Chapter 79: Back in Omnisphere
At the exact same time, both Morden and Darlus noticed their bodies slowly break apart; there was no pain, no discomfort, nothing like that. It was just slowly falling apart from the ground up.
For some reason, the two of them weren’t panicking, but on Morden’s side, the Monkey leader watched, and he watched as Morden slowly fell apart, and because he didn’t understand why that was happening, it was extremely unsettling for it.
So his only response was to cause commotion.
Morden looked at that sight and couldn’t help but smile while his neck slowly fell apart too.
"I will be back," Morden said.
’I hope I never come back to wherever this is,’ Darlus thought.
And that was the last thing any of them said before everything went completely dark.
Not too far away from where Morden was, a dark place that can only be underground, suddenly heard an echoing rattling sound of chains.
"It has been set in motion," a deep and mysterious voice said.
****Omnisphere****
Morden could feel, see, or hear anything; he just felt stuck in a vacuum with nothing to hold on to, the feeling was extremely stifling, but he persevered.
Every once in a while, the urge to fall asleep will come crashing on him, but he will hold on and keep himself as active as possible.
’Why the hell does it feel like this?’ Morden thought, still trapped in that endless nothing.
Just when he thought he might actually lose himself in it, a pull came from somewhere below him, or maybe above him; he honestly couldn’t tell anymore. The pull grew stronger, and slowly, piece by piece, feeling came back into his limbs.
His eyes snapped open.
He was staring up at a wooden ceiling, and the sound of distant chatter filled the room. It took him a second to place it. The spawn room. He was back in Evergreen City.
Morden sat up slowly, testing his body first. No pain, no stiffness, nothing to suggest he had just been broken apart into nothing a moment ago. He looked down at his hands, half expecting them to still be missing.
"So that’s how you get pulled back," he muttered.
He didn’t waste time lying there thinking about it. Wherever Darlus was, wherever Lisa was, he needed to find them, and something in his gut told him he didn’t have much time to figure that out slowly.
He rushed out of the room and down familiar stairs, out into the street, and that was when he heard it.
A trumpet, low and long, echoing from somewhere past the city gates.
On the other hand, Lisa stood frozen between two parts she had absolutely no idea why they were here.
Behind her, past the tree line, the beast horde was still coming. She could feel the ground shaking harder now, and every few seconds another roar or screech rose up from somewhere deep in the mass of bodies pushing toward the city. She couldn’t even see the back of it anymore.
In front of her, blocking the path to the gate, stood the group that had been camped there all day, and they were no longer looking bored or restless. Their leader, the one they had called Lord Marcus, stepped forward with a calm that didn’t match the situation at all.
"Flaming Lion," Marcus called out, his voice carrying easily over the noise.
Lisa turned to see what he was talking about, and that was when she noticed it. At the front of the horde, standing taller than anything around it, was a lion wreathed in actual fire. Its mane burned bright orange and red, and every step it took left scorched grass behind it.
The Flaming Lion stopped a good distance from the group of Bearers, its golden eyes scanning over them with something close to intelligence.
"You stand in the way of what has already been decided," the Lion said, its voice deep and rough, like it was speaking through smoke.
Marcus didn’t flinch. "And you stand in the way of people who’ve done nothing to earn your anger."
"They have done nothing," the Lion agreed. "But that is not why I am here."
Lisa felt her chest tighten. She didn’t know what any of this meant, but the way Marcus’s group had reacted the moment the trumpet sounded told her enough. They had been expecting this. Maybe not the exact moment, but they knew something like this was coming.
"We protect those who have been offered the gift," Marcus said. "That has always been the arrangement. If you have a grievance, it isn’t with them."
The Lion let out something between a growl and a laugh. "The gift was never meant to be shared freely. You know that better than most."
Around Lisa, the other Bearers had gone completely silent, weapons half raised but no one willing to make the first move.
She could feel the tension in the air like a held breath, thick enough that even she could sense it without needing to hear a single word spoken.
’What gift? What arrangement?’ Lisa thought, her mind racing through everything she had heard so far and coming up with nothing solid
.
She took a small step back, trying to put a little more distance between herself and whatever was about to happen, but there was nowhere good to go. The horde was still behind the Lion, countless shapes moving in the dark treeline, and the gate was still too far to reach without crossing directly through the middle of this strange and unusual faceoff.
"Last chance," Marcus said, his tone shifting, colder now. "Turn back."
The Lion’s flames flared higher, and for a moment the entire clearing lit up bright orange, casting long shadows across every face there.
"You already know my answer."
The tension had reached a point where it felt like the smallest sound might set everything off. Lisa’s hand drifted toward her knives without her even fully deciding to move it there.
That was when she heard footsteps behind her, fast and uneven, someone pushing through the crowd like they didn’t care who they knocked into. She turned, and her breath caught.
Morden and Darlus were running straight toward her, both of them looking like they had no idea what they were about to walk into, but they didn’t care.
@Storm2warden, thank you for your support, you are the reason I keep going. If you would like like to discuss the story and ways to make it better. Here’s my discord name Halo_Primus.