battle cry—but in a whisper that carried the weight of annihilation.
The words were a key, an incantation older than language itself.
The response was immediate.
Black flames erupted, voracious and unholy, devouring light, sound, and hope in equal measure. They roared to life not as fire, but as an absence—a ravenous negation of existence that tore through the Azo pëpe like a scythe through wheat. The creatures did not burn; they unbecame, their clay bodies unraveling into ash and void, their guttural wails stifled mid-screech as the flames consumed even their echoes.
Cillian's hand extended, and from his palm erupted a torrent of black flames, reminiscent of those Luxana had unleashed in the Inner Training Grounds of Amoria Palace. Yet these were but a pale imitation of that infernal display. Where Luxana's flames had been an apocalyptic force beyond mortal comprehension, Cillian's were merely devastating.
The black fire surged forth, voracious and unrelenting. It devoured everything in its path, the heat so intense that it defied description. The Azo pëpe, those grotesque mud constructs, began to melt and boil under its onslaught. Their forms bubbled and hissed, the very essence of their being evaporating into nothingness.
Cillian's skin began to tan under the intensity of his own flames, a testament to their ferocity. Yet even this scorching heat paled in comparison to the inferno Luxana had unleashed that fateful day. The memory of her black flames lingered in Cillian's mind, a benchmark of power that even now seemed unreachable.
The battlefield itself recoiled. The air ignited, molecules splitting under the heat of this alien inferno. The ground fissured, cracks spiderwebbing outward as the earth screamed beneath the onslaught. The crimson sky above seemed to flinch, its pulsating wounds dimming as if cowed by the darkness below.
For thirty agonizing minutes, Cillian maintained his assault. The realm around him warped and twisted under the relentless barrage of black fire. Slowly, inexorably, the mud that composed the Azo pëpe lost its cohesion, its very structure breaking down under the impossible heat.
Cillian stood at the eye of the storm, his silhouette etched against the devouring blackness. The flames obeyed him, swirling in intricate patterns—a dance of annihilation that mirrored the chaos of the cosmos. He felt the power thrumming through him, ancient and terrible, a force that demanded reverence and sacrifice. Sweat evaporated before it could bead on his skin. His lungs seared with every breath, the heat so profound it threatened to char his bones to cinder. Yet he endured, teeth bared in a grimace that was equal parts agony and triumph.
The Azo pëpe disintegrated en masse, their forms collapsing into nothingness faster than they could regenerate. For the first time since this nightmare began, the battlefield fell silent—no screeches, no wet slither of reforming limbs. Only the crackle of devouring flames and the ragged rhythm of Cillian's breath.
When the inferno finally subsided, the realm lay scorched and smoking. The air stank of ozone and something deeper, fouler—the stench of a wound cauterized by a blade dipped in the void. Where the Azo pëpe had stood, only smoldering craters remained, the earth glassed and brittle.
When at last the flames subsided, nothing remained in the entire realm save for Cillian and the child. The landscape had been scoured clean, the Azo pëpe reduced to nothing more than wisps of steam in the scorched air.
Cillian staggered, the cost of such power evident in the tremor of his limbs and the blood trickling from his nostrils. His aquamarine eyes, now ringed with shadows, scanned the devastation. This was no victory—merely a pause. The realm's corruption ran deeper than its creatures. The red sky still throbbed, the ground still whispered with malice, and Popoto…
Cillian lowered his arm, his body trembling with exertion. He turned to face Popoto, who sat frozen in terror, his young mind struggling to process the devastation he had witnessed.
"Za ya ni. So ayeke kete ye so mo lingbi ti sara, atâa nyen la," Cillian declared, his voice hoarse from the heat and strain. As he spoke, he raised his other hand, summoning the energies needed to open a portal back to Minsan.
The air shimmered and tore, revealing a glimpse of the world beyond this nightmarish realm. As the portal stabilized, Cillian cast one last look at the traumatized child who cowered in the ashen dirt, eyes wide with terror—not of the flames, but of him, and his expression a mixture of pity and grim resolve.
To be Continued...