Chapter 218: Losing Ground
Elena felt with absolute clarity that something terrible was about to happen if that blade came free entirely, so she tried to speak to Seraphine, her voice unsteady.
"Are you sure we should be doing this?"
No answer came. Seraphine didn’t even turn to look at her, her eyes stayed fixed on the chained figure, and just as Elena was watching her, she noticed something, a golden glow had begun pulsing around Seraphine’s body, faint at first, then growing steadily more intense.
She had no idea what was happening.
Meanwhile, the sword kept sliding free, and the exact instant the last edge of the blade left the flesh, half a second of silence fell over the entire chamber, everything motionless, everything mute, as if even the air itself had stopped moving.
Then the chained figure jerked awake all at once, and a tearing, almost monstrous roar burst from her throat.
In that same instant, black veins began spreading across her face and beyond, while her wings, one after another, started to darken. From the wound in her chest, where the sword had rested only a moment before, void energy began seeping out, dark violet, almost viscous and alive, quickly working its way into the figure’s flesh, corrupting her from within.
The sight sent a wave of terror down Elena’s spine, and she couldn’t help but wonder if they had just dug their own graves.
But right at that moment, she saw Seraphine take a step forward and vanish, and before she could even register where she’d gone, Seraphine reappeared an instant later, right in front of the open wound on the giant figure’s chest.
Without a moment’s hesitation, she stepped inside.
The instant it happened, a golden glow enveloped the entire figure, and the corruption seemed to slow, then stop completely.
But as this happened, the chains binding the creature, which had shown no reaction at all until then, suddenly began to tremble. Small flashes of light appeared across them, quickly taking the form of strange, rune like symbols that lit up along their entire length, pulsing with a yellowish glow.
It was almost as if a battle against the corruption had just begun, a silent struggle in which neither side was able to gain the upper hand.
Elena watched all this in horror, completely lost and unable to make sense of what she was seeing, or why, but then a voice echoed through the chamber.
The female figure was no longer as pale and lifeless as she had been only moments ago. Color had begun to return to her features, and that face was now, without a doubt, Seraphine’s face.
Her eyes opened, and her head, tilted downward, seemed to move as her gaze settled on Venom, in her transformed shape, the sword still held ready beside her.
"Now it’s your turn. Hurry up. I don’t know how much longer I can hold it."
***
Meanwhile, in Ashwick, the situation hadn’t improved, if anything, it had grown even more desperate, because alongside the corrupted beasts, a small army of low rank Hollows had joined the fray, led by an A-rank who showed no restraint in unleashing them.
Screams and panic were everywhere as destruction continued to reign over the city’s outskirts.
The more time passed, the more the defenses failed to hold, letting the destruction push further past the perimeter, like a fire slowly but steadily advancing, setting everything in its path ablaze.
The guards had formed a perimeter, which they were now defending with everything they had, but the longer it went on, the harder it became to hold.
Every second, someone was wounded. Every minute, at least one or two people died.
Every time a guard fell, another took their place, but the rate at which spots were being vacated was now outpacing the rate at which they could be refilled.
"Close ranks! Don’t leave any openings!" the captain shouted, his voice already hoarse.
A young soldier beside him tightened his trembling grip on his spear and swallowed hard.
"Captain... they’re all dying. We’re just sending more people out there to die."
"This isn’t the time to count the dead, boy. Hold your position. If the perimeter falls, everyone dies. We just need to hold a little longer."
But even as he said it, he couldn’t stop himself from glancing back, toward the growing line of stretchers stacking up behind the front, toward the bodies being hastily covered with sheets that were never enough.
That was when the ground shook.
Not an ordinary tremor, a sharp, brutal impact, as if something had just punched the earth itself. The guards spun toward the barricade to their right, just in time to see it explode inward in a shower of splintered wood and dust.
Something emerged from the breach that stole the breath from anyone who looked at it.
It was massive, four thick, powerful legs supporting a heavy, squared off body like that of a rhinoceros, covered in cracked, grayish skin veined with glowing, sickly violet fissures that pulsed like exposed veins. Along its snout, where a pair of eyes should have been, ran an entire row of them instead, small, yellow, devoid of anything resembling intelligence, but alive with a hunger that seemed to know no end.
"W-what the hell is that thing?" the young soldier stammered, stumbling back a step before catching himself.
No one answered, they were all too stunned by the sudden attack, and by the creature’s chilling appearance. The beast snorted, a cloud of black vapor rising from its nostrils, then charged, straight at a cluster of six guards who didn’t even have time to raise their shields.
"MOVE!" the captain bellowed, but his voice was swallowed by the thunder of heavy footsteps shaking the ground.
One of the soldiers dropped to his knees, paralyzed, not by injury, but by the sheer terror of watching death barrel toward him at a speed nothing of that size should have been capable of.
His expression was one of panic and terror, but also of resignation, he understood there wouldn’t be time to save himself, something that, as hard as it was, he somehow found himself accepting. The same seemed to be true for the rest of his small group, who watched the creature close the distance in mere heartbeats.
The beast was two steps from the kneeling soldier, its head already lowered, ready to gore him and everyone near him in a single motion.
Then the air changed.
A faint, almost imperceptible whistle cut through the noise of battle an instant before a mass of water materialized out of nowhere, rising like a wall in front of the group of guards.
The beast slammed straight into the obstacle, and in that same instant the water hardened, solidifying into a slab of ice as thick as a tree trunk, absorbing the impact with a deafening crack, fractures spreading across its surface without ever fully breaking through.