The air in my apartment didn't just grow cold; it died. The lightbulb overhead gave a final, pathetic pop, plunging us into a gloom broken only by the sickly glow of the vial in the lead bottom-feeder's claw. My tears. My despair. The fuel for this nightmare.
They clung to my ceiling like grotesque, sagging fruits, their huge black eyes unblinking. One. Two.
And, after just a second,
three.
Their puckered mouths curved into identical, vacant smiles. The air thickened with the promise of illusions, of hellscapes tailored to break us.
"They multiply..."
Niran whispered, his voice tight with a fear I knew wasn't for himself.
The lead creature's head tilted. The festival's hellish vision slammed into my mind with the force of a truck—the screaming spirits, the blistering heat, the absolute, soul-crushing loneliness. I cried out, falling to my knees. My own tears felt like betrayals on my cheeks.
Dao gasped next to me, a weak pulse of golden light flaring around her—her sacrificed hope trying and failing to push back the despair. Preecha was silent, his hands clamped over his ears, his knuckles white. He was drowning in a silence only he could hear.
The air behind us ripped.
A wave of pure, predatory fury washed over us. The Wailing Void stepped through the tear in reality, its obsidian armor drinking the little light there was. The single blue slit in its helmet burned with cold fire. It was here to finish the job.
The bottom-feeders reacted with chilling synchronicity. Their big black eyes didn't blink. Instead, they projected.
The hellscape wasn't just in my mind this time. It bled into the room. The walls peeled away into jagged, bleeding rock. The floor became hot, cracked earth. The Wailing Void staggered, a low, grinding sound of frustration emanating from its helmet. It was fighting the illusion, its own mind turning against it.
"Gloves!" I yelled at Niran over the psychic scream of the false reality. "We need to break their focus!"
Niran didn't hesitate. "My bag! In your room!"
We moved as one, a frantic, stumbling unit. Dao and Preecha flanked me as I shoved my bedroom door open.
And froze.
Sprawled across my bed, taking up the entire mattress, was Thomas.
The smaller, failed Devileater from the festival was fast asleep on my pillow. One arm was draped over its featureless face, its chest rising and falling with deep, rumbling breaths.
"He's... sleeping?"
Dao whispered, incredulous.
A faint, psychic snore—zzzzt-kkkkkh—vibrated in our teeth.
"Thomas!" Kephriel's voice snapped from the doorway behind us. He sounded like an annoyed parent.
"We are under siege. Get up."
Thomas didn't stir.
The hellscape illusion in the main room intensified. I heard the Wailing Void roar in fury.
Niran lunged for his backpack, leaning against the nightstand. As he grabbed it, his foot knocked against the bedframe.
Thomas's eyes shot open. It blinked, looked from us to the chaos in the next room, and let out an excited psychic yip! It scrambled off the bed with clumsy eagerness.
The two Devileaters stood side-by-side in my living room—one a pristine weapon of war, the other an eager rookie.
The three bottom-feeders focused. The hellscape illusion doubled in intensity.
The Wailing Void weathered it. Thomas, however, whined, shaking its head, completely overwhelmed. It was useless.
"They're too strong!"
Niran said, holding the Nakwi gloves but not putting them on, his face pale with intimidation.
"I can't... the pull is too much..."
--
"Distract them,"
Kephriel commanded, his voice unnervingly calm. He wasn't looking at the battle. He was staring at a point in the center of the room, his hands raised, his own chains beginning to glow with a complex, intricate blue light.
"I am attempting a localized reality anchor. It requires concentration. Do not let them interrupt me or u will perish."
He vanished from the doorway. One second he was there, the next he was just gone, leaving us alone with his impossible command.
*Distract them.*
The bottom-feeders' smiles widened. Their attention shifted from the struggling devileaters to us, the easier prey. The hellscape vision redoubled, a psychic hammer blow. I screamed, the loneliness so absolute I wanted to vomit.
A bottom-feeder dropped from the ceiling, landing in front of me with a soft, squelching sound. It ignored the others. It wanted its primary source. Its claw reached for my face.
A blur of motion shot past me.
Julia slammed into the creature with a cry that was part terror, part sheer defiance. Kephriel's refined calm had shattered under the direct assault. She was just a terrified girl, but she was a terrified girl putting herself between a monster and its meal.
She wrapped her arms around its torso, wrestling it away from me.
"Get back!"
she screamed at it, her voice raw.
The creature thrashed in her grip, confused by the violent, turbulent emotions it was now feeling from her.
Her act of bravery broke the spell on us.
Niran screamed, a wordless sound of fury, and finally shoved his hands into the Nakwi gloves. They glowed with a sickly light. He focused all his will and pulled.
The tchi-tchi crackle was loud. The hellscape flickered. The bottom-feeder struggling with Julia spasmed.
Dao, seeing her chance, focused her hope into a lance. A single, brilliant beam of golden light shot from her chest and struck a second bottom-feeder in its huge black eye.
It screeched, a soundless vibration that felt like ice picks in my brain.
It wasn't enough.
The creatures shook off the attacks. The one fighting Julia threw her aside like a ragdoll. She hit the wall with a sickening thud and slid down, unconscious. The golden light around Dao sputtered and died, her energy spent. Niran grunted, the gloves' pull now draining *him*, his knees buckling.
The third bottom-feeder dropped down, joining the first. They ignored the Devileaters now. They ignored everything else. They started moving toward me again, their movements slow, deliberate, and horribly patient. They had us. They had won.
The Wailing Void was still trapped in its own nightmare. Thomas was cowering behind my sofa.
We were out of ideas. Out of strength.
This was it.
And then, from the spot where Kephriel had vanished, a single, shimmering chain made of solid blue light erupted from the floor. Then another. And another. They weaved through the air in a complex, beautiful, and terrifying pattern, stitching through the hellish illusion itself, burning it away like sunlight through fog.
The bottom-feeders stopped. Their smiles vanished. For the first time, they looked... confused. Then concerned.
The chains pulsed once, with a sound like a dying star.
And everything went perfectly, utterly still.